Winding, Crooked Trails

weak stream of consciousness

End of October I will  have been here at Typepad for two years.  That's nine months longer than I was at the old site.  Doesn't seem so to me, feels like I was there a lot longer than I obviously was.  Perhaps that's because there was more crammed into that fifteen months than the twenty four here.

Typepad posts - 341 
Blogger posts - 429 
Type comments - 3,105 
Blogger comments - 6,502

That all doesn't mean much but I like numbers.  I count some really strange things sometimes.

     

Your current TypePad plan:	Plus
Your billing rate:	$89.50 yearly
TypePad subscriber since:	October 2005
Your billing status:	Up-to-date

Neena gave me a free one year typepad trial in October 2005.  I anticipated being billed last October.  That didn't happen.  Nor has it happened so far this year.  They are probably reading this and I'll get a bill for two years now.  If that happens I'll just go back to the old site, bottom line is it really doesn't matter where you write does it? 

I still look at my stats.  I stopped for awhile but I got in the habit again a month or so ago.  One of the reasons I started writing again was because I felt guilty about the people who would come here even when I wasn't posting.  If you look at your stats you will see me there.  I don't comment as often as I once did but I do read those of you who come here and some of you who don't.  I appreciate my loyal following, of course I do.  As I've said before, I'm not one who writes for himself.  If I wanted that I would just think it and save the time it takes to type it.  Nope, I'm a frustrated entertainer.  I wish my job was Tribal Storyteller.  Yarnspinner.  Taleweaver.  I would speak the truth and only slightly embellish that which I felt could use a little spin doctoring for entertainment purposes.  Not with the sex stuff though, that would all be the truth.  Really.  You wouldn't believe me anyway so why lie about it?

I'm pretty sure I heard a commercial during the baseball game last night, one of those sleep aids I think, where one of the side effect warnings they give at the end, the ones they read real fast,  I swear they said something about swallowing your tongue.  Holy hell!  That one has always freaked me out anyway.  I've tried to swallow someone else's tongue but my own?  Not gonna happen.  Gives me the creeps just to think about it.  I'd rather stay awake, fuck that tongue swallowing shit.

Do you think they have every man over 40 thinking he needs flomax or avodart or whatever the hell  else there is?  Maybe I am missing out on life because of frequent urination.  I especially notice it when I drink beer.  Weak stream.  Maybe, but so what?  Do you girls have weak streams?  My teenage son has a stream that I can hear from next door but I'm not sure he gets done any faster than I do.

I hate those mystery side effects too.  "Can cause a specific birth defect."  Why not tell us what it is?  Is it too horrible to say out loud?  An extra head or mangled genitalia?  I've also heard "can cause certain sexual side effects".  Come on, I wanna know.  Does it make you want to mount small farm animals?  Large ones?  Wear a dress?  Get a mullet?  Change sexual preferences?  Give it up, hell if we can take the tongue swallowing thing we can handle anything.

Ask your doctor if you're healthy enough to have sex.  Right.  I love that one.  Can you just call and ask or do you have to make an appointment?

The stupidest one for me though is "or women who are about to become pregnant"  HUH?
Does that mean later tonight?  Next week.  As soon as I find a boyfriend?  I wouldn't know what to say if a woman dropped that one on me in general conversation........"I'm about to become pregnant".  Yeah?  Cool.
Do you know if it's a boy or girl yet?  Me? I never wanted to know beforehand.

No wonder the rest of the world doesn't advertise drugs and medicine.

I think I'll call my doctor and tell him I've had an erection lasting more than four hours and then ask him if I'm healthy enough to have sex.   God I would hope so, what the hell else am I gonna do with it?   

May I lunch in peace

I've been taking my lunch in cemeteries off and on for several years. 
It began when I was going to Connecticut on business every week during the summer of 1996, the summer my brother died  on the seventh of July. 
Virtually every Monday morning from mid July til the end of the year I'd catch the early morning flight to Detroit, smoke a cigarette with a cup of coffee at a bar next to the gate, then board the nine AM to Hartford, rent a car and drive to Bloomfield, Manchester, Old Saybrook, East Windsor, then back again later in the  week, homing at the Homewood Suites with eggs to order and a cocktail hour by the pool in the summer and in the lobby lounge when it got too cold to nibble the free appetizers and sip the free booze poolside in the courtyard.

That year hotels and rental cars and restaurants were my home.  I'd given up my early divorce trappings and lifestyle for life on the road.

No, I didn't just give it up, I fucking ran from it all.  Busted flat financially, emotionally and with my finger up love's ass I sold it all off, put my recliner and both my personal effects in storage at my Dad's and got my passport photo taken. 

Three months in Israel never felt so safe.  I owned nothing but nothing cost me anything.  It was all on an expense report. For the next year I was so off the grid it was hard to get back on.  I clung to my job and my kids by letter and phone calls.  I had a girlfriend who refused the all expenses paid trip to Tel Aviv because she thought it was too dangerous.  I told her I thought the same thing about Detroit and didn't go see her when I got back. 

I grilled fresh vegetables from the market on a hot plate in the hotel room and pocketed the meal money.  I traveled the entire country on weekends and took side business trips to Amsterdam and Paris, Brugge and Brussels. 

I was in a Paris hotel room when I got the call my brother was in a coma and I was on the longest flight I've ever taken within six hours.  He died a week later and I told them I wasn't going back and they said how about Connecticut and California and I said, I can do that but I'm home every weekend. 

And that's how I started taking my lunch in cemeteries.  Grabbing something and finding the village burial ground that was usually on the highest ground in town with old trees and benches and stones to walk among with dates I could barely read, old, old, 1700's old. 

I like the quiet, the history, it's like a library where no one even whispers.  I like to read the stones and wonder what lives were like.

And now......I work in a bad neighborhood.  I prefer to lunch alone so I can read a little and I don't want to be bothered.  There is a very nice little park a couple of blocks from where I work but twice now a police car has pulled in behind me while I've been minding my own business.  There is a church across the street and same thing, he followed me in the first time I was there and sat just a few car lengths behind me.

So I've moved to the large cemetery in the neighborhood.  It's an old one, I like the old ones.  And so far the cop hasn't followed me in.  I can sit lane side in the middle of the acres of rolling grass and trees and feel a long way away from anyone who can interfere with my reverie or my ham sandwich.  I still wander among the gravestones and wonder and I know there are times I see and mouth names that haven't been seen or spoken in decades.  I like that.  I feel like I'm acknowledging lives. 

I love the names and it's not with a somber gait that I traipse among the graves.  I'm often amused and sometimes I see names I think I'd like to have.  Like this one.....

Hank Hotopp.....now that's a name.

Then a mere fifty feet away, this one....

I thought it was telling that they had died the same year and could have actually  known each other and I wondered if they had become romantically involved and perhaps married....

She could have been Rosa Sells Botts-Hotopp.

I finished my sandwich, squinted up into the sun, dialed your number and asked you if you thought I was twisted and you told me you knew that going in.         

Winding, crooked betrails

I'm not sure exactly when I unhooked the chain of past betrayals I wore around my neck for so long.  I didn't put it away in a drawer like a chain you wore for so long and just can't part with even though you don't want it around your neck anymore.  I remember a time when I took a giant step, five years ago it was, I remember exactly where I was, riverside on the Colorado, alone.  Blinding breathtaking blue sky, bigger and bluer like it gets in the West.  I'd crossed the Colorado on a bridge high over the river down below, it was a weekday in May and there was no one around, there was a pull off and I pulled off and walked, down, down, down to the river, I remember singing Take Me to the River.  When it's that quiet you can hear your body, all of it, the breathing, the crunch of your boots and kicked pebbles falling away, I swear you can even hear the dust settling.  And the rippling of the river, the best sound of all.  Rolling, rolling, always rolling.  That day it was lazy with no spring flooding, no mountain snowy runoff to foam around strewn rocks brought down from previous runs and flashes of flood.  It was where that photo was taken from down there, the wide expanse, and the river, my beloved Colorado.  Ready to flow into what was once Glen Canyon, now Lake fucking Powell, but not yet, not yet, still the river as it was thousands, millions, of years ago.  Rolling, rolling, how much water in that time?  Not a fucking nuff apparently.  I won't drift into that passion now though, doffing my Damn the dam hat and moving on.

Sitting there, I remember what I was wearing which is easy, I only have four or five outfits I wear out West, and always the red backpack, the Merrells looking dorky with shorts long enough for my son to say those are fine dad.  Always the camera, always.  Walking, walking beyond the view and noise of the road, not that there was any more than a car every half hour.  This is my country long before it was a chevy commercial.

Sitting, thinking, nothing, everything.  You do that in the bigness.  Thinking, I got here from everywhere I've ever been before.  Slowing my breathing but still hearing it, I always hear my heart during those moments and think, you're a feisty fightin' fuck thank you very much.

Thinking of my rights and wrongs, lotsa both.  Yingin' and yangin' myself into some center. 

Not thinking of being betrayed, I haven't been much, maybe a couple times as a result of my betrayals. 
Thinking, I've never stolen, physically hurt.  I've always provided, always.

Honored thy mother and father, not guilty of greed.

So what?  I've lied, cheated, coveted my neighbor's wife.  Betrayals of the heart and body.  I did them, did them in spades, over and over.  Fucked and fucked, did more getting caught than chasing, I'm not much of a chaser.  It was easy to catch me though, there for a time.

My two wives betrayed?  You betcha.  My kids, sure.  How could they not be, I broke their homes, all three of them.  My youngest turns eighteen next week, first time I haven't had a minor child in over three decades.  But I think we are all good, all of us, those three and me.  Would it have been better otherwise?  Maybe, but then if it was that much better there would only be two, huh?

Would I be with either of their mother's now had I not been the way I was?  I think no, I know....no, and so do they.

I remember grabbing a fistful of red sand and tossing it in the river and watching it disappear and I knew it would flow down, down, through the Grand Canyon, on and on, be gone to me but still be part of everything that ever happened, I can't erase it, I did it. 

But I know I've learned and would I change what I did?  Most likely not.  I did it because I wanted to and I would want to again, what I have learned is to revere what I have, and not need to want to.

Because I have all I want. 

Maybe I just didn't then.       

That deaf, dumb and blind kid.......

I saw  the Who tonight, it was a last minute opportunity.  I have a very good friend who is round, his wife is round as well and she opted not to attend the concert.  I don't mean to be derogatory in my description of them but that is what they are, round.  That's just how they roll.  They are my favorite couple, have been for a long time, an inspiration that it is possible to live happily in life long monogamy.

Another friend also went with a girl I hadn't met before. He isn't round, he is long, that may be a stretch but he is long when standing next to my round friend.  And then I, of such a supple wrist.
At any rate I got to go free which was even better as the tickets were very expensive.  I will send him a check for at least part of it, it only seems right to repay some of his generosity.  I enjoyed the show even though I have never been a huge Who fan.  I mean I like them and many of their classic songs are anthems of my youth but for whatever reason I've never purchased a Who album, eight track tape, cassette tape, or CD.

There were a lot of old people in attendance, I guess I was one of them but I think of myself as younger from my inside view than they appear to me on the outside.  It was kind of nice not to be the oldest person somewhere, lots of places I go I am that and it gets kind of.......old.  I am actually much younger on the inside than the out other than a couple of key outside places where I remain youthful, thankfully.  Might have something to do with the supple wrist, or a supple mind, or both, or all of you who are younger than me by leaps and bounds and keep me on my toes and on my game. 

I've learned that it's not easy to make yourself look young when you aren't unless you are genetically predisposed or have led a particularly healthful lifestyle (unlike mine, Ive lived fast and hard and it shows) but you can move young and that really helps.  I've always moved around, I walk quickly and with a jaunty step, I get up and down without sighing and moaning, quickly and with practiced agility, I walk a lot, never avoiding steps or distances.  I've always been blessed with quickness and stamina but it's easy to lose if not practiced. We all know people who labor just getting around.  Supple is as supple does, if you don't keep bending you cant and won't.  Sometimes I see men and women much younger than me moping and dragging like it's an effort just to get from one place to another.  I know there are those with bad backs, bad feet, arthritic conditions and all that and I don't mean to scoff at the infirm but carriage is an important part of attractiveness don't you think?  Besides, it's almost impossible to smile or have a look of amusement while moping and dragging.  As for moaning and groaning I like the good kind, the mopey draggy kind makes me think the person is tired and I should just move on to someone more sprightly and let them rest.

I didn't get inebriated or high tonight, honest. 

I'm just going to bounce upstairs to bed now all tigger like, maybe do some wrist exercises before I go to sleep.

Finally Friday

I  chose Nikon for my digital camera last summer (on the pay later or find me plan)  because I love Nikon cameras and because I already had two lenses worth about 1300 bucks.  So I bought the body only and got a good deal online.  I normally shoot with my 24/120 which is a beautiful lens, only problem being it's heavy.  If you buy the camera as a kit it comes with a 28/55 lens made especially for digital cameras.  It's plastic rather than metal like my other two and with fewer elements and groups it's considerably lighter.  As much as half a pound lighter than my 24/120.  Of course it doesn't have the optics at $150 that the $520 24/120 does but it is a very nice little lens.  For whatever reason it is almost impossible to find new so I bought one on Amazon that was purported to be "like new".  It finally arrived yesterday and it does seem to be like new. 

One thing it does do better is macro.  I can get much closer with this one.  I like that.  Nice job Nikon for making an inexpensive lens that performs as well as this one seems to so far.  My third lens is a 70/300 so I have everything from wide angle 18 to long telephoto 300 covered with a really great lens in the middle.

Wasn't that fascinating?

My first experience with digital was with X2's Sony Mavica.  Remember those?  The memory was a floppy disk and they held about 10 photos tops.  It didn't take very good pictures from what I remember although that could have just been me.  I never dreamed then that digital would become my first choice for photography.  I have last year's model of the Epson Picture Mate and it prints really good quality 4 x 6's.  Until recently at least you could still find them online for under $100.  You buy a pack that includes the ink and glossy photo paper and when that's gone you just buy another.  You can find a  150 or 200 pack online for 30 some bucks.

I'm still going to get my film Nikon fixed though.

What do you shoot with and do you like it?

Know what I miss?  Those disposable panorama cameras.  Those were cool and I got some great pics with them.  They were great for big open landscapes. I'll try to scan a couple and see how they look on here.

I need this weekend, you?          

30 minutes

The state of Virginia has passed a resolution expressing "profound regret" for their role in condoning slavery.  Gee, thanks. 

Yes Virginia, there is a slavery clause.

In Connecticut an eighty-one year old man is alleged to have killed three others before killing himself.

How the fuck you live eighty-one years before committing mass murder?  That's a slow burning fuse, huh?  I suppose he thought it better to kill himself than to get life in prison. 

Speaking of inmates, there are one and a half million in state and federal prisons and that is expected to grow by two hundred thousand in the next five years.  I doubt that includes city and county jails or juvenile detention centers.  That's a lot of crime man.  Makes me want to move to Utah (but not Salt Lake City).  The surge in inmate population (an increase of 13%) will cost over twenty-seven billion dollars.  Could maybe feed and house some people with that.   

Men outnumber women in the prison system fourteen to one but female prisoners are expected, according to current trending, to increase by sixteen percent compared to a twelve percent increase among males.

When I was a teenager my cousin lived in close proximity to the women's prison.  We used to shout back and forth to them through the wrought iron fence surrounding the grounds.  It seemed fun at the time and it provided fodder for late night fantasies for both sides of the fence.   That could very well be the root of my lifelong affection and longing for bad girls.

Anna Nicole is still dead.  It's all pretty sad really.  Greed and lust, a deadly combination all the way around.

A woman who fatally stabbed her millionaire psychotherapist husband in 2002 was convicted and given a sixteen year to life sentence.  She claimed self defense but had no defensive wounds and he had more than a dozen knife wounds.  She is forty-nine now but met him as a fourteen year old patient of his.  She represented herself and cross examined her own son who testified that she was "bonkers" and that he would never forgive her for killing his father.  She claimed to be a psychic who knew beforehand about the 9/11 attacks but her husband refused to allow her to alert the authorities.

Apparently he wasn't a very good psychotherapist.

A dozen or more rats filmed scampering about a NYC Taco Bell has generated quite a stir.  Amazing how much difference out of sight out of mind makes given that there are eight million rats in the city.  I know, I know, I pretend they aren't really there too.  Ihatemeafuckingrat.

Jet Blue passengers were left on the runway for up to ten hours.   
Fuck that, I'll hasten the surge in inmate population before I spend ten hours crammed into a smelly, window fogged, dirty aired bullet shaped coffin.  At least they feed you in jail.

I have to go, the Academy Awards are on.  Is it bad that I'm only watching for the breasts?   

Oh, and before I forget, Black Snake Moan starts this Friday.  Samuel L. Jackson and Christina Ricci.  Check it out at the official movie site

 

Christina Ricci in panties and a little cut off T shirt chained to a tractor in the yard.  And a great blues score.  And Samuel L. Jackson.   

I'm so there.  See bad girls reference above.

Revised:  Ever have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night but just don't want to get up so you dream kinda weird?  I did, last night, and the subconscious thought came to me that with so many baby boomers aging and becoming inflicted with incontinence coupled with young professionals having children later in life.......there has to be more people in diapers now than ever before in history.  Not even counting wayward astronauts.  Note to self:  buy stock in Depends and Huggies.

I think there is a market for changing stations for adults.

Upon wakening I mentally gathered myself and guided my thoughts toward some form of normalcy.  My first conscious thought was that Christina Ricci is the girl most likely to seduce your entire family. 

Then I went to the bathroom and thanked the gods for being back to my old self again.  Wonder if I have time to watch that movie trailer one more time?  Of course then I'll spend more time in the shower and be late for work. 

I'm never ready to give up the weekend.

The scene is set, the stage lies quietly waiting

Curtains are drawn but for a dappling of winter sun dropping dusk slashed slats diagonally across your back, cocked from your hips.  Thin rails, tracks for a train I'll soon board as the only passenger.  Light fading to a dusty gray, then to the color of rain, slipping into darkness. Sparking strike to cast flickering formless shadows where the rail straight thin ones just were, all the straight lines now blurred. Smell of sulphur wafts acrid soon replaced by the soothing waxy sweetness licking and curling it's way into our nostrils, golden light and flowering scent spreading into the small room, all other light and sound already having been extinguished.  Raking a nail down your shivery bare back, fair bare I call it when you're like this, I'm grizzled bare I tell you.  Take me there now you say, the anticipation having been built with blocks of time, the foundation laid for this moment.  Built to be taken apart, for the walls to tumble and crumble.

Take me there.  Take me there slow but take me all the way there.  Find the corners and the dark places, light them up, hold them in your fingers, in your hands, make me show you, take them from me.  Show them to us, make me share them with you.  Skin my knees, my soul. Make me share, show me I'm not the only one.

Hello! Hooray! Let the show begin,
I've been ready.
Hello! Hooray! Let the lights grow dim,
I've been ready.

Ready as this audience that's coming here to dream.
Loving every second, ev'ry moment, ev'ry scream,
I've been waiting so long to sing my song
And I've been waiting so long for this thing to come.
Yeah - I've been thinking so long I was the only one.

God, I feel so strong.
I feel so strong.
I'm so strong.
I am so strong

Alice Cooper.

Midnight in the Garden

I'm not an entertainment tonight or inside edition person, no oprah or jerry springer please, but I sometimes get nearly obsessed fascinated by certain stories that hit the news like a ton of you have to be shitting me bricks.  What I do is relate them to myself, would I do that, what would make me, do I have any of that fucked up shit in me?  Holy fuckola this person has majorly fucked up their life.

Like Mark Foley.  The booze made me do it.
Ted Haggard.........who is now reported to be "totally heterosexual".  Uh huh 
The San Francisco mayor dude who fucked his campaign manager's wife......the booze made him do it.

See a trend here?  No one says that until they are busted.....you ever see anyone come clean and say, you know, you don't know this but I'm dressing small farm animals in womens clothes and I'm gonna seek help........you know, I hate Jews but I'm gonna be contrite before the cops stop me and I go all off about it.........never see that do we?    I methed up and fucked this male prostitute but I wanna stop so I'm gonna seek the laying on of christian hands to make me hetero....nope, never see it.

Where in the fuck are you going with this edge you're saying to yourself for the umpteenth time.....

I wanna talk about astronaut out of this world love and good deeds.  K?  Alright, let's delve deep shall we?

Lisa Marie, girl, what the fuck?  You have been in space   capital SSSS, space.  You are a graduate of the naval academy, an engineer, all the right stuff.  Girl, you melted down.  You have a teenage son, two twin little girls, god damn, you wore diapers on a cross country trip to fuck with the woman who was fucking your man.  You wore a trench coat in Florida, you had ted bundy shit with you....wtf?

Ted Haggard..........you were the evangelical mother fucker dude......you had W's ear..(big deal there)....you used to think you might be gay til the bros got a hold of you.....totally hetero now.........hey Mrs H..........how's the sex lately?

Mark, Mark.......what the fuck were you thinking?  Page boys?  You were in congress dude!  Emailing teenage boys? 

This weekend I lost my debit card, didn't realize it til last night, second time in the last year.  Called this morning and canceled it.  First time I lost it a young girl called me, looked me up in the phone book, actually delivered it to my house. found it in a parking lot of an italian restaurant, bless her.

Today I got this in the mail, after I canceled my card this morn......

Girl found it in a parking lot of a gas station at 7:00 AM sunday morning after I took my daughters to the airport.

Found it and said, I'ma look this guy up and mail this to him.....gotta love that huh?

She's a good girl, he's a bad guy, labels....we do that don't we?

You ever been good?

You ever been bad?

Course you have, both.  I love being both at the same time. 

Just cutting the card up and throwing it away would have been an act of kindness, let alone taking the time and trouble to determine the owner and return it.  Random acts of kindness.

But what about astronaut love?  Over the top meltdown.  Stalkish behavior bordering on threats of violence.  Following someone, sitting outside their home watching their movements.  Vandalism in the name of scorned love.  When good love goes bad.  Ever guilty of that?  Ever had to hang on for dear life so you wouldn't do something rash? 

I've had my moments.  Learned the hard way that nothing good ever comes from the insanity.  I was getting slaughtered in divorce, smashed like a bug and I left countless phone messages lambasting how I was being treated.  Rambling emotional rants, recorded of course, and used to further punish me for my unbalanced behavior.  It just so happened to be in the middle of the OJ trial, there was no public sympathy, only fear that I would slit someone's throat.  Thank god I refrained from making threats, I've never come close to violent behavior in the name of love lost.  Someone very close to me has been stalked and the victim of a frightening over the top physical and emotional assault in the past year.  We've discussed the psychology of such behavior.  It's fascinating how love can get so mixed up with hateful actions.  You see it every day, murder and mayhem.

I think it's true, hell hath no fury like a person scorned, or a person who perceives themselves as being scorned, or rejected, or scornfully rejected.

There but for the grace of some checkpoint of restraint go most of us I think.

For not being able to ground yourself Lisa Marie, for taking your insane flight to ruination, for one insane day's actions, you will never again slip the surly bonds of earth and fly the silver skies.

There but for the grace........

We are the Champions!!

How bout dem Colts!!

No matter your allegiance, you gotta love Tony Dungy.  I think this city is as happy for him as they are for the team.

The international media has made a huge deal of Tony being the first African American coach to win a Super Bowl.  He's done something even greater here in Indy; color doesn't get mentioned because his prescence  has rendered it all but invisible.  That's even bigger than a Super Bowl.

But we'll take it, oh yes, we'll take it. 

She moans like a cat.......

January is over, a welcome relief.  I saw one of those moon phase things this morning and it says the moon is 99% full.  ????   How can that be?  And who calculated that?  Was it 100% yesterday, or will it be 100% full tomorrow?  I didn't look forward or backward so I don't know.  Will we be cheated out of a full, full moon this time?  I'm looking at it now and trying to figure out where the missing chunk is.  Most likely it's just a sliver that can't be seen.  I can't tell, looks full to me.

Full moon, new month, that explains some things.

Oh, and the next line of the song is.......

when she wants to be heard.

That Jim Morrison had a way.

Happy February boys and girls.  If I wake up in the morning and see a shadow on my thigh it means I'll have six more weeks of virility and debauchery.  Think I'll leave a light on for me.