The optimistic part of me hopes that justice has already been served to you on a hot plate.
One of your cases probably already unfolded this morning. I of course hope that the victim in that case is soberly acknowledging that some measure of appropriate response finally transpired.
The realistic part of me, the one who has read and heard so many stories about you, dampens my expectations.
Relying on the criminal justice system to protect people is at best foolish. It is an eternal after ~the~fact endeavor.
I know that karma does not really reach out and grasp the people who legitimately deserve a harsh measure.
I would hope that you would finally yield to the universe’s demand that you be held accountable.
To the women you made victim through no fault of their own, I offer my apology. Were the decision mine, liberal though I might be, legal proceedings would be the least of your worries.
I am hoping Justice prevailed. If not, there is no point in honoring our collective agreement to do no harm.
“Make all the right choices. Eat all the right food. And you will still be dead one day. This is a rigged game, indeed, this gift of life.” – X
Have you ever thought that another way to describe a bath is “butt soup?”
For the first time in MANY years, I am getting a refund for both Federal and State taxes. While I can’t finance a yacht with the refund, it is a pleasant change of pace! Also, I did my taxes exceedingly fast; in previous years, it was a very tedious process, usually involving a lot of typing, swearing, and frustration – and that was just addressing the envelopes. Though I meticulously followed the software and triple-checked it, the IRS said my refund had to be adjusted. Whether it’s worth arguing over depends on whether my hold on sanity is firm the day I receive the letter to challenge their adjustment.
“The chickens came home to roost. Or so they thought… the smell of fried chicken soon permeated the air.” -X
Last week, very early in the morning, as I rounded the corner of the apartments near the trail by the hospital, I found three bags stuffed with personal items. Though there was no one there along the fringe of the building, I surmised that someone had slept between the minimal hedging and the brick wall. I saw someone there the following day, and I left them in peace. When I passed by again, they were gone, but the bags were still there. I left a gift for them next to their bags. I’ve not seen the bags since. I wonder about them each day.
I keep learning that being clear and honest still likely results in a mess. It doesn’t matter what your motivation is or how concisely and openly you share; the odds still dictate that things will likely spin away from you. Likely, there’s nothing you can do about it. So much of the outcome depends on the other mercurial person. Not stating your truth will just as likely cause you to bubble over unexpectedly when the pressure to speak overwhelms you. As hard as it is, between the two options, it’s always better to just state your truth when you feel like you need to. It won’t feel like the best option, though. Most of us are hard-wired to put off what plagues us until it seeps or explodes out. It’s important to remember that the feelings you bury are still alive under all the layers.
Wine ice cubes are fantastic. Not only do they go well in actual wine, but they also can be used as needed when you want wine to cook with. Don’t “at me,” either, saying that ice cubes in wine are uncouth. There are no actual rules regarding taste, cooking, or eating. The sooner we abandon that nonsense, the better off we’ll all be. And happier eating macaroni over the sink – or a bowl of cereal for supper. One wine ice cube is much better than a cheap grape popsicle, too. In my opinion. Adult note: if you drink enough wine, your appetite will likely go away. And your ability to cook coherently definitely will.
“Wisdom teaches us to be patient with the ridiculous setbacks we’re all going to encounter. It also somehow still fails to prepare us for being surprised by how people will act.” – X
Not everyone is wired the same way sexually. That’s to be expected. But if you’re a sexual person and not being intimate, consequences to your quality of life or well-being always follow. It doesn’t mean that sex is an overwhelming or inflexible motivator; it just means that human behavior will succumb to the urge toward intimacy. People need to stop being ashamed of their essential needs and how they practice and define them. Sex is the big mystery that permeates our lives in multiple ways – yet most of us have a completely mistaken idea of how other people live sexually, much less how to be happy with our sexual selves.
My therapist told me that in one of my first sessions, I said this: “Isn’t it odd how most of our need to look presentable isn’t really so we’ll feel good about ourselves. It’s because we are leaning into the idea of spectator attractiveness. We want to look good to other people. Because if not, generally speaking, we’d all dress comfortably and not think much about hair, makeup, shoes, or how we are perceived. Absent the expectation of attractiveness and left to our own devices, we might be a lot less preoccupied with appearance and happier as a result.” I could be wrong, but it seems to be true generally.
You can drive around the roundabout 17 times if you need to. Likewise, you can fail as many times as you need to or have to until you finally make the turnoff. It’s where you end up that matters, anyway. It would be nice to avoid a convoluted, circuitous path of errors, but life tends not to work that way.
“You’re not afraid of being alone in the dark. You are afraid that you might not be alone in the dark.” This isn’t my quote. It does demonstrate how our fears and thoughts overtake us.
Male secret #34: most men do not care if a woman’s legs are smoothly shaved. Or if their nails are painted, their blouse, shoes, pants match, etc. The enthusiasm of presence derails all those concerns. I’m not sure you should trust a middle-aged man named X or not – but this is true.
Rule of Presence: each of us will jump to hold the door for another person, but we will move heaven and earth to stop someone from passing us on the road.
I’ve put up three ‘fake’ streets signs in the last couple of months. All of them are still posted. PS If you want to do it quickly, have the sign made prior to showing up, with the bolt already through it. Since most street posts have multiple bolt holes, push the bolt through and twirl the nut on it quickly. Also, did you know you can order a custom street sign easily? If you’re bored, google it. It’s no accident that 75 mph is a great sign to add in Johnson. (I didn’t do that one due to public safety concerns. And the lack of a sense of humor with traffic enforcement there, now that I think about it.)
Another one I stole from the internet: “Each and every selfie is a picture of perhaps your own worst enemy.”
It’s been about six months since my surgery. It’s been the longest ten years of my life. I’m still thankful to be here. But I can’t escape the idea that I’d be a lot happier with a check for one million dollars in my wallet. I might not ever cash it.
The time change is supposed to make it feel earlier in the afternoon. By some miracle, I was asleep at 9:07 last night. I woke up at 1:42 a.m. and listened to jokes on Alexa. I did the no-laugh challenge. By the second joke, I was laughing enough to annoy Güino, who attempted to remain motionless and quiet at my knees. His consternation with me was apparent.
My newish downstairs neighbors had visitors last night. I used the tried-and-true “turn the box fan even higher” method to drown them out. It was effective. Standing on the deck this morning at 2:30, I whispered down at a couple of people as they smoked and gossiped outside and below me. One of the two guys jumped. The other one laughed. “I hope we weren’t too loud last night,” he said. “Nah, the fumes from my batch of meth had me hallucinating,” I replied, being as serious as I could. Both of the guys looked at each other and then laughed. My only regret is that I didn’t have a chemistry beaker as a prop to add credibility to my joke.
It doesn’t feel like Monday, and it indeed doesn’t feel like it is March with Spring breathing down our necks. It’s Pi Day. That always strikes me as funny, given most adults’ aversion to math. To me, November 10th would be more fun for Pi Day, as it’s the 314th day of the year on the Julian calendar. Most people don’t know that the Julian calendar reigned supreme until the later 1500s. I love the idea of someone just deciding to add two extra months to a year, or arbitrarily opting to change the year. The effect of this is that many events we have learned that happened on a specific date didn’t transpire on the date we note. In 1582, much of the world simply skipped ten or eleven days entirely; some parts didn’t. While we think traveling across time zones is odd, can you imagine traveling across an area only to discover that TEN DAYS was suddenly missing? In England, Sept. 2nd was followed by Sept. 14th.
Myths about daylight savings time that won’t die: we didn’t adopt DST to help farmers. We’re already on DST for 8+ months a year, so what exactly is “standard time?” The ‘extra’ hour of daylight does not make us healthier or happier; it’s physically and emotionally disruptive to many people.
I left my backward clock an hour behind. It’s a good reminder that it annoys most normal people to look at a backward clock to begin with.
Time is indeed an artificial construct. Keep that in mind as you clock in to work today. If your manager asks why you were late for work, feel free to reply, “I’m taking back my time from 1582. And where’s my pie to celebrate the day?”
Party like it’s 1582. It’s the least you can do to celebrate this Monday.
As I pulled up to the Casey’s, it was impossible to avoid looking at the tweaker. He was an indeterminate early thirty year old man, replete with thousands of dollars of tattoos across his exposed legs, hands and neck. He sat and shifted on top of the wood for sale out front of the store. His jerky movements were uncontrollable, his eyes and head shifting wildly. I could tell that at some point a few minutes prior the rain had washed him.
For reasons I’ll have to think about later, I felt a wallop of sadness. It was totally unexpected. I see my share of tweakers in Fayetteville. None of them started life with that intention. I parked directly in front of him and when I exited I said good afternoon. His eyes briefly met mine and then he nodded wildly.
While I waited in line inside, the younger man in front of me kept looking out the window at the tweaker. He told the man in front of him that he wished we could round up all the tweakers and put them down as an act of mercy. Though he probably said it offhandedly, the residual effect of sadness inside me flared into anger.
I told him that if that were the case, I hope he would be capable of doing the so-called act of m mercy himself because that kind of heartlessness requires personal accountability. And that perhaps he could call the tweakers mom and let her know that her son has zero value left in life. The younger man commenting was stunned by my words. Everyone grew silent for a moment. Momentarily I felt bad for what I said. It doesn’t matter what my motivation was. My comments did not add anything positive to the world.
It’s true I would not trust the tweaker in my car or my home.
I bought a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, and a soda for the tweaker. When I exited I placed the things on the woodpile next to him. I told them that the things were for him and he again nodded and grunted.
I know that I didn’t do those things for him. I did them for myself, to feel a little bit more human, and to express gratefulness that I had not chosen a road leading to where he is. It’s raining hard now and I know that he has nowhere to go. It’s likely we all know how his road will end. But there is a very small possibility that the universe will choose him for an unexpected upturn in life.
I drove away, glad that the young man commenting had a good enough life to foolishly think that such a thing could never happen to him. We all think that.
I don’t have a neat wrap-up or lesson here. I sit in my car inside my beautiful life, writing this without edit or correction.
Paraphrasing Alan Watts, he said that muddy water clears best when left alone. So I’ll leave my thoughts here unredacted.
I’m reluctant to share this one. While my heart was in the right place, I felt a flare of righteous anger. That type of anger feels right at the moment but often sours with consequences. I am not a hero in this story.
About two weeks ago, I was driving about 35 mph in a way that made me feel alive. Music high, smiling. Not in a hurry.
Her green sedan pulled alongside me in the lane to my left.
She held her phone, crying.
Her black hair reached her shoulders.
She tossed her phone in the passenger seat.
And unexpectedly looked toward me.
Tears on her face.
She nodded and wiped her eyes with a sleeve.
I let off the gas, and she raced away.
Five minutes later, I pulled into the lot.
And saw the green sedan there.
Life reminds me there aren’t many coincidences.
As I parked, I noted she was next to the store.
Cigarette in hand, nervous.
I watched a man pull up and exit his truck angrily.
He hissed at her in a way I couldn’t hear.
She flinched and looked down to the ground. Because of my childhood, I saw the backstory written plain. I already knew what her private life was like. This wasn’t the first time, nor the tenth.
The man gesticulated and shook.
Without thinking, I walked toward them.
“How are you?” I asked her.
She looked at me in surprise.
The man interrupted, “Who are you?”
I replied, “I am the man just in time.”
“For what?” He hissed at me.
“To do what I need to.” The anger flared in me.
I prayed he’d move toward me.
I walked to his truck and opened the driver’s door. “Get the eff out of here, sir.” I smiled like a predator. I admit that it felt good. I’m not sure what that says about me.
The woman watched, fearful of what her man might do.
She should have feared what I might do.
A man in Canada filled my head, his volatile narcissism unchecked, his multiple victims attempting to regain normal lives in his wake. The law does nothing to aggressively meet the abuser’s behavior in kind, even though that is what is needed. Another man was using his long familiarity with control and emotional abuse to impoverish his fleeing wife. Both honestly deserve a measured dose of Southern Justice. This might be my surrogate, one to catch my vengeance. I hoped so. Waiting for ‘someone’ to help might lead to never. I’d felt the burn inflaming me for some time.
“Get home in ten or else,” he told the woman.
“She won’t be there in 10. Or 60. Go.”
He paced around me and pretended to lunge as he did. I didn’t flinch. Ninety percent of all aggression fails to materialize. Had the ten percent emerged, Bobby Dean laid in wait, anesthetized against anything except immobilizing pain. I wanted him to lunge and make contact. The law allows us to defend someone else. If it penalizes me for acting on impulse, that’s fair.
He got in the truck, slammed the door, and roared away. He put down his window momentarily and shouted the redneck equivalent of whatever angry, stupid people say. I laughed purposefully and ignored him.
The woman cried again.
“You know what you need to do,” I told her. “Today, before it’s too late. Do you have someone to go to?”
She nodded.
“Go there. And don’t go back to that. Do you need anything?”
“No,” she murmured.
“Go now in case he comes back.”
I didn’t enter the store.
I watched the black-haired woman get in her car and depart.
I saw a green car today and wondered if the woman was safe. And I wondered who the man’s next victim might be. That there will be is a certainty. I hope there’s a future me waiting for him. It’s evident that I will pull the curtain back and summon Bobby Dean.
My idle pacifist hands are anxious in an unexpected way.
Days later, I’m still thinking about how close I had to get to really hurting someone. And how the realization that the same Bobby Dean inside me was as guilty of the same misbehavior as the man was with his wife or girlfriend. He was a chronic abuser; ironically, I can channel that same energy to obliterate my doubts and step in on the other side of the situation.
There are no easy answers. But I do know that sometimes raw anger is appropriate. Sometimes it’s the only way. It’s not right, proper, or even intelligent. A lot of men need to spit blood to learn their lesson. And some men, men like me, ones who earned their abuse badges when younger, probably need to be more willing to violently be the one to administer a reminder.
PS I know that we’re supposed to call the police. But I also know that they constantly fail to protect people. The law exists to inhibit behavior, but it often does not remedy the need for immediacy. A few weeks after my surgery, I got a reminder of how precarious the idea of safety can be. The flare that lit inside me of me hasn’t abated. As I said, I’m not sure how I’m supposed to feel about this admission.
As I predicted, today was phenomenal. It got even better when the headphones I bought with Sam’s club points arrived. Along with my yellow shirt. Someone at work told me I needed a yellow shirt to go with black pants so I could look like a bumblebee. It seemed reasonable, like climbing a 70 ft tall tree in February. I saw the world from a different perspective up there. Don’t worry ~ I have insurance. Both life and health for that matter. It’s been 5 months since my surgery. Go ahead, ask me if I’m happy. I try to imagine what life would be like if everyday were this sublime. .
I woke up at 3 a.m. to a snow moon this morning. I didn’t know until today that it’s called that thanks to Native Americans. The white billowy clouds moved across the sky rapidly and the wind created silhouettes of witch fingers across the parking long as the bare limbs danced and swayed. Güino gleefully ran outside and across the landing, enjoying the 59 degrees of the February morning. I walked down the landing in my bathrobe, waving at the neighbor’s security cameras, in an attempt to corral him back toward home. Since I had to do a metabolism test this morning, I tried to summon the spit demons to produce enough to fill a vial that seemed larger than a beer stein. And then, in the ultimate act of self-amusement, I jabbed myself with the needle to produce enough blood for a blood sample; this resulted inadvertently in enough blood to mimic an impromptu crime scene. The downstairs neighbors had to hear me laughing like a fool up here.
I’m enjoying a bitter cup of coffee, one made so strong that it might melt through the cup. As the minutes fly by and music plays softly on Alexa and Güino sits on my lap as I type, I realize that it’s a beautiful morning, a perfect one, to start the day. I’m going to laugh a lot today, get some sublime hugs, and wonder about the surprising ways that life still sneaks up on me with lemon moments. Whatever I had envisioned for myself in the previous months, this is a morning that’s difficult to complain about.
Güino agrees and purrs as I finish this.
I’m ready for the day. I hope it’s ready for me, too.
Well, I wrote a country song, if you can believe it. The song is just banjo, piano, and guitar; the guitar is loosely tuned to mimic a banjo’s jangly feel. It’s an imagined moment, making it more tangible than a memory. One of these days, I will sing it, though your ears might protest.
Try This On For Sighs
I turned on the radio, hearing lyrics nostalgic and free Conway, George, and Charlie telling us simple stories invoking us to live by life’s happy and simple decree
family to give us community friends to give us companionship and one to share our vulnerable soul
come here and try this on for sighs you don’t need money, cars, or clothes discard the disguise and guarded pose let your heart and body murmur its song find the enthusiastic arms where you belong
I walked by the closet, you standing like a dare facing the mirror, nimble bare feet on the floor black dress draped against your body, shoulders bare
the memory of your departed mom flooding your candid eyes I could picture both of you silhouetted there, and still your shared beauty an ongoing and persistent surprise
your chin and neck trembled with the painful past you turned and smiled willfully in my direction knowing I witnessed the overlap of time, recast
you tossed the garment aside, your eyes locked and wide “Come here, and try this on for sighs,” you whispered as the invisible music played, our bodies erased the divide
come here and try this on for sighs you don’t need money, cars, or clothes discard the disguise and guarded pose let your heart and body murmur its song find the enthusiastic arms where you belong
In the small space of a closet, time slowed, then stopped as we laughed, elbows bumping as we twirled in that closet, the entire volume of the world
….as we sang…
come here and try this on for sighs you don’t need money, cars, or clothes discard the disguise and guarded pose let your heart and body murmur its song find the enthusiastic arms where you belong
