Category Archives: Personal

Personal

November Nightmare

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(a dream that still feels real)

I awoke, my face covered with something itchy and wet. The realization that cold air was blowing across my face confused me. While I wasn’t sure what startled me awake, I could hear a dissonant alarm sounding from far away. Not too unusual for this area. My eyes wouldn’t open properly. I realized that my face was covered with a paste of dusty, sticky, and itchy material of some kind. Using my hands to wipe at my eyes, I fought to open them, knowing that whatever was on my face would impede my vision. With eyes barely open, I scanned the ceiling to find one of the two projection clocks that normally hover over the bed. Raindrops fell on my face. Because of the implausibility of the conclusion, it dawned on me that the roof was missing above me. The alarm that had blared far away now sounded as if it were in the next room. A cat’s painful meow propelled me to lean over to my right. I moved my hands along the bed, and my heart rate skyrocketed when I realized Erika wasn’t next to me on the bed. All I encountered were larger pieces of that same wet pasty material. 

Energy flooded my body. I jumped up on my knees onto the bed and leaned over to feel around in the dark. My hands found Erika on the floor next to the closet. She mumbled incoherently when I shook her. “Stay here!” I told her. 

I realized there was no electricity, night lights, clocks, or anything else powered. As I stood up, I looked up again, seeing clouds race above me. Raindrops still infrequently pelted me as I stood. Without worrying about what I might be stepping on, I walked naked out into the living room and kitchen. The roof was gone across the entire apartment. I heard both cats meowing in distress somewhere in the living room. I ignored them for a moment, knowing that they were still alive.

I reminded myself that I might be in shock. Or dreaming. I pulled on the door, and it popped open without any locks being engaged. It wouldn’t open all the way, so I squeezed through it and out onto the landing. 

I don’t know how to describe what I saw. No lights to be seen. The newly-constructed blue house next to our apartments was gone. All the trees were ripped off or fallen. Cars were upside down, sideways, and thrown at impossible angles. I looked to the right toward the L-shape of my apartment. It was gone; the entire leg of the building ripped off the foundation. Debris and two destroyed vehicles covered the concrete foundation that remained. In my shock, I realized that Güino was gone, as were all my neighbors along my leg of the building. My eyes followed behind the apartment, and all I could see behind the apartments was a path of massive destruction. The light was dim and most of what I saw was crooked silhouettes of oddly upended silhouettes that resembled nothing familiar. The air was filled with a pungent earthy smell.

I turned and pushed back into the apartment and went along the wall to find my phone where I leave it plugged in at night. Unlocking it and glad to see any unnatural light, I saw that I had no signal. It was 1:15 a.m. Opening Messenger, I saw six or seven messages from my cousin, each of them growing in intensity. “X, are y’all okay?” I closed messages, turned on the flashlight of my phone, and pushed my way back outside. At that moment, an emergency siren activated, screeching in the eerie air  Five seconds later, the rain started falling, and I realized that I was bitterly cold. No one else had yet emerged from the remaining portion of the apartment building.

As I pushed back inside the apartment, I realized that hundreds of people might have died. I turned to look toward Gregg Avenue. The road was covered in debris from imploded houses. Ambulances wouldn’t be able to traverse that. Whatever needed to be done needed to happen now by those of us still alive to do so.

…

The dream seemed to last for an hour. And when I woke up, it was one in the morning. I got up, my mind still grappling with the fact that it had been a dream. Even so, I looked up at the clock multiple times to ensure that the red light indicating the time was actually there. 

Animals, Behavior, Personal, Psychology, Work

Subversive

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This isn’t a vaguepost. It’s an observation about how I interact with the world, which evidently runs afoul of many people’s attitudes. We need a ‘pass’ sometimes, wherein we can just stand and shout, “WTF, dude? Explain this to me.” Sometimes, the person in question might apologize and say, “I needed to get my entire foot in my mouth. I am so sorry. That was stupid and petty of me.” People are going to misbehave, have a bad day, or just suffer the same affliction of quickness and not thinking twice that I do. If we did have a ‘pass’ option, at least we’d know if they react angrily that we aren’t dealing with someone interested in communicating authentically. Ain’t nobody got time for that, much less the sanity of long-term exposure.

We can’t know someone’s intentions most of the time. That’s why it’s more important to observe behavior rather than words. But there are times when “nothing” actually happens, but someone has consciously or unintentionally demonstrated a horrific outlook. In those cases, words have significant power. Last week, I heard a story about an example of this. Anger flared inside me righteously and briefly. The person being treated poorly and demeaned will never know about it. But I do. And I’m stuck with the knowledge, knowing that the person and people involved revealed a sliver of the “real’ them in their behavior. It wasn’t mere pettiness. It was hostility on a basic level. They pulled back the veneer and let their mask slip. Witnessing or knowing such an attitude is inside a person fundamentally shifts my ability to trust such people. This is so much of the reason that I have lingering problems with people I know to be racists. If they gossip to you, they’ll gossip about you. If they treat others with subversive hostility, they’ll do the same to you. It’s just a question of when. Most prejudice stems from the false idea of superiority. Superior arrogance lends itself to a lot of rationalization regarding behavior. In most cases, we never hear about it because they recognize that such behavior or words are reprehensible. They conceal and camouflage the “real’ them. I’d rather deal with outright hostility in most cases. You can avoid a snake in the open field or when it announces its presence; the ones hiding in the grass at your feet mostly can’t be avoided.

Love, X
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PS That’s my cat judging me for not kicking the heat up to maximum. He ain’t 7 feet off the ground for the view.

Lemon Moment, Music, Nostalgia, Personal

Melodious Moment

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A while back, my cousin met me briefly on the way to somewhere else and she gave me a box full cassette tapes, most of which I had made for her decades ago. I took them out several times and looked at the titles and the colored labels that I made back in the day. It brought back a tremendous number of memories for me. Both for the music and the way I had shared it with people. Making cassettes and VCR tapes was one of the ways I helped my mom keep her sanity. Even when she was being argumentative and impossible, the movies, music, and music videos I shared with her kept us connected.

It had been my intention to take them to work and listen to them using an old stereo with a cassette deck. I still have most of the music digitally. Except for perhaps the Looney Toons Christmas music. I put the box in my trunk yesterday.

I’m glad I forgot to take them inside.

When I went to wade the creek today, I followed yesterday’s pattern and went somewhere different. I parked in the apartments near the Agri perimeter. I walked across the wide expanse of lawn, crossed the trail, and walked a different section of the creek. On the way out, I climbed the beautiful tree near the apartments. Most people passing through that section of the trail have noticed the huge trunks that extend horizontally to the ground before pushing back upward. I climbed higher than I should, but I just muttered to myself, “Time is short,” and went up anyway. It was beautiful and the breeze was refreshing.

When I got out of the tree, though I was barefoot, I walked along the protective cyclone fence next to the apartments. A man was sitting outside his apartment listening to music. I don’t know why I approached him. The offer of the box of cassettes in my trunk passed from my lips. He laughed. He said, “Yes, of course! I will give anything a listen.” We talked for a minute and I asked him to wait so that I could walk back to my car and retrieve the box. When I returned, he flipped open the box and smiled. He noted that I had individually decorated and indexed each cassette.

Luckily, he did not pull out very many cassettes. When I went to the car, I put a $20 bill under the cassettes. I also wrote a very short note on one of my infamous index cards: “Thanks for appreciating a returned piece of my past.” I don’t know what he might make of it. But I could tell by the look on his face from just seeing how I had decorated the tapes that he knew it had been a huge part of my life at one point.

It took a long series of coincidences for me to have the box at the perfect time and place. And to find someone who was obviously interested in giving them new life. I owe it in part to deciding to visit new places along the creek. And to my cousin for returning them to me.

Love, X
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Brother, Lemon Moment, Mental Health, Nostalgia, Personal

October, Personally

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I parked my car and walked barefoot down the trail. I knew I needed an unfamiliar spot today. So I walked much longer than I intended, passing people who took second glances at my bare feet and rolled up pants. It seemed as if they looked more frequently than they had yesterday when I had a billowing (but wet) blue cape on my back. I encountered a dirt path mostly hidden in the trees. Not knowing where it led and not caring either way, I followed it. It led down to the creek and I followed the stones and sat on one of the protruding ledges, sticking my feet deep into the rocks and mud under the water.

The cascade and babble of the water combined with the cloud cover and bird song had to have been aligned and created just for me at this moment.

Three years later and I still wrestle with whether the bell which sounded in my head on an October morning was correlation or causation regarding my brother’s death. My ex-wife would roll her eyes and attribute it to sheer craziness. No matter what the cause or how much my brother’s death affected me subconsciously, something in me broke. The breaking left me with a profound certainty of several things. And most of it was the realization that excuses and rationalizations are easy. The bell in my head brought both joy and pain. My new confidence brought consequences I hadn’t expected. Part of which had to be arrogance. It taught me the definition of limerence and of the meaninglessness of intentions compared to consequences. But it also taught me that most of my limitations are self-imposed. All I need is an idea, even more than motivation. Motivation and willpower are for procrastinators. If you get in motion or set things in motion, it is amazing what simple routine consistency will give you. 

Since I was not familiar with this part of the creek, I walked carefully, even through the deeper pockets of clearwater. Countless lightning fast crawdads faced me as I approached, only to flutter backwards so quickly that it was impossible to see them move. There’s always a chance for snakes, but none made their appearance.

The weather is going to shift soon. The days will be colder and likely result in the pads of my feet softening again. I’ll continue to come out here for a while no matter how cold the air or water is. It’s impossible to argue with nature.

The brother of my youth would have loved to be here. It’s true that he probably would have picked me up over his head and thrown me into one of the deep pockets of water. Or we might have even had a rock fight, him promising to not pelt me in the head. Given his size advantage, had he been careless in his aim, there’s not much I could have done about it. We used to spend a lot of time out in the fields having dirt clod fights. It sounds archaic and crazy to anyone who didn’t experience the agony and ecstasy from both ends of a nicely sized dirt-clod bashing someone unexpectedly in the neck or chest. We didn’t invent the rules. They’ve been handed down for generations among kids growing up and playing with the things at their disposal. 

Having said the above, if my brother were here today, there is no question that he would look me dead in the eye and ask, “When are you going to stop being so damn fruity?” I would reply, “Probably about the same time you smarten up and stop being an old conservative hag!” No matter how such a conversation played out, I would lose. Because if my brother couldn’t win through words, he would achieve victory by throwing either me or a table. That’s what happens when the universe mistakenly combines debate-level intelligence with a hulk of a person. 

Somehow in the crucible of our shared DNA, I luckily inherited the introspective yet expressive gene. He inherited the introspective part, but all too often trapped himself in his own head. That’s the worst place for anyone of such intelligence to be.

Mike was right. Maybe I am a bit too fruity. But whether through alchemy or luck, I’m the one standing in the creek getting the last word.

Since I’m long-winded exactly like my brother, I’ll loop back to my initial causation versus correlation comment. It’s obvious to me now that the bell that rang in my head three years ago would have remained silent were it not for my brother having consequences catch up to him. Which ironically likely would have led to me having a major health setback myself. 

The good and the bad may not be best friends, but they definitely sleep in the same bed.

Love, X

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Behavior, Lemon Moment, Personal

Unbearable Certainty

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I walked into the E-Z Mart store with very few collected small winning lottery tickets from swinging for the fences with the impossible Megamillions and Powerball.

Instead of taking the cash, I told the clerk, “No, I’d like them back in $1 fast-play lottery tickets. I’m feeling very lucky today. I know I’m going to win.”

She laughed and smiled.

“No, I’m serious. It’s time. Remember? A plane will fall on you on a long enough timeline, and you might win the lottery.”

“Well, remember who sold them to you when you win.”

She printed off the tickets. I was shorted 3. While I was standing to the left of the register, I looked at the very first printed ticket.

Though you think I’m joking, the first line of the first ticket was a winner. Had I bought a higher denomination ticket, the amount would have been five times what I won. To think I’d have to work almost ninety hours to net that much money is preposterous.

The clerk is a believer now.

I’ve never had to file a claim form with the lottery. What I won won’t be enough to make much of a dent in my debt. But there’s no better feeling than to waste a tiny bit of money to get such a return. I haven’t gone to a casino or wasted my money gambling on anything substantive since very early 2021. Living single without a roommate and having emergency surgery tends to take the money out of your pocket.

Do you want to hear something even crazier?

I’m going to win something even bigger. I hope the work crew I throw in each week will win, just like everyone else buying tickets foolishly. I can’t imagine a better, more satisfying irony than to work like a mule for 18 years being eclipsed by something as impractical and impossible as a lottery. I’d love to look around at people and just experience the moment of incredulity. If such an impossible outcome ever happens, I’m going to need to block the work doors to prevent them from stampeding out of there.

Today, I won “a” lottery. A small one. It didn’t hurt my afternoon feelings at all.

I included a screenshot of an email I sent myself on Sept. 18th.

Love, X

Personal

Still Flying

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Another coincidence for my Saturday back in September 1991. Each year, I hold my breath, expecting another wrinkle to reach me. Most years, it’s silent. But I’ve had a few that bring new information or entirely another perspective. It’s been 32 years. I’ve abandoned the idea that the coincidences will ever stop coming. The first true website came out in August 1991. Prior to that, only nerds used the nascent internet to connect via forums and text-based interaction. This year, someone linked a previously hidden Google directory of discussions related to my memorable Saturday September morning. I read all of it that was available to me this morning at 1 a.m.

Because of the way my labyrinth brain works, it made me want to sit and read “Juan Salvador Gaviota” (Jonathan Livingston Seagull) in Spanish. Every time I get another copy, someone who hasn’t read it pops into my life, and I give it to them, knowing they will experience something wonderful when they read it for the first time. When I was learning Spanish proficiently, it was one of the few books that ignited the possibility of thinking in another language. “Prince of Tides” was another one. (“El Principe de Las Mareas,” which sounds much more exotic to me.) Another one was “Your Erroneous Zones,” by Wayne Dyer, a book that fell into my hands by fortuitous accident after another house fire while I was in junior high school. Though not directly connected, Dyer’s book connected me to the same metaphysical ideas that Richard Bach wrote about in “Jonathan Livingston Seagull.”

Jonathan Livingston Seagull is an allegory about flying – and about life’s hidden meaning, one usually reserved for the outliers.

Maybe Joe Frasca is spending his eternity doing acrobatics. I hope so. If so, I’m envious of the fact that he is up there, looking down on the topography we experience mostly in two dimensions.

Love, X
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Behavior, Mental Health, Personal

Fortuitous

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“The world won’t treat you better just because you’re a good person.” 

It’s a nice reminder. The corollary to this is also true:

“Just because you’re a bad person doesn’t mean you will ever suffer the consequences for it.”

Even if you do everything right, you might still fail.

And if you do a buffet of stupid things, the odds grow increasingly against you.

Then there’s fate, luck, or whatever you might label it. Despite it all, I’m lucky. 

On the anniversary day of my emergency surgery, I changed my desktop monitor wallpaper to the first picture I snapped once I realized I was not in purgatory. (Admittedly, my presence in the hospital bed might qualify. Both for me and the people supposed to be caring for me.)  I’m not sure how many times over the intervening days I’ve stopped and looked at the picture. 

Oddly, it mostly stopped me from saying, “Time is short,” with such frequency. It definitely has not abated the mental recitation. It had to have been in my subconscious the other day when I sprinted past a safety point for my body. It didn’t occur to me that perhaps my explanation for why I had several 200+ floor days on my Fitbit should be attributed to it. 

I spent too much time thinking about September 28th, 1991 as well. And about the two terrible head traumas I had as a child. I’m not including the punches from hands that should not have inflicted such anger. Those hands grew silent, as happens to all of us.

What’s my point? I don’t have one. There may well not be one, and I’m okay with that. 

Love, X

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Animals, Humor, Personal

Cats: 3, X:0

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Evidently, today is the day for feline revolution.

I got up super early as I always do and went into Erika’s living room in darkness to fetch my clothes from the back of the couch. As I put on layers, something seemed off. By the time I threw my shirt on, I realized in horror that I felt wet. I stood there about 30 seconds, my mind attempting to correlate the wetness. And then I realized that either Acorn or Meatball (or both?) had taken advantage of one of their night time perches to disgorge on my nearby clothes. I evaluated my options and finally stripped down. Skulking around in the dark, I retrieved my haircut towel from the laundry hamper, loosely held it around my waist, and retrieved the ball of wet clothing. I scurried across to my apartment feeling like the cats were laughing at me. 

It gets better! Once inside my apartment, I dropped the towel and my clothes. Because my cat Güino has me trained, I walked over to give him treats before anything else. And realized I had walked through clear cat vomit in the darkness of my kitchen apartment. I put down paper towels temporarily. As I attempted to walk away, the paper towels stuck to the bottom of my left foot like industrial glue. Extricating myself from that, I threw my clothes in my laundry and walked back to the living room. I bet you can guess what happened next? Going in front of the cat tower, I stepped in my cat’s other offering in the middle of the living room floor. And then repeated the same stupid fly trap dance with more paper towels. No need for stretching this morning. The paper towel dance limbered me up nicely.

The cats sometimes occasionally vomit. How in the world they all aligned perfectly for my early Monday morning is anyone’s guess. 

Before I left for work, I asked my cat if he had any other surprises for me or if perhaps he got my extra car keys and threw up in the driver seat. 

Since the cat revolution has already started, It will be too late for you by the time you read this. I apologize on behalf of all the cats for your sticky feet. We’re lucky they do not have opposable thumbs. 

X

Exercise, Fayetteville, Lemon Moment, Personal

Beautiful Melancholy

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I’m not supposed to express confusing emotions on social media. I mixed an errand with an early morning walk. That was my intention. But I ended up sprinting. I waited until each breath was more difficult and then my Fitbit began to alarm, flash, and vibrate. Of course I kept going. Even harder. As often happens when you’re pushing past your natural limit, I hit the void point. For those of you who’ve never experienced it, it’s very similar to being on a jet with a steep incline that suddenly pops through the clouds. When I stopped running and resumed walking, it was impossible to look at the sunrise in the same way. Stunning. There was also a tinge of melancholy. Because I wanted so badly to turn to someone with a pointed finger, “OMG. Look!” It’s possible that they might just acknowledge such an obvious observation with a nod. Mundane sights transformed are one of my secret joys. Perhaps it might not have been so beautiful had my brain not been soaked in adrenaline. 

PS I included a couple from last night because the light and color was a cliché of color. 

Love, X

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