The cat runs to greet me when I come inside the house. It’s true that he mainly wants treats. But if I pick him up and hold him like a baby, he purrs and relaxes as I rub his back. If I go into my room and put up the blinds, he will gladly jump onto the pillow I have above the ornamental floor heater. If the sun hits him, he will stretch out there, claiming his spot. The six or seven prisms I have handing in the window often illuminate him and the room. As I sit here and look over at him sunning in the window, a couple of hundred rainbows scatter all across the room. Outside, a dozen birds sing and chirp around the feeder and birdbath.
There’s a half of a cup of coffee to my left. I’m sitting here, my mind wandering to a millions ideas and places. It paces, even as my eyes feel heavy. I’d lay on the floor and nap if I thought there was a chance of success for the endeavor. I’ve been stuck in a bit of a zombie mode, waiting on good sleep to immobilize me for a night. Or a month.
Though I don’t celebrate my birthdays, my fifty-fourth is on top of me.
I remain here, looking out the window. My coffee grew cold while I daydreamed.
I know I look a bit stupid in this short clip. And that’s okay. I’ve acted fairly stupidly too.
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A co-worker who landed in greener pastures returned to work for a visit today. His jaw literally dropped. He hasn’t seen me since I weighed 70 lbs more. Given that his new job is sedentary, he’s gained a bit. I walked him through my secret process (there isn’t one) and told him that if I could do it, he could, and that I was granting him a sliver of my magic to take home. I like to think a few people have internalized the possibility that for most people, weight loss is a frame of mind. My former co-worker listened as I explained to him that exercise would only give him a 30% reduction – and that eating less is 70%. He knows my job is very physical but was shocked that I don’t exercise for the purpose of weight loss. At all. It surprises a lot of people. I don’t mean to be evangelical about it, but it’s true. Exercise has other benefits but it is not effective at long-term weight maintenance.
I’ve been shedding clothes, too, such as this jacket that I put on mistakenly one day last week. I felt like I was wearing a tarp. So I left on a co-workers work rack without comment. No one ever commented and the jacket didn’t resurface. I’ve donated three in this way in the last few months.
One of my go-to treats is picture below: chicken tacos (NOT shredded (yuck)) with onions, cilantro, and pico de gallo. I don’t eat the tortillas. I prefer to eat baked chips or Popchips. From Mr. Taco Loco in downtown Springdale. I often sneak PopChips in.
Have I mentioned Budweiser non-alcoholic beer before? It’s only 50 calories a can. Granted, you have to enjoy beer without alcohol to like it. But it is also great for cooking. I grilled sirloin burgers yesterday without any additional calories added.
Another thing I forgot: it’s one thing to buy new pants, shirts, shoes, coats, and just about everything else. But when you realize that your underwear is floating around? That is a weird feeling. I’ve put off buying new underwear. Not that anyone asked. And no, I don’t plan on posting underwear pictures. Just imagine if Danny DeVito got thin. And then imagine him in new underwear. That should satisfy your curiosity.
As a sidenote, I took my new pack of sidewalk chalk to work today. I think all adults should sidewalk chalk. It makes memos and notes to others more fun and interesting. And in today’s case, I used it to give someone their word of the day in Spanish. Invariably, I trick them by incorporating phrases and add-ons so that they realize they are in fact learning more than just one word, whether they realize it or not.
The person also learned the origin of the English word for “Monday,” as well as other related things, too.
It’s impossible to learn another language without learning things about your own language, too. It’s fun to watch and even more fun to know that I might be the catalyst for someone to finally get over the hump of being a beginning learner. Once someone starts pedaling the bike without assistance, they fly.
On a personal note, it’s hard to realize that you’ve lost a friend, probably forever. No matter how it happened, once you’ve shared a piece of yourself with someone, their absence leaves a blank spot. Fascinating and interesting people are hard to come by in life.
The hubris of life, of majestic leaps atop a mountain, of impractical love. That’s why I made the picture of the woman leaping with apparent joy. I hope she is happy and that the moment was magical for her.
Once you’ve peeked behind the curtains of someone’s life, both warts and happiness, seeing the frailty you share in common minimizes the feelings of your inadequacy. There’s something to be said about knowing that the person who seems impenetrable is as uncertain or more so than you are.
For every boring life or person walking the sidewalks with a wide smile, there is another person who wears the smile and frenetic cloak of being busy as a shield. It’s often unknowable whether each person is truly happy. People are adept at concealment.
If we could hear the tone of people’s thoughts, especially those who seem to have it all together, I think most of our feelings of inadequacy would disappear.
We window shop when we are in the world or when we use these electronic portals to peek into other’s lives.
There is joy, laughter, and fulfillment.
There’s also pain, remorse, regret, and loss.
For every bite of anguish I experience, I know that the toll for others, though often invisible, burns them privately. I regret that our lives don’t allow us to drop the pretense.
We don’t know what rivers flow behind someone else’s eyes, nor do we really understand what ignites them. Some people craft an ornate and expansive wall around them, on to which they project the facade they want us to see. This is truer when the disparity of their daylight life grows distant from who they are at their center, in the shadows, in private, or in whispers.
It’s exciting to peek behind the facade and share that protected self. It’s sublime and affirming.
But the shriek and tenor that results when some do not want to acknowledge that you’ve seen their secret self? Though you’ve not wronged them, they flail and pivot with the agony of your having shared their inner monologue.
It often gets masked as anger.
It’s not.
Anger is the symptom. It’s really sublimated fear.
It doesn’t have to be.
It’s okay.
Some of us can be glad we experienced another facet of life, even if the ending was a surprise plot twist.
It is a gift to hold the truth of someone else in your own heart. Even if it lodges there like a dart.
Of that, I’m certain, even as certainty eclipses my grasp.
The foolishness of my own certainty came back to punch me in the gut. In time, I will forget the lesson, just as I did with the lesson of life’s urgency; it’s a lesson that can’t be explained. It must be experienced.
“Eagles may soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.” – Internet quote.
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He stopped and stared at the long rectangular Target sign at the front of the parking lot. Though the sun shone brightly, the chill of winter still clung to him. His life had become one continuous transition. His heart felt the pull of softness and also the duality of the hardness needed to live a good life. Making choices always cut one’s life into disparate columns; a choice made inevitably rendered another to be toothless. Most people found themselves unable to keep regrets from spoiling their minds; restless minds fill with regrets of things both done and undone, attempting an impossible balance.
The horn behind him startled him. He laughed as he jumped, waving to let the other driver know he was sorry. It had bleeped a long, consistent tone. “Forward now!” it said.
Just like that, he did.
He left the indecision behind him.
“Be happy,” he said, to no one and to everyone. Like his car, his life lurched forward.
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I want you to feel this sentence in your head, to experience the soft agony of a fleeting moment accelerating past. Words are knives, yet sharp edges have utility. The smell of wood smoke in December, hovering above a blanket of quiet snow. The smell of Saturday morning bacon or salt pork, your grandmother’s loving fingers artfully guiding the pieces in the hot pan, her mind focused on the utility of feeding those she loves. The smile of a September bride, her eyes opened to only possibilities and love, miles distant from those tragedies that always befall us. The tap of a piano beginning its melody in the background as someone lifts a cold beer from the family table. A raucous laugh bursting from an amused mouth. The sharp involuntary intake of breath when beauty is within reach. The rush of saliva in one’s mouth with the first bite of fried chicken, a grilled hamburger, or bell peppers slightly charred on a grill. Words are knives, but they are also caresses, ones crafted for delighted eyes and open hearts, to be whispered into attentive ears and crafty mind. Everything is a moment to an observant mind.
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“When life gives you lemons, squirt someone in the eye.” Cathy Guisewite
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Did you know that a truel is a duel except that three participants are involved instead of two? Most people don’t. Invariably, if I use the word without context, most people don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. (It’s the same when I use the word “antepenultimate,” which means “next to next to last,” or “third from last.” It’s a handy word. P.S. “X” is the antepenultimate letter of the English alphabet.)
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He sat motionless at the window, his mind trapped in an alternate universe, another timeline, one in which he was essentially himself, yet immersed in the consequences of other choices. This day would have been substantially distinct, its eddies and currents carrying him far afield from his comfort zone. Tom Wingo echoed in his head. He knew that most people wouldn’t understand the complexities of a complicated life. The invisible and hidden worlds contained inside our own minds are within reach of us all; seldom do people share them, for fear of their essential selves becoming unraveled. It is precisely inside these private compartments of our minds that we reside.
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If I tell you, “J is the only capital letter that faces the left,” you might immediately recognize that it is true. Despite this recognition, most people will stop and take a moment to inventory the alignment of their own alphabet. And if your mind is wired like mine, you will undoubtedly assign another moment to inquire as to why this small fact is true. Surely, there must be a reason.
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Someone wrote me and offered this unsolicited advice. I rewrote it to this: “The best partner is both critic and fan, unafraid to alternate between the extremes of correction and adoration.” Can you imagine if this were to be true in your own life?
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Can someone tell me why “Leave by example” isn’t a better cliché than “Lead by example?”
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Curiosity has its limits. For instance, I often see a picture of a beautiful person and wonder how many minutes have passed since they REALLY let one rip.
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About 1 in 10 people regrow at least some part of their tonsils back after removal. This fact has always stuck in my head, no pun intended.
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I am 19,717 days old today. Yay!
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Bananas are still the most popular item sold at Walmart.
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People don’t sneeze while they are sleeping. If you sneeze, you will wake up before doing so.
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A couple of the rooms here are flooded with rainbows emanating from the prisms I have in the windows. It’s the first day of Spring here in the United States. The day brought a lot of sunshine, some of which reached my heart today. That is a welcome change.
The realization hurts worse when you understand that you had to be made into one for the other person to get to a narrative he or she can live with. I think we are all guilty of this in some form.
It’s a rare thing for people to look at one another, nod in acknowledgment, and go on with their lives. We are wired to evaluate, judge, and appraise.
None of us like to imagine we acted badly. Sometimes, we have. And sometimes, not that often, we are outmatched by a superior intellect or a harder heart, both of which contribute to the likelihood that you’re going to be the rapacious villain when the words “The End” appear.
It will burn your heart and sense of fairness to be at the epicenter of such attention. Flailing won’t help – and neither will rebuke.
Sometimes, we’ve been assigned motives that don’t reflect what is in our head or heart. People need those motives to protect themselves from introspection or scrutiny.
It’s okay that it’s that way.
It is possible to act with the purest form of love and still stumble so badly that someone labels you as the villain.
It’s hard to change that label because so often there is no observable trail, no defense to be made, and no fair reckoning of facts or forces.
Yes, even in love, especially so; if vulnerability is invoked, it amplifies the rawness and center of people.
Consequences often overshadow intentions.
There are times when there is no real lesson, no moment of clarity or closure.
Only of acceptance.
Anthony Marra said it well: “You remain the hero of your own story even when you become the villain of someone else’s.”
Yesterday, I reached my moment of clarity and gave myself closure. In so doing, I ruptured some unseen line of acceptance. And I realized that the villain was me.
And I accept that, even though the label fails to align with the truth of my life. But such statements are given to an audience of no one. Fighting your labels is seldom rewarded.
I want everyone to be fulfilled and happy and to have people in their lives who love and appreciate them.
I say none of these words as villainous. But perception and personal filters assign motive for anyone reading this.
This picture is of me today, in a place that does not put me at ease like it once did. It was was supposed to have rained and stormed by the time I took the picture. Hours later, and it still hasn’t.
For reasons of my own, I’ve started counseling. Doing the comprehensive assessments yielded some surprises. Because of the pandemic and the bureaucracy of anything related to mental health or healthcare, I’ve only done distance counseling so far. My first face-to-face talk therapy session isn’t until next week. I haven’t done such navel-gazing since I was much younger and struggling to understand the demons that some of my family members dealt with.
Oddly, I’ve convinced so many other people to get counseling or at least seriously consider it, especially at work. Talking things out can’t hurt. Knowing your truths isn’t something to shirk away from, even if the conclusions aren’t what you expected or wanted to hear.
One of the things that caused issues on my assessments was my sixty-five lbs. of weight loss in the same time period that coincides with my life issues. Absent some pathology, it’s rare for someone to do something so successfully and simultaneously fail on a personal level. But that is precisely what I’ve done. The vision I had in October propelled me toward success. I’m grateful. That I crashed and burned on a personal level is still a shock and sadness that prevails. I’m struggling to “pull up” meaningfully. As hard as it is to accept, I’ve got an anxiety problem that is keeping me up at night.
In the future, maybe I can share those surprises and defeats here. Part of the story doesn’t belong to me, even though it’s mine to tell. Hurting people isn’t part of my natural repertoire. Time and distance either gives us grace or the ability to revise our narrative despite the path that we took. Most of us can’t tell our story without revision, especially if we know we didn’t treat everyone as we would like to be treated.
The part I can tell is that I was so confident of the outcome and that my path was one of ascendancy and fulfillment. I got crushed in that confidence.
Today, I stood next to one of the men’s display tables at Sam’s. On the one hand, I was a little chagrined. On the other, it pleased me to know that the perfect size of that pants style wasn’t available to me. Because I was too small. If anyone had told me last September that I would encounter the problem of being too small, I might have laughed. Wearing such pants wasn’t possible for me before. Now that I realized that I love the fabric and fit, I’m a fan. This brand and fit aren’t available in 30″ waists. For the record, I’m a 32″ waist for the brands I used to wear.
A man saw the displays of pants and walked up. Almost immediately, I realized he had no clue what his exact size might be. He began to fumble and hide his attempt to ‘see’ his pant size. Because I was only a few feet away, he looked at me and laughed. “Hey, can you read the tag?” he asked me as he turned the back seam of his pants down. “Don’t make it awkward,” I told him jokingly as I leaned in and looked. “34 X 30,” I said. He replied, “What brand?” I didn’t have to look. “Eddie Bauer,” I said. I had a moment of surprise as I realized that my waist was smaller than his.
Because I knew Sam’s had no Eddie Bauer on display, I gave him a twenty-second presentation of why he should buy the pants I had on. And because he was listening, I sold him on the same style of shorts. He picked out four pairs of pants and four pairs of shorts. I should have asked for a commission.
When I got back to the house after Sam’s, I grabbed five pairs of pants and discarded them. The 36″ ones float on me. Because I’m still overly confident that I’m never going to the size I once was, I don’t begrudge the money I spent on these pants. As my size reduced, it has been a comfort to ritualize me throwing out the old.
Joyce Street in the day is a hideous mass of vehicles; people are hurried and tempestuous. In the early hours, deer often scurry past, often oblivious to my passage. Sometimes, like this morning, they stop in the road and look at me. I slowed to a stop, turning down the radio. The world at that moment contained only us. After a few seconds, the spell was broken and they scampered away. Later, as a I return, I’ll slow down a bit and try to imagine that such a corridor of traffic is another world before the sun makes its visit. Then again, so am I.
Though you wouldn’t think so, when the deer greeted me, “Let Go” by Brothers Phelp played on my usb. If you haven’t listened to the song in a while, give it a listen. I needed its advice this morning.
It’s almost time for Springdale’s Demolition Derby. I know I comment or joke about it each year. This year, I emailed all the government officials and asked why we couldn’t simply use ALL of Springdale and its roads to have the derby, instead of confining it to Parsons Stadium. I’m not sure many of us would even notice the difference.
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Here, the entire room is awash in rainbows from a single prism, hundreds of them. On the floor, in long swaths across the walls, and everywhere. I can’t tell if the universe is taunting me or reminding me. The above picture is a small section of the floor by my desk.
At the store, I encountered someone who was taken aback by how much of me was missing. It probably seemed more intense, given that I shaved too much the other day. He told me that his wife was still unwell, which saddened me a bit. His son kept us entertained by his constant demands for attention and insistence on scoring an animal from the bin with the impossible claw machine. I didn’t have any cash; otherwise, I would have supplied him with one hundred chances to beat the machine.
Doing the self-assessments online yielded some surprises. I’m not sure why I would be surprised. To be so actualized in some respects, and afloat in others!
The picture below was on the front page of Reddit today.
It is unimaginable the road that led me here. I walked it with an enthusiasm that eluded me before. The path seemed so clear, my eyes so focused, and my vision unclouded. I wish everyone could experience the joy of such certainty.
I’m sitting here, looking out the window at a sun slowly sliding down. The prisms hanging in the window take me to another place, a place I can’t call mine. All windows open to the same world; that much is true. But when it is you who have changed, the window loses its allure.
I weigh less than 165 lbs. Six months ago, I weighed 65 lbs more. I still can’t believe it. I fold myself into this chair and wonder how much life I crammed into those intervening months.
I shaved my beard down after allowing it to grow as long as it has in 20+ years. It wasn’t a decision so much as an obligation that boiled out of me in a rapid exercise of momentary certainty. I used the raw edge of the trimmer’s blade and failed to follow up with a razor.
I’m boiled away to me, raw.
My muse is absent. The silence is painful, hurtful, and uncomfortable. It’s my price to pay, even as I struggle to understand it.
The filaments that have sustained me became gossamer and intangible in a way that shocked me. I held my breath, summoning optimism, hope, and love to my defense.
This morning, I woke up to the surprising illumination of a solar light that somehow charged and lit up the entire night.
The next day will come.
I fear that my stumble has stolen an essential piece of me.
It is a cosmic coincidence that this day precedes the time change. Were it so that I could burst forth to the day when my muse returns.
I find myself looking out the window, between noted words, calling my muse back to my branch. The prisms hanging there beckon, their magic in plain sight.
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I’ll include this picture of me from earlier as a comparison. For the briefest of moments, I held my muse in my heart.
And in the above picture, I took it accidentally while trying to get a picture of my crazy vest. It didn’t fit before. And I slipped into another one of those many moments where I simply didn’t recognize my body as my own. These moments only carry their significance forward when you have a reason to share them.
P.S. Parenthetically Speaking 