Sunday afternoon post

It's Sunday afternoon, and I am in the swing of a mild, pleasant day. Disorganized thoughts and notes include:

I played some Overwatch 2 and it had that not-unusual effect of irritating me to the point of crankiness, even after I put the controller down. My temper has always been a test for me.

I have been up since about 3:30 a.m. or so. I "layed down" around 5pm feeling a little weathered, and just stuck with it the rest of the night.

Tina is feeling well, having caught a cold from her Brianna during the two visits in two days we saw her. I wasn;t sure I didn't have it, so took it easy. I feel well enough this morning that I may have either not gotten ill or had a delightfully mild case of "it." 

I'll try not to over do things, but the sun came out and I went outside and got a few thousand steps in; I've been terribly lazy lately, and the scale tells the tale! Oy.

Today, I will have the feast I started late yesterday: four kinds of cheese, half a rack of lamb, some carmelized onions I threw together yesterday. There are ingredients for salad. 

Cheese:

* St. Agur, a bold-looking blue from France

* Daff black truffle (brie, I think), French

* Artikaas 18 month Gouda

* Florette goat brie, also French!

Confessions of a hopeless fuck-up

They always tell you: "Do your best."  The advice is less forthcoming when your best sucks.

I've got this job. There are some things that suck about it, but it's a good job. The people are fair and nice, and that alone is pretty rare, and makes me want to do well.

The thing is, I keep fucking up.  For a while there, I had good reasons to fuck up - not excuses, but real, verifiable causes that a conscientious person could identify and correct. Things like insufficient sleep, lack of training, inexperience and trying to work quickly at the expense of  of working thoroughly. 

One by one, I have corrected those problems, and things have improved.  But not enough.

I make stupid, rookie mistakes.  People hand me paperwork with obvious errors and my signature on it, just bigger than life. And I look at it, and it's like it's someone else's work. I remember handling it, but I don't remember skipping or duplicating or fucking up whatever got fucked up BUT THERE IT IS. And I am powerless to excuse or redeem it. All I can do is accept it, and promise to do better, knowing I probably won't.

It's all compounded for the worse that I am currently the main breadwinner at Casa de Loser; times aren't all that plush WITH me working. If I fuck this gig up, it's gonna get ugly and fast.  That pressure is the final turn of the screw, and there were times last year when I really thought I was going to succumb to it. I really felt like a mental, physical or emotional component was going to just give out, and shit would get real. All I could do was trudge miserably ahead and keep showing up as long as they'd let me. 

I'm a big boy, and I know that it's just a job. But I've tried not giving a whit of a fuck about my job, and it doesn't suit me. I can't get the math right. When I try not to care, I'm really good at it, and it shows. And it's unsustainable. It's not long before I speak and behave as if I really don't care, and at that point I may as well just quit and get on with it.

On the other hand, I have managed to disconnect some of the gnawing shame associated with tripping over my dick on a regular basis, and it's a good thing. Being a witless fuckup is pretty painful, if you don't handle it properly (and I don't).  I have somehow managed to step back from the sting of failure, and while I still want very badly to do well, the cascading anxiety of relentless, ridiculous mistakes has become a little bit removed. All I can do is patiently surmise: "Well, they'll either fire me, or they won't." I don't exactly look forward to that, but I have to say I have learned to look on the bright side of that eventuality and recognize the good that comes from change.

But I'd much rather do well and enjoy the benefits of a secure position that pays the bills. And I would really like to enjoy the well-being that comes from competence and a job well done. That is much more my speed, and while I'm capable of it (in theory), I miss it.

Commut-ication

(wrote this in my car during my commute)

I've been watching, feeling and thinking about mortality a lot these days. A lot even for me, and I've always kept a wary eye on that marker.

A big part of it is media, and the awareness it sustains that time marches on. Celebrities make a fair meter. It dazzles my primate brain to see someone who is "here with us" one day topple over the Great Horizon the next. I'm thrilled to have survived long enough to have a grown nephew who looks at me quizzically when I mention popular shows or artists no longer in existence. He looks at me like the dog does when I juggle. By simple extrapolation I know that there were artists before my time whom I'll never know or appreciate, although I'm making a few small efforts to broaden my musical appreciation.

Beyond the pop, I think of my mother, and now my brother, lost to the pantheon of memory and infinity. Now that my temporary blessing/curse of invulnerability to loneliness has dispersed, I am left with all too-keen an understanding of the need for human contact and interaction, with none of the social skills necessary to make it happen, and a wife who loves me but doesn't understand my need for communication to foster intimacy, nor harbors the communicative skills to make that happen.

In my teenage years, when my mom was still alive, she would get so lonely, trapped in the house by her illness and feebleness. Sometimes I would spend some time with her, but her illness was hard to witness, and I was a not-unusually self-centered teenager with a head full of madness and my own problems. I wouldn't mind spending some time to keep her company these days, and she could do the same for me.

I'm grateful that I get the chance to wake up every day and take another shitty run at life, although I feel that I'm still doing it incorrectly after thousands of chances to get it right. I am still baffled that so many people mortgage their souls to a full-time job, and yet I haven't discovered an attractive alternative. Then again, I haven't really put the time and research into it, have I?

Usually by this point I would write: "Maybe someday," but once past life's halfway marker, phrases like that don't come as cheaply or wistfully as they used to. If "someday" doesn't come with an earnest plan, you might as well use the word "never."

I look forward to the day I can converse with my son as one man to another, and I hope I do things right enough in between that he'll still talk to me when we get there. Wouldn't that be something.

I don't know what to tell you about my daughter. The whole story between me and her has been an epic case study in poor planning and human apathy, and we quite obviously don't know what to say to each other, and haven't since she was four, it seems. Our entire relationship has wobbled on a knife's edge for years, with neither of us wanting to sever it, nor do we know how to improve it. It all smacks of failure and disillusionment and regret; what a mess.

Who writes these things in a place like this? Someone with nowhere else to turn. Words seep out of me like tears, or pus, a natural by-product of life. The lack of an interlocutor is beside the point, like complaining to a geyser that "all this water could be put to some use, you know."

Oh, the places you'll go

We get some flyover traffic here, being roughly due east of San Francisco. I like to watch the planes come in and out, and I marvel at where they could be coming from, and where they might go. I remember the direction we took to Paris more or less, and when one follows anything I can deliberately fantasize is a similar track, my brain flows with a mixed vision of my experienced there, my next visit, and all the imagined lives of the millions of people it could be on that plane. Boggles my mind.

My world is finite, and yet so infinite!

Lava Lamp

Two weeks since my last post, and my mind is a ridiculous lava lamp.

I continue to feel less scattered, more integrated, which is a welcome relief. Feels healthy.  Announcing to myself that I can set comedy aside has allowed me to shed the weighty, negative feelings of isolation and regret that were jabbing at me.

What's ironic is that now that I feel stronger, I feel tempted to do more, including comedy! My April 7th comedy gig now includes an hour's stint on local morning radio; new opportunities like this seduce and excite my mercurially unreliable intellect. I have the technical ability to do websites, podcasts, live shows and more. How tempting it is to try; they are wonderful, exciting productions (and huge responsibilities to shoulder once my manic buzz is gone).  Agh! These bursts of optimism are most frustrating! As you can see I have trouble managing the rise and fall.  If you're a mental health professional, feel free to Comment.

I feel like I used to be more at peace with these things, finding ways to swim in the tide's ebb and flow, rejoicing successes more and regretting less the areas where I've "failed" myself. I'd like to return to that level of harmony one of these days. Maybe it's just a conscious decision to let myself off the hook. What a concept, to simply live in a joyful state of mind. I am suspicious of the idea that humans are built to do that, but it's excruciatingly tantalizing.

If I could clone myself, the first thing I would do is turn around and slap myself for these constant, jarring reversals of fortune. I will work more on loving myself for the silly human I am.

Stupid

I feel so stupid. Stress produced rage, which produced destruction, which produced shame, which now produces stress, again. Ugh - brilliant.

I'm embarrassed at it. I don't want to discuss it with my loved one - why give my wife more evidence that she's married a fool? When I can't talk things out, I literally can not get them out. So, it recirculates within my systems, knotting my gut and haunting my psyche.

I can spoon some of it out here in my blog, which helps in small measure.

People must wonder how I can be comfortable noting in bright public relief things I am scared to admit in private. The answers are that I have a low estimation on humanity as the faceless, slobbering throng that it insists on proving itself to be. You inhuman rabble, I don't care what you think of me.

Paradoxically, people who have shown me kindness and friendship, even of a virtual kind, I trust you with my oddness, my pains, my secrets, my shames. I would gladly hand a knife to a friend and confidently turn my back. What good are these bonds if they can't be relied upon now and then?Thank you for listening.

TGIF

When I was a school-aged child, I couldn't wait for three o'clock so that I could be free to play as I wished. I would stare at the clock and fiercely will it to shuffle along its way. I should have been more careful as to what I wished for.

Now that I'm 40, my days flip by like the pages of a book left open in a storm. It's Monday. It's Friday. It's Monday again.

I drive in the dark and marvel at the natural wonders of the morning landscapes, both plain and mystic with their Navy blue sky, surreal moon and creeping, glow-eyed, nocturnal fauna that most people rarely experience.

I dream of pulling over, exiting my car, my life as it now exists, and giving myself over to the haunting call of the not-yet-dawn.

I fantasize about sneaking away from my carefully, yet precariously planned life, stacked like river rocks, in a blurry, secret agent-style departure, slipping away to a new, more exciting chapter that doesn't resemble this one at all. A bon vivant in Paris. An artist in the City with intense, creative friendships and long, compelling discussions and passionate arguments that last into the dawn and solve all the world's problems and dance around the most utterly frivolous nothings with equal reverence.

The longing is persistent and distracting. I fail to resolve two truths I feel in my heart: one, that I am leading a life unprecedentedly fortunate among those of my species, even in this "modern" age. A life full of love and family and ease and comfort and opportunity. The other, that life is short, too short to always choose the bird in the hand, that my brother died at what we consider a young age without finding a true love or a passionate pursuit, a fire into which he could willingly and joyously feed the fuel of his body, mind and time. What a sad prospect.

Turning forty has been a wondrous existential catastrophe. Fairly to the day of my life's anniversary, I was struck as if by a lighting bolt with an added dimension of perception. I felt like a hiker who had paused to look back at the mountain he had half-climbed, having only seen it from the start of his journey until now. How small the routes look from up here. How lucky I was to survive some scrapes in hindsight. But most of all the way the entire journey is cast in a different light in view of my experiences so far, throwing into doubt not only the routes I take next but the entirety of the goal itself!

One of the lessons I have learned is that I am never satisfied. Even as I near a goal (when I am persistent enough to have neared it, which is too rare), I am bewitched by other twinkling distractions, drawing me away and leaving me unfulfilled, my current prize nearly but not quite achieved.

And so when I look my mid-life crisis in the face, I am powerless to recognize it for what it is. Is it the gauzy Muse, screaming truth at me across the void, gesturing madly that I may listen and follow my true course in life? Or is it a fiendish siren song, a lovely, heart-rending beseeching that I would stray and guide my little ship away from calm seas and fair weather and onto the rocks, and lament my stupidity and loss as I slip beneath the waves?

I am wholly powerless to discriminate; I truly cannot tell the difference, and at times the agony of indecision is exquisite.

Don't be so glum - it's Friday!

It's a new year, and I'm off to a very mixed start, with positives and negatives coming from unexpected places. This is a good thing I guess, as at least it's not boring.

On the downside (so I can finish with the "ups"), my intentions to eat healthy and get more exercise have gone right in the shitter. The same habits and weaknesses and struggles with discipline don't give a dry fuck whether it's a new year, they just want what they want, and they're getting it. Hope springs eternal, where there's life there's hope, and tomorrow's another day. Three cliches oughtta do it. But obviously, I cling to the idea that I can always try again tomorrow, as long as there's another tomorrow in me.

On the other hand, comedy started January off with a big show in a big room in a new place, and not only did I do a pretty good job performing, I earned a little respect from my booker, I stretched and did more time than I'm used to and earned a little for myself. Best of all, I basked in the company and hospitality and dare-I-say-it love of some good friends while I was in their area. I haven't had a non-family member say "I missed you" and mean it in longer than I can remember.The effect was startling and warm. Wow, as a social misfit, you sometimes forget what you're missing, which is probably an excellent coping mechanism, and so for the best. Still, I was awash in the glow of genuine, unexpected affection. How do I show my appreciation for that, and pay it back in kind? I'm not good at that.

Also, I'm working on getting an open mike together in my area, hopefully strengthen my performing muscles. This has come along with a small but healthy breakthrough in my attitude towards performing, and I hope that I can capture this and develop it. These types of mental changes are mercurial, and can slip away if not acted upon, so we'll see how it goes.

Anyway, happy new year out there, people. It's looking like a good launch to a wobbly vessel on this year's journey. See you on the high seas!

San Francisco

We went to Pier 39 in San Francisco yesterday, shopped the outdoor mall and had a good time. We took Michelle's nephew James along, and I'm glad we did. He's grown up with a good heart and strong sense of humor. Plus, he bought me a beer; that always helps.

We caught a street performance by a performer who worked juggling into a love-triangle skit. It was a little forced, but she was lively and charming enough. I tipped her a fiver, and I gave Brian a buck to tip her, too. Brian started out cranky, but she had won him over by the end.

We saw the seals, Brian and Michelle went on a cool Merry Go Round, and I got to eat a fantastic chocolate dessert crépe that Brian "shared" with me after swearing he didn't want one. That's ok, I pulled the same trick when he got an ice cream ten minutes later!

It was a beautiful day out.

In a bad place

What a mess I've been in lately. As a snapshot, I'm barreling down the highway at 72mph, the potholes are brutally grudge-fucking my tires and suspension, I've got a stress headache and I'm not really looking forward to getting home.

How did I get here?? I don't get headaches! I've got a lot on the ball, plenty to be happy about and grateful for, and I'm utterly miserable. I'm supposed to be too smart to allow myself to get into such a predicament, and yet here I am.

I have a definite, yet inexplicable sense that I'm going like Hell, but in the wrong direction. What's more, that if I could tune into some inner monologue and listen, the perfect answer is available to me. But I'm having serious trouble tuning in to that signal.

Some clues are available to me, though: when I let my mind wander and play, it drifts to Paris. Nostalgia for my trips there, French cuisine and the more-grounded lifestyle for which they are so well reputed. There is a whisper in my ear that this is the direction in which my happiness and fulfillment lie.

Side note: just when in the fucking Hell are these blog postings going to be joyous, triumphant boasts about how stupidly happy and successful I am to be living this life? GodDAMMIT, every day that doesn't happen is a sin against humanity and I should be ashamed of myself.

Anyhow... Why am I not studying art? European history? What could be more grounding and basic and satisfying than learning to cook French or Mediterranean food? I haven't looked at my French textbooks in ages! What, do I think I'm going to live forever, that I can afford to waste the time that's been given to me, and not pursue these things? (Don't worry, this is how I psyche myself into embracing changes that require any effort. I'll be done in a minute.)

Maybe these discomfitures are symptoms that I'm off my true path, like the noise and smell from the engine of a car that's been driven on flat tires (bear with me; if a shitty metaphor is the cost of personal growth, at this point it's a bargain; I need answers so, so badly).

I've got to find a way to connect with the real me, my higher power, my true calling, my rainbow elephant (again, small price to pay) or whatever lets me get back into the groove I've so abjectly lost and so woefully need.

The answers are there. The tools are within my reach. Let's get cracking, motherfucker.

Panting

Having trouble keeping up lately. An insufficient amount of my creative desires are being exploited, due to poor time management, exhaustion, and general frazzled-ness.

My frustration at this inability is driving me mad. I am trying to adjust my expectations accordingly, down from: "I can do every little thing that occurs to me," to: "if I make to work and back, I should be happy with that; all else is gravy." It's a grudging admission, but necessary.

Even my numbed self-awareness is telling me that something isn't working for me. I am not living that higher-purposed existence that spiritual and self-help gurus are always on about; the joyous synergy that comes from doing what you love in a way that fulfills and rewards.

I need a change, but I don't yet know what it is. Ah well, back to work. I'll figure it out someday. Unless of course I don't.

Be yourself, for God's sake

I am unimaginative. I am a lobotomy patient. I have taken several blows to the head in my life and am too lazy to think for myself, not even the simplest mouthings of the voice in my head I call my Self. I cannot be bothered to ape the most basic, original utterance to the world

I am deathly afraid someone might get to know the real me and not like me, so I copy N paste the most hackneyed tripe ...I can find on the social networking pages I stumble into in order to "connect" with people I barely know, squandering the opportunity, unprecedented in the known universe, to connect with people regardless of not only distance but culture, heritage, race, religion or social status. I am a sad, thoughtless individual, and I don't deserve the gift of life nor the blessing of a sentient brain and the chance to use it.

Copy N paste this to as your status for an hour if you want someone to put a bullet in your empty little head and end the suffering we all feel when we read sad, pointless status updates like this.

Paris webcam

This is a great Paris/Eiffel Tower webcam. Unlike the few others I've found (really, Paris? Only a couple webcams??), this one is clear and has good enough play that you can watch birds and clouds fly by.

Nifty. Magnifique.

River Deep, Mountain High

River Deep Mountain High

When I was a little girl, I had a rag doll
Only doll I've ever owned
Now I love you just the way I loved that rag doll
Only now my love has grown

It gets stronger in every way
It gets deeper, let me say
It gets higher day by day

Do I love you my, oh, my?
River deep, mountain high, yeah, yeah
If I lost you would I cry?
Oh, how I love you baby, baby, baby, baby

I found this song on a Tina Turner greatest hits-type CD, and I love it. It has what my limited musical vocabulary describes as a boogie beat, a lotta horns, just a good song. It talks about the depth and breadth of love for another human being in real and human terms; expressive without being fancy. Very down to earth.

I played it for my wife, and she didn't get it. She didn't like the style of music, didn't understand Tina's lyrics due to her screeching (some might say, wrenching wail, in a good way) style. The whole thing left her cold. When you're trying to express to someone how you feel about them in another medium, the blunt force trauma of the dearth of connection there is chilling indeed.

Why is it so hard to make these connections? Why is the chill of rejection, even minor or imagined rejection on such a small scale, so bitterly cold? I used to think I was immune to the pain of social isolation, and maybe I was. But if I was numb or emotionally armored for years, that desensitivity has vanished, that armor has turned brittle and flaked away.

The kicker, the proof in this pudding, was my trip to Paris, France this past spring (yet another eye-opening revelation from a trip to Paris, this one not necessarily as welcome as the last). I was so horribly lonely, desperate for human contact of a sort that I could not achieve; what anguish. Now that I'm back, I can't deny that the sensation persists, if much less acutely.

I think I was happier with my social blinders in place; this new sensation is anything but pleasant. It's like an ache in the bones before the coming rain; I'd much rather just depend on the weather report, and leave the discomfiting forecast out of it. Apparently I have no choice in the matter.

Just as hunger is an excellent motivator, maybe this gut-borne longing will propel me to do or find or go to or be something useful or valuable. I hope so. My friend Joe believes in an ultimate sense to be made of these types of things, a cosmic logic; I hope he's right. 'Cuz this malaise is just a nagging misery at this point, and I'd just as soon be rid of it.

Doing OK

Life has been interesting these days. And strangely better. I'm writing a little more, which has been a real problem. Seems like that's easing and improving.

Met some pals and made s'mores with the kids last night. What a good night.

Michelle smiled at me today. Nice.

I mean: "I'm fine, how are you?"

Gravity. Bacteria. Entropy.
They are but hungry, tenacious wolves
patiently waiting to pull us down
expose our guts to the cold sunlight
and draw us inexorably back into mother nature's deathly silent embrace.

Out with it

You know that moment when someone says something unexpected and inappropriate and the thing that pops into your head in response seems too real or awkward to say, so you create an uncomfortable silence? Don't be a pussy, just say it already! What, you think you're going to live forever? Life is not a dress rehearsal, just go with what you've got.

The Hyena Men of Abuja

Wow. Pieter Hugo has a fascinating story and pictorial record of a troupe of Nigerian performers who keep and use baboons, snakes and hyenas for a traveling show. The photos themselves are amazing, and the story is wonderfully interesting.

The story touches on many things, including animal rights issues, and the comments section after the post is as rife with passionate and opposing viewpoints as you'd expect. What did surprise me is that some of the comments are pretty thoughtful; I don't see a lot of that, usually.

Speaking for myself, I think an ideal world wouldn't involve the keeping of wild animals as pets, but none of us lives in that ideal world, and certainly not the Hyena Men of Abuja. The complaints against this practice miss the point, and sound a little too much like: "Why don't these guys just get a job??" Good for them for finding a bold, unique way to make an honest buck. I'd pay to see it.

The pleasure of anticipation

The first time I went to Paris, I spent weeks or even months planning the trip. I agonized over the air fares and hotel packages among different offers, and ran the numbers like a coked-out Accountant with OCD. I noodled over sights and how the Metro worked. Already a student of the language, I kicked my studies into a higher gear, and made a lot of progress.

Not long from now, I'll go again. The thought of returning was just as dream-like as the first time, right up until the time I booked the flight. At that moment, when it became real, a combination of events began churning into reality and quietly began to erode what I didn't realize were some of the best parts of the trip: the anticipation.

The run-up is the dance before the kiss, when all things are possible, a story not yet written. It's all potential: the dreamy, cartoonish whimsy where imagination and expectation meet, and jerk each other off. (Egads, what a jarringly crass turn of phrase. I think I'll keep it.)

As soon as I pulled the trigger on this little event, stuff started happening. Some pending items in my personal life, much like my trip, went from "someday" to "pretty frigging soon." My work life was much the same, taking a typically lax span of time and filling it with strife and tension. Even my stand up comedy life, deep in the drowsy doldrums, twitched and demanded attention.

In short, all the slack was pulled out of my line, and it was all I could do to hold on.

I had hoped to renew my love affair with the French language (which never should have lapsed). It's currently what I'd call "passable," but I wanted it to be so much better. I wanted to study art so that when I went to the Louvre and other museums, the things I'll see would have more meaning. I had hoped to scout out my sights online; for my last trip, I cyber-stalked cemeteries, streets and sights within an inch of their lives.

What will I see in Paris this time? I've barely put together a list, and even that was fairly flung together.

When will I see it? I hastily threw sights into a calendar like darts at a dartboard, and who knows if reality will reflect the slots I've chosen.

Where will I eat? I've got a wonderful book my wife bought for me, describing all sorts of restaurants there. I haven't read nearly enough of it.

I've barely been able to keep track of the paperwork I'll need to get on planes and trains involved in the plans I have cobbled together. I almost lost one of them this morning. My shit is not wired tight.

I feel sad and cheated that I haven't managed my time well in advance of the voyage. I've got to get a better mastery over the way the data is arranged in my noggin. I can do better than this.

...

Often, these blog posts give me perspective. The emotion I note here isn't the only one; sometimes, not even the dominant one. Still, it's useful to look back and see where my head was at, and that's reason enough to register my disappointment here.

So, on the bright side, I'm going to Paris, punk! If you had told me six months ago that I could go to Paris without a moment to plan, I'd have kissed you on the mouth and gotten on the plane. Things aren't so bad. I could happily sit on the street and consume cheese and wine and stare at the buildings and people and be as happy as a dog eating shit.

Here's to the happy dog!

Dime store wisdom is still wisdom

As further evidence that FaceBook is cheating my blog out of all my good brain droppings, I submit the hard-earned knowledge below, originally posted to answer a question that nobody asked (much like all the other posts in this blog):

I don't know much, but I know this: "drama" is like a sickness, it weakens you. The only person it helps is those who hope to catch you slippin'. Abandon and ignore the haters. Let go of the negativity when you can. The heat from flame wars burns down your house long before it touches anyone else's. (They're fun, though!)

Build your alliances with those who have treated you well; those investments pay dividends early and often.

Since I'm adopting a professor's tone, here's some extra credit: try to forgive the lesser slights against you. With time, you may even come to realize that you were as much to blame for what amounted to a misunderstanding, and your empire will be built that much bigger.

Class dismissed.