I am not a Writer

     The one thing that I have learned from my class in Nature Writing is, I am not a “writer.”  I am not an artist.  I am not compelled to write.  There is no creative passion spewing forth from the center of my being.  There is no drive, no constant wish to do better, to learn by doing.  I mostly would just like to drink a few beers and go to sleep.  Writer’s write daily.  They use it as a tool.  They write to find solace.  I find no solace.  The worst part is how bipolar writing daily makes me feel.  One day I will be saying how much I hate everything and that the world is a terrible and gloomy place.  Then the next day I am writing about how there is hope, and I just need to find that one thing that I can do to make the world better.  It makes me realize just how incredibly selfish I am.  And how much of a jerk I am.  For instance a lot of my daily writing in my nature class centered around one person in my class.  I was super annoyed by this person.  I would write things like “GAH WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THIS GIRL?”  It turns out she has asperger’s.  And I am this shitty guy silently judging her for interrupting class with outbursts, and needing everything repeated 1000 times.  I am a shithead.  I am supposed to be this supportive creative part of this learning community, and I am too busy hating people for their faults that they can’t control.  Silently, hating.  I am not a writer.  I am a product of a generation that constantly thinks the world is about to end, so there is no reason to put any hard work into anything.  No reason for this struggle, so why bother.  I have noticed that when I write now, I say the same thing 4 or 5 times.  You could sum up everything I ever try to say with one sentence.  If I was writer I could do that, but I am not.  I am not a writer.  On my way into my first day of my Nature Writing class, I saw a bumble bee the size of my thumb with its stinger stuck in a locust or cicada or whatever they are called.  They writhed on the ground making buzzing noises.  They were both going to die.  The bumble bee thought it would be a good idea to sting, and now he was stuck.  The locust thought it would be a good idea to piss off the bumble bee, and now he was stuck.  How incredibly insignificant this all was, didn’t stop me from watching the two insects fight for their lives on the sidewalk.  I watched, because that is what I do.  I watch.  I am a watcher.  Watching the pointless events happen around me.  I am a watcher.  If the Bumble bee hadn’t stung the Locust, would they still be alive?  No, their death was inevitable.  But, maybe they could’ve had a few more days.  A few more days to pollenate flowers, a few more days of buzzing.  A few more days to float around and watch.  Watching is important.  I watch.  I open my eyes and watch.  I watch with eyes, selfish, biased, ignorant eyes.  But, I watch, and I will never stop watching.

Let Go

                The other night I had a dream.  I was dangling from a ladder attached to a metal catwalk, bolted to a mountainside.  Below me was an endless drop, and a tiny metal platform that my mother was standing on.  The rungs of the ladder were just far enough apart to make climbing down impossible.  I was holding on for dear life.  My knuckles turning white as I gripped the cold metal.  My palms were sweaty, I looked down and the shock of it made it hard to breathe.  I tried to pull myself up higher, but my arms were too weak.  The platform beneath me was just far enough of a fall to be dangerous.  Then my Mom yelled up at me, “ Climb down you pansy… LET GO!”

               I was watching a TV show the other day, there was a man in rehab and he was told to ‘Let go and Let God’.  This expression pissed me off.  No one can ‘let’ God do anything.  If God exists and he is some kind of omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, creator entity, then there is no letting him do anything.  The truth is if there is a God, he is some kind of voyeur.  A perverted, tabloid journalist junkie who apparently loves watching people when they are at their most vulnerable.  Just waiting in the wings to hack your email, but in his case he doesn’t need to, because he sees all.  He sees all and does nothing.  And of course we were made in his image which is why human beings are disgusting pathetic, self- gratifying people.  We are all hoping against hope that there is another car accident, or natural disaster, or celeb sex scandal, so we have something to watch.  So, we can sit and watch and not do anything.  Just soak in the horror to make ourselves feel better.   

                I don’t know what the dream meant.  Maybe it means I feel like I am on the edge of something.  With no safety net, no parachute, and no one to catch me.  Maybe it means that I need to take a risk, a leap of faith.  Maybe I am just afraid of heights and my mother’s judgement.  I guess maybe all us of need to let go.  To let life happen.  To move forward, and keep moving forward.  We don’t need to let go and let God.  We need to let go and let ourselves be.  Be what we truly want to be.  Get off the sidelines.  Stop watching and do.  It may be sappy and trite and contrived and clichéd.  I for one have hope that when I let go of the ladder the fall won’t hurt because I know I made a choice.  Maybe not the ‘right’ choice, but a choice nonetheless.  Choice is what it is all about.

Another Post About Going Back To School

     Shakespeare in context.  There are theatre majors in this class.  I "SEE" a few english majors that I recognize from other classes, but I can "HEAR" the theatre majors.  They have said the word "CRAFT" a few times.  This may kill me.  I, myself, am a performer who hates other performers.  A wanna'be writer.  A girl enters stage right and screams "Beckah!!!"  then laughs and says to the rest of us, quietly ignoring her, "What an entrance?"  Yet again I am faced with the fact that I am too old for this.  I don't have time to make mistakes anymore, these kids have eight to ten years to get where I am right now.  Which, come to think of it, is only four feet away.  It has taken me a decade to move four feet.  That is a depressing thought.  A snail's pace, a sloth's pace, like Chinese water torture.  A persistent, slow, pointless drop drop drop of water slowing eroding a hole in my brain.  My brain a floating hunk of trash in an ocean of jellyfish.  It doesn't even stir with the constant stinging.  I am starting to sound like Hamlet.  At least my dad is still around.  There is always something rotten in Denmark, or Richmond, or wherever you are...that is even more dramatic than these young theatre majors.  These young beautiful people who are all going to make it on Broadway, or in Hollywood, and really just piss me off.  My professor just made a Mr. Bill reference and I am the only one who laughed.  OHHH NOOOOO!!!!!

Reviews

Some Reviews of My Future Hypothetical Comedy Shows:


"Joe Coleburn You won't know when the jokes begin...or end!!"

"Joe Coleburn the one thing you can say is... He's likeable!!!"

"Joe Coleburn he WILL make apologies!!!"
"Joe Coleburn he takes comedy to a  level that you won't understand, and honestly don't want to!!"

"Joe Coleburn he once ate a bagel off the ground!!"

"Come see Joe Coleburn he asks the tough questions like ' What is the deal with observational humor?' !!!"

"Joe Coleburn... believable..."

"Joe Coleburn...Too Long... Too chubby...Too drunk..."

"Joe Coleburn ain't nothing like him, and there shouldn't be."

"Joe Coleburn umm it was ok, a little slow at first, but I mean it was good.  The beers there were good, I am not much into live comedy.  Did you see the cat video the other day.  Ya know the one with the two cats dancing to 'Turn Down For What', that shit is hilarious.  Totally the bomb."

SARAH SARAH FRRRRRIIIIIIIEEEENNND!

The other day I was thinking about the movie Labyrinth.  Is Labyrinth the greatest piece of cinema of all time?  Probably not.  Does it hold up?  Maybe.  Is it a movie that I constantly think about, and may have had more effect on my life than any other movie?  Yes.  From the moment I first watched it I fell deeply in love with both Jennifer Connelly and David Bowie.  The character Sarah was young and beautiful and a dreamer.  She makes a mistake and has to deal with the consequences.  Once in the Labyrinth she shows her smarts and her determination.  Even though she chooses down, when you should clearly never choose down, I had an immediate crush on Jennifer Connelly that has never gone away.  I sat there and projected myself into the puppet characters.  I was Hoggle who looked at Sarah’s innocence and beauty and knew that she could never love such a wretched cowardly ugly creature as he and I were.  And my heart broke when I realized I was Ludo as well the big dumb animal just searching for a friend.  Even Sir Didymus let me see that loyalty and the virtue of friendship was important.    

            Then there was Bowie, Jareth the goblin King.  As I looked at him with his insane Tina Turner hair and his dramatic eye makeup, strutting about and singing with a devilish smile or a moody stare, I realized I was in love again.  In love with the dark side.  In love with the secret pathetic vulnerability of evil.  I wanted to be him.  I wanted to be this tortured soul who stole babies and turned the world upside down for Jennifer Connelly.  I also really wanted to go to that crazy masquerade even if it was a hallucination.  These crushes were very confusing when I was young.  It is only now that I fully understand them.  Although David Bowie still is a little sexually confusing.  I mean for a kids movie there sure is a lot of David Bowie bulge bouncing around.   If you haven't seen it watch it.  You may learn something about yourself, or maybe learn more about me.

NEW NEW NEW!!

NEW NEW NEW!  Come check it out.  It is the latest advancement.  Ladies and Gentlemen, boys are girls come one come all.  It is here.  Fresh exciting, different, the next step.  Check it out it is really great.  There will honestly never be a better innovation.  This is unprecedented, unparalleled, unrivaled, and undeniably the most important thing ever.

Seriously it is great.

The Best.

I mean it.

Really I do.

Ok so maybe there are a few problems.  But you know everything has a downside.  There is no light without shadow.  You know what, I am honestly not crazy about it, but I mean what choice do I have?  I thought we were ok with what we had, but of course they just had to change things.  To be honest I really don’t even like it.  I heard it is the worst.  I mean you want ‘new’ but at what cost?  How dare they?  It basically came from slave labor and is ruining the environment.  I hate this new thing I want the old one.  This new thing killed my father. 

NEW NEW NEW!!  It’s the new thing.  It isn’t like the old one because it’s new.  It is actually more like the old one.  Classic if you will, retro. 

You know what, I love it.    

Story I am working on

              When we got to the party it was about thirty people all standing in a gravel covered backyard slash parking lot behind an apartment.  There was a group of guys I knew shot gunning beers in the bed of a truck, a small group of  young professionals in one corner drinking cocktails and talking about fantasy football or whoever’s wedding they were going to that weekend, and at the far end of the lot there was a beer pong table and the four people who I knew played beer pong everywhere they went.  I wondered why these people were all still friends and then also wondered why I was friends with them.  After I locked up my bike I hopped into the bed of the truck with my cohorts to a rauckus cheer.  One of them handed me a bottle of Evan Williams and told me to do work.  I tipped the bottle up to my lips and took a long drink.  When I was done I coughed and said geek geek gah damn and passed the bottle on and said do work. 

                The sun has gone down and I am in an alley urinating on a trash can.  I can still hear the party even though I walked about a half of a block to find my perfect bathroom.  The moon is full and I look up at the big son of a bitch as I sway.  My back hit’s the fence behind me, which causes some mangy old dog to have a hissy fit.  It barks and snarls I zip up and growl and bark back at it letting drool fly from my mouth.  After awhile I realize I am fighting a pointless battle.  I begin my retreat towards the party noises.  My walk is swift and purposeful but the alcohol makes it look like I am falling towards something.  When I get back there is a large group of people all singing along to a song we all know.  I don’t feel like singing so I go over to a group that is smoking and ask to bum a cigarette.   I center myself and say the same trying not to sound or look too drunk.

The beginning of My untitled Buddy Comedy

The other night when I was in the bathroom I felt a sharp pain that I thought was gas.  I sat there on the toilet as my bowels constricted and throbbed.  A shooting pain, like a knife stabbing in and twisting, began to creep up my lower back.  I began to sweat and to pant.  I was dying.  My life was limited.  I laid down on the cold tile floor to try and cool off my feverish red skin.  There was no solace.  I took off all my clothes and grabbed handfuls of water to splash my face with.  I moaned and screamed and cried.  I sat on the toilet and pushed because that felt good.  I pushed and I pushed.  It was when I was pushing I heard it.  It was a voice, definitely a voice between the flatulants.  It sound like it said “Heeeeeeey”.  I stopped pushing and breathed, I was white as a sheet and cold now.  Where did that voice come from?  I knew, but I didn’t want to believe it.  I curled up in a fetal position and shook my head.  No, this wasn’t happening, no there was no voice, no there was no little voice saying “Heeeeey”… coming from my butt.

Curiosity took over.  Fear subsided for the moment, pain reigned.  I sat on the toilet and pushed.  “HEY YO.  Keep pushing yo.”  I stopped and wondered if I should ask this hallucination a question.  Who are you?  What are you? What are you doing inside me?  Instead I took a deep breath and pushed with all my might.  This time relief and splashing and struggling sounds, as if something or someone was choking on something.  Then a pinch, my left cheek, an unmistakable butt pinch.  “Hey fatty would you get off the toilet your suffocating me?”  I jumped up in surprise and turned to face my horror.  There in the toilet was a foot tall green man.  He had pointy green ears, buggy lizard eyes, and a snout like a pig.  He wore a tiny Hawaiian shirt which was wet with waist and bile.  He pulled some black wayfarers out of the pocket of his cutoff jean shorts and put them on.  From his other pocket he drew a toothpick which he stuck between his yellow fanged teeth.  “Whooh.” He said “ Yo mang you want to put some clothes on.  Cuz dig this man I just came out yo butt, and I don’t wanna sit here all night and look at ya junk ya dig.  Think I seen enuf ya know what I’m saying… ya dig…?”  He looked at me with his yellow eyes as I grabbed the shower curtain and wrapped it around my lower half.  I sat down on the edge of the tub.  This was going to be a long night.  To be continued…      

 

Alex's Birthday

Alright so I got liquor balloons some gifts, I think I am done.  Man I hate shopping for someone.  They say it is the thought that counts, but if that were really true why can’t I just walk up carrying nothing and say “Hey I thought about you.”  I mean clearly I have been thinking.  I am constantly thinking.  In fact all I have been thinking about lately is what to get her for her birthday.  She isn’t going to like the gifts.  That’s ok though because she likes me so she has to pretend.  I mean if the situation was reversed I would smile and be like “no I love it, I really do.”  Saying “I really do” usually means you really don’t.

How is it that no matter where this balloon is it is in my way?  It is one balloon.  How could this one balloon be so disruptive?  I look in the rearview the balloon is there.  I look in the side mirrors the balloon is there.  I turn my head to check my blind-spot and the balloon floats into the way.  This balloon is going to cause me to get in a horrific deadly accident.  This balloon is going to inadvertently kill me.  That will teach her not to like the gifts I picked out.  I die on the way to her house with a balloon and some dodgey gifts.  It would be so tragic.  So romantic.  I would be remembered as the best boyfriend ever.  Not just some guy who was too cheap to spring for more than one balloon.  How beautiful it would be, she would have to remember these gifts forever, as the things I died for.  How tragically beautiful?  Fuck this fucking balloon is pissing me off.

an illness narrative

I remember my mother’s face peering down at me.  My hair is matted down on my left side, and my nose is full of something that stings.  My throat is dry and my mouth feels crusty.  I am wet.  A hand is sliding down the left side of my face.  A furry moistened hand.  I open my eyes and I am in a tub.  It is very bright in the bathroom and I squint as I look around at the yellow tiles.  I am seven years old and I have no idea what is going on.  The water is warm but I am shivering.  My dad has one arm behind my back supporting me in the tub, as he kneels beside me the light is reflecting off his glasses and I can’t make out his eyes, I hear him sigh and his grasp tightens as he sees me looking up at him.  My mom is kneeling beside him and rubbing the side of my face with a washcloth and looking very worried.  It is at this point that I smell it.  The unmistakable vomit smell.  I feel the side of my head with my hand, I am covered in it.  The stinging in my nose and throat tell me that it is my vomit.  I look over at the door to the bathroom and see my older brother peering in at me.  We shared a room and I guess he must’ve woke up in all the commotion.  This has never happened to him before.  Nor has it ever happened to my older sister.  My mom and my dad never had this problem.  I am different and alone and no one knows why. 

My brother and sister told me, that one time when I was four, I had thrown up all over the car during a family road trip.  It was the three of us in the back seat of a Pontiac sedan and there was no escaping the fruit loops I had eaten for breakfast.  They said I had been asleep, and then had just started vomiting everywhere.  I know now that this may have been the first instance of my seizures.  I had nocturnal epilepsy which I was told basically meant that certain nights, for no reason and without warning, I would lay down to sleep and right before I hit that level of REM sleep, something in my brain would go haywire, I would have a seizure, vomit, and pass out in my own sick.  Luckily, for me, not for him, I shared a room with my older brother growing up.  So, he would hear me shaking and moaning, wake up and run and get my parents, so that they could make sure I didn’t asphyxiate.  Needless to say I wasn’t allowed to go to many sleepovers.  I had an overprotective mom who thought my brother, who was four years older than me, and my sister, who was seven years older than me, were all the friends I needed.       

“Joseph, Joseph, Joseph…”

My eyelid is peeled back, and a fire burns it.  Uniformed men are thumping around the tulip wallpaper.  Hands in my armpits tickle as I am lifted.  There is a sharp prick in my hand as a belt is tightening around my chest.

“Hey honey?”  My moms voice… Where am I?  A big busy room.  Few man in white coats, few people in green matching outfits.  Everyone is talking.  There are curtains, and hallways, and machines.   Hospital.  A man in a white coat says that I had a… ‘Grand Mal’.  They are all staring at me, but not talking to me.  Their eyes look sad.  The other’s leave.  My mom and I look at each other.  There is a thin curtain next to the bed I am in.  My mom squeezes my hand.  “You had another seizure and you wouldn’t wake up.”  My face is hot and I feel different and alien and fragile.  My mom always said that everyone who goes to Johnston Willis hospital dies.  I look around.  My mom tells me I’ll be fine.  “Try to get some sleep”, she says.  I close my eyes.  My eyes open to a loud bang.  The doors at the end of the hall have burst open.  A black haired man in a white suit is strapped to a table with people, dressed in green from head to foot, rushing him in.  They push the table up to a wall and pull a curtain around him.  I can just see silhouettes.  His head has a gash in it and the shoulders of his suit have turned pink.  I close my eyes again as things start to calm down.  My eyes open, my mom is standing up looking worried.  There are loud yells.  One of the nurses comes out from behind a curtain nearby with her hand over her face and blood gushing from her nose.   Doctors come running and grab her and rush her to a bed.  The pink and white suited man creeps out from behind the curtain staggering as if drunk.  His pants around his ankles, he turns to face my mother and I.  He stares at us and there is nothing behind those eyes.  My mom moves between him and me, and puts her back to me.  I have to lean over to peer around my mom.  He pulls his pants up as he sways around with a stupid grin on his face.  My mom turns to me and tells me to try to get some sleep.  She keeps looking from the man, to the hospital staff huddled around the nurse, and then back to me.  It is bright and loud and strange, I know it is night but in here it is as busy and bright as school during recess.  Two police officers and a doctor approach the man in the suit, he struggles as they get him back behind the curtain.  A new nurse walks towards the group with a needle.  Yet another nurse comes up to us and says.  “Your room is not quite ready yet, but I think if we move ya’ll a little ways down the hallway he may get some sleep.”  “I’m not tired.” 

I wasn’t, I was afraid to go to sleep.  Afraid to go to sleep and have another seizure.  Afraid to go to sleep and miss whatever mischief the man in the white suit was going to get into.  Afraid to go to sleep and leave my mom alone with her thoughts, and her hatred of hospitals.  I was afraid.  Over the next few days I spent in the hospital, I took all the tests.  The MRI, the EEG, and others.  I remember thinking the MRI was nowhere near as cramped or as loud as everyone said it was(although now in hindsight I realize I was a tiny kid, and was too fascinated to be annoyed).  During the EEG they glue things to your head that somehow read brain activity.  They gave me legos to play with while they were running this test and they asked me to please not grit my teeth.  Immediately I gritted my teeth to see what would happen, as soon as I did it, it made the machine jump all over the place and they said they had to start over.  I thought it was funny, but my mom told me to cut it out.  Most of my hospital visit was spent watching cable and flirting with the night nurses.  For some reason they were all cuter than the day nurses, and more willing to laugh.  At the end of all these tests and all this time, my parents and I were told that, the cause of my Epilepsy was: uncertain, the possibility of it happening again: uncertain, the likelihood of me growing out of it without medication: probable, but Uncertain.  Gee Docs what a relief?

I am twelve years old and it has been over a year since my last episode.  I am allowed to go camping with my brother and dad now, and I am allowed to stay the night at my friend Chris’s house.  I am nervous all the time.  I have now read about people like jimmy Hendrix and others who died of asphyxiating on their own vomit.  Sure this was usually drug induced, but I am convinced that one day I won’t wake up.  I bite my nails to the point where they start bleeding.  At school they tell me that I may have a learning disability.  That I have a high verbal IQ, but that I am a slow reader and may be due some ‘accommodations’.  I hate this.  My brother and sister are both top of their class.  Again I am different and alone and alien and fragile.  I begin to twirl my hair during class, and when I am doing my homework.  My friends and I spend most of our time playing Dungeons and Dragons after school, and I twirl my hair while I do that too.  I begin to twirl my hair at night as well, unable to go to sleep.  Either out of fear of seizures, or fear of not being a good student, or the fear that the friends and the whole little life that I had going could come crashing down at any moment because I might just asphyxiate in my sleep one night.  I was a very stressed out twelve year old.

The hair twirling, turned into hair- pulling, which turned into a bald spot.  Yes, I was the only kid at Midlothian Middle School with male pattern baldness.  It was alright until people started to notice on the bus.  My mom started yelling at me about twirling my hair, not realizing what was really going on.  My grades began to get worse and worse because I couldn’t concentrate.  Who could concentrate when everything seemed so awful and strange.  And what was the point in concentrating if it all could end at any second, and if some standardized test already lumped me in with people who were incapable of learning.  I was trapped in a circle.  I was scared, sad, angry, and anxious, so I bit my nails and twirled my hair.  Which in turn made me scared, sad, angry, and anxious.  In other words I was a very normal tween.  Here was another disease that had no clear cause, cure, symptoms, or warning signs.  When I finally expressed all this to my mother, she looked up at me over a glass of wine and said derisively, “What do you want to go see a therapist?”  From then on I shut up.  I did grow out of the hair pulling, and my hair grew back.  Do I still bite my nails?  Yes.  Do I still have fits of panic, and bouts of depression? Yes.  There are two lighter notes to this section of this illness narrative, 1) I found out in highschool that in middle school they had read my test scores wrong and that I probably didn’t have a learning disability, Gee thanks Docs.  2) As I write this I am twenty-eight years old and I have thick hair with no bald spot what’ so’ ever.

It is September 12th, 2001 and I am very depressed.  I am sixteen years old and something happened yesterday that I don’t quite understand, but I can’t stop thinking about it.  I was in school when it happened and watched the second plane hit from a television in my history class.  After lunch I had my theater class, the place where I felt most comfortable and our teacher told us to do whatever we wanted and if we needed to talk she was there.  I sat there talking with some friends, I was angry, sad, and anxious. Over the next few weeks, the news kept showing more death and sad stories.  Tragic stories of heroism and disbelief.  I begin to think that the world is scary and hateful and ugly.  I wonder again what is the point if it can all come crashing down.  I spend the next year and a half floating through high school pretty much only putting effort into theater.  Performing was finally something I found that helped.  For some strange reason getting up in front of people and feeling that fear, made me happy.  And made me forget all that other fear.  Performing made me happy, confident, and comfortable.  I was living in a world that seemed to me, very temporary and hateful, and scary.  But being on stage there were moments where you had the butterflies in your stomach, but you overcame them.  It felt like there was no hurdle to high when I was performing.  If I could stand in front of a full auditorium and say whatever I wanted, then maybe none of this anxiety mattered.  Maybe I wasn’t going to asphyxiate in my sleep, maybe I was going to be alright.        

I am older now.  I have good friends, and I am working on being happy, rather than drowning my anxiety and depression.  The fact is it could all end tomorrow, and that is the point.  That is why you have to keep trying, that is why the sick have to get well.   

SELF HELP

WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN HOPING YOU ARE NOT EXPECTING AND SUSPECT THE UNEXPECTED ISN’T ALL THAT GREAT:  Do not EXPECT people to tell you the truth when speaking about your child.  Always EXPECT someone to say “she looks just like you!” she doesn’t, but they will say it.  She actually resembles a flesh colored potato with a tiny face, but they will tell you which great aunt’s and uncle’s they resemble within ten minutes of birth.  EXPECT they will never agree with you politically.  Do not EXPECT them to take care of you when you grow old, by then there will be a panel of Jonas brother types that decide the fate of everyone over 50.

THE POWER OF POSITIVE THINKING?:  Positive thinking leaves you powerless.  It makes you ignore the truth.  That no matter our thinking we are powerless against the cruel mistress that is the universe.  Not to say that negative thinking is any better.  Best to not think at all.

MEN ARE FROM MARS/WOMEN ARE FROM VENUS:  If men are from mars and women are from venus, then there are no earthlings.  We are all just tourists in fanny packs and tommy Bahama shirts hoping to see the sights.  Tip check out the world’s largest pumpkin.

WHAT COLOR IS MY PARACHUTE?:  Your parachute is there.  It does not matter what color it is.  If you have a parachute it means you are falling.  You may be falling slower than others, but you are still falling slowly towards the endless abyss. 

ZEN AND THE ART OF STUFF THAT ISN’T THAT TRANQUIL:  To the motorcycle mechanic, motorcycle maintenance is work

20 pounds

            I realized today that if I lose 20 pounds I will be happy.  Wait, it isn’t that I am not happy now, I just know that if I lose 20 pounds right now I would be happy.  The thing is which 20 to lose?  Let’s just say for the sake of argument I lost something unimportant like my pinky toes and my pinky fingers.  I am pretty sure this wouldn’t amount to even a pound of flesh.  A quick google search informed me that the human head weighs 10 to 11 pounds, but I only have one of those to lose.  My head may be more dense than most, but losing my head would only lose me 13 pounds at the most.  Maybe I should get diabetes and lose a foot, that has to be at least a couple pounds.  I would say we could go ahead and get rid of my testicles but that wouldn’t make a very big dent in the 20 pound goal.  The pitfalls of losing my testicles though.  I would be like one of those male soprano castrato singers, but without the voice.  It also would probably cause me to have crazy hormonal fluctuations.  But other than that, honestly who needs them? 

I really have never really enjoyed eating, it usually gets in the way.  I mean first there is the actual process of eating which in itself is cumbersome.  Do I really have to count to 36 every time I chew a bite of food?  Then there is how you feel after you eat.  And pooping is extremely over rated.  They say that you spend 1/3 of your life asleep, I would say I spend another 1/3 on the toilet.  That only leaves a 1/3 of my life to find the best place to eat brunch, which probably takes up more than that.  That is it, I am quitting eating.  I read somewhere it is good to set attainable goals, and come up with a plan to achieve said goals.  Done and done.    

These Sunday Brunch Jazz Hounds

     I look up from the bar and see the stand-up bassist’s face shaking and quaking.  His huckleberry hound jowls jiggle around, his eyes shut tight in concentration and his fingers dance and squibble.  Bum bum badum dumming all over the place.  Luckily his white fedora with the black ribbon is pulled down tight on his sweaty brow, or else it would be in danger of flying off in a fit of jazz frenzy.  The guitarist sits behind him with a maniacal smile noodling along softly.  His old grey eyes grow wide, like a zealot's as he sits noodling waiting for his turn to shine.  The sax man in the flowered shirt keeps time with his polished black shoes.  I sip my bloody mary and wonder what I have gotten myself into.  The early morning summer wind blows in the bar door, taking with it a stack of cocktail napkins.  I watch them float down the bar, and see the bar keep grab a salt shaker to use it as a paper weight.  Just then the sax man begins to blow from his stool.  His legs dance out from under him.  I wonder how he stays on that stool with all that music and movement coming from him.  I finish my drink and pay.  These Sunday brunch Jazz hounds are too much for me today.

Rhyme Is For Suckers

Rhyme is for suckers

 Some poets are hell bent on meter and form. 
Others blurt out their verse in a storm
of imagery, and emotion, and words chosen.
They think slant rhymers are a dime a dozen.
Pentameters, stanzas, couplets, and beat,
don’t always make a poem smell as sweet.

 I myself am not big on punctuation.
My poems have as much rhythm as an echocardiogram’s fluctuations,
 UP and DOWN, UP and DOWN, and beEP BEep bEEP!
It is enough to jolt even Mr. Van Winkle from his deepest sleep.

 To say I am lesser, is to deny some simple truth
 that a rose is a rose, and a poem a poem, and of that there is proof.
 So for all you rhymers, and lyricists, and reciters,
 for all you rose red, violets blue, and rapper’s delighters,
 for the slammer, the jammers, and the bee bop skeetin’ daddios, I have but one message and it is this:

The ‘proof is in the pudding’ and ne’er in how you mix!

Inspired By Actual Events

Saturday

“Hey what’s up Patrick?  You going to lunch with mom and dad tomorrow?”

“I… well uh… I hadn’t really planned, uh… whether or not… but sure, yeah.”

“OOoook, well I was only asking to see if you wanted to ride together.”

“Sure, what’s wrong with your car?”

“Nothing is wrong with my car… I just figured it is stupid for all three of the siblings to drive, especially since you and I live near each other.”

“Yeah, ok, I just figured if you were asking for a ride something was wrong.”

:::grunts::;” Yeah well, no there is nothing wrong, just thought we could save gas or the environment or something.”

“Ok sure I will call you when I leave my house tomorrow.”

“Ok see ya.”

“See ya.”

The next day

“Mom and dad still at church?”

“Yeah I wonder if Betsy is coming, I should’ve just parked on the street instead of the driveway.”

:::door opening and closing:::

“Helloooooo!!!”

“Whelp, there she is.  Hey Hey.”

“Hi!”

“Oh you too rode together, what is something wrong with your car JOE?”

“Uh No there is nothing wrong with my car.”

“Because you know that is the first thing Mom and Dad are gunna ask.”

“Yeah I figured.”

Lunch

“So, Joe is there something wrong with your car, is that why you didn’t drive today?”

“No, Mom there is nothing wrong with the car.”

“Do you need any new clothes?”

:::Cue soundtrack pause on close up on my face looking slightly stricken:::  Fade out:::

Thunder Thighs And Heck Jenson's Miracle Boy

     I was told that when the mother was said to be having difficulty with the birth and that her whinnie was very faint, the message spread through the crowd in a hushed whisper that, she wasn’t gonna make it.  Most weren’t too worried about the mama, after all the next day she was scheduled to be sent to a factory somewhere over near Farmington, to be made into glue and to wigs.  No, what the crowd was surely gathered for was the child.  When Thunder Thighs, Heck Jenson’s favorite horse, became pregnant at such an old age the whole town had thought it was strange.  Nobody coulda’ foreseen however, what Ted Girk the veterinarian discovered upon his examination of ol’ Thunder Thighs.  Thunder Thighs was pregnant with a human boy.  Heck was shocked.  He began tellin’ everybody in town that there was a miracle baby coming, and that he was going to be born right there in his stable.  So, the whole town started buzzing with miracle fever.  They came to visit Thunder Thighs often during her pregnancy and combed her thick black hair for her, and stroked her saying: “Good girl Thunder Thighs, good girl.”

                Thunder Thighs began to stomp her big hooves kicking up dirt and mud and straw, while Doc Girk tried to calm her down and bob and weave to stay on Thunder Thighs’ business end, to catch the baby she was trying to force out.  By the time the boy’s blonde head started to show out of Thunder Thighs’ Hindquarters, she looked like she was about to keel over.  Keel over she did, and when she hit the ground with a great thunk, a naked eleven and a half year old boy with blonde hair and blue eyes shot outa’ her like a cork and slid across the stable in his own after-birth.  The crowd gathered was quieter than Dafford’s Cemetery at midnight.  They gawked at the boy and each other, and at Heck.  No one knowing what to do, Heck took of his jacket and threw it over the boy as he began to stir.  The boy stood up and pulled the jacket around him, slimy from head to toe with a hundred pair o’ eyes all staring at him.  It was at this point that Rabbi Schmulie Bogdonawitz extricated himself from the crowd and approached the boy.  The crowd looked and nodded and thought, yeah the Rabbi should be the one for the job.  The Rabbi said, “Hello, miracle boy!  And welcome to this modest stable of Heck Johnson’s in our humble town.  You truly are a blessing and a gift.  Mazel tov and L’chaim my young friend.”
The boy looked over the faces of the crowd before smiling and then saying.  “HOWDY YA’LL I am your lord and savior returned.  Ya’ll got some beans or anything because I been stuck up a horse’s ass since Christmas and boy howdy am I hungry.”  The crowd stared at the slimy, naked miracle.     

Her Name Was Veronica

                Today I was watching a movie that had a character named Veronica in it.  Afterwards the song ‘Veronica’ by Elvis Costello popped into my head.  I started singing it as I walked around the house aimlessly, while doing laundry.  It was stuck in my brain, so I decided I needed to listen to it.  I opened my laptop and went to youtube.com, this being the quickest way I could immediately listen to that specific song.  On YouTube’s homepage there was a featured video of Seth Rogen on C-span talking to a senate appropriations committee.  When I saw his face I thought of his guttural annoying laugh and the secret jealousy I have about his fame sprung up in the back of my mind.  Of course I had to watch this video first.  I began to watch and it turned out that Mr. Rogen was there to speak to the senate about Alzheimer’s disease.  He told a personal story about his mother in law.  And gave some nice factual information about the cost, the ugliness, and the overall crapy’ness of the disease.  He spliced in his own brand of self-deprecating humor.  It was at this point that I said whoah this is weird, ‘Veronica’ is a song about an old woman with dementia.  I glossed this over as an interesting coincidence and not the internet’s subtle way of controlling and or knowing my thought process, and kept listening to Mr. Rogen’s testament.  He apparently helped start a charity. 

                This all made me think of Mr. W, at work.  Mr. W is an employee of mine that has in my opinion a good amount of the symptoms normally attributed with the very early stages of this disease.  When I first met him I assumed he was very slow.  Through conversations I have learned that he is a veteran and was an electrician for 30 years before retiring.  He works for me now doing menial work.  No matter how hard I try I cannot teach him and have him retain the knowledge that is required for these menial tasks.  One day I will “correct a behavior” as they call it where I work, and the next day he will do the same wrong thing again.  When confronted he says with a surprised somewhat vacant look in his eyes, “oh nobody ever told me that, thanks.”.  Others at my workplace sometimes think it is an act, because he can be so cognitive at times, but then he will just fall apart.  He bums me out daily.  I am frustrated not just because he slows me down, but also because I can’t imagine not being in complete control of my brain. 

                On Christmas Eve, one of the few days we don’t work, I got a call from a colleague of mine.  I ignored the call figuring that they were trying to get me to come in and do some last minute work.  He left a message, when I listened to it I found out that my co-worker had found Mr. W in the building on Christmas Eve.  He had been sitting there since noon and it was now six pm.  My co-worker asked him what he was doing there, and his only response was he was there to work.  I had told Mr. W our holiday schedule before he left the day before, but in my haste to get home and be with my family, I forgot to write it down for him.  Rather than make an embarrassed call to find out if we were working on Christmas Eve, he had just showed up around the time that we normally work.  I sat down to eat with my family trying to fight back tears as we began to eat.  Feeling how sad it was.  How he just sat there all day when he could’ve been with his family, and this was all my fault.  He had to just sit there all alone in an empty warehouse with only his thoughts for company. 

                I have gotten over my guilt but still every day I want to do something to help.  Maybe I do by asking the same questions daily.  By the repetitive tasks I get him to do.  It still doesn’t make me feel any less helpless.

Thoughts I think Every Day

Existence: 
                   I open my eyes.  A ceiling, white puffy paint, cracks.  In doors.  Inside of something.  My house.  Steven's house, he owns this, I rent it.  I am laying down, is it laying or lying.  I am on a bed.  This bed, it exists in my room, in the house that Steven owns, on the floor and beneath the ceiling.  The floor is wood paneling.  I know that it exists because I am touching it, seeing it.  It exists.  I exist.  There is proof I exist.  Birth certificates, paper trails.  My thoughts and my memories they only exist in my mind.  Does any of this matter?  How do I prove that I exist?  What do I leave behind?  If I leave something behind will it make me exist?  If I fall in a forest will I make a noise?  Like 'ow' or 'whoopsidaisey' or ' thunk'?

Time Travel :
                          I still don't understand time zones.  How is it noon here and nine somewhere else?  It is already tomorrow.  Tomorrow has already been and yesterday was.  The present is just the past of the future.  As I write this, it is old news, but it is the newest blog post since yesterday.  Is it all predetermined?  If it is, there is no now.  Like this moment right... now...crap it is gone.  What I need is a constant(you're welcome Lost fans).  Like every time I go to the bathroom, it is the same.  That will be my constant.  When I pee it will remind that I am in the now, and will always be in the now. 

Legacies and The Meaning of life : 
                                                             I will be remembered as that vain guy who was pretty likable.  In the words of Forest Gump: "I don't know if mama is right and everything happens for a reason... or if we are floating around accidental'like on a breeze.  But I think maybe it's both.  Maybe both is happening at the same time."  He had an IQ of 75 and he will be always remembered as a hero, a ping pong star, and a millionaire.  And I... I got nothing.  Well until I am gone I will just keeping on keeping on.  I will stay a romantic without the reverence, a humorist without the social commentary, and a Hemmingway without the impotence.  Well, without the impotence, yet.  Yet!      

Eyes Skyward In Wonder

Wild wisps of hair running through my eager fingers
Holding out, held on, tracing the lines of hands
And brushing lips against a wrist.

Blissfully rolling and pitching on the edge
On the way down
A waterfall constant rush and then a hush.

Then a pounce with pounding sinuous thighs
Arms coiling around and constricting
Slithering away with serpent’s tongue hands
Leaving trails downward
Eyes following trails in the dark
A hungry gaze feasting the landscape.

Stars aligned
Heavenly bodies orbiting
Not a warm sun but a cool foggy moon
Eyes skyward in wonder.

questions

Whoah wait if I am not the new normal, am I the new not normal?

Or is it the new weird, or new strange, or new unique?

Why are my hands shaking?

Why did I drink so much coffee?

What was that noise?

Is that the wind or some kind of rodent?

Should I keep this mustache?

Is my hair cut perfect?

Or is it better than perfect?

How can I get my kids back?
Should I start professional arm wrestling?

Is my life interesting enough for reality tv?

Or is it too interesting?

Why does my head hurt?

Why do I think about time travel so much?

Another Excerpt from the Bible 2

The Bible Two:  The ‘New’ New Testament:
Stories from hell…
An Excerpt from the Journal of Jack Covington P.I.

     Leninovich Stolalvya in life had been a successful man.  A respected man almost up until his death.  Lenny as his friends called him, had grown up first generation American who put all his efforts into becoming a king in the financial market.  Unfortunately with great passion sometimes comes greed.  A hunger that is never filled.  The constant acquisition of more and more power and money is what drove him.  When his investors finally realized that they investing in speculating on speculation, and that all their money was gone Lenny was already so wealthy he couldn't be touched, or so he thought.  During a particularly dire low point in the world economy the American Government which he loved and had helped out from time to time decided to make an example of him.  Rather than let him blame bad management for his crimes, they held him personally and financially responsible.  Before they could have him arrested he took his gold plated .44 magnum and ate a bullet.  Now, when they say 'there is a special place in hell, for this kind of person'  there is.  He and a few other not so poor souls, are housed in a few old dilapidated mansions overlooking the lake of sulfur.  We called it ' The Hamptons'.  Even in hell the rich folk still have nice views. 

The First of Many Unlikely American Greeting Cards(not sure what the name of the business is yet.)

    

Happy Bastille Day

      This Bastille day I hope that all of your aristocrats are virtuous.  I hope your oligarchs are socially conscious.  And I hope that you don't let the class system get you down.  When God gives you lemons, make lemonade.  No bread in the pantry?  Eat Cake!  If a bunch of "Connerie" is getting you down, sharpen the guillotine blade, and try to keep your head.  Three cheers for La Resistance.  Also, the French word for dangerous has an 'X' in it, which is totally badass.

Another Long Lost Letter From Rasputin's Young Lover

Another Long Lost Letter From Rasputin’s Young Lover:

Dear Raspy’,

                I won’t be writing you anymore.  My pleas for you to return to me have gone unanswered.  I know your commitment to God and your work comes first, but I feel as if this relationship is based on a memory of you, rather than you.  When I think of your face I can no longer trace the shape of your beard in my mind.  You were the love of my life and I may never love again.  The lord may send me someone, but you have ruined me for other men.  So, now it is goodbye my love.  I hope that someday when you are in the arms of a cold winter’s night, you can think of me and you will be warmed.

All my Love

Svetlana Banglanka

P.S.  Could you send me my crockpot.  I left it the last time I visited and I really want it back.  I found your megadeath t-shirt and I am sending that with the letter.  That was an awesome concert wasn’t it?  Anyway if you see anything else laying around send it to me.  TTYL!!!

A Skeptic, A cynic, and A Pessimist

A few people have described me as a skeptic, a cynic, and a pessimist.  Webster’s defines these terms thusly:

Skeptic: a person who questions or doubts something (such as a claim or statement) : a person who often questions or doubts things.

Cynic: a person who has negative opinions about other people and about the things people do; especially : a person who believes that people are selfish and are only interested in helping themselves.

Pessimist: a person who feels or believes that bad things will happen in the future.

I am all these things at times, but everyone is.  Today, I was sitting on my couch when someone rang my old antique doorbell three times.  No one ever rings that doorbell, unless it is a friend intentionally being annoying.  When I went to the door there were two nicely dressed individuals standing on my stoop.  One man, one woman.  The man wore a fedora and had a thin mustache like mine.  His was grey, his suit was grey, his hat was grey, and the cardigan he wore beneath his suit jacket and above his pressed white button up shirt, was blue and looked like it could’ve been homemade.  He wore a black and white striped tie.  His partner wore an olive green shawl over a plain blur dress.  She had a red-orange knit hat that also could’ve been homemade.  I didn’t look at their shoes, I was too busy staring them in the face trying to figure out what they were doing on my porch, and how I could get them away from me. 
“Good morning Sir, my name is Robert.  Are you familiar with the Bible at all sir?”  I thought about that question for a moment.  Yes I was.  I was raised Catholic.  Had I memorized the King James, like I assumed these two had?  No, of course not, it is a book.  A book written by men to teach others how to live.  It is not the word of some being from some other magical place.
“Do you know the lord’s prayer?”
“Yeah.”
“What does it say in there?”  I start to try and remember all the words.  It is hard to do when I am not in a giant room filled with other people reciting it.  I have to mouth the words.  I get to the part about ‘on earth as it is in heaven’ and Robert interrupts me.
“Now what do you think about that, doesn’t that sound nice?”  This man is presupposing that I believe in heaven, know that it is nice, would like it to be that way on earth as well.
“Yeah sure it sounds nice, from what I have heard of about heaven.”
“Well I have this brochure for you to look at with some questions on the back.  Do me a favor and look at those questions and see if you think those are good questions for Christians to be asking.  And pick one that you would like to learn about.”  The silent woman pulls the brochure from her bag and hands it to me.  The front had a collage of a bunch of nice looking people from every ethnic background and the words ‘Good News From God!’ in big bold letters.  I flip it over to check out the news.  I read the fourteen questions on the back, trying to find a question that didn’t have the word God, Christian, or lord in it.  The only one was number six.  ‘What hope is there for the dead?’  I tell Robert that I had thought a lot about number six.  How I wasn’t sure what happened when we died.  How I hope that we could see our loved ones.  But how I am pretty sure we just end up rotting away in the earth.  I tell him how the idea of not existing scares me.  How this world for me could not exist without me.  So, honestly what hope is there for the living or the dead. 
“I am glad you ask that question.  The answers to all these questions are in here.”  He pointed to the Bible and looks up in the brochure what verse he should read to correspond to my existential dilemma.  He opens the Bible and tells me to read John 11:21-24, 38-44.  I immediately wonder what was written in 25-37.  I read the words he wants me to read.  And he talks to me about Lazarus.  The story made me angry.  What was the point in even allowing Lazarus to die if he was just going to bring him back.  It made death pointless.  I smile at them and tell them I will read the brochure and read my Bible and meditate on all this, and other unnecessarily polite lies.  They tell me that they will come back next week same time.  I make a mental note not to be home around 1130 on Thursday and say goodbye.

A Response to an Old Love Poem I found...

A Response to an Old Love Poem I found…

Roses are red, violets are blue.
I wrote a poem once and it was for you.
It spoke of love on wings of a dove.
The verses were free, I asked for no fee.
It spoke of a light burning bright in the night.
I know it was trite, but to me it felt right.
I call it ‘Baby Precious’ as other lover’s had inspired.
Now the light of the poem has dimmed and retired.
Baby precious always shines is a lie, and I am a liar.
It may all sound harsh.
For in the foggy march of time, the changes come with a punch.
But I have my own hunch.
Even though the light went out, does not mean it never shined.
A smile comes when I flip through old pages and find.
The name ‘Baby Precious’ brought to mind.

STATE OF THE UNION 2032

STATE OF THE UNION 2032: The President stands on the steps of the Lincoln memorial looking out on a crowd of loyalists

 

My fellow North Americano’s we are again at a crossroads in our great nation’s history.  We are a nation divided once again by an ideal.  An ideal that our fore fathers fought and shed their blood for.  Again we face a problem with no easy solution.  As we have learned time and again what is easy is not always right.  The simple fact remains that after thirty years the television program American Idol must be canceled.

Eighteen years ago if you had told me that I would be standing in front of you, this great nation torn asunder again by a war that pits brother against brother, as your president.  I would’ve told you: you’re whack.  But now I stand here Justin Bieber your president pleading to a wayward nation to begin to heal this rift. 

This nation has had to endure many hardships.  December 7^th 1941, September 11, 2001(never forget), and the recent atomic attack of the New England section of the United States in the hopeless attempt to wipe the “Harvard Elite” from this earth.  Moments that shall live in infamy.  Thinking about these dark days could lead us to lose sight of the good that has come in the 21^st century.  The annexing of Canada for one, and the passing of the 35^th amendment allowing canucks like myself the right to run for president, and two days ago when I learned what the word infamy meant(LoL). 

Like our nation I had my fair share of troubled teenage years.  In fact I was deported from this great nation at the height of my music career.  I, like the country that I loved and still love to this day were both suffering from something called “affluenza”.  But as the Bible and YouTube.com taught us there will always come a day of judgement. 

All this does not change the fact that today I sign into law something very controversial.  Perhaps the most controversial document ever penned, but a necessary one.  When I sign this document the television program American Idol will no longer be legal to produce or watch.  This decision may not be popular, but it is the right one.  It is the one that reaffirms the belief that all men and women of this country and their children and their children’s children, are born with the right to the pursuit of happiness.  Happiness, ya know that word has such a special meaning today.  It seems so far.  I assure you, however, that happiness is on the horizon.  God bless Usher, and God Bless America!!  DON’T STOP ‘BELIEBERING’!!!! 

Hold for applause then robo-journey and the corpse of Steve Perry are brought out to fireworks and the chorus of Don’t Stop Believing echoing on repeat over and over.  At which point the mechanized war machines are deployed to Simon Cowell’s secret bunker to dispatch the fuhrer of pop music.