What I've Done and What I've Written About What I've Done With Mentions of Lebowksi, Bergman, Hendrix, My Dad and Other Stuff

"Creeping about looking in diaries" -- From The Subterraneans by Jack Kerouac.

(This first bit was written on Labor Day evening.)

Nothing to eat now that I’ve finished a bag of chips. Could make scrambled eggs but there’s no bread. Simpson’s marathon still on TV but finishing tonight. Will miss it. Wife and oldest daughter took youngest daughter to university. So home alone. Not feelin’ it. Not without food. Not without a specific plan. Plus I’m tired. Not enough sleep again. Seem to be on an every other day sleep schedule. Coffee worn off. Feeling fat because of the chips. Fat but hungry. Glad I’m running tomorrow. Should probably go for a walk but not feeling it. Too something. Not depressed though. Nothing existential going on. Just here.

So I start to read and just manage a paragraph. Then I try to watch a movie and can’t pick one. Then I look for something else on TV to sink my teeth into and there’s nothing. Then I think about working on a project and then I stop thinking about working on a project. Then I think about doing research for my novel and scrap that. Then I think about taking a nap but can’t fall asleep. Then I think that just sitting around doing nothing is okay now and that aI shouldn’t worry about it but then I think that no I should be using my time wisely. Then I write this crap.

I don’t know. Maybe having done some reading, some writing, some household chores (cleaned the toilet, washed clothes, emptied and filled the dishwasher) and having watched a movie is enough for the day. Plus I’m too tired to do anything even so much as committing to watching another film, although I took the plastic wrapper of the last one I bought. But think maybe later. So this is what I write.

Oh yes and I check in on the baseball game in which the Giants blew a big lead fell behind late and now have tied it in the 9th though they were in trouble last I checked and its been too frustrating to just sit and watch having seen a big lead squandered especially with them being in a playoff push and all. Yeah, see, I checked and they lost and that ends their seven-game win streak in a frustrating sort of way.

So I’m still here with the Simpsons except like now when a commercial interrupts which sucks unless its that new Carl’s Jr. one with that gorgeous Hannah Ferguson although she’s paired with Paris Hilton who I could do without.

(The rest was written today.)

I ended up watching The Big Lebowksi (1998). This was a good choice. ("The rug really tied the room together" you know.) Two thirds of the way into it wife and oldest daughter returned home. We exchanged hellos and updates. Then I finished watching the film and went to bed. I slept comfortably for nine hours with many interesting dreams although not interesting enough to recount here. Unlike some people I remember my dreams and mine tend to be quite interesting -- to me at least. I have sometimes told other people about a dream and have been asked: is that true? It's ridiculous to ask someone if they are kidding about their dream because dreams are weird enough that you don't have to make up anything. At least mine are. I do interpret some of my dreams, that is I try to, but really some just baffle me. Its easier to derive understanding from dreams when they fit a pattern. I have, for instance, a lot of dream in which I can fly. I have a lot of dreams with celebrities in them. Recently I had one in which Jimi Hendrix asked me to re-write All Along the Watchtower for him. In other words he asking me to re-write something originally written by Bob Dylan. The missus had a few days before told me that Dylan once said that the best cover of any of his songs was the Hendrix version of All Along the Watchtower. It's one of my favorite all time songs, period. I doubt I could improve on it. Silly of Hendrix to ask.

So this morning I went to the gym and by jingo it was great as usual. I'm sore and tired and want to collapse in bed now but that'll throw off my sleep cycle and I'll have a restless night tonight and screw that. Instead I watched Bergman's The Silence (1963) which I've written about here before. Like a lot of his films its about several different things depending on how you look at it. Not communicating for one thing. My odious step mother (departed from this Earth) used to complain that my late great father didn't communicate. Back when I was still drinking I got the notion to pass this objection on to the old man. I know he'd heard it before directly from the old bat's mouth but being in my cups as I was I must have thought that coming via me it might make an impression. I don't know why I would have cared, come to think if it. So anyway I told my dad and he made a scoffing noise. He was good at making scoffing noises. A real expert. As I recall his scoffing noise included a sarcastic utterance of that very word: communication. It also included his waving his hand in derision.

My father was born in rural Finland in 1916. People born anywhere in Finland at anytime are generally loathe to do a lot of "communicating." I can dig it. I'm coming to see that there's way too much useless talking going on in the world. A lot of blah blah blah and yak yak yak that fills time like verbal empty calories. My step mother, as a matter of fact, was one of the great talkers of our time. I should say terrible talkers of our time because she had absolutely nothing to say and wouldn't shut up in proving it. Such a mouth you've never seen. She not only said nothing but she repeated it over and over. She found something she liked saying it and ran that observation into the ground. How my dad put up with it for the 34 years they were married I will never understand. Drove the rest of the family up the wall. Not so much my brother but I think that's because he had a hearing problem so could easily just tune the old windbag out. He probably turned his hearing aid off the minute he caught sight of her.

Dad was in the U.S. Army at the end of the war

In his later years my brother and I as well as the grandkids and other folks for that matter, would prod my dad into telling stories. He had a lot of them just from his time as a merchant marine, a time which coincided with World War II. Great timing there, dad. This included the time he was at the helm of a ship in the Arabian Sea that was torpedoed by a Japanese sub. He was the first to see the periscope and pointed it out to the first mate who poo poohed the idea that it was a periscope. He changed his mind about the time of the explosion. While this was the highlight of his stories, he had many others about sailing the seven seas and prior to that fighting in the Finno-Russian Winter War and prior to that the less violent experiences of growing up in Finland. Then there was his time in New York, meeting my mom, moving west and all the houses he built and all the athletic events he attended and raising two perfect sons (we were perfect to him, to others not so much). My dad was a stickler for the truth and this included his stories. It's not like they needed embellishing anyway. His stories were always consistent from one telling to the next but not perfectly so as is often the case with made up yarns. When my father spoke it was usually interesting. He also understood the art of listening, something that my step mother could never figure out to do. I'm not sure what her idea of "communicating" with my dad would have been but I'm sure it would have mostly consisted of her running her big fat mouth.

But my original point was about the Bergman film and communicating. It's a tricky subject because we always hold back no matter how much we open up. There are some things we have to keep -- as they would say on Seinfeld -- in the vault. No one needs to know or a few people or one person. The vault almost entirely opens up if you see a shrink or are at 12 step meetings, but even in those circumstances you've got a few things that it never seems quite appropriate to talk about at a given time. I, for example, have never told anyone about the incident with the badger, the hockey stick and my then girlfriend Mindy. Y'all just don't wanna know.

I don't think the concept of communicating is anywhere near as important as the idea of sharing. A word I like a lot better in this instance. To communicate can be to do the old yak yak blah blah but sharing ideas, feelings, observations and opinions is really giving something of yourself and receiving something of someone else. Depending on what you're sharing it can require a certain amount of trust. You start opening up and you make yourself vulnerable. I've noticed a few people at work and at previous workplaces who blab about everything in their lives -- or seemingly so anyway. Wisdom is finding the time and places to share certain things. When I used to consume barrels of alcohol in one sitting I would tell anyone anything and everyone everything. This was not just altogether unnecessary but almost obscene. Except of course for the fact that the people who I was talking to where generally so wasted that they either had no idea what I was talking about or were going to forget in five minutes. But to others who for whatever reasons were not getting blasted, a young man psychologically exposing himself like that must have seemed, well again I've got to go with obscene.

Nowadays there's a word for it: oversharing. Maybe it's two words, I don't know. It's the third person way to talk about someone going into too much detail or sharing stuff that is too personal. In addressing the person one often says TMI or too much information. In a way this is odd considering all the information people share about themselves through social media. I don't know about you but I passionately love/hate social media. It is destroying/bringing together our society. It sure as hell ain't doing one or the other.

Okay so I watched The Silence, then what. Stuff. Nothing interesting. You don't wanna know.

Life on the Streets, One Homeless Man's Story

They say that everything happens for a reason. Bullshit. Some things are totally without purpose or meaning. They can be arbitrary they can be cruel twists of fate and there’s no great meaning attached to them.

They also say that when one door closes another opens. Or maybe a window opens. I forget which. That’s still more crap. A lot of the time a door closes and that’s it. All doors and windows are closed and locked tight. You’re stuck in or out or wherever the metaphor calls for you to be. It’s over. No entrance or exit.

They also say that time heals all wounds. Come on. You can get some real nasty wounds — and I’m including physical and emotional — that will stay with you until you die. And for all I know they stay on afterwards plaguing you in the afterlife.

In other words the ubiquitous “they” talk a lot of shit. There are many people — I should probably say there are many of us — for whom events with no reason have closed doors forever and left permanent wounds. Some of us have suffered some terrible blows that have cost us everything and now we’re living in the streets. You might say we’re bums now. Or you might call us homeless. Or you may even refer to us as losers. You could even call us the economically disadvantaged. There are all kinds of names for us. Whichever one you choose separates us from the fortunate, the privileged, the normal. We often have mental problems. Quite a few of us are addicts. Some of us ran afoul of the law and the criminal justice system has spit us out onto the streets. Many of us have suffered a severe trauma or two or three. We are generally divorced or abandoned by family or likely both. We’re alone in the world save a few belongings. You see us in your cities. You hear us asking for spare change or wailing insanely. Hell you get close enough you can catch a whiff of us. We generally reek to high heaven or to low hell. A lack of laundry facilities and showers and soap will do that to a person. At the very least you’ve smelled the results of us not having toilets. The strong urine odor in parts of your downtown area and in your subway stations can usually be traced to us.

You don’t want us and you ignore us or pretend we don’t exist. Oh sure a few good natured souls toss a coin our way now and again, we even get some folding money. Around Christmas those bills sometimes have a five or even a ten on them. There are also the kind hearted volunteers who set up kitchens to feed us or find shelter to house us or occasionally organize to get us clothes or a blanket. Mind you these are clothes and blankets someone else got rid of not that we're complaining. You'd be surprised how grateful we are for anything.

But we aren’t part of the public dialogue. I mean helping us isn’t. Getting rid of us? Another story. You’re all about that. But when’s the last time a politician, particularly one on the state or national level, talked about solutions, ways to help the homeless get more than just a meal for the day or a roof for the night? When did you ever hear one talk about appropriating funds for the kinds of mental health and drug rehab needs our “community” has? When is there ever a discussion about work programs that will get the homeless jobs?  Or when are economic issues ever addressed in terms of making our society one in which there is a social safety net for the vulnerable who by losing their jobs risk losing everything including a place to live? Doesn’t happen. Plenty of money for dropping bombs here and there. Raising taxes — especially for the wealthy — is not an option. The rich get richer. Those mental hospitals and drug rehab centers will not be opening in the near or even distant future. Plenty of coffee shops though.  Plenty of high end clothing stores. Anything that will generate more money for the already well-to-do. People know this. People know there is a widening gap between the rich and poor. But nothing is being done nor will be anytime soon. Meanwhile the homeless still suffer.

I’d say we’re an afterthought but honestly we’re no kind of thought at all. Not after or before.

Maybe you’ve seen me around. I've got the scraggly beard and tangled hair — dusted with white and gray—  that so many of us sport. I wear a bulky army jacket and jeans and boots and an old work shirt. Nothing too ragged or torn or filthy at the moment. But I’m getting there. I wasn’t in the service so I don’t have a handmade cardboard sign claiming to be a vet. I don’t have a dog with me to earn more sympathy and I don’t hang out with other homeless cackling with laughter or engaging in angry arguments. My duffle bag and I just sit near the subway station by day. I have a little plastic bucket you can toss coins into if you’ve a mind to. Some of you do and I thank you kindly.  I’ve been on the streets for four years now and I’ll never get used to it. That said I’m accustomed to it now.  A person learns to make do.

My descent to here started seven years ago when I gave Tracy Lichtman an F on her English essay. That’s right I was a high school English teacher less than a decade ago. I lived in a nice condo with my wife Judith and a cat named Sniggles. We were a happy couple. No children but that was by choice. We’d saved some money and although it was a ways off, we were already making plans for our retirement. Judith was a nurse in a children’s hospital. Neither of us loved our work but we were neither of us unhappy in it either. We regularly went to plays, the opera, the symphony and an occasional baseball game. Life was okay.

I had gotten nothing but positive evaluations throughout my teaching career which was in it’s 21st year when I gave Tracy Lichtman that F. I got along famously with some colleagues and well enough with others. I’d done turns as department chair and a union rep and served as the T part at PTA meetings. After beginning my career at a rough inner city school, I’d spent the last 15 years in suburbia where the facilities are clean and new and students are not in gangs and don’t live with a crack addicted or crack selling parent. Our school never went on lockdown and we almost never saw a police car drive by let alone be stationed outside.

Most of the kids I saw were pretty well adjusted for teenagers and counselors and tutors were on hand to deal with the few problems that they might bring to school. It was a fairly cushy job to tell you the truth. Especially compared to what I’d seen at my previous school.

I was in a rut but it was a happy enough one. I sure miss it now. I might still be in that same darn rut today if….But isn’t that what life is all about? Our ifs? If I hadn’t done this or if that hadn’t happened or if I had known this or if I hadn’t found out that. Life can change dramatically because of one if. The worst part is that we often don’t have control over the situation. We’re at the mercy of fate. I look back and can’t see a damn thing I did wrong. Oh maybe I didn’t fight hard against the events that engulfed me, but it all happened so fast and was so incomprehensible that it’s hard to beat myself up about it.

So like I said I gave Tracy Lichtman an F on this paper. Actually its far more accurate to say that she earned an F. I had assigned my 11th grade (that’s juniors) class to write a fairly simple five page paper analyzing this short story we’d read by Shirley Jackson called “The Lottery.” Well Tracy Lichtman’s paper was just terrible by any standards. It was barely half the required length, and didn’t show any evidence that she had read the story let alone understood it. I’d been pretty sure on a lots of occasions in the past that a student hadn’t read the book or story that they were writing about, but they at least made a decent effort to fake it. Lots of time I’d only be able to stick them with a D or maybe even a C despite my suspicions. But Tracy Licthman’s paper was so vague and off the point that an F was the only possible grade.

Well this was her junior year and so she was applying to colleges and this F was going to bring her English grade down to a D for the semester. Tracy was, in her own words, freaking out. She spoke to me after the class the day I returned the F paper and pleaded with me to raise the grade. When I reminded her that I was not one to raise a grade just because a student wanted me to, she asked if she could re-submit it. I had to remind her that in addition to not changing grades I did not allow students do overs. Then the poor girl made up some hare brained excuse for the quality of the paper that was so convoluted it contradicted itself.  Tracy was a pretty young girl and like many such teenagers at our school tried an adolescent from of flirtation using what I suppose was meant to be a seductive voice while leaning forward and looking into my eyes. I’d seen this act before and was impervious to it as were all my male colleagues. Tracy could clearly see I was not impressed by the batting of a pretty girl’s eyes. Finally: “You are ruining my chances of getting into a good school!” She practically shouted. I suggested she leave before I report her behavior to the vice principal. If only I had. (See, there’s that if.)

Two days later Tracy asked if she could talk to me after school. I saw no reason why not, assuming that she had come to her senses and was going to try to figure out how to improve her work. She showed up with her friend Alexis Renwald who was also a student of mine. Alexis, she explained, had come along for moral support.

Our meeting dragged on for nearly half an hour with Tracy asking me all manner of questions about classwork, readings, extra credit, my grading system and even the purpose of studying literature. I tried to be helpful but I found Tracy’s behavior to be strange, though that’s not so unusual among teenagers. I also couldn’t quite understand what Alexis was doing there. She sat over at my work station and asked if she could “google some stuff” for a history paper. I said sure. It never occurred to me that they had hatched a nefarious plot of which I was the victim. At last they left and I was able to spend the next 45 minutes at my desk catching up on work before heading home to another typically quite evening. Life was never to be so good again.

The next day I arrived at school to find a note in my office “mailbox” asking me to see the principal, Mr. Wilde, immediately. I thought nothing of it and went over and tapped on his door. I sensed trouble the second I stepped in. There was someone from the district office and our current union rep and a school safety officer named Dave all looking very glum and very very serious.

Mr. Wilde got to the point hitting me with the bombshell that I was to go on immediate paid administrative leave while charges of sexual harassment against me were investigated. I felt as though I had just fallen through a trapdoor into absolute darkness. I hadn’t the slightest clue what this was about and when I asked I wasn’t told. The man from the district office, a Mr. Smits, told me that I would be informed in “due time” and that I was to be escorted to my car by the school safety officer. Just like that. I was not allowed to leave lesson plans for my classes, gather any things from my classroom or get the faintest notion what was happening.

Judith was initially quite supportive. She shared my fury at the Kafkaesque treatment I’d received. She insisted that once I clear my name I, in her words, “sue the bastards.” Clear my name. Sure that’s what I was going to do. Seemed so easy. After all I hadn’t done a darn thing. Innocent as a new born lamb.

It was a week before I was given specifics of the charges. An agonizing depressing week that I couldn’t believe was happening. My world had been turned upside down. Upside down with me under it. Buried in other peoples’ lies that I would never crawl out from under.

Tracy had alleged that I had put my hand up her skirt. That she had come to see me for help in class and that I had promised to raise her grade if we had sex and that when she refused I stuck my hand up her dress and tried to tug her panties. Alexis claimed to have walked into my classroom in search of Tracy and seen the whole thing. They further stated I then proposed a threesome for which both girls would get As in my class in addition to some cash. Before they could leave I had then, so they said, insisted that they look at pornographic pictures on my computer. They said that out of a mixture of curiosity and fear they looked at the pictures and then left in disgust. The district had seized my computer and easily found porn sites in the history. Because, I can only assume, Alexis had surreptitiously gone to some porn sites while I was talking to Tracy.

Tracy’s dad was an attorney and he had bought his daughter’s story hook line and sinker. He was going to come after the district, the school and me with everything he had. No one was interested in advocating for me. Even the union thought that the testimony of two girls was too strong for them to want to waste their valuable resources on me. It may not surprise you to learn that Tracy was involved in the school’s drama program. She’d been in the Fall play and was quite good in a leading role. Her role as the victim of a sexual assault was evidently very convincing too.

I never taught again. The process was surprisingly fast. School districts and individuals schools hate so much as a whiff of bad publicity, especially when it concerns the horrible combination of adults, sex and students. The parents of the two girls had to be appeased and I had to go. The only concession I got out of the whole thing was that the parents agreed not to pursue legal action against me provided of course that I lost my job. But in the end I lost not only my job but any chance of another one in education as my teaching credential was revoked. I couldn’t even sub.

I was paid through the end of the school year which had another five months to go. My marriage to Judith barely had that much time. She went from lovingly supportive to believing ever word of Tracy’s story. Like everything else this happened so fast it was hard to make sense of. Looking back I think Judith saw that my days earning a steady income were over and so too was her comfortable life with me. She wanted to get out and move on as soon as possible. I guess now that her love for me was pretty superficial, if it existed at all. Who knows how some people wind up together.  I haven’t missed Judith very much to be perfectly honest, there was precious little passion between us in the best of times. Absent Tracy’s lies Judith and I might have lived out a long loveless marriage.

She got everything in the divorce. In large part because I didn’t have the will to contest her on anything. Oh and her brother is a lawyer. Just my luck, Tracy’s dad and my Judith's brother both lawyers. I hate lawyers now. More than I do Tracy or the school district. Within a year Judith found a new husband, this time landing a well-heeled business executive, a widower with a pot of money. Lucky her.

By that next Fall I was living alone in a studio apartment in a bad part of town with no income and dwindling savings. I was depressed as hell and couldn’t even imagine how to get into a new line of work let alone look for any. I barely had the will to live let alone make anything of myself. I had very little family and few friends and they were either disinclined to help me or I was too proud to ask. So my response to these dire straights was to start drinking. Heavily. Judith and I had never been big drinkers at all. We occasionally had a bottle of wine in the house that was used during special meals  and we also had wine when we went out to eat. That was pretty much it. But now I found that getting drunk was the only way to keep from feeling miserable. And at that it wasn’t 100% effective. Nothing could take me away from how suddenly my life had become miserable.

Generally I drank alone in my shabby little apartment. I started out drinking the good wines like what Judith and I used to buy. But it wasn’t long before I had to get the cheap stuff. Money was dwindling. Within a year I was broke and had to move out. I sold most of my possessions, put the rest in storage and lived in my car and stayed at a homeless shelters some nights. Then I sold my car. I lost what was in storage when I couldn't pay the bill. Eventually I used my last dollars to take the bus into the big city to begin the last chapter of my life, that part where I live in the streets.

So here I am. I’m done feeling sorry for myself. I’m done feeling angry at Tracy Lichtman. I’m done feeling resentful toward Judith or anyone else for that matter. I’m done trying to make sense of it all of trying to figure out what I could have done differently. I’m just done. I’ve accepted that this is my fate. That somehow this is where I belong. Hell I don’t even feel particularly bad about it. This is just what it is. There is no miracle coming that will lift me out of this. I’ll die living on the streets. Maybe I’ll starve, maybe I’ll get a disease, maybe I’ll be stabbed. There are any number of ways to go. Who cares? If I don’t I can hardly imagine that anyone else would.

Sure I’ve contemplated suicide. A swan dive of a bridge would be easy enough. But you know what? I could never work up the nerve. I suppose if you’re miserable enough you can do it but I’m not in that much pain. I’ve got a kind of lethargic depression.

You might think that I resent women what with how it was Tracy and Judith who are the individuals most responsible for my circumstances. Well I don’t. I’ve always been a kind of male feminist and I’m not turning on one gender just because of the actions of two individuals. I’m not angry at schools or really that angry at lawyers or anyone else. What’s the point? They all do what they do and did what they did. What the hell I was just unlucky.

I do occasionally think of what motivated Tracy to commit such a dastardly act. Such a horrible, damaging lie over one lousy grade? Talk about an over reaction! And she even roped another girl into it. I didn’t know Alexis all that well she was kind of a nondescript girl who generally got Cs and didn’t care. Tracy had always been a nice kid and I can’t imagine she felt that I’d done her an injustice. I guess it was all a game to her. She was 17 years old and people that age don’t always know right from wrong. Who knows what her life is like now? Maybe she regrets what she did and maybe she has no conscience at all.

Water under the bridge. Filthy polluted water but under the bridge just the same. And here I am.

I make a point not to bother anyone. I’m not one of those annoying tramps who come right up to you. I don’t say anything to passersby either. I don’t make eye contact. I do look at people as they pass by. Sometimes I wonder where they’re going and why the rush. I wonder if they are happy. I wonder if they are in love. I wonder if they are rich. I wonder if they have any idea how quickly life can change. I wonder. You may not believe this but I’m never bored. In a big busy city there’s always something to look at something to hear and things to smell. I’ve had a few people talk to me over the years. A do-gooder will ask what I need or someone will ask about my life. I generally don’t say much back. There are a lot of homeless who have much greater needs and some who have much more compelling stories. I talk to some of them too. I avoid the crazies, there's no sense in talking to them. But I talk to others who've still got their sanity. We share stories and talk about practical things like where to get a meal or a good place to sleep at night. Mostly I stick to myself. For most people misery loves company, but I liked sharing my joys -- back when I had any -- and keep my sufferings to myself.

Sometimes I get a hold of book, magazine or newspaper and read. It passes the time. You see I no longer draw any inspiration from literature like I used to. I no longer find meaning in stories. I no longer enjoy how writers use the language. I have no interest in current events or past events or the lives of celebrities or social issues or anything. Reading words just fills up time. That’s all I’m doing really, just killing time. Until it kills me.

But don’t feel sorry for me. Please don’t. You’ve got your own life to take care of. It’s precious. Enjoy every minute that you can. Realize that your joys and fortunes can disappear seemingly overnight. Oh I don’t mean that you might end up living in the streets. But you could have an accident or a loved one could. There’s always cancer and other diseases. Terrible things happen to good people all the time. What happened to me was nothing compared to what has befallen lots of other folks. Point being that you shouldn’t dwell on what might happen or what did happen, but enjoy and appreciate what you’ve got right now this minute. Try to be happy. God knows I wish I could be.

I Say Hi and Indulge in Some Retrospection and Write About My Day and Writing

“If you don't say what you want, what's the sense of writing?” -- Jack Kerouac.

Hi. You read that right I started a blog post with "hi." Felt like it. We don't always follow our instincts and do what we feel like doing. This can be a good thing. I know that in much of my misspent youth I did precisely that -- just what I felt like doing. This led to some colossal mistakes. They can't be undone but they can be learned from. I was an aspiring young journalist, quite prolific with a nose for a story and possessing the dogged kind of persistence necessary to that kind of work. I loved it too. I was on my way to a successful career. But being in excellent circumstances isn't always enough. I've had a tendency over the years to have something wonderful, maybe even perfect and  to then want to change it, make it better. Trade it in for something new. This is a horrible character flaw.

I left the newspaper business at the ripe old age of 25. I took a job that I was ill suited for as the development director for a student lobbying organization in the state capital. I subsequently was a sandwich maker, a furniture sale man, a gift shop employee, shoe salesmen, a bank teller, and a proofreader before finally going into teaching, a profession I've been in for nearly 30 years.

So let's see if I got this straight. I was enjoying a budding career as a journalist and dropped it on a whim and never returned wandering from job to job and from city to city for seven years before I became a teacher. Well at least I've been a good teacher and have enjoyed the work. But still....

I am not the least bit unhappy with my life and spend virtually no time pondering what ifs and why the hell did Is. No point. I am in the greatest marriage possible with two wonderful grown children and love my current job beyond measure. My health is excellent and the joy of my work is augmented by a deep love of film, literature, music, sports and my own scribblings. Not bad. The kind of spur of the moment whim I currently indulge in is more along the lines of starting a blog post with "hi."

Rumination and retrospection and self reflection are not to be overdone. Indulge yourself from time to time but don't make a cottage industry of it. Better to occupy large chunks of time in the pursuit of happiness. Wisdom for the ages.

Happy happy happy.

Delightful cafe americano earlier today helped make up for an inadequate night's sleep. Actually. Sat down watched a full American football game cause it was Cal opening their season after 1-11 face plant last year. The Golden Bears actually won and I'm all smiles and tonight will follow tradition and  eat ice cream.

I have the next week off. From work. I will write. Watch films. Go to the gym. Read. Talk a long walk in the hills. I will do research for a novel. I will send out another one. (Interested?) It's funny how people react when you tell them that you've written a novel or are working on one. Some people -- not many -- will ask a lot of questions and may even offer some encouragement. A lot of people will offer a nod and maybe a comment or question but quickly try to change the subject. And a lot of folks will just out and out ignore you as if you said you'd just spent the night being probed in an alien spacecraft. They don't wanna know. I'm sure a lot of them think what an idiot you are for joining the long ranks of those who dream of being published. In their minds you might as well say that you're planning on winning the lottery. To some of those who give you the silent treatment you are speaking another language. You are talking about something that is well beyond their imaginings. These are generally people who don't themselves do a lot of reading. I have no illusions about the chances of being published but given my nature I'd be insane not to try. I've wanted to have a novel in print since at least the fourth grade. My dad believed in me anyway.

So there's that.

But like I said at the beginning of this post -- hi. Sometimes people will greet you with "hi there." I don't understand this one but don't worry about it either. I once had a coworker who "hi there'd all the time. A few of us shared -- but not with her -- that we were not fans of a hi with a there at the end. But not a big deal. What's wearing on me is the overuse of words like grab and guys. "You guys wanna grab lunch?" Everyone is guys and and guys are always grabbing stuff. I grew up in a golden age when grabbing was impolite. "Don't grab!" We were admonished. But like the young people say, "whatever." I could do with out all the whatevers too. Most of all though I hate "no worries." This just crawls under my skin and eats at my brain causing searing pain and gastrointestinal distress and great waves of overwhelming depression and thoughts of homicidal rage. Please don't ever "no worries" me if you know me or chance upon me. I'm liable to lose it right there. What I'll lose I can't say. And whatever I do lose I hope I find it. I've heard of people losing family members. "We lost our father this year." Have you looked everywhere? Is he hiding? Maybe he was kidnapped! Shouldn't you still be out looking for the old coot? Oh you mean he's dead. Well for crying out loud why didn't you say so? Fact is then that he's not lost at all. He has ceased to be among the living. Happens to all of us. No shame in it. No need to say he "passed" or was "lost."

Words. Gotta love 'em.

I think I'll prod the wife into making dinner. This can be dangerous. She is an utterly delightful woman but you hit her up on dinner at the wrong time and there's hell to pay. Wish me luck.

Sweet Dreams Are Made of This

When the Jazzman's testifyin' a faithless man believes
He can sing you into paradise or bring you to your knees
It's a gospel kind of feelin', a touch of Georgia slide
A song of pure revival and a style that's sanctified

Jazzman, take my blues away
Make my pain the same as yours with every change you play
-- From Jazzman by Carole King

My god some memories come piercing into your mind wreaing all manner of havoc and disrupting the calm of the day tearing at you and rendering your psyche a bloody pulp and leaving you wondering if you should just bag it. I mean why go on given the mess you made of things. But then you remember that some good somehow came out of it too as if flowers somehow managed to grow from all the shit you planted for years. You just go on and you wonder and you ache and you did blunder. But there is always today to be sorted and the possibility of something worthwhile coming out of tomorrow if you can just somehow get there with your sanity in tact.

Adhering to the precepts of hedonism and nihilism as religiously as I did ensured that I was not to enjoy great financial security nor awards nor honors nor a legion of admirers. It’s done now. Look back at your own peril. Sure the mistakes are to be learned from and those precious few moments of glory to be relived. Forgive yourself, admonish yourself, draw lessons and comfort and conclusions and solace and most of all gaze into eternity with a fixed stare. Let it dare stare back and challenge you to push forward.

I have exhausted myself writing and thinking about my childhood with an undiagnosed schizophrenic mother who abused me and yet I never tire of the subject. Sometimes it seems I revel in my misfortune as if a source of pride. Look what I managed to survive without blowing my brains out or anyone else’s. And here I am a functioning adult managing to make something of myself. I also made my way through drugs and alcohol consumed constantly for years and in such great quantities. I also made my way through acute panic syndrome and the paralyzing attacks and the medications that left me variably a raging maniac or a brain dead zombie or a babbling mad man. Then there was (is) the depression (is is is is) and the veil of blackness that can descend quite unexpectedly and totally. I never hesitate to point out these crosses that I bear. Yes yes yes they point to who I was and who I am and who I will be. They are me. Myself. And I. They are wrapped neatly within my ego. I. Function. How very special. How spectacular. How amazing.

Not to change the subject but...

I remember a Summer rain once — rare in these parts — when I was a child. Being by a lake with my friend Mark. My mother had left us there for the day while she visited friends. I don’t recall if rain was in the forecast. But there we were. The two of us the only ones at this place that was usually at this time quite busy with families and teens swimming and sunning and playing. But it was just Mark and I. Finding different places to get out of the rain. A tree here or there. With thick branches for cover. One spot wouldn’t do. We were about ten or eleven years old so had to move. Boys don’t sit in one place for very long, unless there is a TV set or movie screen in front of them. At times we just hunched and watched the rain land on the lake. It was goddamned depressing and it seemed as the day wore on that my mother would never come. The day just stretched out eternally. Thick dark rain clouds dropping their load ceaselessly and we gradually got sopping wet. Mark and I were expert at playing and had been doing so together for years. But not outside on a rainy day with no toys.... we had our bathing suits but….

My mother finally came in late afternoon and seemed oblivious to the fact that we’d had a perfectly miserable day. She chattered away. Mark was dropped off and I always wondered, though I never asked, what his mother said about her oldest boy being left by a lake in the rain all day by his best friend’s mother.

I remember coming home and pulling off my wet clothes and watching the rain from the comfort of my house feeling a little angry and a little depressed that I’d been robbed of a Summer day. Summer is precious to a child, especially lads like me who so enjoy the freedom to run about and play play play.

Well mom you did have the excuse of being a total loon although at that point I was the only one who knew it. It wouldn’t be long before mom could no longer control herself and the raving and raging she did in my presence would be seen by anyone who happened her way.

Sweet dreams are made of this.

Creeping Sneak Attacks and Some Fellow Commuters

Creeps up on you then grabs you. Weird how you feel it in your feet and in your ass. Standing sitting and moving are not possible. Being conscious is horrific and you are wide awake as awake as you have ever been in your whole life and as you ever could be. Horribly awake and aware of everything every feeling every sound every thought every molecule and you hate it and it eats you. You don't exactly want to die although it would provide relief. Death seems so very remote because you are so attuned to everything but not in a good way. Like your brain is overloaded with sensations. It is a bombardment and oh it is awful.

You have just had a major league panic attack and in your mind it is never going away it is your permanent state of being for ever and ever.

Drive you crazy. Literal
ly
cra
zy.

These are the moments that define your madness. A horrible grip the tentacles of insanity choking the soul
out
of
your being.

As they say in the ads: but there's more. Other times there is: Anticipation. The sneaking creeping feeling that one is coming. Paranoia. Is this the start of another one? What's going on with me? Life in ruins don't know what to do next. Sit? Stand? Walk or pace or let the coming terror -- if it is coming -- over take me. And this thinking business. How exactly does it work? What should I be thinking about? What should I avoid thinking about? Calming thoughts would be good. If such a thing were possible. Mind is going this way and that and I don't feel I can control it and I guess I'd better take a pill. No no no don't want to become dependent. Don't want to be numb but also don't want the terror. Into your life it will creep. Starts when you're always afraid....

And scene.

But one makes do and gets by and tries not to get high. There is no brain replacement. Shazam!

*********************************************************************************
I see some of the same people everyday or quite often during my daily commute. There is the bespeckled middle aged Asian gentleman who arrives at the BART station at almost the same time I do. He stands at the exact same spot everyday and immediately gets out a magazine. He also gets off at the same station in San Francisco that I do. I do not specifically recall a morning that he hasn't been there nor can I ever recall him being at another spot or without a magazine to study. Mr. Creature of Habit.

Sometimes across the street from where I catch the trolley on Market Street there stands an older African American woman wearing flamboyant clothes and hat. Often bright purple or shocking pink or deep green. She sings. Loudly. Hymns to Jesus. Her voice is grating. Powerful but unpleasant. Especially at 7:06 in the morning. When she is there I immediately turn to my iPod for protection. She's got the joy joy joy down in her heart and leans heavily on the everlasting light. And makes us poor saps who are minding our own business, just heading off to work, pay.

Speaking of obnoxious noises...There is a most odious chap who on occasion is on the trolley I board. He is a very large fellow in girth and height overweight but mostly just big. He can always be found sprawled in the very back of the trolley looking something like he's turned this public transport into his living room. He always -- and I mean without exception -- is on his cell phone having an extremely loud conversation. If I am at the front of the trolley I can still hear him quite clearly and woe be tide those sitting any closer. He is speaking in Spanish so I don't understand much of what he says, which is of little import in this case. Lest you think that my sufferance is purely individual, others are visibly annoyed and on more than one occasion a passenger has asked him to please be quieter. Dude needs to shut up.

There is also a woman who rides the trolley who is being beckoned by 1964. She is, I'm guessing, in her mid 60s and sports a perm very much like women wore 50 years ago. Her hair is a shiny wavy plastic white and is seemingly screwed to the top of her head. She wears make up aplenty including ruby red lipstick. Her attire is most proper as if going to Ernie's Restaurant where she will be in a scene from Vertigo. A martini then a steak and perhaps a slice of cake with coffee. I saw this woman and many like her when I was a small child. And here she is transplanted over a decade into the 21st century. She seems not at all confused by this. She sits primly with a black purse on her lap. No cell phone for this old dame. She's a caution I tell ya, a caution.

Black Hole of Calcutta on Wheels, The Good Sweat, Melted into a Puddle of Eternal Ecstasy, Not Polite Enough, I'm a Happy Person, Missing Robin Williams

BART train during commute

Good lord but it was a hot BART car made the worse because it was packed. A sardine can is roomy in comparison. Every now and again the AC in your BART car will not work. This is bad. Even if, like on that day, it was cool out.

An overweight hipster's backpack was hanging in my face. At least I had a seat. For many others this was the black hole of Calcutta on wheels and they were standing, clinging to a long metal bar for balance.

There was a young otherwise attractive woman with an ugly growth on her lip. Maybe she couldn't do anything about it but certainly the black polyester pants were under her control. Except for the driver's stop announcements it was desperately quiet in my car. As if we were all fellow survivors of a particularly difficult workday all too drained to utter a word. I thought about shouting out a request for a sing along. A proper knees up in mid commute. But on further reflection I opted to join in the dour silence. No one likes a smart ass anyway.

Tommy James and the Shondells

As I got off the train Crimson and Clover by Tommy James and the Shondells was playing on my iPod and I was digging it. I was strolling and sashaying and sauntering and moseying and meandering and strutting all the way to the gym. Sweat city for me. Don't know about y'all but I love to work up a shirt drenching sweat. I do not care for sweats induced by weather conditions and thankfully living in the air conditioner that is the Bay Area I generally avoid such sticky situations. But a good run and other aerobics that produce steady streams of perspiration are most welcome. The sauna that follows and invites still more sweating is also wonderful. Then a cool shower.

So at the gym where all went as planned. More sauntering strolling sashaying and the like. Walked by a little kids' park. There were two very young women perhaps in their late teens cavorting on a play structure. They were mocha colored speaking French wearing short dresses no shoes and were gorgeous. I imagined 16year old boys beholding the site of them. I would have melted into a puddle of eternal ecstasy. As a bit of an old codger I merely enjoyed the moment and went on my way.

You ever feel a person wasn't quite polite enough? On MUNI the other day a guy dropped a folded up stroller and it whacked me in the knee. He said, "sorry" but it was half hearted and perfunctory. It would have done if he bumped me with a pillow but for a whack on the knee I'm thinking a long drawn out "I'm so sorry" would be appropriate. One of those apologies where you begin to feel bad for the person apologizing and you finally respond with an "it's okay, really."  An hour later I'm nearing the gym and this woman walking in front of me gets her YMCA ID card out. As she does a five dollar bill floats out out of her purse and lands in front of me. I could have pocketed the fiver as easy as you please with no one the wiser but I did one of those "excuse me, excuse me," deals. When she turned I handed her the five saying it fell out of her purse. "Gosh, thanks," was her response. It was a thanks worthy of passing the salt, for retrieving a finn it was totally inadequate and made me think I was a sap for returning it. I'd have gone with a "oh, thank you, thank you very much that's so nice of you." What're ya gonna do?

Last week I got a response to a recent blog post in which some college tootsie rips me down one side and the up the other. She had the nerve to assail me for being angry, snarky and having a generally piss poor view of humanity. Surprised she left out my predilection for kitten torture. What I had done was poke a little fun at a small time business and its hokey marketing techniques. I DID NOT NAME THE BUSINESS. No harm done. What I like to do is express irritation outrage and annoyance on this blog. It gets it out of my system and makes me feel better and makes me a nicer member of the human race. Also some people may read such rantings and ravings and relate in some small way and thus themselves feel better. We do that. We complain and kvetch to one another because the whole shared experience makes us feel part of a whole rather than isolated lonely creatures.

Also I am far from angry and my view of the world is remarkably positive considering I am an abuse survivor a former abuser of drugs and alcohol a rare sufferer of an acute panic disorder and have suffered the premature deaths of two close friends and a brother. Not to mention having taught middle school for 20 years. I wake up happy almost everyday and go to bed happy almost everyday and spend large portions in between happy. I think writing about things that annoy and outrage helps.

Life is okay. Trust me on this one.

Now if we could just get Robin Williams back. That whole deal stunk. Drug addiction and depression. I know from this stuff but Williams was clearly on a more intimate level with great waves of depression than I have ever been. Being driven to the point of suicide is beyond my understanding. I've followed, enjoyed and been inspired by Robin Williams since the days of Mork and Mindy. I even enjoyed his show on last season's TV schedule, The Crazy Ones, and was disappointed it wasn't picked up for another season. I wish Robin could be picked up for many more seasons on Earth. RIP.

So What Happened is That My Room Started Getting Smaller and Then I Started Writing About it and Then Some Other Related Stuff Came Up

Johny's in the basement
Mixing up the medicine
I'm on the pavement
Thinking about the government
The man in the trench coat
Badge out, laid off
Says he's got a bad cough
Wants to get it paid off
-- From Subterranean Blues by Bob Dylan

The room is getting smaller and a giant lizard just poked its head in. At least I’m sure the lizard isn’t real but I’m not convinced that the walls aren’t somehow closing in. I should be frightened if not terrified right now but I find myself rather sanguine about the whole thing. I’m used to paranormal activity wherever I am because my brain just does funny things. It’s probably not normal. I mean I can’t really be sure given that my mind is the only one I know. Weird shit could be going on with other people all the time but they just don’t say anything about it. Ya know, societal pressures and all.

So the truth is that I know the room is not getting smaller. However that is not to say that this is all a figment of imagination. If I was going to be imagining something right now it wouldn’t be a shrinking room. It would probably involve a Victoria Secrets model and the full consent of my wife to do as I pleased with said model. So imagination…no. It’s my current perception. I perceive a shrinking room. That is my reality. No no no my reality is not that the room is getting smaller but that I think it is. And I’m not being metaphorical here. There is nothing symbolic about this at all.

As for the lizard that was probably just a dash of LSD that was left over from years ago. Things like that happen every now and again. I’m used to it now. A momentary glimpse of something totally bizarre or completely out of place. Like a green polar bear dancing on the roof of a Honda Civic. Okay extreme case. More like a dog doing a back flip. And they don’t all include animals either. Sometimes a flash in the sky or a tree changing colors or Theodore Roosevelt walking by.

The whole deal with Ernest Hemingway being in my room the other night was totally different. I don’t have a category for that sort of thing at all. No explanations I just live with it. Time to sort it out later I suppose.

I eschew the terms hallucination or acid flashback. I just do. I want to call them something else and again haven’t got this one sorted yet. I’ll get on it.
But later.

When I was a little kid I was afraid that the ghost of Abraham Lincoln was in my bedroom closet. At least at night when I went to bed. By daylight ole Abe’s ghost was somewhere else maybe scaring the beejezus out of another kid. But I was really afraid of Lincoln’s ghost. Don’t know how that all got started but there you have it. To this day I like to keep my bedroom closet door closed when I go to bed. This amuses the missus but she plays along although it costs me some teasing. I promise you though that if I ever do see Lincoln’s ghost I’ll write about it here pretty soon thereafter. Just as soon as I’ve got my wits about me again. Lincoln’s ghost finally appearing after all these years would really mess with my head. And this, as you've no doubt gathered, is not a head that needs any further messing with.

Like fer instance  how do you further mess with a head that sees things and feels rooms closing in and is otherwise generally pretty fucked up.? Well I’ll tell you, it can always get worse. Brains are like that. No matter how bad they are you can always take it another step.

All this said I’m not doing so bad. This brain has suffered childhood trauma, alcohol and drug abuse, nuclear bomb like panic attacks, bouts of depression and extreme anxiety yet still functions well enough. Well enough that I remain gainfully employed, able to write, in a happy marriage and the father of two daughters. I can navigate social situations well enough too though I prefer to avoid them. Get me around other people socially and I just start thinking how fucking weird everyone else is.  I mean I know I’m goddamned nuts but what the hell is their excuse? I mean seriously such banalities. Imagine the state of mind that enjoys small talk? No thanks.

It’s really bloody hard to get people to open up and say anything interesting let alone meaningful. Conversations skip along the surface of what people are really feeling and thinking. Course they generally just touch upon trivialities. Nonsense talk that is trading of minutia. People don’t feel comfortable really talking to one another. They need to be lifelong friends before they open up and discuss what’s really going on with them or how they really feel. The kind of shit I’m writing here could not be spoken at a garden party. It’s all about the weather and vacations and day-to-day activities and sports. Sports. There’s one. I used to love talking about sports. Now I refuse to say more than a few words on the topic unless I’m talking to someone who I know knows what the hell they’re talking about and shares a love for the same team or at least doesn’t love a team I hate or hate a team I love. Sports talk is generally just obvious observations and swapping bits of information. Like statistics. There’s also rumors and ill founded opinions. Some people absorb that sort of crap for hours a day. Just how good is Jones and is Smith overrated and will Brown be traded and are Johnson’s statistics misleading and will the Polecats beat the Jumbo Shrimp tomorrow and what was with that call in the Otters/Calvinists game last night and who’s rebuilding and who is getting ready to make a run and who is what with and who are they when and where. Blah blah blah.

But who am I to judge?

Anyway the room has stopped shrinking but its still smaller than it should be and I wish to hell it would expand back to normal size. Last thing I need is something strange to have to deal with.

Trip Down Liquor Aisle Causes Trip Down Memory Lane

The cracks between the paving stones
Look like rivers of flowing veins.
Strange people who know me
Peeping from behind every window pane.
The girl I used to love
Lives in this yellow house.
Yesterday she passed me by,
She doesn't want to know me now.
Can you see the real me, can you?
-- From The Real Me by The Who

Shopping at the supermarket with the missus this afternoon we found ourselves going down the liquor aisle.

She asked if it was torture to look at all the booze. Here’s what I said: It’s like seeing an old girlfriend. One you had a lot of really good times with but it was a bad break up and while you have a lot of fond memories, what ultimately sticks out is the pain that she inflicted.

I did sigh looking at the Guinness Stout. I loved that stuff. A bottle of it would be quite tasty and leave my body with a warm and wonderful glow and a sense that all was well in the world. The after taste would be sublime, the drinking of it divine. The completion of the bottle satisfying. Pure contentment.

Then I’d want another. I’d have to build. It wasn’t enough. That feeling had to be doubled. Tripled. And quadrupled. Oh of course sooner or later it would be something else. Maybe just a cheaper beer to keep the high going. Maybe a glass of scotch to intensify it. And why not a few lines of coke to allow for more and more and more. I would be feeling so damn good it would seem like utter folly not to keep it going.

I would fly. I would bounce up to the stars and dance in mid air and score rhapsodic touchdowns of unending glory. I would be in the perfect body using the perfect mind and every utterance would be poetry and my soul would soar around the planet and every ounce of splendid youth would course through my body.

Would.

Sure the world would be fuzzy. But I wouldn’t notice that I was talking too loud. Sure my gait would be unsteady. But I wouldn’t be sure what her name was. That beautiful girl I was talking too. Or even if she was beautiful. Sure my words would come out jumbled. But I wouldn’t care what secrets I was revealing. Sure I’d sway too and fro. But I wouldn’t see the way some people were embarrassed for me. I made perfect sense to me and I was the only person who mattered. Or ever did.

Wouldn’t.

Drunk. Blasted. Toasted. Shit-faced. Wasted. Smashed. Bombed. Stoned. Ripped.

And the next day. The morning. Greeting the dawn with a “fglmshchx?”
That awful pain residing in my head. Driving though and around and within and without my brain which as it was felt covered in syrupy sand. Hello guilt. How are you today? Hello depression, I guess you’ll be around for awhile. Hello weakness and lethargy and confusion and wonder. And a great big hello to what-the-fuck-did-I-do-last-night. And who did I say what to and where and how much money did I spend and never again. At least never again that loss of self. Control always and forever. Changes are coming. Reform. You’ll see. Lesson learned.

Yeah, right.

So I did feel a longing going down the liquor aisle. But I have now drank deeply from the cup of memories that I keep six packs and pint bottles and jugs of in my house and wherever I go.

I need to always remember that shit and what I used to do to myself. Because I am still and always be recovering.

Ernest Hemingway Just Visited Me and So I Wrote About it

Ernest Hemingway sat down next to me while I was watching a movie on my laptop. Just now. There was no other chair in the room but he sat just the same. He patted me on the back. He had a large toothless smile. He was wearing an olive green jacket and dungarees. The shirt was checkered.

I wonder now why Ernest Hemingway came into my room and sat next to me. I haven’t read anything by him lately. Recently when I had trouble sleeping I thought of what my 25 favorite novels are and none of us his were included although he is one of my favorite writers.

He’s still here by the way. Watching me type this. It’s okay. I’m not freaked out by it. I don’t feel compelled to offer him a drink. Oh he’s got a small cap on too. Ernest Hemingway seems shorter than I would have thought. But then again he’s long dead so there’s that. I hope he’s not bored. If he expects me to talk to him he’s got another thing coming. Well he just shook his head no. So I’m off the hook on that count.

I’ve had other famous writers pop in on me too. But this is a lot clearer than the others.

Watch while I type this: “Hello Ernest Hemingway. It’s so nice to have your spirit or whatever is visiting here in the room with me. I greatly admire your work. Not a fan of the hunting or the bull fighting but let’s let that pass. I hope you are enjoying being in whatever form you are in as you visit me here. And I want to thank you for acting as a muse for me here today. Is that what this is about? I was watching a movie instead of writing and maybe you were sent by the Great Dead Writers Guild to get me going.”

Ahh, he’s just nodded his head in the affirmative. So that is it. How nice of you. I also want to thank you, Ernest Hemingway, for not talking. Hearing someone who has been dead for over half century speaking to me would be upsetting. I should think so anyway. The presence is really effective enough. Hearing voice would be too close to psychosis. Don't need that.

I sense you're fading, Ernest Hemingway. Mission accomplished I suppose.

Goodness he sure seemed real. Well not like I could have touched him but like his presence was real.

Ernest Hemingway in my room. Imagine that.