Fiber

I have added fiber to my diet. Guess why. Right! I like that cereal little Meggie likes, Post shredded wheat n bran -- combined often with milk. Not sure my system (by this I mean my body) likes the milk part....

I'm having so much fun lately it's sad. Poor Bob in San Jose is not having fun like me. My fun is anomalous. If I were still happily married I would not be having this fun. So it is sad fun. All of it.

I went and "taught" a 2+ hour lesson on fiddle and piano to my new friends in Westlake who live in a wonderful house and are possibly happy to see me. I don't charge them for this, since I have no curriculum in place. Though they have learned some stuff. In just 2 weeks! After that I went over to Lamberts, thinking I would see Emily and the Marshall Ford guys and eat a bbq sandwich. And all that came to pass with the added bonus of Matt being there so I could get him a beer and chat, and Erik was there playing great fiddle and let me sit in on Fat Boy Rag.

Then I zipped over to Cafe Caffeine to catch Megan Melara at her monthly thing there. Her gig. Was tired from the sandwich and from being old, but she asked me to sit in, and playing woke me up. She has a throat thing, so she felt she had an off night and quit kind of early. I put a chocolate muffinny thing on top of the bbq (which was already on top of the Post cereal).

Megan's "crowd" is decidedly of a different sexual orientation than me. I feel that I am doing sociological research when I am at her gigs, which shows maybe that I am a sex/racist. The folks all treat me real nice. They just don't want to sleep with me. Except maybe one or two of the guys. But really not even them, since I don't belong to a gym and don't care what clothes I am wearing (this may change). There are babies there whom I cannot explain.

Megan's singing and writing knock my mismatched socks off, throat problem notwithstanding.

After that I went home. At about 2:30 AM I had the worst (perhaps only) stomach cramps I have ever had in my life and spent the next hour in the little room with all the drains in it, wondering if I should call someone before I died.

But I toughed it out, since I am a man of fiber!

Need and Cushions

I was going to write about need. About how if we need something, we are automatically needy. And nobody likes needy. Yet we do. But I'm not going to write about that.

Instead: The Saga of the Pillow Thing

4 or 5 decades ago Mr. and Mrs. Kaye (the first Mrs Kaye even?) purchased a nice couch, long enough for a 6-footer to sleep on, comfy. Don't know what those pillow parts are actually called, but you know those firm yet cushy pillow parts -- the ones you sit on, lie on, not the smaller ones in back of you that you sit back on. Those are actually pillows I think. I guess the bigger ones are called cushions -- maybe they're all cushions. You get the idea though.

So. The couch lived in Atlanta for a long time. It saw Kaye girls grow I think. It probably saw the first Mrs. Kaye become ill and disappear. And then a new Mrs. Kaye and more children, mostly girls. Lots of Atlanta folks sat on that couch. Some drank wine. Some did not. The pillow parts (cushions?) had removable/washable covers, and they were fersure removed and washed a few times over the years.

Then all the Mr. and Mrs. Kayes were dead, the condo got sold. The couch was old then (2001), but the Levins, who were in charge of the Kaye estate, chose to move el coucho anciento to their house in Buda, Texas "in case anybody in the family wants it at some point." It resides now in Ezra's room. Sort of in the way. A place to sit, but more a place to throw junk. Piles. Ezra does not reside there. In fact mostly who resides in the house in Buda is just old man Levin and some dogs. Oscar, a very fine dog, and Zooey, another very fine dog, sometimes come to visit. Now that Oscar is neutered and fat, he requires special rigging to enable him to leap from the floor up to the bed where he sleeps when he visits. Enter the old white pillow. The old man grabbed one of these pillows and placed it on the floor by the chair next to the bed, so Oscar could make the leap with some grace. Zooey got into some turkey bones or something and had episodes of diarrhea all over the house, notably including a big clump/lump/wad on the old pillow, right in the middle of it in fact. She also peed on it. Or maybe Ringo did that.

Anyway the old man unzipped the cover, removed and washed it, dried it, replaced it over the stuffing. Now the pillow thing is good as new. A bit of the stuffing came loose. No biggie. That good old Atlanta stuffing will make it to the Creedmoor Dump within a week. A bit sad? Nah. No one really needed it.

No one in their right mind throws away something they need.

Mail Menopause

Only recently uncovered, dissed and doubted, but it's real, oh too real:
Mail Menopause. When mail gets to that certain age, it just starts falling out of the box. Sweating. It can get angry and often asks for money, sometimes lots of it. Hormone replacement works well, but who's gonna get a complimentary Wall Street Journal or National Geographic to remember to take a pill every morning? No, it's a real toughie. And decades-long relationships hang in the balance. Folks tell their mail, "Don't make any important decisions -- you're not in your right zipcode!" Homeland Security is at a loss. And FedEx won't touch them. Some pieces of mail actually shower twice or three times a day. Doesn't matter if they become illegible. People are scared to read them anyway....
There's nothing to do but wait it out. With compassion. Maybe get a hobby. Collect porn. But not stamps, not postcards! Use email. Or just don't communicate at all. It gets better. Really it does.

cancer

Not just an astrological sign anymore, cancer is the scariest. My partners's dear wife has some sort of carcinomas and that sucks. My mom died of the crap, so I can talk.
I have trouble being serious though, so please don't get mad.
There is some poop psychology/holistic science voodoo out there now, quite related to my last post actually without my knowing about it. Something about UT finishing a study that says that stress/negative emotions/really mostly ANGER
is the number one cause of cancer. Obvious bullshit. But what's funny is this. I came to the realization that everybody is probably angry all the time! I know I am. Either I am self-destructing in anger, or being snidely whiplash with anger, or working AA steps to "find my part in it" so as not to drink from the #1 offender: resentment (that's when you re-feel anger, re-sentiment) hahahahahahahahahahaha. And all that anger we all carry (and "stuff") from our childhood because we didn't get to be loved enough by a mother or father or bro or sis or (in my case) the large groups of neighbor kids who sat on me and spit. Man that pissed me off. People even get pissed about their grades. Their pay. Their job or lack thereof. The fact that they build a life with somebody and do something stupid or look ugly a few times and then their God-destined love of their life leaves and shops a bunch at Target. Which is disappointing all around.
Target causes cancer. Worse than agent orange.
Breasts cause cancer, especially breast cancer, but lack of breast-feeding is what started me being pissed off.
Enough about me. What caused your cancer? Don't let it be rage at me. I'm just the messenger.
Oddly though, I don't seem to have any cancer. Just a few cysts and boils and an unbearable amount of emotional growth.
Pisser. I know what you're thinking...."Emotional growth, my ass!" It's benign though.

Stupid? I don't think....so....

I feel that I am brilliant or utterly stupid regarding the following: Emotions.
What the hell@#$%^&*(? What are they for? God in his infinite wisdom gave us these things, these "feelings." What was he thinking?
Take anger. Everybody's always talking about how it's ok to feel it, but you gotta be careful about acting on it. In other words, don't act on it. Plan first. Revenge or assassination, which has 2 asses in it. Seriously though, anger. When is this a desireable thing? Ok it's good that we were pissed at King George and his minions, 'cause without that anger we wouldn't have had The Greatest Nation on Earth. Greece.
Sorry, I can't get serious about anger. It's a total waste of time. And it hurts. And if you say well it teaches you lessons, surely I could learn them without the pain of anger. Or fear. Or desire. Or disorientation/dissociation. Or love.
Is love even a feeling? I loved that chocolate ice cream the other night. But that love wasn't a feeling, was it? It just was pleasure. Pleasure. Now there's a feeling I could get into. But if I had the choice, I'd go Borg as it were. The pleasure is just not worth the pain, anger, fear, rage, envy, frustration, exhaustion, psychedelic god-knowledge.
Some of these are feelings right?
You feel me?
I'm for flatline. And I don't care if nothing gets accomplished. Beethoven's 1st is his best anyway. And so was Willis Alan Ramsey's. And St. Francis and St. Augustine and Talmudic scholars and Rumi were all way smarter than anybody living today.
And I just don't picture any of them feeling at all. Except Willis of course. 'Cause I know him.

If this line of thought bothers you, I am sorry. But not remorseful.
There's a word for this version of me. That word is sociopath. But it is not a word often if ever applied to me. Many people call me friend, good guy, christian man, honest, hard-working, reliable. Some idiots call me brilliant, but they're just joshing.
Actually I am a sociopath. And I am skipping down a so-so path. And I will get to the end.

change

Change is hard, espcially if there are coins involved. Paper money, less hard. But there may be paper cuts if the money is crisp enough and if you are an idiot.

What do you call someone who chooses the evening of the 21st of December to say "I'm about to hire a hit on you." ?
Easy. You call that person Wife.

Some pleasure can and will be derived from this situation, but it will have nothing to do with the Rolling Stones tune "Moving On," which, though vintage Stones, sucks. There will certainly be lots of learning. And I may take on some of the characteristics of that albino guy in the Da Vinci Code. You know, he was profoundly religious. And he self flagellated. Rock. Talk about Hard!

I was writing nice poems there for a couple of days.
Here's my Christmas poem:

A FINGER IN THE UPDIKE

The old Polish dentist
His shoulders hunched over
Suspecting foul play,
But wrong Dr. K, the play
Was fair and sweet between
Your daughter and me.

We didn’t have sex til New York
And the subway was dirty too.

I think of my father
Laying in supplies for the winter,
I think it was colder and folks hibernated.
Bernie drank a lot, the way I’ve told it.
Whether or not an alcoholic.
But I loved those trips to the State Store
With the Pennsylvania shield on the door
The keystone state
And if you need proof, well that’s just the
Alcohol content
Times 2.
Not divided by 2, boy.
As it often was.

He drank with a friend of an evening,
Discussed Freud, Marx, China, and possibly,
When I was not in the room,
Women.
Or homosexuality.
By age 23 I knew more about sex than he did.
He held forth:
"Sex is highly over-rated."

Bernie was not from Shillington (Updike’s town), but close.
Reading.
And he was a reader and a
“Writer of letters.”
Sometimes he typed, more often wrote by hand,
A neat blockish alphabet.
Point was,
He never wrote a book,
Though he seemed to want to.

A man with potential for loneliness, but no follow-through.
His great consolation and joy,
Those trips to the State Store
From which we emerged into the cold December air
With 2 or even
3 boxes of Canadian Club blended whiskey, Gilbey’s gin
and vodka.
And he and I were both happy
Laying in those supplies.

Ring

ring.........brrring.........ring............
ok fine, don't answer that -- but since caller ID is ubiquitous now you'll likely call back.

see this ring? iz round!

I took my wedding ring off earlier today, but I couldn't keep my eye on it continuously, and I checked later and there it was back on my ring finger. Damn! Little bugger. My thought is to have some minor surgery done to my tongue and have it implanted there. That way it would be less obvious that I am married. You see.

The government will always know though. They have my tax return. And they pass it around and read it over and over for laughs. It's a riot. Our company CPA told me it was my CPA's job to monitor the situa quarterly and determine amounts due.
I told her "You're talkin to him," and she said "I don't want to hear about that." Thing is (you diligent revenuer you), I'm always completely candid, forthright, and honest in regard to federal tax owed. And I pay. Seriously though, off the record, I suspect TurboTax is causing me to overpay. Hence her comment ?

And now, I've got something for you.....an opera you can't refuse. Rigoletto maybe.

Better yet something from Wagner's Ring trilogy. The Frying Dutch Oven.

Next year I plan to write some anthemic music for jews harp and melodica. Reminiscent of the 1812 overture played by recorders and pop guns (doing the cannon part). And some dance music with no beat whatsoever. And some retro feelgood music played on Uzbeki horns (the old ones that only play 3 different notes, unless you're a virtuoso and can hit that 4th high one.)

Tomorrow....the story of the human feces in the back yard aka "Does Bear roll in shit in the woods?" (has a nice ring to it)