Memories

Memories... light the corners of my mind...

Misty water colored memories...

Of The Dark Tower.

The spider

For about 6 months a spider lived in my bathroom windowsill. Every morning I'd walk into the bathroom and the spider would be there, just nestled up in his super complex network of web. It was a pretty big one. Sometimes I'd blow really hard at the spider and it would kind of jiggle it's legs a little, but otherwise it wouldn't move at all.

Every few days or couple of weeks I'd notice one of those mosquito moths or a fly trapped in there with it, so I supposed that it was at least moving enough to eat now and then, but I never saw it move of its own volition. One day I noticed a nice little egg sac in the web. I guess the spider had moved around enough to get pregnant, but otherwise it was always in the same place.

This went on for a few months, this spider and its egg sac. I began to become irritated that this spider was here in my house, living its own little life and even starting a family, and it wasn't paying a lick of rent! But at least it wasn't eating my food...

This irritation grew a little bit every day. It made no sense at all, but there you have it... irritation at a spider for living in my house and not contributing a damn thing. Then one morning I walked into the bathroom and the spider wasn't there anymore, and neither was the egg sac. Damn, what happened to the spider? What happened to the egg sac, for that matter? Did the little buggers hatch and eat the sac? Or did the mama spider finally get tired of absorbing my psychic irritation every day and pack up, egg sac and all, for greener pastures?

Well, I was surprised to find that I actually kind of missed the spider, my morning bathroom companion.

:p

I'm so sick of this shit I could puke coat hangers.

Tired doesn't even come close to describing it. More like wretchedly weary. Worn down to the bone.

Angry, at this situation. Angry at customers. Angry at being here. Too tired to be angry. Anger just dissolves into apathy.

This last week is the worst, just remarkably bad. I know why, of course, but I'm too tired to really give a shit. I don't want to open my mouth and say another word until I'm far away from here. I want to sleep now and wake up at home.

There is danger in being away from the church.

Laundry day

Oh boy, what an emotional day. E.T. is on TV and I'm crying as I watch it, remembering how I was the same age as Elliot when this movie came out. I'm such a crybaby nowadays, anything emotional will set me off.

Oh yeah, laundry... I went out into the hall, careful to wipe my eyes. Right as the door opened, a man and his little son, about 4 years old, stepped up to the elevator. Oh great, here I am all teary eyed and barefoot and now somebody else has to witness it...

So we all get into the elevator. The little boy immediately pipes up. "Where are you going? I'm going down. On the other side. Which side are you going on?" By sides, he means, either the lobby or the basement, as depending on which floor you stop, you wind up on opposite sides of the building. "We're going on THAT side. Where are you going?" I looked down at this little kid.

"I'm going to do laundry."

"Where is your laundry? Why don't you have a bag of laundry?"

"It's already down there. In the washer. I'm going down to dry it."

"How did you get that mustache??"

At this point the father chuckles, the door opens, and they walk out into the lobby. I laughed out loud.

"I grew it!" The doors shut and I could see the little kid looking at me wide eyed, at my mustache, I'm guessing.

Do it

Tonight I took a walk. It was my first walk in a few weeks. I've been feeling really down lately; not only depressed but physically ill. It's the enemy fucking with me because the time is getting close to go home where I'll be back in contact with my church. So, it makes sense that the full frontal assault should happen now.

Anyway, today I said fuck that, and felt a little better. Good enough to take one of what used to be my normal walks. So, I started off at about 6:30 with the idea in my mind to do another video blog. My camera kept running out of memory though, which was weird, because there is plenty of memory on my card... so after about three tries at this, I decided to say fuck it, I'm not supposed to do a video blog. So I kept walking.

I got downtown and a woman was walking in my direction. We made eye contact. My usual habit after making eye contact with a passing stranger is to immediately disconnect, but for some reason, I kept the contact until we were face to face, and of course, a conversation became obligatory.

The first thing she asked was 'Say man, you know where I can get some 4:20?' This is nothing new to me. I have 'the look', and people ask me this all the time, as was demonstrated tonight, and as I will now recount. She said 'You look like you might know where to get some'. Like I said. I told her, no, sorry, but I don't smoke weed. And from there, it became this long exchange of stories about our own personal histories of drug abuse, and how getting old is such a surprise.

After exchanging life stories, she asked me what I was going to do when I got home. I told her, 'I want to get into counseling so I can help other addicts like myself'. She smiled the biggest smile and said, 'Yeah man. That's great. Do it, man. Do it.' She walked closer to me and took my hand and stood there, looking me straight in the eye, holding my hand. 'Do it, man. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it.' She let go of my hand and started to walk away, all the while looking at me as she departed, saying, 'Do it. Do it, man. Do it.'

Cold, wet, and windy

Today is the first really cold day we've had this year in Ketchikan. First off, it's windy, and I do mean WINDY. The scarves on the T-stand outside kept blowing off, and I actually had to pull up the hood of my hoodie so that I wouldn't freeze to death while standing outside taking a smoke break.

And it's cold. Weatherbug says it was 51 degrees, but that's at the airport, across the ocean on the other island. Maybe it's 51 degrees there, but here on the Ketchikan island, it's downright cold. Cold, as in, I really do have to pull my hood up over my head (nevermind that it makes a mess of my hair), tuck in my shirt (to keep the wind from blowing up my tummy :::shiver:::), and pull the sleeves up over my hands so that the wind don't bite them off.

And WET. As we say here in Ketchikan, where they call rain 'liquid sunshine', and the average amount is about 12 feet a year, it's raining sideways. Or more accurately; imagine a 25 degree angle upward from the zero degree horizontal. The rain is following that line, blowing down from the upper right to the lower left. Almost sideways, anyway. Good enough for government work.

So... if there's two things mixed together that I absolutely can't stand, that is... two things mixed together that I HATE, other than peanut butter and mayonnaise, it's cold and wet, both occupying the same place at the same time. And the wind only makes it worse. Let me add that to the list... three things mixed together that I absolutely can't stand. Cold, wet, and WIND. Welcome, wind, to my hate list. Not that I didn't already hate you all by yourself, because you just love to blow my hair around so that it's a bona-fide workout before I go to bed just to get the tangles out, complete with sore shoulders and biceps in the morning. But now, wind, you get to have friends. Cold and wet, meet wind. Wind, meet cold and wet. Misery loves company, so they say.

Speaking of sayings... like my mom used to say, "It's colder than a witches tit in a brass bra outside." Please excuse the crude metaphor, simile, or idiom, whatever it is. But I always thought that was funny, so in order to make the horrible cold wet wind more bearable, I use that crude phrase to describe it because it makes me chuckle. Thanks mom. :)

Boogies

I got them boogies in my nose.
They grows and grows and never goes.
I'd wash them boogies with a hose,
But that don't work it only slows
The growth of boogies in my nose.

Heaven knows I never chose
To have them boogies in my nose.
They there so long it seems they froze,
Way up there where the wind don't blows.
Them boogies nestled in my nose.

I blows and blows and blows and blows,
Then hold the rose under my nose...
But still them boogies never goes.
The snot it never flows no moes
I guess it only goes to shows
That I have boogies in my nose.

The cut of my jib

Somebody came in the store today and said to me, "I like the cut of your jib." What the heck does that mean? thought I. I posted the question on facebook and Fr. Justin replied thusly:

"Cut of your jib: One's general appearance and demeanour.

The jib of a sailing ship is a triangular sail set between the foretopmast head and the jib boom. Some ships had more than one jib sail. Each country had its own style of sail and so the nationality of a sailing ship, and a sailor's consequent opinion of it, could be determined from the jib.

The phrase became used in an idiomatic way during the 19th century."

Well, if that didn't make my pride swell. Somebody likes the cut of my jib. :) But then I imagined myself strung up between the foretopmast head and the jib boom. :p

A dream - injury and justice

I dreamed last night that a woman was lied to and made to give up her ovaries to a scientific experiment. It was displayed on a computer screen... all the parts of a woman's ovaries, but it was all mechanical, with gears and conveyor belts and sliding hydraulic pumps, moving eggs along mechanically constructed fallopian tubes... but there was a point were the eggs were diverted. They fell onto another conveyor belt. Each egg glowed bright blue, and some had partially formed arms and legs. I saw each of these eggs as a potential human as I watched, as a distant observer. They were being deposited into a tank where experiments would be performed, without the knowledge of the woman.

She was drugged, and put into an ambulance, thinking that she had been injured. She kept calling for the one she loved, the one who had talked her into this and lied to her, but he never appeared. She was taken away, and needles were put into her. I cringed when I watched this and had to turn away, as I have a great aversion to needles. Nevermind the horror of what was going on.

Some weeks later, when she was back to her life, she still had no knowledge of what had happened to her. Then the guy she was in love with sent her an e-mail, detailing everything they had done, trying to convince her of the 'good' of it. He was actually trying to justify it. At this point, I was active in the dream. I warned her that this man didn't love her, that he had further designs for her in his experiment.

Later we are all together in her apartment, and the man is there in person, pleading his case. I attacked him with a rod, trying to beat him, but I was subdued. Then we were all underwater, and the man had a knife to my throat. There were several voracious looking fish circling us; they looked like giant piranah, but we couldn't see their teeth. The man drew the knife across my throat, but it was a dull serrated edge, and only drew a little blood. He examined the blade and seemed astonished that I wasn't dead. Then he had the idea to snare one of the fish to finish me off. He caught one, reeled it in, but instead of going for me, it opened its gaping maw, filled with rows of razor sharp teeth, and latched onto the mans face. He screamed in agony, but it was muffled because his screams were going down the throat of the fish. Finally the fish let go, and I saw the mans face, gouged deep with teeth marks. His head was now one mass of yellowish green decay. But the fish hadn't had enough yet... the mans screams were muffled again as the fish once again latched on.

Green Vs. Green

As I stare out the window, I see trees on the mountainside, blowing in the windy rain. The closer trees are a dull bright green (a contradiction in terms, but with no sunlight, there is no other way to describe them). The ones further away are a darker, kind of pine green, behind the closer ones. And even further than that, there is a dark green patch which blends into the black of the farthest point of vision on this mountainside, completely ensconced in shadow. Imagine these layers of green, with the brightest and closest moving the most rapidly... then through layers, with less motion and less green, until you finally reach the black motionless part.

I watch this black part and am annoyed at the interruption of the bright greens and lesser greens as they obstruct my vision of it because of the wind. It is very windy here. Nevertheless, I stare for a long time, losing track of time even, at the blackest part of the green, where it becomes completely black... towards the farthest point away from where I am, over there on the mountain. But still, the closer portions move the most relative to my position and keep obscuring my vision to the point that I start noticing the brighter parts.

The brighter part, superimposed upon the darker, blacker part that I was concentrating on, what with it's movement and all, begins to look like the slavering jaws of a monster which is trying to consume me as I gaze into that black part. I don't know what this means, if it means anything. Probably nothing. Everything doesn't have to be symbolic in my life. But I could have sworn that the rapidly moving bright dull green movement was trying to consume me as I lost myself in the black.

Sitting

Today I came home early. It was my turn. I was just sitting on the couch, watching 'The Last Samurai'. It's a pretty good movie. I was just going over in my head... is it a good movie, or a great movie? I'd say, just in between good and great.

I was sitting there on the couch, just a few minutes ago. On the left side, against the arm. I looked to my right... what if someone was sitting there? Next to me? Where would that person be? Close, or far away, on the other side?

I imagined that someone sitting close to me. I put my arm along the back of the couch. Where would that person's shoulder be? Right about there. I looked at my hand, imagining it cupping a shoulder. I adjusted it up and down, an inch here, a little bit forward... right about there seemed right.

Their head? Upright, or leaning against my chest? I imagined against my chest. I put my hand where that person's head would be and imagined stroking hair, against my palm, through my fingers. It took a minute or two to get it right, but then I had it. A good vision of what it would be like. Almost a memory.

Only

Last Thursday I began to feel sick about halfway through the day. A pounding headache, chills, and a stomach ache. I've had stabbing stomach pains before, but these weren't like that... more like aching anxiety in my stomach. I walked home and just felt steadily worse and worse as the day progressed. I went to bed early and didn't go in the next day. I looked up the symptoms online, and with no fever to accompany all of that, the most likely cause was stress. Kind of a mild nervous breakdown is what I chalked it up to.

Last night I didn't get drunk, per se, but I was definitely buzzed. I went to bed early again, at about 5:30 (I think I'm still on Texas time). I woke up in the middle of the night with horrible stomach cramps. Again, not like the 'stabbing pains'; lower down in my gut as opposed to my stomach. I lay there for about an hour enduring it, then got up and went to the bathroom. Chaos ensued.

I won't go into the gory details, except that both ends were very active. Horrible. For an hour I was in there, constantly flushing the commode and either sitting and cramping, or curled on the floor with horrible nausea. I finally prayed to God to please, take the pain away, and I promise I'll do better.

The pain immediately began to fade. It was almost like that a time at vigil one night when my stomach started to cramp, and I prayed to God to take away the pain, and He did. This time I made a promise though... that I would do better.

These last few weeks have been the most stress I've ever felt in my life, I think. Even worse than when I was on drugs. I've never really experienced stress to the point where it just wreaks havoc on me physically. I've been away from church, I miss my friends and family, I'm trying to deal with a broken heart, I'm drinking constantly, and I'm depressed and just not happy being here. The novelty has definitely worn off. I don't like this nervous breakdown crap.

Only three more weeks.

Little guy

A guy was perusing the gloves right outside the door about 30 minutes ago. Strapped to his back was a wide-eyed toddler, probably just under a year old. A real cutie. He gazed at me with those wide, brown eyes, not a hint of self consciousness at all. What an age... I lose the staring contest every time when I'm confronted with that wondrous gaze of the innocent.

I played peek-a-boo with him like I used to with Marcos. That brought a smile to his little face, and he reached out his arm toward me as the guy he was strapped to started to walk away. I reached back, and was just able to brush his tiny little hand with my fingers.

Stuff

I came home today with another stomach ache. I hate it when this happens. Luckily we had some great business right before it kicked in. We had a crap day yesterday... and I had just put Pinback into Ed's mp3 player, so I played Pinback all day yesterday.

This morning Ed said, "So, we know better than to play Pinback again." He's superstitious... all kinds of things influence sales to him. Where the racks are positioned, how many games of chess or solitaire he's won on the computer, and what music is playing.

So, when he dissed Pinback... well, I just seen red. So, the day started out really slow and it sucked for about three hours, and I thought to myself.... self, if the day is going to suck, I'm going to at least hear some Pinback. So, I started it up and five minutes later, BAM we got hammered and sold two coats and 4 scarves and a hat. About $3500. Of course, it was the Pinback we were playing. The cruise ship passengers today just happened to have really good taste. How can you not spend a few grand when Pinback is playing, getting your endorphins pumping?

Unfortunately, right after that the stomach cramps started, so I walked home.

Alive

The movie about the Uruguayan rugby team that crashed in the Andes in 1974. This movie plays on HBO a lot here.

I started out watching Futurama and drinking beer, having a dandy time on my day off. And after the third beer I remembered my prayers, that I didn't say them. And there I was, half drunk on an empty stomach, and I suddenly felt awful. Such guilt. The enemy... but it's my own damn fault.

I switched on the TV and Alive is on. I can't help but watch this movie every time it comes on. It never fails to make me cry. The prayers they say, in the midst of such despair and dashed hopes, along with such courage it took to survive for more than a year in the freezing mountains.

God was with them.

::::::::

There is a scene where one of the survivors, just after an avalanche that killed many of them, is sitting on top of the packed snow above the buried wreckage and smiling. Others climb out and the one sitting says, "Do you feel it? God is everywhere today."

I looked at the mountains on the TV screen. They were beautiful... I turned my glance to the window. I saw the mountains outside. They were beautiful too... but obscured somehow. Glass. The window was shut. I shut the window...