Sunday, May 8, 2011

Witness the Planet

The Planet was always planning. The Planet had dreams. The Planet read voraciously. Everything from romance novels to every self help book that was released. Or so it would seem. So the Planet either had discovered her reborn self, or had kept it hidden from me and now felt it had to come out. Of course we did the family church thing at the local Presbyterian church, and that was something the Planet could sink her metaphysical teeth into. Presbyterian's may have been a little wishy washy for her rediscovered or newly forming fundamentalism, but the Planet was forever trying to fit into her surroundings. The Planet tried hard to blend into and reach accord within the cosmos. My first hint was her habit early on in the dating process to not only begin to parrot phrases that I used, but to quickly complete my sentences. Now I know I don't have a huge repertoire, but after dating someone a few months this can be a little disconcerting.

But being a courtship that was cut short by the pregnancy induced two minute marriage drill, there wasn't much time to dwell on the implications. But as I stare back from the eternity of this now I can only shake my head and ponder the endless question of “Why were my eyes so blind." I wanted to be loved. I wanted to be close to another human being and the Planet I would later discover was a master of becoming whoever she intuited the person she was with would want. I think we all operate on that level to some degree, either consciously or unconsciously, and especially early on in the merging process. A talent perfected out of child like necessity resulting from her constant moves as an "Army Brat”and the depredations of youthful yearnings to fit in, feel accepted, and then eventually loved. A very human and constant condition in us all. How we deal with those inborn drives makes all the difference in our actions in this sojourn we are all on.

My being around, as anyone who has a dailey absent spouse will tell, interjected my presence into a households daily routine. Dysfunctional or not we all have patterns we adhere to, and whether we wish to change them, are trying to change them, or are oblivious to them, only we can instigate the change in our day to day. Outside interference has it's price's and consequences. Despite the positive out come to my health, the newly gained knowledge of the operation of my household was a revelation. While my presence should have freed up the Planets time for her business pursuits, it in reality drove a deep wedge between the illusions the Planets gravity was spinning and the reality of the situation. Denial of depression even with the treatment of professionals runs deep. The Planet needs space for her orbits. My additional gravitational influence had it's effect on the Planets orbital patterns and merely accomplished sending the Planets orbit further from it's true bearing. As any orbital disruption in axis or orbit will attest to, it sent waves of change rippling through the Planets core.

This point in the journey deeper into the heart of Indiana was not only the apex of my joy, but the the embarkation to the final thrusts into the absolute depths of despair.

Thrusting into the previously unrevealed.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

This guy has to look up unlimited in the dictionary and he makes how much? Three words for Sprint and I'll bet Danster doesn't have to look them up. Sell Sell Sell !!!!!!!!!!!!!http://bit.ly/eSPN7u

Friday, February 18, 2011

Doctors Know

I had been living with pain for sixteen years, and it had begun to be unbearable. Re-fittings were all that was offered. Never did a doctor or anyone suggest a period of time off the limb to promote healing. After all, with employer paid insurance they seem to be reluctant to suggest such a remedy. Who's buttering who's bread is always in play on one level or another. There is also the consideration that time without a prosthetic may lead to a costly resizing and re-fitting regime, also not a very popular solution in our hyper productive age. As workman comp professional once told me, “Once the lazy bastards stop working they never want to work again.” So stuff some newspaper into a good solid lace up boot and get back to pounding the pavement and delivering optical elements like you were before, and stop your whining was the unstated message. So I had for the past sixteen years. No charity for me , thank you. But then pain and festering became intolerable. The solution from the medical experts was that if the infection couldn't be beat, they would have to amputate more of what remained of my poor mangled appendage.

So I did the unthinkable and took my treatment into my own hands. I followed there recommendations and took the antibiotics, and soaked the stump. But I also took a leave of absence from work, and instead of wearing a prosthesis 16 hours a day, I stayed off it and only wore it a few hours each day to do laundry and clean up after the Planets spinning. Two weeks later, on the visit to the doctor, he seemed pleased and said things were looking good, patting himself on another save. But of course there was the precautionary not out of the woods yet. I took it to heart and extended my leave for a total of two months. Was it the antibiotics? They never worked before. Or was it the combo platter of the pharmaceuticals and pedestrian prudence that saved the day. Well, research shows that research works and this will never be researched. Who knows?

My leg had never felt so good after that time. I felt rejuvenated and was walking and feeling better about than since the date of the accidental dismembering. I was in heaven. It was the best I had felt walking since my foot and I were separated by a Checker taxi. I felt alive. I was a mobile mono ped without alternating interior winces.

But the planet didn't like me being around that much. I should have noticed. Me being there was interfering in the arrangement with her girl Header, as the young lads Clark and Addison dubbed her. Even though her business was never a money maker, I always heard how her Director had explained you have to have things in place so you can focus on your goals. That meant money out of pocket to create conditions conducive to opening the abundance the universe has to offer. Priming the pump , so to speak. It was nineteen hundred and ninety six, six years down the South Shore path of Indiana, and we had already refinanced once and had taken out a home improvement loan. Half went to improve, the other went to pay down Planet incurred credit card debt. Or as we used to call it, "The Saturday Morning Supprise,” being the time I would sit down to do bills and books for the household. This was before internet access to account statements was prevalent, but with me being home statements were no longer as likely to disappear from the mailbox. There was more to quickly follow. But the Planet wasn't worried. The Planet's trajectory was hooked into the cosmos. I was frantic and insecure while feeling quite full of my ability to heal myself. Those were heady times and long before I even had an inkling that the Planet and I were never on the same page. For that matter we were never reading the same book.

I was reading from the the " I don't want to be crippled and alone at fifty" script of post Rene Abuduh and pre Planet days, whereas the Planet was reading the current version of what these days is called "The Secret". The Planet planned and little else occurred during the day. The Planet did not like having anyone other than toddlers and Header around to witness her day to day routine. Once revealed the Planet wisely sought professional help leading to the many diagnoses's of everything from ADHD, to Thyroid distress and everything in between. Plus the depression and the most importantly concealed manic part that was never caught or revealed, with the ensuing multitude of chemical concoctions du jour in the search of the magic combination of legally prescribed drugs. In the meantime I had a beer or three, but no longer to take the edge of the physical pain, but the edge off the other pains and anxieties. Excuses abound. It was no secret that there was trouble afoot.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Also Sprach The Planet

Also Sprach The Planet


There we were. The planet and I were locked in each others gravitational pull. Each dependent on the other. The inevitable exchange of energies both expressed and unexpressed. Communications continue on all levels of existence, aware and unaware. Things are communicated and exchanged always, over distances vast and small. Effects are caused and visa versa.

The use of resources expends them, does replacement ever really keep up. The important question should always be are they being squandered, or wisely used for enhancement of the sojourn. Just as natural resources can be expended in decades while taking millions of years to create, so leveraging futures of satellites for the Planets and my goals can make the balance show a negative flow. But then was paying attention to the net loss flow creating more of the same. Was not acknowledging it going to change that trend? When do you stop throwing good energy after failed outcomes? When you start looking at the world and begin to feel total connectedness of all things many things become apparent. I wasn't looking or feeling, so nothing was apparent. As for my present hindsight? Delusion, deduction, or dementia? But whilst in the gravitational pull of the Planet, either needy, selfish, or on a mission and not aware of the total interconnectedness of things, one only feels drained.

Yet as merged as we both unknowingly were, looking back on things that you can never change much becomes apparent. Or so it seems now. The Planet and I were wearing each other out. Hopefully some of that energy was transferred to the satellites. Because they were just that. Open and receptive little sponges soaking in all around them. Bless the little sputniks hearts. While the Planet and I were draining all our energies in some sort of gravitational fracas, just as the earth from a distance may appear the calm blue marble spinning in the vastness of open space; while on ground level the dirt is full of rot, decay, and festering malignancies, so all appeared serene on the surface of our existence. But from such things birth comes forth.

As the unchanging landscape of the bleak and economically depressed South Shore panorama snaked by dailey, these were the thoughts that would fill my brain. I felt less and less connected to the world of business, more and more drawn to the world created in the depths of Indiana. My heart was drawn to what I really cared about. The Planet and the satellites. The next eye candy moving picture show to hawk and maintain market share of the newest snake oil or must have widget that must be possessed for fulfillment and prosperity was losing it's importance to my existence. But the cash flow this generated did not. Twenty years of success, which felt effortless, had lulled me into to a false sense of security. But our DNA demands competitiveness. It also gives us awareness of damage being done to it's structures. The pain, the demands had given me had made me numb to what was a living chronic infection. Only I could address the pain because it was mine. Each step was being counted. Measurements were taken on the necessity and benefit each step would produce. But the seeping festering wounds must be cauterized.

I knew what I had to do.

Friday, December 31, 2010

Drive by Communication

Drive by communication

It seemed that as our rotations fell further out of sync, the planet spent less and less time rotating on me, or me on the Planet. When less time is spent together, communicating either on the baser or higher levels, just how does one relate to the other. When the flows that make up a marriage stop, and given the difficulties of cross gender communication in general the home ecology can stagnate and poison itself. Worse yet what seemed to be a tactic akin to throwing a hand grenade into a room and running for cover became the Planets favorite mode of relating "important issues". For whatever reason the timing of broaching subjects always happened right before I had to get to the city for work on that South Shore Line, or she had some place to be (still gives me the shivers to imagine what that might have been) when a topic deserving of a lengthy discussion would be broached. I often had the feeling that as far as the Planet was concerned, the pin had been pulled, the safety had been released, and the grenade was now in my court. Unable to be completely explored at that moment, and an expedition unable to be resumed later in the day due to the Planets daily sunset. When the days light set on the Planets rotation, there was rarely any planet left. Tired, worn out and unresponsive. As I was worn out, in pain, and deadened by my daily endeavours. There was no exchange of any kind of energy. Only the need to recharge to continue on our separate orbits. So it went.

So the initial intentions of my daily trip into the darkness that is Indiana was the conservation of resources. Since the laws make all resources common, they had become the Planets as well. The two satellites had been launched, and the Planet had the luxury of being a stay at home mother. I came to notice however, in that rather rustic and isolated enclave on the banks of Big Lake Michigan, that there were two kinds of family organizations. The ones were the mothers stayed at home, with all the inherent horrors that implied to the Planet, and those that were two career families, and could afford or had the family near by to afford them the piece of mind, and freedom that child care can bring to the situation. The stay at home moms would look down on the working moms as shirking their maternal responsibilities, while the career women would smirk and disdain the stay at home for being drones and hopelessly oppressed by their domestic situations. By being good wifeys and mummsies they were viewed as leading less of an enriched life than these driven career birds of prey. The planets polarity was torn. The solution was in how the realities were viewed in the larger context.

Polarities within the family, polarities within individuals. What do you get when you have no dreams and the other has many dreams. What if the influences of feeling you have to keep up with the Jones's's next door is not realistic with the present cash flow. While the Planet was thoroughly ensconced in the day to day surroundings at one end of the South Shore line, I was in a struggle with pain, fatigue and the trying to maintain a career that, like so many things in my life up until then just seemed to happen.What I had set out to do, on the surface I had invariably done. I had much help, but then I started to feel and reject those who had helped. I was now throughly in the Planets gravitational pull. She was my reality. But what reality had the planet embraced. I knew what I thought I knew, but I realize now I did not know, and the Planet wasn't talking. I was talking but not apparently getting through. My presentation was ineffective and harmful to the Planets sensibilities I really didn't understand. What bothered me I vocalized, but apparently not in a language or a style that was being received by the Planet.

We all have different needs. Since I really didn't know or didn't admit to myself mine invariably made me unable to understand and supply the Planets. Planetary needs where plenty, and the drive of the Planet were never ending, and to me unfathomable. The Planets spinning was ceaseless, and apparently unable to gain the traction necessary to produce the desired result. I suspect now that result was an income for the Planet. For the Planet is always in motion. A decision that would not be revealed to me until years later, and much hemorrhagin of finances and resources. Financial prosperity was spewing into the universe at amazing speed, and I was unable, or unwilling to plug the holes. I never knew where they where or where they would materialize next. Life was a never ending fire drill. I could fool myself that at least on paper, because of a booming stock, economy, and real estate markets we were actually staying ahead of the game. I was wrong, as I started to be consistently wrong about almost everything. You have to put everything in place as if you are already successful or you will not be able to achieve what you want, sayeth the Planet, out of the pages of her many self help books. Worse yet I started to read them. When your major influence in life is your relationship with the Planet, you start thinking with in the same spheres. But I knew not what the grand planetary design was at the time. I would just get brief exposure at times, and only when there was no time for discussion. From now on I make my own time, because it is to costly not to.


Also Sprach The Planet

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

The Planet Is.

The planet is:


many stories
always changing
always tired
losing things
forgetting things
reading
buying things
gone on Saturdays
joining groups
sick
taking on more outside responsibilities
leaving more things undone
setting goals
wanting her way
caring
not caring
searching for peace
feeling unappreciated
repeating things
finishing sentences
trying to belong
never satisfied
expecting different results
hiding things
not speaking
cooking
warm chattering
going to therapy
spinning out of control
spinning into inaction
residing resplendent in squalor
not knowing where to start


What is the planet doing?

If I thought I knew I know I was wrong.


Which of course begs the question. What the hell was I doing. Which is probably the only question any of us can answer with any authority at all. The truly sad thing is that I would probably get the answer wrong. Sadder still is most of us would.

But I can tell you what I thought I was doing even if it was no where near good enough for the Planet.

earning a living
helping with the satellites
keeping the household books
doing the laundry
doing yard work
paying the bills
trying to make income faster than the planets outflow
thanking genuinely for ever kindness showed
being grateful
being a loving husband
being a responsible father

Gosh, I am so special. At least these were the things I thought I was doing. Was I succeeding. The answer to that becomes apparent as the journey on the South Shore Line continues. All answers become self evident upon closer examination. The real trick is to stop looking with our heads and start to see with our hearts. Now that the panic attacks have ceased it is much easier to do.

Caring for the Planet was indeed a full time job. Where as I come from a long line of stoics, there never seemed a time when the Planet wasn't tired, in pain , just plain tuckered out. I tried to understand incapacitating maladies that have nightly occurrences, but the stoic in me is ever skeptical. Being a couple that had dutifully read "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" while in marriage counselling, I tried very hard to go against my nature and try not to fix things. So what's the natural response. I guess I chose to listen when verbalization of issues out of my control were offered and then do nothing. Maybe that wasn't the right response.

Oopsy.

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

The Little Lords of Doom

Is it inevitable that they visit every Planet? I don't know. What are the first signs? Is it the increasing signs of neglect. Showing up not only on the physical side of the household, but on the satellites as well. Is it the first time you get home early and discover that the drapes have not been opened all day and the house is still dark. Even though the hasty claim of “closed for nap time” is made. There was a lot of napping going on in those days, and not by the two little lads. They obviously had vast amounts of time, especially Addison, to create huge crayon based murals on walls all over the house. While I have always been an advocate of the arts it never dawned on me to question that toddlers would have the swath of unsupervised time to create such masterpieces on walls as opposed to supplied paper. But I trusted.

Was it the vast number of self help books and novels of all sorts that piled up in the two places the Planet orbited most that should have heralded the stealth arrival of the Little Lords of Doom. Or was it just the piles of everything that gathered on counters, stuffed into closets, piled on desks, thrown into the garage. The vast amount of fast food wrappers that seemed ubiquitous on the floor and in the back of the mini van. Or should I have been concerned about the mail that was picked up at the mail box on the corner, but never made it into the house. After all, the Planet had the care and feeding of the beloved Clark and Addison to contend with. Who could not understand the leaving of a few bills that have fallen behind the seats of a mini van inhabited by the two celestial terrors that are young boys in the throws of the terrible twos and beyond. Even if the bills contained large charges that where not mentioned either in passing or in family finance discussions. Was this screening of mail a tactic learned in one of those ever present self help books.

However meals were always prepared, The Planet was a born earth mother southern girl in the kitchen. I never thought twice about my arrival in the door and her saying take care of the boys I have to get out of here. That, from what I hear, is very common amongst mothers in the last decade of the Twentieth Century. It was quite enjoyable to care for my young sons. Quite refreshing after having to deal with advertising people all day, and strangely similar in more ways than I care to mention. Battle though it was with the apparent lack of routine things like brushing teeth and picking up toy's was hard to enforce when it was unknown to the lads on a daily basis. You pick your battles after all. But Planetary battles pick you in reality.

And thus the Little Lords of Doom continued their insurgency.

About Me

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Purveyor of paralogical compliance to verbally mediated reality, artisanal smut, with a pinch of full time flâneur tossed in to taste.