kvetching up

  Entry 1 Driving home from spending time with Jenny's family, we repeatedly had a conversation about how devalued Jenny felt when no one asked her about her work that she wasn't important and that her worth was devalued. In their eyes, she would say, I am just a teacher. I would reassure her that her work was the most important work any of us did, and that teachers have historically been paid less because the workplace is so gendered. She looked for insult at each successive visit at any family event, and took greater umbrage.  It is absolutely true that other people's work would be discussed, and that it was rare that we would discuss Jenny's work. I don't know why that is, but it was a thing. I can say that when she was a new teacher she would regale all of us with stories, like when one of her students in her special ed class, would routinely pull his pants down and eat his flaking penis skin and how she dealt with it. As time went on, and maybe because she beca...

Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, 1628. Entry 1 I felt better with the sun out. It leavens my depression, not lifting it completely, but enough to relieve what is otherwise unrelenting. While the sun was relieving, I crave the darkness when I am blue. I wrap it around me like a blanket each night, and curse the longer days. While i hate the gray and darkness of winter in general, being swallowed by darkness is nature's metaphor for what I crave.   William  styron, in Darkness visible, a memoir about his depression written well before anybody was listening to Prozac, describes the "gray drizzle of horror induced by depression takes on the quality of physical pain." For me it's an ache, a nagging beast reminding me I am still here. I think my flavor of depression is less acute and yet longer lasting than Stryon's, but that is only speculation. If his was a failed transmission, stopping him dead in his tracks, mine is more like haivng the low air light in the tires...

Entry 1  7:57 AM 2.25.2024 Leiney's First Scone Ever. Evergreen State Fair, August 2004. Tomorrow is Leiney's 22nd birthday! Today, a party at my house. This should be interesting and I may deconstruct that later. Meanwhile, I am going to breakfast with Leiney and Jared in an hour and a half at the Whistle Stop. I am so glad I don't live far away where I can't see her regularly. She has remained, despite growing up, the most amazingly kind, optimistic and driven human. I am a proud papa. Happy Birthday, Snicklefritz!   --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Walking on egg shells was the way we lived for so long. We wanted to avoid the wrath, the anger. For me, I always believed in my heart of hearts that I was wrong. For instance, we entertained a lot all the years the kids were growing up. Whether with our extended family, with friends or, as per usual, both, we had people over. We would host. We would cook. We had the formal ...

Entry 1 "Part of surviving smear campaigns, part of it is knowing what it looks like. .  . The narcissistic person will have no problems telling bold-faced lies about you. It's like a gaslight. . . but you will be gaslighted by a massive group of people who will come up to you and say, "Whoa, he told me what you did, that wasn't cool."                                                  - Dr. Ramani Ursuvala Last week I had to get on Jenny's mac to find an old tax return to submit for the request for Abby's FAFSA. I knew that screen captures with relevant passwords from Jenny's phone were on the laptop. I just had to read through the jpgs to find them. I need to spend a day with the laptop and remove all the material on there not related to Jenny's affair and the programmatic disinformation she spread to people about me. This will spar...

For who knows where the time goes? Who knows where the time goes?  I ache, but for what I do not know. When does this solipsistic nonsense cease. I should be able to walk this off by now. Instead, I am in the dark. The Velvet Underground's Robert Yule is singing sweet nothings to me in his high pitched voice, while Lou Reed provides backup vocals. Meanwhile, I imagine--for no particular reason--what the streets of Manhattan must have looked like in 1971. I should be thankful I am not a slave to the needle like Lou Reed. It killed him eventually, as it does. Why it took him before that dreadful David Crosby, I do not know. T hat is neither here nor there. All those drugs poisoned his liver, and it killed him. It's ironic that the tumors on Jenny's liver are what killed her, ultimately. Two of my favorite people killed by the organ that is supposed to filter poison out of the blood.  On my first day in the Village for law school, I looked up and saw Lou Reed on the opposite s...

Entry 1 Memorabilia " It's that little souvenir of a terrible year  Which makes my eyes feel sore . . . " I don't want to say I stay home a lot, but the only time I ever leave the house is to get groceries or money to pay the handyman. That is it. For months . I wish it were different. If I could get my shit together. . . I would be a happier man. I am not completely isolated. While I haven't answered the phone for anyone but my kids, I do speak to them. I am honest with Leiney when talking about my mood, I don't discuss with the younger child at all--nor does she inquire. Babysitting Coop @ Ocean Park circa 2010 . Ain't it funny how time just slips away? The other evening, when speaking to Leiney, she asked if I would like to have dinner on March 3. I told her I would like to say yes, but for some reason thought there was something I had to do that day. Something I had to do.  .  . She politely reminded me that the thing in the back of my mind I could...

Entry 1 Long ago, it must be I have a photograph Preserve your memories They're all that's left you         -from Bookends by Simon and Garfunkel Leiney at S. Lucile Street, June 2004. From the time that we got our first digital camera, until the kids were in their early teens, I took more digital snaps than most can gauge. Tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of images and videos exist that no one has ever seen. I would take the pictures and videos and transfer them to a hard drive, but the vast majority went unreviewed, unseen. Not a person. My kids have never asked to see them, seemingly happy with the several thousand pictures that Jenny and I posted on Facebook, or that I forward to them from some cloud photo repository . Thinking about it, snapping all those images was really an attempt by me to stop time, to capture in a bottle every fleeting moment of the kids childhood, of our family life. Given the futility, maybe mama should have taken my Ko...

  Twin Towers You got off the plane that May, glowing with joy to see me. I met you at the gate. You could do that in 2000, without a security screen. In retrospect, you were bursting to tell me something. Before we could even leave the gate, you handed me a card and told me to open it. It was handmade. It was obviously made by a teacher--a Swiss teacher. Neat handwriting, stick figures, triptich in form made with fine point colored marker on thick construction paper. The first page was a stick person--a man. Under the man it said, "You." Pulling it open, the second image comes into view. Again a stick figure, with the standard girl hair that you see on them, essentially a Bell curve with ends curling up in opposite directions and a bow. It was labeled, "Me." The third was a baby's head in a bassinet, captioned, "And baby makes three!" I was clueless. I smiled, kissed you, and thanked you for the card. The look on my face clearly showed I...

 Entry 1 8:54 A.M. When Jenny was explaining why we were really like oil and water, which is, she claimed a primary reason she had the affair with el pinche, she explained that we had different love languages, the two of us. She, who left home as frequently as dandelion seeds hit by a lawn mower, insisted that her love language was quality time, and that mine was receiving gifts. She had determined mine simply through her years of proximity to me.  I had started hearing about "love language" several years ago, initially not paying Valentine's Day breakfast, a la Jenny, circa 2014. much attention to the idea. I also didn't question it. I eventually swallowed it in one gulp, when Jenny talked to me about it--ostensibly to make me understand how different we are--how incompatable. Ultimately, her love lingo argument was made clear that this idea was a primary post-hoc excuse for cheating on me and neglecting our children aover the 19 months she was dying. Perhaps it...

I stumbled across this cover of Amor Eterno performed by my favorite band back in 2012.  La Santa Cecilia, a Los Angeles band with more talent than feels fair. Life isn't fair. Marisol Hernandez has a voice like an angel, and the only singer besides Johnny Ray that can sing through tears and make a masterful performance transcendent. Okay, so, Johnny Ray couldn't really do that--but consider the material--"The Little White Cloud That Cried." Also, I am pretty sure his crying was pure schtick and on demand. Hernandez' tears slowly roll down her cheeks as she delivers a perfect rendition of Amor Eterno.    I am alone, not answering calls. Not talking to anyone but my kids and work, the latter only if unavoidable. I suppose that is how it is going to be. Catherine called tonight. Jane hasn't called in a week. I haven't ever responded to the family get together text for dinner tomorrow night. My invisible Magic 8 Ball says, "Outlook not so good." Fri...

 Entry 1   "The apotheosis of self-centered trivialit y !"                                      --Wilson Quarterly                  Taking a bath in the morning twilight. Roberta Flack singing about making love accompanies my plunge. The sickly treacle smell of bubble 🫧 bath 🫧 🛀  assaulting my nose while the warmth of the water makes me fight to stay awake. I can't decide if the effect of the warm water today is akin to the feeling you get 3 hours after smoking a joint--the sense of being so tired you just want to stop everything and it's a fight for every tenth of a millimeter you lift your eyelids. Given that I am shaking my left leg as if it were a fairground foot massager, I would say no. Cleaning day, which means I need to scramble out of this tub and go prepare the way for the cleaning person. Whi...

 Entry 1 Depression Is: When your bed is your second home. "Bed is our solace, it's where we go to think, to hide, to cope with whatever has us down. Sometimes we go there and hope we don't wake up, or at least when we do, our depression has subsided." The above quote from the Depression Is substack is a good reminder of why my bed is often my office, my place of contemplation, my base of operations these days. I like to tell myself I am just a bit blue, all the while evidencing the circular travels around a cul-de-sac of emotions. It's a bit like wallowing in shit without the enjoyment a pig gets out of such a roll. The best I can say about today is that I am up, out of the bedroom, bathed, brushed and working. That feels like an accomplishment.  I didn't realize when I was growing up, how tiny our 800 square foot home was. It is small enough for one person, but as many as six or seven lived in that place. I remember when I first experienced what in retrospec...