kvetching up

Entry 1 Sunday mornings are as hard as Kris Kristofferson warned they could be. I'm listening to Anna Scouten cover John Hartford's Tall Buildings . It's a sad song about giving up childhood dreams and succumbing to the drudgery of typical American life. I remember when I was excited about that prospect, when I realized I could actually do such a thing. I have missing years. Not Somewhere in Oregon, 2014ish . like Jesus, more like a low-rent Lazarus, some denizen of the original skid road . A particularly apt description, given my Seattle origins, my preteen retreat into drugs and the attendant abandonment of same nearly 10 years later at the ripe old age of 20.  These Sunday mornings are all the more brutal with the advent of spring and daylight savings time. In the darkness of winter mornings, it takes my brain longer to wander into memories and suppositions about what was, what is, and what could have been. In the cold light of early spring, pain shines like a beacon. I...

Early mornings, the dogs nearby and content, music playing, alone with my thoughts, this is when the darkness comes. " Nobody said it was easy, nobody said it would be so hard ," Aimee Mann sings through her nose, reminding me that I am woefully unprepared to be alone, and irretrievably broken to move forward. I spin in circles all the time.  Grief moves at its own pace . I am sad for so much. I grieve her passing. I grieve for my girls loss of their mother. I grieve for the relationship I thought was one thing, but was another. The loss of time I could have spent with someone that loved me, that better part of my life that I will never get back, these things I mourn as well. I of misspent youth, awho always blamed myself for her anger toward me, even though I knew it to be irrational at the time. I, who believed myself so smart, to realize I am the fool, who disguised himself from himself only by not wearing harlequin and a motley. We all build sandcastles against the tide o...

Entry 1   Goals, Planning, And Dark At The End Of The Tunnel When I was in my mid-20s, I lived a mile or so away from my friend Shaun, who was 21. We met when I was a counselor at Camp Waskowitz MDA camp and he a camper.  MD stands for muscular dystrophy. Shaun had Duchenne's, a particularly virulent genetic disorder that kills all the muscles in your body, slowly, starting generally around the age of 2. 99.9999 percent of people with Duchenne's don't make 20.  I could go into the science of the disease, but suffice it to say, it is a fucker. Time Flies Anyway, one day, Shaun calls me up and asks me to come over.  He said he needed to talk to me. We were friends, not close friends, but bonded after spending more than a decade together with others at camp.  I hopped in my truck and headed over.  When I got there, his parents were gone, or just leaving. I don't remember. Given that he couldn't move any part of his body save his fingers and his head, they...