Round and Round I Spin, Where I Stop is Almost a Given

Three ways to spend my time. I always seem to choose the screen, giving my days away and not remembering what I saw.

The Nick of Time

I asked her to order the 100 pack of razor blades for me. She thought "why not?" and ordered two packs. At the rate I use them, I now have enough shaving blades to last for the next seven years. Or, to put another way, well into my fifties. I will now think about this every time I shave.

The Gods Love a Joke

Jeff Spate

Source

The sun plunges into the ocean
A blazing titanic stone
The mother of madness opens her arms
And swallows you whole in the night

Penny she waits all alone in the dark
Her tears outnumber the stars
Her man he’s been gone now for so long
Wonders will he ever come home

Icarus cried when his wings got fried
Sailing too close to the sun
He paid for his folly with his young life
Left a poor father to grieve

No it ain’t always funny but somehow its seems
The fates they just come in between
Cause the gods love a joke just like anyone else
Especially when the joke is on you

My New Answer to Everything

It started with fencing. The teenagers, finding me not as beatable as they thought, would ask me how long I'd been fencing. Wanting to be enigmatic and with a straight face, I'd say, "not long enough."

Lately, it seems to be my answer to every such question. But only because it's the honest one.

January was nine years since I got back into fencing. I fenced a little in college. I don't mean to say I fenced for a college. Rather, I took a class sophmore year, loved it, transferred colleges and joined a local club. For another year or so after that I fenced with them. There wasn't much organized fencing in my area and it being the pre-internet days I had no idea how or where to find any. My memory of the club I was in was looking at the fencing book and seeing if we matched the pictures. I never had much formal training.

Skip twelve years and lots of game changes later, I moved homes again. Amongst the many things I held onto was my fencing stuff. I had always picked up the foil to practice some parries, done a little footwork, and figured I'd get back into it. But after all those years of not fencing, I figured this was its last move and I would sell everything once I got settled in my newest place. Instead days after I moved I found an advertisement for a brand new fencing club just starting up. So, figuring it was a way to meet new people in my new home, I joined.

That was nine years, three clubs, two injuries, and lots of strip time ago. You would think, based on that list I'm an experienced fencer now. General fencing wisdom is that it takes three years to become a competent fencer. Based on the numbers alone, I must be three times better than competent by now. 

As we all know, numbers lie. In my case, they don't lie so much as betray. It's been nine years and not a whole lot of progress to show for it.

PICTURED: Not me. At all.

This is all brought home whenever I compete, which isn't often. I competed yesterday for the first time in a year and a half. I sucked. I'd say it's one of the worst showings I've had in a while, but as I mentioned, it's been a while since my last one.

Going into yesterday's event I thought I'd record my thoughts before and after to see what I found. It looks like this:

Before a Competition

• I'm excited to fence
• I can't believe I'm fencing. I always wanted to fence.
• I kinda hope it's over quickly
• Fear that I'm going to suck
• Guilt for not training harder
• Anger at others' abilities (this is where I compare myself to others)
• Resentment that I don't have more time and money to train
• Embarrassment for all of the above

After a Competition

• I QUIT!
• Fu-uck
• I gotta find a new club
• I gotta take more lessons
• NINE fucking years!
• I gotta get to the gym more
• I gotta be faster
• Let's get drunk
• I want to snap my blades in half
• I quit
• I'm clearly wasting my time

Why might you ask is this coming up now and not before? Because I've been taking three months of private lessons and yesterday's showing was horrible. It's like I learned nothing. Not only that, this one is getting in my way today. I really need to focus on other things at the moment, but instead I keep seeing all my mistakes. When I try to do something healthy about it, like search what others do to recover and move on, reading their words makes me angry about my situation all over again.

I'm putting this, raw as it is, here for the moment in the hopes that saying it aloud (sort of) will help unblock me and let me do what I need to. I just need to get past myself to move on right now. I'm so angry I don't even want to pick up my foil right now, much less figure more of it out.

A New Year Requires Old Quotes

It's a new year which means a new calendar (diary if you're from Britain). That means penning in quotes to help keep my on track throughout the year.

This year's list includes some old favorites and new thoughts.

Though long overdue, improving my handwriting is NOT on the resolution list again this year.

I want a busy life, a just mind, and a timely death. 

Zora Neal Hurston

Most people overestimate what they can do in a day but underestimate what they can do in a year. (Improved) Paraphrase of a Bill Gates quote

Less angst, more action.

Me (no really)

Never mistake motion for action.

Ernest Hemingway

I should have revered the last two, but one triggered the memory of the other.

How many times can I randomly write that I'm feeling overwhelmed on some scrap of paper which I leave stuffed in an unread book or on an untouched pile for my later self to find?

Evidently a lot. My past self is my current self's most consistent correspondent. The bitch is I can't write back. But, if I could I'd just keep sending this postcard:

A Veteran (With the War Paint to Prove It)

I don't know how she does it.How she gets me to do things. Well, I do know. It's her. One of my oldest and dearest friends. The woman who once slammed my hand with my own locker door, who I impersonated Miss Piggy for in Latin class, who never approved of the girls I dated, who got me to get a pedicure nine years ago and again last week.


This time was not as dramatic as the last. I was experienced now. I'd had a pedicure before, so I had a clue. There were some things that were different from then till now. The first time I was the only male in the salon and it was cause for comment among a few of the other non-males in the room. This time it was no deal (big or otherwise) at all. The first time, I got an extra foot rub instead of the nail polish. This time I got both.
 

And this 'ittle pitty got all tarted up.

It's been a week living with technicolor toes and I've noticed a few things:

• Every time (I mean, every. time.) I see my feet now I wonder whose feet are attached to my legs.
• I don't feel the polish has polished my podiatric presentation that much (next time I'm getting the "Dressed to Kilt" red instead of the "Dating a Royal" blue)
• There's no small glee in being at work and knowing that I'm the only one who knows my toes are painted. It's like when I wore the novelty underpants to a funeral.
• That glee is often momentary, because I readily forget about the polish. Which hasn't been an issue, except when I went to change into my sneakers in the locker room and my naked toes reminded me they were painted before my brain did. I'm somebody's story now.
• I did not, repeat NOT, feel like less of a man with nail polish on. It made no difference to my self-perception. Which means, it's the kind of thing I can do or not because I want to, not because someone else expects it.

Thanks to Mei-Mei for taking such thoughtful care of me these last 26 years.

Same Cloth, Different Color

Dead. You're not supposed to be dead. You were supposed to live forever. Or so you thought. You lived like there was no tomorrow and now, suddenly, there isn't.

But tomorrow isn't what I'm thinking about. It's yesterday. Twenty-two years of yesterdays ago. In the course of one weekend, which started standing at the open trunk of your car, you added so much to my life. Things I still treasure. Things that make me laugh and feel stronger and remind me to keep going. Things I have passed on to others, sometimes without giving credit where it was due. Friends now think of these things as mine, but I know they're yours on loan to me.

How did you die so quickly? Weren't you getting better? You were supposed to get better.

The last time we spent together was Bethlehem in 1999. Has it really been that long? Friends for six years and silence for much of the rest? I know why.

That last time it was you and Ann Marie and that girl I picked up who I never should have. Like the smiling devil you were, you sat on my shoulder encouraging the sin. It scared me less that I listened to you than that your voice effortlessly made all the angst seem so pointless. It was too much power for someone to have over me, so I walked away before it was too late. But first, I spent the night with that girl. I'm still not sure who was more pleased about that, me or you.

But it wasn't only that. As we once said, we were cut of the same cloth, but dyed different colors. Yours was a world of wenches and fantasy and bravado. Mine was a world of guilt and history and insecurity. Over time I felt our colors weren't as complementary as I once thought. I drifted away, but not without taking swatches of you with me.

Above all the rest, I still carry a little you-shaped devil with me. He's on my shoulder whenever I want to be puckish or bawdy. And if I say my mind at those times, he's behind the Cheshire cat smile on my lips. It's never as broad as yours, but it's there just the same.

Thank you for everything. All the Harpo handshakes (and knowing what they are), the sword-play, the aimless drives that went somewhere, the Dark Side, and Tom Lehrer. Mostly, thanks for making me a fuller person.

You have done well. But it'll take time. You are generations being born and dying. You are at one with all living things.... You have power beyond imagination. Use it well, my friend.

No Thanks, I've Seen This One Before

It’s one A.M. and I’m dead alive. One or both of those anyway.

It’s a nightmare. And not just any nightmare. It’s a rerun, written by the evil offspring of O. Henry and Hitchcock. It goes like this:

I find a man in a darkened room. He’s almost dead. He’s got a long, thin, curved face, like a lobster claw on a neck. At first, I think he’s dead. There’s no motion, no breath, so I leave.

After this, things get a bit hazy. What’s certain is that there are a series of suspicious deaths which look increasingly, to me anyway, like murder. Each of the numberless deaths appear to be a severe test of their physical limits. Ultimately, as my sanity strains with each death (over the course of a single day!) I wind up back at claw face’s to sleep. Because that’s restful.

I’m in a back room on a couch. Someone is in the room with me (I think). Finally, as the intensity of each death hits me, breaking down my sanity, I run through the house to claw face’s room. I was wrong. He is still alive, but barely. I start to wake him, fighting off the urge to rouse him so frantically that I kill him and almost burst my own heart.

As  he wakes, I realize that I’ve become another guinea pig for the test. I don’t solve the mystery of the person behind the curtain, because the realization of my situation pushes me over the edge, exploding my heart, and I die - waking up in the real world, totally disoriented and scared. I’m dead, right? Dead and gone. My mind shattered…

I want to run, but there are warm covers over me and my wife sleeping next to me. Is she dead? Did she fail the test? Did I do anything to stop it? Anything to encourage it?

As my eyes adjust to the darkness, my mind adjusts to the reality. I realize two things: I’m in my bedroom, safe, and I’ve been with claw face and the rest before. In the bright light of the back room, I wish that this is my last visit and that I’ll never go back.

And now, almost twenty four hours later, I’m too blood-shy to fall asleep.

Sing, Sing, Sing

Anger is a brief madness. HORACE

Lately, in an effort to slay my latent and expressed anger, I've been writing and raving and singing. Yes, singing. My life requires a soundtrack, always. Particularly one I can sing to. Even my anger. Especially my anger.

When I'm angry there are dozens of potentially suitable songs which could be played. But I've noticed over the years there are four that play during every outburst. These are them.

"All Apologies" - Nirvana

"Behind Blue Eyes" - The Who

"Basket Case" - Green Day

"Destroyer" - The Kinks

It's all further evidence that I'm trapped in Stuart Smalley's hell and it makes me angry.

I should say no matter my mood I will belt these out if I hear them. Like right now. I'm singing while I write this.

Why Do I Smell Smoke?

An old girlfriend of mine once told me that had I lived during the Reformation I would have been burned at the stake.

On the bright side, I do prefer to be hot rather than cold.

At the time I thought she said it because of my theological outlook. Over the last twenty years, though, I've come to think that she meant something much more intrinsic.

This all comes on the heels of a day where I was perhaps too zealous in my approach. Though in some cases, I knew what I was doing and wanted to provoke the moment so we could have a conversation. I did that because, despite claims to the contrary, we don't actually talk about necessary things.

What happened was a typical conversation which included altered histories, insecurities masked beneath authority, and a general expression of victimhood.

Perhaps the most disappointing part of a disappointing day is the realization that, for the most part, I work with and for children. Public tantrums are permitted under the guise of compassion, all constructive criticism is taken as condemnation, and an absence of any plan or direction is considered freeing. In almost every way it's the opposite of how I want to be. And just to add to these joys, it's been explained to me that all change only comes from the top down, but there's currently no need for change because we. are. perfect.

The hardest part of all is knowing I'm complicit in this too. I add to the crazy, but with the best of intentions. Which is just like them. They only have good intentions. They may not see the whole board the way I do, but they're still well-intentioned. Besides, none of them are smart or talented enough to be Machiavellian.

Still, I'm not always easiest person to work with. I expect an awful lot. Mostly, I expect people to bring their brains and use them, actively find ways to be better today then yesterday, and be open to the new. That list sounds benign, but it's not. It's about change and power and effort. Dangerous things that, if you're the one being read the list, can leave anyone feeling judged ineffectual and wanting.

I guess it all comes down to this: I'm clearly worshiping in the wrong church and I'd better get out before they lash me to the stake and toss the torches.

Old Hopes For a New Year

My hopes (and needs) for 2015 are the same as they were for 2014. They include:

Hack away at the unessential.

Spend time on creativity.

Nurture connections.

Take better mental & physical care of myself.

Present myself in best possible way.

Ignore repetition and try the new.

Don’t wait, do it now.

Having lived with these directives to myself for a year I realize two things. These are exactly what I need to spend time doing. Secondly, I should remember that not waiting makes achieving the others much easier.

Am I Too Tired or Are You a Nachzehrer?

I'm always saying this...

... but I have to be honest, these last few days I'm too tired to fight. Too tired to care what lies beneath the facade. To tired to deal with your irksome bullshit. I just want to get something real, something of value, accomplished. Preferably without you trying to water it down, push it away, or ignore the realities of it.

It kills me that your voices are among the most common I hear in my head now. I let that happen, I know. But still, why am I giving you valuable air time in my mind? Why do you get to drain my energy without paying for it in some way?

The worrisome part isn't that I'm just tired, it's that I think you've made me start to not care. Not caring is the absence of hope, and that's soul-sucking. But that might explain why no matter how much sleep I get I'm not rested, no matter how well I eat I'm nauseated, or no matter how I try to reign myself I'm still running (even in my sleep).

The more you say it's impossible, the more I want to work to prove it's not. Which tires me out even more.

I need to bring something tangible to fruition, to create order out of the chaos, which actually happens to be my job. I also need to keep you and your incredibly unhelpful thoughts at bay.


PS A Nachzehrer is a soul-sucking, not blood-sucking, German vampire.

While at a Meeting About the Future Which Couldn't Escape the Past

I watched as she poured salt all over her unsaid list of thoughts and frustrations, which didn't heal anything, but hurt just as much.

His Verse Ended Abruptly

Like the rest of the world I saw that Robin Williams not only died, he committed suicide today. I find his death affects me more than I would have guessed. I'm crying.

I have life-long relationship with Robin Williams. One of the earliest gifts I remember getting was a Mork action figure and egg ship. His A Night at the Met album was the first and only album my father took away from me for being too "adult." My high school friends and I created a poetry club based on Dead Poets Society. While my immediate circle of friends has changed over the years, each group has spent time watching Robin Williams films. And, perhaps most importantly, the first pair of naked breasts I ever remember seeing was in The World According to Garp when my age was still in single digits.

Yes, I'm actually crying over him. Not because he died, but because he killed himself. Because I also have a lifelong relationship with depression. What makes this so confusing is that at some of the worst times of my life his work helped get me through it. I keep wondering who made him laugh? Or more to the point, who did reach out to for laughter?

I know I shouldn't take his death to heart, but I took his life to heart, so why not this too?

For him, I offer this, The Clown's Prayer:

As I stumble through this life,
help me to create more laughter than tears,
dispense more cheer than gloom,
spread more cheer than despair.

Never let me become so indifferent,
that I will fail to see the wonders in the eyes of a child,
or the twinkle in the eyes of the aged.

Never let me forget that my total effort is to cheer people,
make them happy, and forget momentarily,
all the unpleasantness in their lives.

And in my final moment,
may I hear You whisper:
"When you made My people smile,
you made Me smile."

-Anonymous-

Groucho's Poem From the Play "Animal Crackers"

When we did "Animal Crackers" we needed two minutes for a change - a scenery change - so I wrote a ridiculous poem. And I always think of whether the audiences really listens to the actor on the stage. I wrote the most ridiculous poem, you could possibly write, and tried it on the audience. And the first three weeks we did the show, we used to get a sophisticated New York audience, and they used to laugh and they used to applaud at the end. Then we started to get the out-of-towners, people from the middle west, and they thought I were serious. Here's the way it goes:
  Did you ever sit and ponder, as you walk along the strand,
that life's a bitter battle at the best.
And if you only knew it you would lend a helping hand,
then every man could meet the final test.
The world is but a stage, my friend, and life's but a game,
and how you play is all that matters in the end.
But whether a man is right or wrong, a woman gets the blame,
and your mother is your dog's best friend.
Then up came mighty Casey, and strode up to the bat,
and Sheridan was fifty miles away.
For it takes a heap of loving to make a home like that,
on the road to where the flying fishes play.
Then I used to take a chair, which the vaudeville actors used to do in those days, and I would start walking off the stage, and the last line would be:

So be a real life Pagliac'
and laugh, Clown, laugh.

Source

Fate, The Jester

by Arthur Guiterman

 The planets are bells on his motley,
   He fleers at the stars in their state,
He banters the suns burning hotly -
   The Jester whose nickname is Fate.

The lanterns that kindle their rays with
   The comets, are food for his mirth;
But, oh, how he laughs as he plays with
   His mad little bauble, the Earth

He looks on the atomies crowding
   The face of our pitiful ball;
His form in the nebulae shrouding,
   He chuckles, unnoted of all

The valorous puppets that chatter
   Superbly of Little and Great.
A flip of his finger would shatter
   The dreams of these "Masters of Fate" -


He laughs at their strivings and rages
   And tosses the murmurant sphere
To bowl through the zodiac-stages
   That measure the groove of a Year.

He laughs as he trips up the maddest
   Who scramble for power and place,
But laughs with the bravest and gladdest -
   Fate's comrades, who laugh in his face;

Who laugh at themselves and their troubles
   Whatever the beaker they quaff;
Who, laughing at Vanity's bubbles,
   Forget not to love as they laugh;

Who laugh in the teeth of disaster,
   Yet hope through the darkness to find
A road past the stars to a Master
   Of Fate in the vastness behind.

Source

Jester Envy

From William Shakespeare's As You Like It (c. 1600), Act II, Scene VII

JACQUES
A fool, a fool! I met a fool i' the forest,
A motley fool; a miserable world!
As I do live by food, I met a fool
Who laid him down and bask'd him in the sun,
And rail'd on Lady Fortune in good terms,
In good set terms and yet a motley fool.
'Good morrow, fool,' quoth I. 'No, sir,' quoth he,
'Call me not fool till heaven hath sent me fortune:'
And then he drew a dial from his poke,
And, looking on it with lack-lustre eye,
Says very wisely, 'It is ten o'clock:
Thus we may see,' quoth he, 'how the world wags:
'Tis but an hour ago since it was nine,
And after one hour more 'twill be eleven;
And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe,
And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot;
And thereby hangs a tale.' When I did hear
The motley fool thus moral on the time,
My lungs began to crow like chanticleer,
That fools should be so deep-contemplative,
And I did laugh sans intermission
An hour by his dial. O noble fool!
A worthy fool! Motley's the only wear.

DUKE SENIOR
What fool is this?

JACQUES
O worthy fool! One that hath been a courtier,
And says, if ladies be but young and fair,
They have the gift to know it: and in his brain,
Which is as dry as the remainder biscuit
After a voyage, he hath strange places cramm'd
With observation, the which he vents
In mangled forms. O that I were a fool!
I am ambitious for a motley coat.

DUKE SENIOR
Thou shalt have one.

JACQUES
It is my only suit;
Provided that you weed your better judgments
Of all opinion that grows rank in them
That I am wise. I must have liberty
Withal, as large a charter as the wind,
To blow on whom I please; for so fools have;
And they that are most galled with my folly,
They most must laugh. And why, sir, must they so?
The 'why' is plain as way to parish church:
He that a fool doth very wisely hit
Doth very foolishly, although he smart,
Not to seem senseless of the bob: if not,
The wise man's folly is anatomized
Even by the squandering glances of the fool.
Invest me in my motley; give me leave
To speak my mind, and I will through and through
Cleanse the foul body of the infected world,
If they will patiently receive my medicine.

Mover & Shaker

She said, "He'll shake things up and then leave without an explanation." A smile was on my lips and a denial in my throat when I realized she wasn't all together wrong. I'd like to say it was just her perception of me, but I can't honestly do so. I've said the same thing about myself, but less directly: I have no stamina.

Strange as it sounds, I prefer her version.

Funny how ten minutes after that bit of truth was tossed at me I got a phone call about a meeting I forgot I had in the next hour. What did I do? I begged off, but not before offering a big, shiny new idea. And then I hung up.

Now, as always, I'm panicky in the aftermath. My shame urges me on to do something, anything, to prove that I can follow through. So instead of doing anything I said I would, I unpacked and arranged the house a little more. It didn't help. Turns out it take more then half an hour. So I stopped.

Since motion seems to be my problem, I thought I'd sit down for once and take some action.