Alex’s Rants

I love my kids but sometimes they drive me crazy. The trip might not be long and arduous to start with, so I suppose it’s not fair to blame my insanity entirely on them.  Where does it all come from, the insanity that is? We live in a crazy world, a world of bizarre irrationalities, we care so much about global warming yet the real threats to humanity such as the 20,000 nuclear weapons pointed every which way seem to escape our notice. Where did things go wrong? To believe the Bible, which I don’t, it began with THE WOMAN, and her beguiling lure of Adam into depravity. I suspect Eve was simply hot and Adam, having been created at some distant undisclosed point in the past, was horny. He just may not have known it at the time. Out of the pool they went, and the rest is history as they say. Mankind is still recovering from these transgressions, both getting kicked out of the pool and pining after the hot women. Personally, I can’t claim much enlightenment.

Every time I go into the bathroom the hand towel is on the floor. How many times have I asked my kids to make sure it gets hung up? The stars will sooner stop rising in the evening than they’ll remember to hang it up. How many times have I reminded them to brush their teeth in the morning? More times than Constantinople was invaded by the Turks, only to have them decide they liked the place and stayed. How many times have I suggested that when using the last of the toilet paper on the roll that they reach into the drawers directly in front of them to replace the roll with a new one? Have I ever seen this done? I will see the roll taken out and placed in some handy location, the shelf next to the toilet, on the back of the toilet, but not the roll. The leaves will sooner stop falling from the trees come fall before the roll is replaced when empty.

Then again my kids always have a way of redeeming themselves. Before leaving for Manitoba my son N* came outside in the dark to give me a hug and say goodbye. It wasn’t even 6am. I heard his door open and wasn’t sure what he was doing, I thought the truck starting might have woken up. What are you doing up? Dad, I set the alarm so I could say goodbye to you! I hugged him and kissed him and told him I loved him. The towels, teeth and toilet paper suddenly didn’t seem that important. My daughter will always come into my bedroom and kiss me goodnight if I forget to come in and say goodnight to her. My other son made me a Fathers Day card, a stencil, that said “I love you Dad. I wish you could live forever.” How can I care about the mundane when my kids see such a larger picture of what is important. If someone wants you to live forever does it really matter whether the toilet paper holder has the roll on it? If someone wants to say goodnight does it really matter whether shoes have always been taken off before going into the house? I can learn something from my children, that’s why I love them so much and can’t imagine what my life, and who I would be, without them.

I’m with my kids and we are visiting the Goshen Ocean. This is pond that was created by the US Army Corps of Engineers on a minor tributary of the Sugar River, in Goshen NH. It’s memorable because it caused quite a stir in the town at the time when I was growing. The Corps seized the land with eminent domain and we were very good friends with the Pertuccios, who owned a large chunk of property in Goshen and the proposed “Goshen Ocean” would bisect their property in an ugly fashion. The government being what it is, the Army no less, of course got their way, and the Pertuccios got their pittance for their bisected property.

In the dream I’m explaining these details to my kids. I’ve brought my canoe and we are now paddling across the pond. I’m on the lookout for a trail, this would be the trail that I rode on with the husband Pertuccio, I can’t remember his first name of. He had an old Wiley jeep and had made a road through/around his property, this included building his own bridge across the brook that has since disappeared into the pond. Interestingly I’m telling my kids in the dream about our adventures traveling their property, bouncing up and down in the jeep, and even describing the size of the boulders we traversed in the jeep. The boulders were trial sized, impossible to traverse in a jeep, but nonetheless we did. It is a dream after all, certain liberties are acceptable under the circumstances. In actuality we NEVER got to take our ride in the jeep - but I always wanted to badly. I traversed those boulders, and the trail, vicariously in my dream. I also always wanted to go shooting at the Pertuccios and my Dad at one point promised to do this but this never materialized either. This is my Dad, long on words, short on actions. He never once came through with his promises for us. Do I sound like I haven’t gotten over it? I hope not! Hey, I’m not dead yet!

We see several paths around the “ocean” but I can’t remember which is the right one. In real life the trail exited the brook into a wooded property, in my dream it’s something like an open field with worn paths that were each once roads of some sort, like wagon ruts. We pick one that looks promising and disembark from the canoe. We start walking up the path, in leads over a wooded hill, through some pucker brush then another pond appears. Interestingly this pond looks like Rand Pond, which we grew up on. There are small cabins and docks around the pond. There is a recreation cabin that looks just like the one on Rand Pond. Occasionally my brother and I would walk down to the recreation cabin at the campground on Rand Pond. I don’t think we were allowed there as it was intended for the guests of the campground, once when we told our Dad where we had gone he got quite upset and forbid us from going there ever again. That didn’t stop us though, but it seems with the fear of our father that we possessed we weren’t quite as enthusiastic after that, more like fearful. Plus they often didn’t have any ping-pong balls around for the tables, and it’s tough to play ping-pong without a ball. There was a machine that dispensed them but it took 2 quarters and we didn’t usually have any money. Same problem.

Inside the room is a ping-pong table, my Dad and a woman. The woman appears to be about my age and actually resembles T*, my cousin on my Dad’s side of the family. I have one cousin on each side of my family - that’s it. They both have the same name. I’m not sure what that means. I have a small family? Sometimes it seems too big. The woman is attractive and in the dream I’m attracted to her. She has an Eastern European accent. I think about how long it’s been since I’ve been on a date and how I miss being with a woman. In reality I do indeed miss being with a woman, but it seems mostly I just miss the sex. She is wearing a grey sweater with blue jeans. Unfortunately she appears to have some kind of relationship with my Dad - the nature of which is not clear. I start chatting with her, making small talk. We talk about the ping-pong table. She agrees to meet me for ice cream the next night. In the dream though I become repulsed thinking about having sex with a woman that has had sex with my father. Fortunately I think that is normal to be repulsed by such a thought. I can’t say all of my dreams feature normal human behavior, we’ll make an exception in this case.

Night before last I broke up with R*, assuming that 2 dates qualifies for “break-up” status. I think it does. We definitely got pretty close given the limited time together. Don’t forget phone and email! She is a sweet girl and a part of me feels bad about it – even now. It had to happen though. I’ve got no time for project women, and so far all the women I’ve met are projects. I could have an attitude problem as most women seem to have some degree of “project” to them, so do I accept the “project” or not? To say “Not” means I’m alone, which coincidentally is where I find myself! Yes I understand, not really a coincidence!

Breaking up is hard to do. I want a relationship to work and every woman has the potential for something better, but I develop a feeling early on where a relationship is going to go, then events that transpire have a way of proving my feelings right. I’ve realized one important lesson – women that contact me, as R* did, are somewhat desperate. They need something in their lives and they don’t have enough other interests to be “engaged” sufficiently so they don’t have time for such perusing. Maybe this is somewhat cynical, but it seems true. What, me cynical? It’s like I don’t know myself anymore! Speaking of which, I need to write more humor. I do think about things in funny ways, but for some reason my writing is overwhelmingly negative. I can be funny, believe me! Ah, who am I kidding?

Getting back to breaking up. Breaking up is hard mostly because of guilt. You feel bad having invested time and energy into a possibility and don’t want to disappoint the other person. I’ve also learned that sex should be put off as long as possible, this confuses the emotions and makes the guilt trip more severe. R* made it relatively easy though. We hadn’t had sex. I already had some doubts brewing about our future when she sends me a text at 11PM on a night before a business trip, which she knew I was going on, asking me to call, only for me to find out she wanted to labor the topic of her “abusive” first husband and her inability to deal with the fact that while they are no longer married that he is still the father of 2 of her children and God Forbid he should want to see them a few times a year. I tried to offer my point-of-view which was a big mistake, it got turned around into a statement by her that “I don’t understand victim mentality”. That’s right, I only grew up with an emotionally and mentally abusive father, but what do I know about “victims”? I’m a man also, but that also doesn’t qualify me for much in this department. I do understand though the connection that a father feels for his children, whether he is a good father or not, and the challenge it is for women that have been mistreated by their one-time husband to separate their feelings to allow them contact with their children. So many women extend their feelings regarding their childrens father and are unable to separate their children from themselves. The result of course is that their children miss out on the experience of knowing their fathers, for better or worse. Even a bad father, unless the child is in obvious harms way, deserves to have the opportunity for a relationship with their children.

But hey, what do I understand? As if to put the final nail in the coffin that I was already pretty much finished assembling the next day she sends me a “chain” text message as follows:

“Find a guy that calls you beautiful instead of hot, who calls you back when you hang up on him. Who will stay awake just to watch you sleep. Wait for the guy who kisses your forehead. Who wants to show you off to the world when you are in your sweats. Who holds your hand in front of his friends. Wait for one who is constantly reminding you of how much he cares about you and how lucky he is to have you. Wait for the one who turns to his friends and says “That’s her.” If you open this you have to forward it to 10 people or you will have bad luck in love for the rest of your life!!!”

Seriously, who comes up with this shit? First of all, THAT MAN DOESN’T EXIST! Why is this so hard for women to understand? Second of all, if they REALLY want such a man then they really should spend their time working on BEING this type of woman. How many women are like this? NOT MANY. Many women are rather self-absorbed and self-centered. This isn’t to say men aren’t either, but men are much less capable of hiding their inadequacies. Many women can pretend very convincingly to be someone else, and then expect to find the man who will be so good to them. If I needed further convincing of my feelings about R*, well that did the trick! I am obviously not up to being her man, because to be her man would mean being a 10x better person than her. What kind of relationship is that? Get a reasonable view of yourself and your limitations, then you’ll have basis for finding someone who reasonably meets your expectations.

I wrote her back, “it seems u hv me confused wth smone else-I’ll try to call tom nite”. The phone call the next night was short and sweet, well not literally sweet, figuratively we’ll say. I could tell from her pensive tone when she answered the phone and during the introductory chit-chat that she was expecting the “train has reached the end-of-the-line” conversation. I suggested that our scheduled date for a few nights hence was not a good idea, and in general, while I had a good time with her so far, I didn’t feel it was a good idea to see each other further. She asked for an explanation to which I explained that she deserved a great guy, and I wasn’t such a guy. She disagreed with me, but I assured her that she didn’t know me very well and I really wasn’t a nice man. This is true of course, but what I really meant by this is that she has so many issues that it WOULD take a much better man than myself to co-exist peacefully with her. After 2 dates and a few phone calls I could already feel my patience for her defeatist, sexist, ex-bashing, take no responsibility attitude, plummeting faster than Little Boy on his way to toast Hiroshima. Poor Japs. She wanted an explanation but I kindly explained I didn’t have good experience with such, after all why ruin the possibility of friendship by explaining everything? What is there to explain anyway? Didn’t work out, keep on truckin’, life goes on.

Have spent most of the last 4 days in hospitals, not the best times of my life for sure. I took my kids dirt-biking last Saturday, on the trail between Newport and Claremont. N* lost control of his bike heading into a corner, he was startled it seems by some riders coming the other way. S* following behind him hit his bike and then went off the trail down an embankment into the Sugar River. N* bruised his back, S* ruptured her spleen and sustained a compression fracture of V7. I didn’t know all this at the time. S* was in serious pain, I looked her over but didn’t see any bruising on her back or stomach so didn’t see what might be wrong. I suspected she had bruised her ribs or one of her organs. N* was complaining similarly but also didn’t have any signs of blunt trauma on his back or ribs. He was not in such pain as S*.

I thought about calling 911 but I didn’t see any sign of major injury and could imagine a grueling ordeal of Newport EMS getting them off the trail. Seemed better to get them out myself. I raced back to my truck all the way in Newport, about 4 miles away. Loaded the bike then raced back to the nearest drive-in, about ½ mile from the accident. In the meantime the father with his 2 kids had gotten S* up and walking back to the truck. I met them 2/3rds of the way from the truck. I walked with S* for a while, then decided to see if her motorcycle (being brought by the other people) would start. It did so I rode her the rest of the way, maybe ½ way by now, back to the truck. Got N* in, he walked most of the way himself, loaded up and headed to New London Hospital.

Big Mistake. I was in Newport and thought about heading up to Dartmouth-Hitchcock, probably would have been 10 minutes further at the most. I will never make this mistake again. After an hour there it was clear NL Hospital was not capable of dealing with her injuries. The doctor admitted as much so called DHMC to have her admitted. The head of trauma at DHMC refused her admission, citing insufficient information to understand the severity of her injuries. That initiated an involved argument with the doctor in NL, he already admitted that they couldn’t help her, but DHMC, the hospital that could, wouldn’t admit her. That is really fucked up, and I told the doctor so. At first he was antagonistic towards me, but I think once the severity of her injuries became apparent he softened up considerably. I don’t understand that mentality – regardless of the severity shouldn’t doctors be universally sympathetic to the plight of their patients?

DHMC wanted him to run a “long-prep” CT Scan, to his credit the NL doctor ordered a “short-prep” CT Scan. It still took 2 hours to get the scan and results back, they indicated a grade-4 spleen laceration, including a moderate to large amount of internal bleeding and accumulation. The doctor called DHMC back and this time there wasn’t any argument from them – they even offered to copter her but the copter was out on a call. By this time N* was complaining of severe pain in his abdomen and back so they ordered a CT Scan on him as well. I had to leave N* in the ER at NL though, to accompany S* to DHMC. I really hated doing that but I couldn’t get a hold of anyone. I felt awful leaving him there, all alone in the ER in his bed. It’s the worst position for a parent to be in, he wasn’t hurt as bad but having to leave one of your children while they are in pain is agonizing.
Raced home to get my cell phone, then to the hospital. Got to go 90mph with flashers on, didn’t even get the pleasure of explaining to any police the reason for my high speed. I cried for parts of the trip up, the emotions of it all were over-whelming me. I love my daughter to death, seeing her in pain and feeling some responsibility about it and not being able to do anything tangible to help her, was all getting to be too much. S* was already in the ER when I arrived. I was rip-shit at them, but also thankful she was being taken care of. One thing to say about DHMC – they do a good job. I lit into the “nurse liaison” then the head of trauma himself, Dr. S*. He proceeded to then lecture me how “we can’t deal with all the stupid things people do to themselves”. I wasn’t happy with his lecture but he was at our bedside and I had already subjected S* to enough arguments with doctors – better to let it go for the time being and focus on her care. Continuing this argument wasn’t going to help anyone at this point. They are going to hear from me though! Dr. S* was obviously very competent, tough to stay upset when finally my daughter was getting really good care.

They ran more scans on her and also found the compression fracture. No instability was detected however so they weren’t worried about her. L* arrived at DHMC after seeing N* discharged, S* was still in the ER. Her vitals were stable so after an hour or so of tests and observation they decided to move her to the Pediatric ICU. It was now Midnight. It was going to be a long night. The next hour was spent trying to figure out why the morphine was working – 7mg had supposedly been dosed to her now, she should have been out like a light, instead she was near crying with pain. After several requests to check her drip they finally figured out the pump wasn’t working – it was showing delivery but the syringe wasn’t being compressed. Nice. Replacement of the pump finally got her comfortable. She was resting finally so I tried to get some sleep, in between beeping machines and S* waking. L* decided to go home to be with N*, then would come up in the morning. I was a sleep deprived wreck by morning, but nothing compared with S*. She was and is still in extreme pain, nauseous and uncomfortable. She is such a trooper though and while racked with guilt over the whole episode also find myself with newfound respect and admiration for her. She makes me so proud.

Now, I’m sitting here next to her while she sleeps in bed. It’s Wednesday afternoon. Her belly is distended with blood and swelling but she looks peaceful and dreamy. I know she doesn’t feel this way. My mom just interrupted my writing with a call – turns out she was trying to reach K* G* and mistakenly dialed called my cell phone accidentally. I wonder what that call was all about – I can’t help but think negatively, largely because my mother has routinely rewarded my suspicions as being correct. I had spoken to her about blood transfusions, how it could have been low enough for her to receive one. I would allow it in a heart-beat if it meant saving S* life. Mom didn’t say anything but I’m sure she was wracked inside at just the thought of it. My baby, full of some strangers evil blood! How will I justify spending time with such a defiled being? She is one confused person. It’s hard to believe I was once a part of that insanity. It seems so long ago, like another lifetime ago. I don’t even relate to the ideas of it anymore, but truth be told I don’t feel I ever truly related to it. I will do anything to save my daughter, or my sons.

A crisis in the family causes instinctive actions and reflective thinking. My instinct is to protect her at all cost – even if it means offering my own life. I would do it in a second, maybe less. Our instincts to protect our children are so powerful. We care about our children immensely, as I do for S*, but it’s evolution too. Without our children we die off – the human race is extinguished. The will to survive is incredibly powerful, more so than we realize. What would my life be like without S* in it? A part of it would be empty – never more to be filled again. All people are irreplaceable, but nobody is indispensable. My daughter is irreplaceable and I don’t even want to think about what not having her in my life would mean. I want to see her grow up, make a life for herself, have a family, have grand-kids, be happy. I should be the first to die, not her, and not my sons either. She is such a beautiful girl and beautiful person. I have a new respect for who she is through this ordeal, she has been so strong and patient. It has also made her a better person. I don’t wish badness on her but it’s clear trials and tribulations make us better people. How do we build that character without those experiences? We are the sum of our lifes experiences. The sum of S* is beautiful so far. My boys are another story! They are both young – time will tell what will come of them, right now it’s difficult to ascertain.

S* may go home tomorrow. She has a long recovery ahead of her. Several weeks of bed rest, several months of healing. It will make her better, I can see it already. I would never wish it upon her but I also can’t take it away. It just is. I wish I could take it away, it would alleviate my guilt anyway. I will make sure she has better protection in the future – body armor and pants at the least. Hopefully she’ll get back to riding this year, maybe next. She has to get back in the saddle, at the least this provides for conquering her fears. Life lacks fulfillment when it’s lived in fear. Fear destroys the spark of the human soul. I don’t want my children to be victims of fear. The world is there waiting for them to seize it, if only their fear does not interfere. We have nothing to fear but fear itself! I know – not my original words!

Notes from Dreamland last night, or rather this morning. Got a call from S*, a customer of ours who is experiencing some business difficulties. Specifically, he is being sued. I read the affidavit – Magic Eight Ball says Outlook Not So Good. Not sure what one thing has to do with another but given all the conflict in my life, with family and work, it’s not surprising that conflict characters are in my dream. In fact the only area of my life without much conflict is my love life, probably because I don’t have one! He has invited me down to review a project he is working on. I drive to NJ and visit his offices. We are reviewing the photos for the project, a neighborhood of Cincinnati was built into an open-pit mine. Large apartment buildings were built on the “benches” of the mine, in a circular fashion. In the center, the bottom of the mine, a sinkhole is developing. The pit is falling into the pit at the bottom. He is going to instrument the buildings with crackmeters, there are already substantial cracks in the buildings. He estimates 20-30 crackmeters.

He says we need to visit another office to review the drawings. We travel in his car, something like an old Lincoln Continental, large and white. The building we stop appears to be an old brick building, like an old pumping station. Very high ceilings, musty smelling inside, large windows that haven’t been washed in some time. The light filters through to illuminate the bench where all the drawings are arranged. After reviewing the drawings he mentions he has some electrical work to do. We go outside, there is a large cabinet, more like a shed, housing several boxes of electrical equipment. All high voltage equipment. Two boxes look identical, one doesn’t have any wires attached. He gets on the roof of the shed and pulls up one of the boxes (the attached one) by the cords and lowers it down for me. As he is lowering it the wires in the box short out to the box below. A large spark show erupts. I joke with him that he should watch where he puts his boxes. The wires weld to each other and start smoking.

Suddenly some screaming erupts from the house next door. It appears his mother lives next door. Smoke is billowing out of the house. I run towards the house and open the screen door, she is on her way out. I see a curtain in the kitchen on fire. The kitchen looks out of the 50’s, retro appliances including old pull handle fridge. I holler at her whether she has a fire extinguisher, she points to a very small one on the counter in the kitchen. It’s about the size of a soda can – I wonder how I’m supposed to put the fire out with such a small extinguisher. I grab and shake it like a can of soda. I attempt pulling the pin out but it’s held in place by a knot of string. I struggle to undo the string, meanwhile the fire starts heading up the wall. It appeared to have started in the outlet near the curtain, as a result of the short-circuit outside. I’m find a knife in the kitchen to cut the string and finally succeed in freeing the pin. I squirt the fire, soda appears to come out of the unit but it does put the fire out. The liquid makes a carbonated beverage hiss as it exits the extinguisher.

I look around for more fire – I see smoke coming from the back. It’s coming from the bathroom. I enter the bathroom, with low ceiling and white walls it reminds me of the small bathroom in T*’s apartment. I don’t see any fire anywhere so I don’t know where to point the extinguisher, which appears mostly empty anyway. I exit the house, by then the fire department shows up. They rush inside with their hoses. I sit down on the curb to rest for a moment. A woman sits down in back of me, her hands resting on my shoulders. I think in the dream how nice it feels to be touched by a woman. I feel comforted. We start talking, about what I’m not sure. She has a nice smile and reminds me of a woman I was messaging on Myspace. The woman gave me a royal blow-off last night, not sure why. We seemed to have some things in common but then she accused me of twisting a knife further into her heart. She is getting divorced and all I tried to do was explain the behavior of men. I’ve learned something about them from spending so much time as a man. There is something fundamentally broken between men and women. Women want to know what makes men tick but then when it’s explained to them they are repulsed. I don’t get it. I should learn to keep my big mouth shut. She is very nice and I’m enjoying talking and laughing with her. She has a small son, around 6 years of age. We agree to meet again in the future.

The future arrives quickly as I’m now back in NJ. We are attending a church function to raise money for the fire that apparently destroyed or heavily damaged S* moms home. I’m walking through the church, it’s organized like a receiving line. Everyone is depositing their envelopes in a basket like a collection. Most of the church is filled with black people for some reason. After going outside I meet “Tawny”, the woman I met during my previous visit. She now appears more Latino, not white, not black, maybe like mulatto. Her son is very white though. We sit on a curb outside, her in back of me as before. We are watching her son go off to school. He is running across a sidewalk but trips and falls on his face. I have a sinking feeling in my stomach which reminds me of when S* was running towards me in the driveway, tripped and fell on his face. Seeing that unfold was one of the worst experiences of my life, I can still feel the helplessness watching S* topple head-first into the pavement. The gash above his right eye wouldn’t stop bleeding so I had to bring him to the hospital. They had to stitch him but without any anesthetic because they were worried about it being too close to his eye. It was possibly the worst experience of my life having to hold him down while he struggled and screamed during the stitching. It still gives me shivers thinking about it, even in my dream. You learn to differentiate the many cries of a child after being exposed to them for years – his was of sheer pain and terror. It was horrible. Tawny’s son appears to be ok, just a bump on his forehead.

After seeing him off to school she introduces me to her other children, two boys who are as black as night. The older one has a hair style like buckwheat from The Little Rascals. We are at their school. The older one gets upset with me and accuses me of abandoning him and treating his mother badly. This hardly seems possible as I just met them and hardly know their mom. I hug him and reassure him that I mean him and his mother no harm and that no matter what happens his mother will always be there for him. I wake up – it’s 4:13AM.

I’ve been going through all my old photos. I’d like to get them scanned and have them in digital format. They say the one loss of a fire that is most regretted is the loss of photographs, because in most cases they are irreplaceable. You can replace books and most household furnishings, not photos though. You get a sense of the value of photographs going through them all as I am. You get a sense of time and place that is quite unique. You connect with memories and feelings that are associated with the place you are viewing in the photo. I see a dead relative and many memories of the person and the place I was at in my life when I knew them comes rushing back. They say “A picture is worth a thousand words” but I believe the expression is better said “A picture is worth a thousand feelings”.

I found some pictures of Uncle P*, my mom’s only sibling. Pictures when I visited him in Germany, we were drinking beer. I remember all the beer glasses he stole for me and the bicycle rides (“Flitzen Alex!”) after imbibing way too many beers. Other pictures when he came to visit my mom and us here is the States a few years later. Then pictures of his funeral. G* and Mom went to Germany to the funeral. The heap of flowers on his grave. I should have gone to the funeral, not sure why I didn’t. Another poor decision of my past which I wish someone would proclaim “Mulligan!” I may fault G* over various issues but he has demonstrated better decision making in numerous cases. I probably didn’t want to spend the money. I hope it wasn’t that base, but knowing me that is a possibility. S* would have been young at the time, maybe the demands of the family had something to do with it. Who knows, in hindsight there isn’t a good excuse. Should have gone, enough said. The feelings of knowing P* as a gregarious and fun Uncle came flooding back, along with the regret at missing his send-off. He wouldn’t have known whether I was there – it’s about closure. You have to put yourself in the situations that give you the best opportunity for moving on.

Then I found a bunch of pictures of E*, my Dad’s last wife (we called her “Aunt E*”). She wasn’t the most pleasant person in the world, a bit cantankerous and not terribly tolerant of kids, but she tried. She never had kids herself but she tried to be nice to us. I have many fond memories of her. Making fried dough for us, cooking delicious meals, walks in the woods, her laugh. She was a funny and idiosyncratic old bird. She didn’t take any shit from Dad, that’s one of the fondest memories I have of her. Dad used to give her shit about her making burnt toast to eat in the morning. She loved it burnt, the blacker the better. Dad had an issue with that, its cancer causing! What an idiot. Who cares if it causes cancer or not, it’s her body. This is my wonderful father though, bent on controlling the behavior of everyone around him (more on that topic later!), to hell with their own notions. Father knows best! When his advice is cast aside he takes it as a personal affront to his good wisdom and his notions of “caring” for other people. Even if his advice was impeccable (most of his advice is rubbish anyway) you still can’t presume to control everyone around you. It is interesting how the pictures bring all these thoughts and feelings back to mind. She died of a heart attack while swimming in her beloved pond. I had called her a week earlier and we were going to visit a week after her death. I went to her funeral at least. I need to create a Myspace tribute page to her.

Then there were pictures of V*. A bunch when she was playing with S* when she was a baby. They were playing peek-a-boo or some such silliness in the living room. Others with her and D*, her husband. When we stayed on Fang Is. in Maine. Playing cards together, cooking and eating, playing with the kids. V* saddens me. She has a good soul, but she is very misguided. She doesn’t know what is real and important anymore. She believes her “cult” is “right” and “true”, and for this has ex-communicated me and by extension my kids, from her life. She is missing out on one of lifes purest pleasures, living vicariously our childhoods through the interaction with our children. Children also help us deal with our mortality, they are living testimony to the future of our family, and life on earth, that will persist long after we are gone. I am not afraid of death and my kids are helping me with this inevitability. I’m looking forward to being a grandfather and the prospect is frighteningly close at hand. My daughter will soon be 15, I could be a grandfather in several years. I’m not getting any younger, but my kids are helping me accept that. I will accept my death when it comes because I am working to see my family have the best future possible and can be confidant I’m doing what I can to facilitate that. V* is missing out however and I’m sure she senses the loss. I know her, she is sensitive. She has made her decisions though and there isn’t anything I can do about it. Everyone has to live with their decisions, for better or worse. Most of these pictures I’ve thrown out.

Of course I found a lot of pictures of my “family”, pictures of the home life, vacations and other events. The life I was living I always wanted, although at the time I’m not sure I understood that. Then L* had to fuck it all up. I brought my own liabilities for sure and I don’t think it’s entirely fair to blame her for it, but I do. Proof is found in her life since getting divorced – she still hasn’t gotten her life together. She still acts like she has no clue what she wants nor how to get there. She wants everything but doesn’t seem to understand that you can’t have everything, and that which you can have will inevitably require a lot of hard work and dedication. Recently we got into a big fight because I told her things I shouldn’t have, namely that she needed to make some better decisions about her life. Predictably my commentary was construed as “unsupportive” and “unkind”, “kicking me when I’m down” is how she described it. When you are being thrown out of your house and don’t have a job, obviously there has been some poor decision making. Everything happens for a reason. You either make your success in this world, or you suffer from its multitude of inequities. I usually am pretty good at censoring my thoughts but in this case something failed, perhaps my patience. It saddened my somewhat to feel that I had to throw all these pictures out, not the ones with the kids, but anything with L* in them. I don’t have that life anymore, it’s gone forever, so the pictures must go too.

Interestingly the pictures of my Moms father, including his war-time pictures, didn’t stir much in me. I never met the man, he died rather young, it seems around the time I was born. This seems a key with pictures, if they don’t remind us of the time and place then the emotional connection simply doesn’t exist. We understand the connection on an intellectual level but it doesn’t really mean anything to us. I threw out a lot of pictures because they didn’t mean anything to me. What is the point of keeping them around and dragging them from house to house in my sojourn through life? It’s like the equivalent to emotional baggage that can weigh on our psyche – at some point we must decide to free ourselves of these burdens. I threw out all the pictures that reminded me of being a Witness, working at the Kingdom Hall building projects, visiting Brooklyn, Witness “parties” or other get-togethers, past girlfriends. They do mean something but I’ve moved on and keeping the pictures only reminds me of the loss. There were good things for sure and I’m reminded of that, but there is more loss than gain, so best to throw them away, and finally and inevitably move on. It’s unfortunate our psyche isn’t so easily purged. Nietzsche wrote “Blessed are the forgetful”. I agree with that for the most part, but he wrote that before pictures were such an integral part of our lives. Some memories are better recollected and pictures help us with that. They remind us of the experiences that have enriched our lives and made us who we are today. If given a chance to revise his statement I’m guessing he would have. He was a smart man after all, unlike yours truly.

Got in from Portland OR tonight, I am glad to be home. As I get older I look forward to coming home more and more, in fact I don’t even like the leaving. I like the routine of home, the comfort of knowing what’s in the fridge, eating some chocolate from the freezer, drinking some mineral water before going to bed, reading my books, laying in my bed, my head nestled in my Tempur-Pedic pillow. I’ve got to figure out how to start packing my pillow at least! Why do we love home so much? Some people don’t I guess, but I do. Some trips I do really look forward to, like my annual pilgrimage to Alaska. I would love to live in Alaska but the reality is I probably never will. It’s too far from everywhere, my kids in particular. Maybe a summer home could be arranged.

Saw the new Disney movie Enchanted on the way home on the bus. For someone who can wantonly kill animals without remorse it’s strange how emotional I can become watching a really sappy movie about love, not even a good sappy movie but grade B at best. I’m really tired though, I tend to get emotional when I’m tired. Knowing I’m coming home to an empty house doesn’t help. I don’t mind being alone, but sometimes it bothers me. I saw a couple coming home on the bus, the woman was very interesting looking, I found her highly attractive. They both had rings so married I presume. I would like to have someone to call my wife I believe, the trick is finding the right someone. The lesson of Enchanted was that Love isn’t that hard, for the right person we’ll do anything, even die. I’m not sure I buy into the hype of Love. What is Love? For sure it’s an attraction, but it must be more than that. It seems borne more out of desperation than anything else. I may be cynical.

I made a few mistakes on this trip. It really bugs me when I make mistakes. I got a speeding ticket in Oregon. I hardly ever get tickets when traveling, in fact I don’t remember the last time. For going 45 in a 25 I got slapped with a $175 fine. What a f***ing rip-off! What can I do? I can’t rightly contest it as it would require a trip to Oregon. Our government is out of control. You wonder why there are fanatics of the 2nd Amendment? We are going to need our guns at some point in the future. Count on it. I lost my cell charger which is annoying. More annoying is buying another one only to break it and lose the charger adaptor for my phone because I left it in my back pocket. There goes another $30 down the drain. I hate stupid mistakes.

Of course coming home there are all the inevitable problems to deal with. I had to stop in at work to pick up my backup cell charger and found the computer room so hot it was about to catch fire. Ok slight exaggeration, but all the fans were going into turbo mode. We also had a power outage apparently as all the computers were in varying states of not booted up. I got everything restarted, except our mail server which unfortunately I didn’t realize until getting home. I’ll need to stop at work tomorrow. I can’t post this entry tonight in any event, tomorrow hopefully. Then L* wants to meet next week about something with the kids or house or something. I wish she would get her life together – I’m getting tired of her inability to focus on what is important and stop living her fantasy existence. Well nothing lasts forever I suppose. Eventually I’ll be dead.

I got a text from T*. I guess it’s ok that she sends me messages, although I’m sure it’s because she wants something from me, or for me to be somewhere I’m not. Can’t blame her for trying. I’m not there though, never really was. I’m not exactly sure why, maybe because she just strikes me as yet another woman that needs to be taken care of. I can hardly take care of myself – how exactly am I supposed to take of a woman? Women expect too much anyway, why do so many of them cling to the idea that they need a man to take care of them? Wouldn’t it be nice if we all had someone to take care of us? Maybe I’ll ask my mother to move in – then she can take care of me. I’m jesting of course. Such a move would surely end any hope of a relationship with any woman I met. I don’t have anyone to take care of me and I might just like it this way. Most of the time anyway. 

The shop called – there appears to be some problem with my new Hayabusa. I had a bad feeling about this bike and my instincts are proving right again. I dropped it getting it into my truck and dented the tank and cracked the front fairing. Don’t even want to think about what fixing those issues will set me back. Not looking forward to calling Monday to find out the new problem. It’s still good to come home, even the challenges are familiar. My kids will be over tomorrow, I miss them. Now I’m sitting in bed listening to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and there are no problems, except the palpable melancholy. Nick Cave is a genius.

We’ve laid the cables and the wires
We’ve split the wood and stoked the fires
We’ve lit our town so there is no place for crime to hide
Our little church is painted white
And in the safety of the night
We all go quiet as a mouse
For the word is out
That God is in the House
God is in the House
God is in the House
No cause for worry now
God is in the House

You have to listen to the rest to know what he is talking about. S* put me onto Nick Cave. I did love S*. She was a crazy bitch but I still miss her. I may still love her a little.

I’m driving across Arizona today and passed this old guy in what appeared to be a 1966 Ford Fairlane station wagon. Well I didn’t know the year by looking at the car, but after reviewing some pictures on the Internet made a more educated guess. Driving across Arizona is surreal to begin with, the lonesome cacti silhouetted against the barren red and brown hills, you feel the loneliness, the emptiness. Stretches of utter desolation, then miles of characterless retirement communities and RV “parks”, populated by old people wiling their days away in air-conditioned comfort. They might emerge in the morning, before the oppressive “dry” heat asserts itself, for a round of golf on the bizarrely green chemically over-dosed golf course, but otherwise what are they accomplishing? Whatever happened to productive old age? Whatever happened to supporting the next generation of life that is engaged productively to keep society moving forward? I don’t ever want to be an old person like this with such an empty, meaningless existence, concerned only with the location and quality of their next meal, or whatever physical malady has recently befallen them, or better yet, their neighbor whom they hardly know.

I digress. This guy was about 70 years old and looked like he had been behind the wheel of that Fairlane since about 1966. He had the back loaded with God Knows What junk. Why would it be expected that an old balding guy driving a run down 1966 Ford Fairlane would have the entire back filled with junk? Where could he have been going? Who knows. You have to admire the individuality of the fellow. Here he was surrounded on the Interstate by one nameless late-model car after another, and yet he chose to drive the same damn car year after year. The cars of society, and society itself, moved on, but not this guy! How many times did he have to rebuild one part or another to keep the old wreck rolling? Why didn’t he toss in the towel, hoist the white flag, call the horse dead, 5 transmissions, 3 carburetors, 2 engines ago? Some old timers like to say “They don’t build ‘em like they used to!” but as it turns out that was a good thing. Any old Ford is a piece of junk. This guy wasn’t paying attention to the noise. He pursued his own path, doggedly for sure, and looked quite happy behind the wheel. He couldn’t even be bothered to go the speed limit. It was 75, he was going 55, which likely was the speed limit on the highway back in 1966, assuming that stretch of highway even existed.

It is interesting to think about the advance of civilization and where everyone finds themselves. A few are leaders, the majority are followers, but inevitably you have the stragglers, the world will pass them completely by before they succumb to the forces of change. You can’t really laugh at them, after all with every change some good is lost, and it’s debatable whether an equal good is gained. Oh sure we gain such trivialities as longer life spans but then most of that is spent in unproductive idleness. It seems we lose more humanity every year than we are gaining. It’s encouraging to see someone who doesn’t buy into it and is willing to lead a life which proves to everyone else around them that they don’t need the modern embellishments, a 1966 Ford Fairlane will just as adequately get them from point A to point B as that over-sized gas guzzling Chevy Tahoe. In all fairness the Tahoe probably gets better gas mileage.

It’s 3AM, sinuses are driving me crazy, so why not write something. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about men and women. There are 2 ways to look at the differences between men and women, glass half-empty or glass half-full. I tend towards glass half-empty. This may be the result of large amounts of failure with women in my life, at some point it becomes hard to remain optimistic of success. Determination is all well and good but at some point you have to be realistic – will I ever really figure out what it takes to be happy with a woman in my life? I certainly want it, or a part of me wants it, but another part of me doesn’t want it, because women are so difficult to understand and relate to. It’s like a really complicated math problem that you have some awareness of how to solve but just can’t and you suspect you just simply don’t have the intellectual, or perhaps emotional, prowess. You know enough to know that you don’t have what it takes to really know. You know there are things that you don’t know. It reminds me of something Dick Rumsfeld said a few years ago.

There is nothing wrong with accepting our limitations, as much as I would like to think about a career professionally racing motorcycles I know my opportunity to do such is long past. I can dream but I know it will never happen. It never even had a possibility of being my life. I’m 41 and have been a failure to date with women and most of the time I feel this will always be the case. At some point it would be good to stop pining to have lived another life and accept fate. I look at my father, at 81 he is still lusting after women and has even grander catastrophes than myself with the opposite sex. Is he a fool or an eternal optimistic? I think he is a fool and quite possibly even pathetic. I don’t want to be 81 and considered a fool, not to mention pathetic. This is not a plea for pity.

I’ve got a few minutes until the allergy drugs kick in, why not try and figure it all out! I’ll start with Men, being a man should mean I understand them better compared to women. I think that’s true. The other advantage with talking about men is that The Problem With Men is very simple: SEX. Yeah I know, what a genius! Did it really take me 41 years to figure this out? Well, yes! We have sex on our minds constantly, you could say 24 hours a day. I just woke up in a sinus congested induced stupor (you might wonder how I can write so coherently being in such a state – well then again you be the judge!) from a dream I was having about sex. It might have ended happily (Happy Ending! Happy Ending!) if I hadn’t woken up, because I sure had a nice woody going. Then again I did have to pee and that provided some release. It’s not the same, trust me. I was climbing Mt. Everest (no doubt inspired by a recent PBS documentary I was watching on a massively failed expedition) and who should I meet but a girl I had a crush on many years ago when in High School (I would include her name but that might be a little creepy). I got re-acquainted with her recently through re-connecting with another classmate of mine that has recently married her sister. (As a side-note I did ask about M* and it turns out she also married a couple of years ago and recently had her first baby) She meets two other climbers, hugs them and then starts “air-licking” them provocatively (she was doing a Gene Simmons act-alike while in close proximity to their necks and faces), which of course causes me to have an erection (although there is the possibility I had the erection first and then the dream followed – it reminds me of times when I was kid and had dreams of peeing against a tree in the woods only to wake and find I was peeing the bed) that really rages when she finishes with them and then starts REALLY licking me. In the dream I can smell her sweat, her heat, her body and it really turns me on. I can taste her in my dream. I wake up with a raging boner. Can you blame me? M* still looks really hot, judging by the myspace pictures. Big inviting smile, sultry eyes, kissable lips…

Even while sleeping I can’t help but thinking about sex! I dream about it! I know, it’s messed up. I’m sure women have sexual dreams too but that is a topic for another time. Further, would you like to know the common test for erectile dysfunction? You buy a roll, more or less depending on the size of your member, of old lick-em-and-stick-em stamps and you paste them on your wiener before going to bed, if the stamps are separated when you wake up then you DON’T have erectile dysfunction. If they are still attached then you DO have erectile dysfunction, because every night, whether you realize it or not, men normally have one or more erections. It’s like the body is practicing for the Big Event, even while you sleep! How else do you explain it?

Our sexual drive isn’t all bad – after all this helps ensure survival of our species. Without our drive we may not be that inclined to have sex which would quickly end the human race as we know it. Sex is fun too – it strikes some primitive hormonal and emotional cord with us. It feels good to be with a woman (or a man as the case might be), the dirtier the better. Spank me Baby! We don’t need science to tell us these things. Women have sexual drive too but their evolutionary heritage connects it differently in their minds. I’ll share my thoughts on this topic another time!

The problem of course is evolution. By all accounts men didn’t spend a lot of time with their women, nor with their children, at least not early on, and definitely not with the girls. The men were off gathering food, hunting usually, and this necessitated extended leave from the clan, leaving the old men and women in charge. The women spent much more time together sharpening their relationship skills, sometimes put to good use, other times put to poor use, to manipulate and control. Naturally the women competed for the attention and sex of the dominant men and it’s highly likely that the dominant men had several sexual partners. This is demonstrated by other species in the natural world, most behave in this manner. The males fight to secure their leadership and this leadership comes with a few perks, one of which being the rights to several women, or several wives at least. This also explains why men are by and large so incapable of understanding women, we just didn’t spend enough time to figure them out. It’s not in our genes.

Fast forward a few hundred thousand years and while society has changed dramatically the basic urges are still largely intact. Men still jostle for position and women still jostle to be favored by a man, or by men. Any doubters of this only spend an hour or two in their nearby mall, which is overwhelmingly an extravaganza of shopping opportunities for women. Why do women need all these blouses, skirts, pants, perfumes, make-up, and lingerie? When have you ever seen a lingerie shop for men? The fact is men are competing with each other and wearing lingerie won’t help in this battle, unless of course you want to lose. You can argue this point with me and assert we’ve left our evolutionary heritage behind but it becomes really tough to explain these facts. These urges are necessary, otherwise we wouldn’t copulate and without which we would all die off.

You want further proof regarding how men are approaching women? Consider the criteria by which men judge the appearance of a woman. Generally the breasts are first, the ass is second, more general body proportions third and last their face. You could re-arrange these depending on the man, some are “ass men”, others are “breast men”, but the idea is the same. What are we subconsciously doing? We are judging their physical characteristics by their suitability for producing children. (Who cares about personality? We aren’t wired to be spending a lot of time with them anyway, so what difference does their personality make?) How else can you explain it? Think about the breasts, what difference does it really make whether they are large (universally favored) or small, perky (universally favored) or saggy? The difference is that a large perky breast is on some crude level understood to be better suited to nursing our children, and likewise to product healthy children. The bigger the breast the more milk it surely must produce! The more milk it produces surely must produce bigger children! The same goes for the ass. How exactly is a baby supposed to fit between the huge butt cheeks of a fat-assed woman? Occasionally you hear of reports in the news of fat women who have smothered their children to death while sleeping with them. How is a fat woman supposed to be healthy enough not only to produce my child but also survive and be healthy enough to raise it? Oh I’m sure some men would argue this suggestion (and women too!) but the fact is we are wired to think about survival and the manner in which we evaluate women reflects this. Darwin was right, all animals - humans are no exception - are operating on survival instincts, and no more is this true in our evaluation of a womans appearance.

What does this mean about us men? We are thinking about sex 24 hours a day because our sex drive is connected with our need to control and dominate situations around us. By extension this includes our women because our women, as producers of our offspring, are our future. We want to control our future. When considering this context the actions of men in a broader sense all makes a lot of sense. Most men though live in societies that only permit a single woman, whether called “girlfriend”, “significant other”, or “wife”. Men haven’t accepted this though, even when ensconced in a “committed relationship” (whatever that means) we still can’t but think about other women, and usually in sexual ways. We want other women but have learned to control ourselves, for the most part anyway. When they walk by us at the mall, even if holding the hand of the woman we’ve professed our love for, we can’t help but admire and conjure up depraved thoughts involving positions we’ve yet to try with our love interest in hand. I don’t have a rational response to this reality of men, except to say that I know it’s the truth. The truth is not pretty in many cases, and this is one of those cases.

So men are faced with several challenges, not the least of which is that we can’t have all the sexual partners that we desire. We MUST control ourselves, otherwise we end up with NONE. The wise man Jesus apparently said something to this effect “The man that commits adultery in his heart commits adultery with his member” so by this measure I’ve failed. By a more realistic measure, meaning given opportunities to satisfy my longings and having turned them down out of respect for my partner at the time, I’ve succeeded. I have never partaken of a woman while in a “committed relationship” with another woman. Many men, perhaps most, would fail this. This isn’t to say I’m better than these men, on the contrary if I was truly good I would not even have contemplated the actions. Oh I contemplated, and in some cases agonized! I am not that good. There are some that are that good. This leads to the second challenge – to separate our sexual drive from our more rational drive when it comes to choosing a woman and then remaining with her. Sex drive is like a cloud that hangs over our thinking, a fog not unlike that induced by alcohol. We know our rational thinking is there but we are slightly, or grossly, as the case might be, out of touch with it. Men are born with “Sex Goggles”.

It then becomes very difficult to think about our potential partners in a rational, realistic way. Love is also a type of fog, but I argue that for men it’s mostly a fog of sex. In another entry I’ll argue that women are primarily subject to the fog of love. As men we want “it”, therefore we will sacrifice good sense if need be, to have “it”. It doesn’t matter if we see no future with the person we are with, we aren’t even thinking that way. Future? Ejaculation is 30 seconds away! What the hell else could possibly matter right now? If we attempted a rational thought process with most of the women we meet we would quickly realize there isn’t a future with that person, and so we move on. We don’t move on though, at least not until we’ve satisfied our lust, or the woman tells us to go to hell. Once we’ve gotten “it”, it becomes easy to move on, we got what we came (no pun intended) for, we can take the phone number and never call back, we can leave before they wake up and not even leave a note, we can operate without a last name, hell even a first name is optional with the right pair of goggles.

What is a man to do about then? It is a dilemma for sure. I don’t think I have all the answers, at least not for men at large. I do believe every man should attempt reduction of themselves to understand what exactly it is that they want. This in itself is a challenge because this implies connectivity with our emotional inner selves – and I don’t need to tell you that this is a challenge for most men. However, over the years I’ve learned some techniques to fool myself, and they are remarkably simple. I try to picture myself with this person in 6 months, 1 year, 5 years time. Will I still be with them? Where do I want to see my life in that time and given what I’ve learned about this person would they be part of that picture? There is an implied challenge there too, I have to know enough about the person to understand something about who they are and whether they fit into the picture of who I am and where I’m going.

Another aspect of this technique – wait as long as possible to have sex with them! Once “first contact” is made it becomes very difficult to think clearly about the person because if I like them enough to see them again, am I  thinking only about having sex with them or about having a life with them? There is a big difference between those two concepts. It’s also important to not get confused by the quality of the sex. I’ve had amazing sex with some women that clearly I had no future with and if I had thought for a nanosecond while with them about the future I would have ended it sooner rather than later. Even better I wouldn’t have started. There’s the self-control problem again. Women do seem to have more of a tendency to be fooled by the quality of the sex. Really good sex is not that hard to learn – it is amazing to me how many men are really bad at it though. This no doubt is behind some of the notions that women have, you find a man who really satisfies you then there must be something special there! We got “chemistry” baby! I’m not going to let this one go! I’ve been with enough women now to become fairly proficient at it, meaning a good time was had by all. This will definitely be a topic for another entry. So by putting off sex as long as possible it seems to help the thinking process, or at least keep it more rational and more likely to succeed. In the end success largely derives from a rational process and relationships are no different. This may be the Engineer in me talking. Although to date I haven’t been successful, but I’m not dead yet! Hopefully along the way I’m learning about myself, men, women and what it takes to have a successful relationship. I wish you the same good fortune!

Thoreau penned a chapter in Walden called “Solitude”, extolling the virtues of being alone. I love Thoreau. He has such a way of weaving words to express thoughts and emotions that is so moving, so powerful, yet so simple. The chapter begins, “This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, and imbibes delight through every pore.” I am such a hacker by comparison. I suppose with everything it takes practice to become good at anything, and writing is no exception. Although it seems with writing there is something of an exception to this. Some people just naturally express themselves beautifully with the written word. They are connected with the words in ways others can only wonder and admire. The words fall out onto the page arranged and neatly ordered as if the brain itself wrote them directly without any need for arms and fingers and writing utensils, or keys on a keyboard as is such the case in our modern age. Perhaps they are simply a reflection of the ordered and articulate thinking that flows through their grey matter. I wish I had such a gift. I try, but I know I’m in a different league. It’s double-A, Thoreau was big-leagues.

I spent the week alone and at home for a change, on both counts. I haven’t been involved with anyone for a couple of months now but I’ve been so busy with work that between kids and traveling I haven’t had much time to myself. This week I came home every night and also had the whole weekend to myself. I worked for a couple of hours yesterday but most of the day was spent doing errands and other chores. I planted flowers and mulched the front flower beds, it looks so nice outside now. I love flowers. I planted lilies, expanded the iris bed, seeded another bed with black-eyed susan. My ornamental crab-apple is finally about to bloom, in the next couple of days. I love it when this tree blooms, the entire front of the house smells of sweet apple blossoms. It’s right up there with the lilacs, which are also about to bloom, maybe later in the week. Now it’s Sunday night, just finished supper and had a few minutes before more chores. Have the floor to wash and some bills, then off to bed! I do look forward to going to bed. It’s my sanctuary, my resting place. If I’m not in bed I’m restless to be doing something, to be exerting myself in some way. I do work hard. I can’t stand lazy people. I need to let go a little bit.

It’s been a productive week. I am prone to developing routines when left to my own devices. Every morning I made my tea, ate some yogurt, a banana then an English muffin with liverwurst. Well every morning until Saturday, because by then I was out of yogurt, bananas, and liverwurst (there were 10 patties in the package, you do the math). Yes, I eat liverwurst. I know it’s basically fat and ground up liver, maybe with a few other bits thrown in, the specifics of which are probably better left on the fine print of the package, which I make a point of not reading. What can I say, I like it. Some things in life are like that, you have a feeling about it and it doesn’t stand up to rational reduction. I should not like liverwurst, nobody should really, but I do. It must be the German in me.

I wrote my Dad about recent events which have caused me to wonder why I bother working at having a relationship with him. It’s sad to say, but true. It’s said (and I know it’s true because I’ve read this in various personals listings…) that you can judge a person by the relationships they have with their parents. By that criteria I will not be well represented. I don’t have a healthy relationship with either of my parents, mostly because I have a low threshold for bullshit and both my parents are full of it. They make the mistake that many parents seem to make and that is treating their children like children for their entire life, instead of modifying their behavior once they realize their children aren’t children anymore but adults with lives of their own involving adult-size responsibilities and notions. I hope to not fall into that pit with my kids. I’m looking forward to them having their own lives and not feeling that I need to be overseeing what they do and how they do it. I want to be a grandparent in the traditional sense, there to have fun with the grandkids but no responsibilities! We’ll see I suppose.

I don’t mind being alone. I’m very productive when there isn’t someone around to distract me. Women like attention from their men, and I’ve dated all kinds of women of various degrees of independence and they are all the same. Oh they may say they aren’t this way, but invariably when in the company of their man they want to be the center of attention and preferably in copious quantities. I don’t have a lot of patience for that, probably because of my independent nature and the fact that I don’t need a lot of attention. I think it will prove difficult to find a woman who can tolerate that about me. Well so far this seems true! It’s said (again I read this in a personals add, so…) that you’ll be willing to change and expend energy for the right woman but I don’t think that’s true either. It seems that ultimately, no matter the company, our behavior reverts to reflect who we really are. You can only hide who you are for so long. Chris Rock once said (he is a comedian so of course an authority on all things important) that the first 6 months of a relationship you are really dating the ambassador of the person, and of course the converse is true that you are sending your ambassador out on the dates. Then reality rears its sometimes ugly head and you find out who you are really with and also who you really are. I think there is a lot of truth in that. That’s probably why I find dating so tiring. Why can’t we just skip ahead to the comfortable, understood expectations, communicative and working part of the relationship? I know, won’t ever happen. I enjoy working hard, but for some reason I make exception when it comes to my relationships. 

The problem with men, and I’m no exception, is that we want sex too much. It’s on our brain constantly. It’s hard to look at a woman, or even a girl for that matter, and not think about sex with them. It’s not that we can’t control ourselves, but we are thinking about it. That is really messed up. I’m being serious here. The challenge then is that in a relationship it becomes very difficult for a man, and again this is me we are talking about, to differentiate whether we are with someone because we really like them or because we just want to have sex with them. I have learned some tricks of the trade however. Within a couple of weeks of meeting a woman I start thinking about the future and whether I can see this person in my life in 6 months, 12 months, 2 years or 5 years. Forcing myself to answer the question usually helps me come up with the answer regarding how I really feel about them. It also helps if I haven’t slept with them yet. Sex really clouds the thinking of men, well I think of women too, just maybe in slightly different ways.

Nothing is easy in this world, and relationships are actually one of the most challenging aspects of living. We’ve got all these complexities to sort out, both with ourselves (What do I really want?) and with the person we are with (What does she really want?). I suppose therein lies the magic of it. You have to appreciate magic I suppose. I like magic, sometimes. Dave Copperfield is a phony. He isn’t fooling me. I think he’s got a lot of women fooled, men too for that matter. It’s hard enough to sort out our own complexities, others are just about impossible. It doesn’t stop me from trying!

Back to Thoreau. He was a big advocate for Solitude, and the older I get the more it resonates with me. I’m not sure if I should be scared, or thankful that possibly my sex drive is diminishing which is allowing me to use my big head when making decisions about my life. Perhaps I’m meant to be alone. Either way I’m not getting any younger. I can at least still get it up without blue pills! Thoreau never married though, and whether he even had his way with a maiden is questionable. Oh the pleasures of the flesh! He argued that we are never alone as nature surrounds us, or should anyway. Once we appreciate the beauty, the majesty, the company, of this vast expanse of living, breathing, dynamic beings, even if in the form of a cloud in the sky, then we will never feel alone, because we are never alone. We want the company of others but in reality we want the company of Nature. I do feel this way, but I can’t help feel a sort of sadness at this notion. I miss having a woman around. I miss sex! And I don’t mean the wham-bang-thank-you-ma’am kind of sex, but the intimacy of protracted and involved love making. The tastes, smells, sounds, sensations of another living body in the throes of ecstacy. Try doing that with a tree or a cloud or a ray of sunshine Thoreau! I do highly esteem Thoreau but I’m thinking he missed partaking of some earthly pleasures. So is that all I really want? Possibly. It rings so shallow, but it is honest at least. My mother always said, “Honesty is the best policy!” Honesty with others begins with honesty with ourselves. What do I really want?

I know I want to become a better person, or at least intellectually I want this. It’s very difficult to become a better person without rubbing on another person, or persons. Thoreau didn’t seem to think too highly of this, he described our interacting with others as “giving each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are”. It’s a comical vision, and maybe partly, or largely depending on the type of cheese, true. The Proverb (27:17 if you must look it up) also states that “As iron sharpens iron, a friend also sharpens a friend.” We need the company of others to help us think outside of ourselves and this is the path of growth. Too much solitude only seems to cause our thinking and perspective to grow inward, myopic. I don’t want to be myopic, but sharpened by “a friend”. Is this friend a woman? Ideally this seems so. After “sharpening” we can enjoy hot steamy sex! There I go again, always with the sex! I am a man, after all.