9/11
On Thursday my anesthesiologist, a Fox-watcher and all around asshat, relayed with some glee that fellow asshat and would-be Koran-burner Terry Jones would halt his book-burning plans in a tit-for-tat deal with Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf to move the “Ground Zero Mosque.” Never mind that Jones was overstating his supposed deal, has since recanted his narcissistic plan, and that the “Ground Zero Mosque” would not be built at Ground Zero nor was it even a mosque. The media was all over it and this guy, my anesthesiologist, who incidentally knows my political leanings (I once told him that I, too, am unhappy with our President, since he’s far too right-wing for me), had to needle me with this non-story.
This is for him.
Lloyd Dangle, Troubletown, Buy this cartoon
Let’s hope no one does anything stupid today.
D.
Ars longa
The other day, one of my patients said, “I bet you’ve already blogged me.” Which surprised me a little because I wasn’t wearing my “I’m blogging this” tee shirt, haven’t mentioned to anyone at work that I blog, and certainly hadn’t mentioned it to him. Turns out he was just ribbing me, but before I realized that I said, “I NEVER blog my patients!”
Yes, yes, this is patently false. Although if you’ve paid attention, you’ll note that I don’t blog my patients in any identifiable way. I would prefer to think their own mothers wouldn’t recognize them in these posts.
Anyway, I started to realize that this blog is all the writing I have anymore. I’m not creating anything, and I miss it. I really do. It’s hard to believe I could have written something like three-quarters of a million words, and now nothing. Like the reservoir has dried up.
I’m not lacking ideas. The ideas are there, but the words are not there. The voice is not there. The drive is not there.
And something inside says that if I could just start, the words and the voice and the drive would come. It’s a bootstrapping operation. I need to re-read some old work, perhaps, or set aside a tiny block of time every day and make it longer and longer, do one or all of those little tricks I’ve read about but just can’t bring myself to do.
It’s an awfully weird state of paralysis. But I can still blog, after a fashion.
D.
Creepy video, great music
You really need to listen to this. (Watch, not so much.)
Yet another great group of musicians my son and I discovered by playing video games. BTW, the CD containing this song, Book of Silk, is out of print (or whatever you call it). Downloadable as an MP3, or you can pay some exorbitant amount to sellers on Amazon. How does a great CD like this go out of print?
D.
Bukowski
Charles Bukowski has been on my must-read list for some time now. Perhaps it was an offhand comment by some author I admired — Michael Chabon, perhaps — how depressed he was when he realized he’d peeled through all of Bukowski’s work and would never again have the pleasure of reading one he’d never read before. Or, much earlier, someone told me Bukowski was the author behind Drugstore Cowboy. He wasn’t, but the name still stuck with me.
Tonight, while busting it on the elliptical trainer at the gym, I ripped through the first sixty pages of Bukowski’s semi-autobiographical Ham on Rye. Usually I don’t gravitate toward memoirs, since I prefer to think my own childhood was appalling and it always humbles me to discover that someone else had it much worse. Cue the Four Yorkshiremen. But Ham on Rye is something else altogether: a memoir with narrative drive.
Where does this narrative drive come from, that’s what I want to know. Is it my desire to see someone kick the narrator’s father’s brutal ass? Hopefully the narrator, Henry Chinaski, will do the kicking. Is it my secret wish to see his mother grow a spine, knowing full well that such people never grow a spine? No. Mostly, I want to see how a kid so damaged by his parents turns into a person who somehow, even if only tangentially, fits into society.
Below the cut, a poem by Bukowski that I found on some other guy’s blog. Enjoy.
Another one
I didn’t get to sleep until after 5 AM* and when I did, I had one of those terror-full end of the world dreams. At one point I recall looking in the bathroom mirror, wondering if I was dreaming, but it wasn’t the insightful “Is this a dream?” question that always yanks me from the dream, it was the “Is this a dream?” question you ask when things are going to hell and you wish half-heartedly that it would be a dream.
That we were living in my grandparents’ old house on Atlantic should have been a clue. Or the pet bear, but we’ll get back to him in a moment.
I was in the living room, looking out upon a darkening sky. There was a storm coming from that direction but it was like no other storm: horizontal rain, the droplets hitting the window like pebbles. As I watched I realized these were indeed pebbles, and the pebbles grew larger, had traces of light as if they were tiny comets. The sky had turned black. I realized the window wouldn’t last so I hurried Karen and the pets** into the kitchen (at the back of the house) and told her, “Good thing I bought a 2.5 gallon water jug yesterday, but I’m afraid there isn’t much to eat.”
Whereupon our pet bear, big and shambling like an overgrown dog, looked at the cats and Karen and me and said, “What are you talking about? There’s plenty to eat.”***
I blame Discovery Channel, or Animal Planet, or whatever Karen was watching yesterday. There was a bit on a trained bear that had bit out its trainer’s throat, killing him, and another bit speculating about different end of the world scenarios, such as the meteor that’s going to almost miss us in 2028.
The scary thing about the dream was not knowing what had happened. I went on the computer and was surprised to find power still working, the internet still functioning, but there was no news. And so we passed the time, waiting with our cats and talking bear, while I was torn between waiting for the inevitable and venturing back into the living room. To watch.
Like the Cowboy Junkies sing, I just want to see what kills me.
D.
*Insomnia from hell, despite giving up all caffeine and chocolate, doing cardio for a hour yesterday afternoon, and taking my usual meds.
**Sorry, Jake, but my subconscious spared you from this end of the world fantasy.
***I pointed out that by the time he’d finished off Karen and me and the cats that the rest of the population would be dead or, at any rate, inedible. He appeared non-plussed. My logic had defeated him.
Quest for furniture
My son doesn’t understand why I keep spending money on a room which he claims will never get used. He’s not entirely right; I would argue that the room’s usefulness is already evident. My books are out of their boxes, the boxes are out of the garage, and that wasn’t gonna happen without bookshelves.
The $599 sofa bed that wouldn’t fit through the doorway? I have to admit, that was a mistake. “Why would you buy something like that without measuring the doorway?” he asked yesterday. “Sheer stupidity,” I said. It never occurred to me someone would build a sofa bed that wouldn’t fit through a bedroom door. Or that someone would build such a narrow door in the first place.
First place I checked out yesterday showcased rustic Spanish pieces built from reclaimed wood. (It’s here, the Capri, catalog #228 if you’re curious.) $350. The table rests on sturdy legs, looks the sort that with a glass top, could be a prime surface for Mexican drug lords to cut lines of coke from their personal stash; looks the sort that would soon have dust motes and small pets swinging around it in perfect elliptical orbit.
The end of an era (not).
Craigslist Abandons Adult Services… for Good?
No matter . . . there’s still the Casual Encounters section. So for example,
I am a tough woman looking for someone that is a little more gentle than what I am used to. I think I deserve to be treated like an angel for a night or two as opposed to getting roughed up in the sack all the time. I am away from my old man for a little while and thought I’d post here. IF you are interested get at me.
It’s not the “tough woman” I’m afraid of. It’s the “old man” who roughs her up.
Anyway, a quick perusal of the Casual Encounters list suggests that things have indeed changed. Gone are the pleas for “gas money,” “contribution for the room,” a “generous man.” Gone is $u$ie who will make your dream$ come true. The prossies are gone, mate.
Nothin’ left but people desperate for no-strings-attached lurve.
D.
Not what Bako would prefer to be known for.
I will find a city, find myself a city to live in.
One of our local doctors (not someone I knew) was found dead in a chimney a few days ago. Internist Jacquelyn Kotarac was apparently trying to break into her boyfriend’s house and opted to do so via chimney. Her body was found some time later when the lady who came over to feed the owner’s fish discovered a stench and “fluids” dripping into the fireplace.
The homeowner/boyfriend speaks:
Dr. Jacquelyn Kotarac was a very intelligent, attractive woman and a gifted doctor, estranged boyfriend William Moodie said.
… “She was absolutely brilliant as a doctor,” he said.
… Moodie declined to talk about his relationship with Kotarac or what their status was as a couple when she showed up that night.
But he’s tired of people saying negative things about her and said it’s time to leave her alone.
I have nothing negative or positive to say about a woman I never knew, not even by reputation. I will say that this story is so far out there, I doubt we’ll ever know the truth of what she thought she was doing or why she did it. I’ll file this as a Great Mystery.
For the record, though, Bakersfield would prefer to be known for its Basque restaurants and Buck Owens’ Crystal Palace.
Oh, and don’t worry about me and Bakersfield’s record-setting ozone and particulate pollution. Got my lungs tested last week and I’m just fine.
D.