Crenellated Flotsam

Here’s one of last night’s dreams. I have no idea why I remember it.

I was on a beach, on a small cliff-like thing with a woman watching the waves and stuff. There was a large ship out in the water, impossibly close to shore. I got up to investigate, made my way down the five foot cliff, and began walking near the ocean.

The woman never followed.

I headed south along the sand and just inland the cliff rose to a height of about ten feet. I could tell that there was a solid wall inside or beneath the cliff now, that the sand was piled up against it, and I wondered what was inside. I knew it was some sort of industrial something or other, maybe sewage treatment or something like that.

I reached the end of the wall and was met by some kids, about eight to ten years old. I struggled to climb up the cliff and they laughed at my efforts and just dashed up around me. When I got to the top I was again on level land, and the kids ran off.

The structure was to my left now. The west-facing wall may have been solid, but the others were chain link and covered with a tarp. I found a door and made my way inside. It was a large, open space and in the center was a small collection of pipes. There were three teenage boys standing around it.

One of them was talking to the others, and it was evident he worked here. At one end of the pipes there were a couple brass pistons, about the size of a grapefruit, and a black rubber diaphram about three inches in diameter. The diaphram was leaking a thin stream of water, but it was coming out with a lot of force.

The boy who worked there cautioned one of the others to be careful, and showed him some proper safety techniques for examining the leaking gasket. He told them he may as well show them how it works, since it should be tested from time to time, anyway.

It turns out the pipes were some invention of FD Roosevelt, and came from that time.

He did nothing I could see, but we all knew that it was working. I hadn’t spoken to anyone, but was right next to the thing, along with the rest. We walked around it, and by the time we got to front I could see the pistons slowly pushing out and back in.

There were some open pipes on one side. Two of them were caked with salt, and I knew the machine was creating water. Another pipe contained a parade of tiny trucks, tankers mostly, but with train cars and anything else that could hold water. It was like a demonstration of how water could be put in the trucks and then transported to the public.

I watched as a series of tiny trucks pulled out from the pipe, filled with clean water.

We went to an underground room near the solid wall, and there was some stuff in there, but then I had to go. They all said good-bye to me and I left the compound and was on a street next to the beach. I was walking along another chain link fence, and rats were scurrying out from the vegetation that grew at the bottom of the fence. I was wearing heavy black boots, but was unable to kick them since I was paralyzed and could only lay down.

I wanted to kick one of them, one that was coming after me. Instead, another rat came out and was attacked by a third. The one that had been menacing me, went to join in that fight. A fourth came out and bit my shoulder, and I was unable to get him off since I couldn’t move. I could shrug my shoulder, but no more than that and he was stuck on me. I rolled over onto him, and hoped I’d squashed him but was afraid to look.

When I looked up, on the other side of the fence was a meeting. I couldn’t see many of the attendees, but I knew there were about twenty people. A middle-aged man and woman were trying to make them dealers of Penta water.

I was yelling that it was all a scam, that it was nonsense, and the couple started getting annoyed at me as the audience began looking doubtful. The couple started talking about molecules all lined up and staying that way and I mentioned water is not a solid, it’s a liquid and molecules move. The man began holding little models of molecules, and I said he should just stick to magic tricks and let these people save their money.

I rolled back over, and the rat was motionless. I was afraid to see if he was alive or not, but he was and I kept trying to get him off my shoulder, which was now soaked in blood. I had to pry all his teeth off and could only do that by wiggling my shoulder.

He fell off, ran away, and I woke up.

Now that I think of it, I may have two odd complaints about homosexuals. Sometime in the seventies, before it had become the universal and exclusive property of the gay community, LA Times columnist Jack Smith expressed sorrow over the loss of the word gay. There isn’t another word to replace it in English, it was a wonderful word, and while neither he nor I have anything against gays, it’s a shame that the word can no longer be used except to refer to sexual choices.

While I’ve gotten used to not calling people gay who are just wonderfully happy and light, and never had much use for rainbows, there’s another word I’d like to use but now can’t. I’ve had friends most of my life, and family, too, some lovers and an ex-wife, and all that rot. But what if I want to have someone near me who would face things with me and share things, someone with whom I held a bond that went beyond friendship. For the same reason it sounds silly to call someone a girlfriend when you’re both over thirty, friends have a connotation, too.

What is bothering me is that I can think of having someone like that, a partner in my life. But, I can’t use that, either, because the PC people have grabbed partner to mean life partner, and that isn’t what I mean at all.

How come they can’t create new words to describe these things? If I were gay, I think I’d want a new word, if I were PC, I’d want an unsullied word to describe my new bland reality.

Aren’t they worried that partners connote Western gun toters? Anyway, I should begin a list of once good words that have no been forced into postures. Gay is still a tough one to lose, and I wish they’d acknowldege the theft.

Even though I don’t believe in the straw God that I created from the Bible, the wrathful, vengeful, and jealous one, I may not be a poster child for atheists, either.

I infrequently say, but occasionally out loud, that sometimes I think there is a God and sometimes he seems to be on my side. This can happen when I stumble upon an address I’m looking for or some other serendipitous event. I don’t really feel that there’s any sort of personal entity who’s all that concerned with my well being or behavior, or who seeks to reward or punish me, but I do often sense a direction, a “grain” in the universe.

I don’t believe in destiny or purpose, but I look at it this way. Suppose I’m with someone and enjoying myself. I take that as a sign that what I’m doing is right. When things become stressful or don’t work out no matter how much effort I put into them, when I’m miserable and losing, I take that as a sign that what I’m occupied with is “not to be,” that I’m struggling against the current.

For that reason, among others, I try lots of things. Or, maybe it’s just “lots” from my limited perspective. When things go well, go easily and effortlessly, when they feel “right” I’m not likely to argue with them. I’m not so egocentric as to believe the world was created so that I can do it, but it’s more like a harmony, like I’m doing something I’m fit for.

Those are the things I feel I can be successful at, that I should pursue, that I should embrace. It obviously isn’t anything I’m doing that makes some things amenable to me and other, equally desirous ones frought with pain and peril, but I don’t see too much of guiding or helping hand in any of it, either. There isn’t any personal involvement by the universe, just an order that I can discover and attune myself with.

This isn’t much of a God, I grant you. But it does fit in nicely with what I’d expect of a God. I’m sorry, but I don’t see God as some sort of Santa Claus and to whom you can pray and get better or richer or laid or whatever. If you need to pass a mid-term, maybe God has arranged it so that you can study and learn, if you want to get a job, you won’t get it through prayer as much as by meeting the requirements and being an excellent candidate. I think my whole prayer thing can be boiled down to two stories. In the first, someone remarked that they prayed for patience and the next day had to go to the DMV after waiting at the grocery store. I like the type of God who would do that, who would give you opportunities to practice being patient over waving a magic wand and instilling it in you.

In the second, an older man whom I treasured dearly and on whose answering machine my message was the last and first one he never heard, once told me that while he talked a lot about it, he didn’t really pray any more. Everything he had to say to God was unnecessary, and not because God knows everything, but because there was no reason to ask when he already knew that God had given him the ability to fulfill these things. Anyway, he said that if he prayed it wasn’t to ask favors or to tell God anything, it was only for other people and his prayers were remarkably short. They’d be little more than “Dear God, Kathy” and he’d think of Kathy, hoping her well or filling with memories and thoughts of her. He wouldn’t presume to tell God how to handle her problems, which I admire, and wouldn’t ask for his assistance, which was a given, he’d just remember her while asking God to do the same.

When I hurt, which is invariably my own doing, I’m proud to say that I react with all the emotional maturity of any well-adjusted third grader.

My first, and often my only, reaction is to hurt back. I’m not so uncouth and confrontational as to hurt insults, to shout and call names, I’m much better than that. I rely on hurtful responses, demeaning and cruel remarks, the ones meant to sting and bite with deep psychological damage.

One of my better tricks is to get people to question themselves, to adopt the role of the chaste and unobjectionable and cast disparaging comments on the other’s behavior. Another favorite trick of mine is to act the martyr, to feign nobility and a dark, tortured soul, one made even more pitiable by the other’s actions.

I think it was my counselor who pointed out to me what an excellent manipulator I am, but it was my shrink who noted that I reminded him of a jellyfish. “You’re both spineless, but each of you has a nasty sting.”

A good person, a healthy one, will take a blow and rub it, noting the pain and wincing. Somone like me will strike back, will try everthing in their power to make the other hurt worse than I do. This, of course, is the exact opposite of healthy behavior, and my desire to make others suffer can be seens as a worthwhile measuring stick to gauge the extent of my maturity.

It may be, I tell myself, no more than the “misery loves company” idea, but this is categorically and utterly false. I don’t so much companionship in misery as I want to win the battle, to be the one suffering the leaqst.

It should go without saying that i’ve yet to win any of these numerous fights. Quite the contrary. While I wallow in regret my opponent goes on her merry way after a momentary awakening. I don’t carry a grudge, but I remain stuck while she shuffles me into long-term memory and picks up with healthy relationships and fulfilling ones. It’s always a mistake to think me an equal. I’m not, and will show you my laughable reactions when crossed. I may talk a goog game intellectually, but my emotional responses can only remind you of playground games, the ones I never outgrew and always lost.

It’s hard for me to feel good about life when the only God I can see is a judgemental, non-caring one.

I never thought much about God growing up, He was just a part of life like cousins I saw on occasion but who never, really, meant much. Later, when I began hearing questioning His existence, I started wondering, considering the possibilities. As the years unspooled, I found little in the Bible to give me any sense of comfort. The God I read about there reminded me of a teenager, jealous and demanding, petty and brooding.

Sure, he was powerful and all that, He gave His son so if I chose I could stay with Him forever, but having seen what He gave me in this life, that wasn’t an enticing prospect. Being all-powerful, He could certainly make things much worse for me, but I have trouble worshipping anything merely because the alternative is torture. It’s like respect, something which must be earned.

I’ve said earlier (I think it was the rant about Heaven or Hell), that I’d most likely do anything if you held a gun to my head. That creates obedience, but not respect. I’ve heard many, many people speak of a loving, generous God who gives them things, but what I’ve received could just as easily have come from an uncaring one. I guess it’s an attitude thing, and the food I eat and the wonders of nature aren’t things I see as gifts, they’re things I expect and struggle to get.

A God who didn’t feed me, or allow me to feed myself, would be a cruel lord, indeed. Creating me just to watch me starve would be a bad thing, so feeding me is closer to necessary than an example of benevolence. There are many people on this planet who are doing very well, who have rich, full lives filled with bounty and happiness, but I think that’s more because of how they react to things than because they’re receiving gifts. If I were better adjusted, if my attitude was positive, I could probably do okay, too.

One argument that I like has to do with right and wrong. When God, I’m told, created the Commandments He set down our rules for living. My issue has always been that there are things outside of God, bigger than Him if you will. I cannot conceive of any universe where God had any choice about killing, for example. Killing is wrong whether God says so or not, He could not have said it was right, so even allowing everything else I can’t picture Him as being all-powerful. Right and wrong, as I understand them, exist independently of Him and his choices.

It was important at one time in my life for me to have a God who loved me, who cared about me. I’d lie and say I had one, but I’ve never had any close, personal relationship with a diety. The universe I inhabit has some physical laws, including chaos, and random events that I sometimes see as coincidental. What I fail to see is any plan, or even any necessity for one.

People come into my life, and I sometimes entertain or amuse them. If I touch them, it’s more on their terms than mine or anyone else’s. I’m little more than an object, and no matter what I want or hope for, I see no necessities in any of it. I can have dreams, but they crumble or are met through what I and others do more than through the machinations of any divine hand.

If there is a God, I think his name his Randy. Random Chance.

I’ve been pretty good about not using this as a journal to talk about what’s happening (or not) in my life. I’ve failed a few times lately, succumbing to the overwhelming immediacy of the moment, and I regret that, but nobody’s perfect.

Today another lesson in how a wonderful morning fizzles and dies, leaving me wishing I were dead.

So, I got the AlphaSmart I won on eBay and it was exactly as advertised and pictured. It came with the claimed Mac Y-Connection, but I hadn’t realized the AS 2000 used a PS/2 connector instead of the UBS connector that my broken AS 3000 uses.

AlphaSmart sells the necessary connector for $30, but by this time I’m already dreading another in a long line of expensive fuck ups. I went to Fry’s this morning, and bought the necessary cables for less than $10, then the fun begins!

First, I looked at the files that were still stored on my new old AlphaSmart. School things from 2001, notes from some meeting of an entertainment committee (they had $72 in the metal cash box they authorized purchase for) and were going to use leftover pretzels from one celebration for the Christmas party, to be held in January. The only other file was one student’s (couldn’t determine the gender) wrestling story, a touching story of his or her first match, which was a win! There were plenty of exclamation marks, so you know it was exciting! Also, he or she had managed to shed six pounds in a week to make the fighting weight of ninety pounds!

Anyway, hooked the AlphaSmart up to the computer and fired up WXP. Opened a blank Rough Draft document and hit send and all hell broke loose. Rebooted the computer in *nix, with the same result in AbiWord. Lost use of the mouse, rebooted, and the mouse was completely gone.

Got the mouse to work again (several more reboots), and felt like shit. Realized I’d used the mouse port instead of the keyboard port, and felt dumber, but hopeful. Tried again in the right port, and I can get the AlphaSmart to work, but not as I’d hoped with both the keyboard and the AS plugged in at the same time. I need to switch cables, and also discovered that at one point the ‘puter refused to boot at all.

When my system cannot find the correct booting info on the hard disk, I panic. The Master Boot Record is something I screw around with way too much, typically with disastrous results.

Anyway, things are working again now, but I’m not as happy as I wanted to be. I rarely am as happy as I want to be. I’m a heat sink for desires that cannot be fulfilled, desires I create just to disappoint myself.

It’s an outside job, for me.

Last night I went to bed early, around 10:30, and was feeling as miserable as I can recall. I lay in bed, planning my next blog entry, and while I think I managed to evoke the utter despair I felt, it sounded so dismal that I would have been forced to add a line at the end reassuring you all that I was not, in fact, going to kill myself. I was, however, more than willing to die without a struggle.

Around one in the morning I woke up following some funky-ass dream where I was on a hillside with some people I know (my dreams are frequently populated by strangers), and was unable to get back to sleep. I checked my ‘puter and found an e-mail that brightened my life like a thousand nearby suns.

I know, I know. I should be able by now to lift myself up, to stop relying on other people’s opinions of me to make me feel good about myself. That was one of the things I felt bad about before sleeping and that I try to justify by seeing it as some sort of evidence that I’m a people person. I may be, but I lack any measure of self-worth and still rely on validation from others.

That, by the way, is not a plug for good karma.

Yesterday I received some mixed news from a doctor. I think my worst fear–cancer and unaffordable operations–is a figment, but other news leaves me feeling trapped and helpless. I don’t like to consider my problems are all in my head since that’s not something that can be cured with a pill or two. Years of therapy have taught me to fear any more therapy. I think the depression I experienced yesterday resulted from seeing myself as my biggest, perhaps my only, problem.

While my aches and shit may be internally caused, my salvation came from outside. While I beat myself up for not being able to fix me myself, I absolutely love feeling better. Good enough, in fact, that I can look back and laugh at the wild swings of the last twelve hours.

I am so fucked up. It’s absolutely wonderful.

As wonderful as it is being sober, there are some things about drinking that I miss. No, not enough to pick it back up, but it helps me understand why I did so much of it.

There’s a marvelous freedom in not having to drink all the time. When I was constantly fucked up, being fucked up was all I did. When I got clean, I could do everything, everything except getting fucked up. The choice between doing one thing and everything else was harder than you might think, but it seems so stupid now.

In addition to being fucked up and not doing anything, I was also shielded from feeling anything. Emotions were pretty much things I read about in books, and my own experience was shallow and meager, like seeing the world using the eight colors in an old version of Paintbrush. I was unprepared for the rush of feelings clean people have, but had pretty much been a happy drunk and never got into fights or any of that.

What I’m learning now is that I was also sheltered from the more subtle painful emotions. They’re still new to me, even all this time later, and I have no idea how to deal with longing or wanting. Rejection was something I felt soon after getting sober, and it hurt me so bad I don’t want to experience it ever again. But these insidious, nagging, discomforts hurt me every bit as much as a sharp blow. Being homesick would be a challenge for me, reigning in my desires so that they can be realistic is a constant effort, and if anyone used the word any more, I think being lovesick would torment me.

The joys of life are indescribable, but you’ve all felt them much more and much deeper than I have. I love how good I can feel, even if it’s momentary, and the thrill of a shiver of delight up my spine just makes me want to burst with joy. The uglier, blacker emotions are ones I’m feeling, too, and while I still don’t immediately recognize them for what they are, and am still pretty much a stranger to anger, most everything like that will make me incredibly depressed.

But the slow, tortuous dwindling of hopes, the replacement of wishes with realities, the recognition of impossibilities is something I’ve never had to deal with, and I don’t know how much of a deal to make of them. They hurt in their own way, a much more real one than shock or a stinging slap. I intensely dislike being subject to such feelings, but I’m learning they’re part of life.

I was somewhat startled the other day when I read someone complaining about the needless words in English. It’s true that English has a ton of words, and even more true that I recognize many more of them than I use.

I think it’s been decided that the old saying about Eskimos (now Inuits, I believe) having twnety-seven words for snow is a myth, but some group has many. I know that the Greeks had a few different words for love, and I’ve heard the Indians have over fifty. This, I thnk, is a good thing. It would keep lovers on their toes and could possibly help keep those less literate from breeding.

The first girl I ever dated got sick right after she dumped me. I think we were still on speaking terms, and I remember mailing her (through the US Mail) some sort of funtime sheet of puzzles, silly games, and things like that for her to mess with while she was ill. Although I’m pretty sure it must have contained a connect the dots thing, the only thing I can vouch for is a “complete the poem / fill in the blank” type of thing. I don’t remember it all, but it ended like this”

blah blah blah
….something above
I know now that the one is you
The person that I really _____

She wrote back (she completed the page and sent it back, and I guess I’d asked her to do that) “Isn’t that leading the witness?” and filled in the blank with the word wuv.

I don’t know if teenagers use the word wuv anymore, and I certainly never heard it again in my life. It’s a good one, though, and probably better describes the advanced nature of my most intense feelings than any other word. There’s an innocent, playful quality to wuv that distinguishes it from the mature, responsible love most everyone around me shares with their partners. It may capture pretty well the cartoonish aspects of my attempts through the years, my copying what other people do when they’re in love while having no good idea of how to do so myself. There have been some women who returned my romantic inclinations, but I have a hunch many more found them amusing.

Oh, if you want to read a dream I had, check the “more” section.
(more…)

Oboy!

I just won an eBay bid on an AlphaSmart. Maybe I’ll take better care of this one.

There were two of them so, of course, the one I bid on went for five dollars more than the other. I’ve really missed mine, which works but the keys have gotten all sticky and I use a lot of Fs and Gs and Zs.

No, they didn’t get sticky that way. Porn is horrible on AlfphaSmarts.

Here’s a great review about them, and why I like them so much.

Now I need to remember all my PayPal crap. I hate PayPal. Most confusing site ever. I always get trapped deep in the bowels of some weird-ass area I can’t navigate out of.