Crenellated Flotsam

Things have returned to normal, except not yet physically.

I received a warm and pleasing welcome from Minardi, who hadn’t seen me in days, and who found the scents I returned with to be a real treat. After an hour of greeting, he’s decided to lay down on the floor, not in my room, and is sleeping. I think he distrusts me, and I can’t blame him.

Everything else is unchanged after a week’s recuperation at a friend’s home.

I guess it’s good to be back where I belong. Sentiment has little place in the 21st Century, I still want more than I get, and sad good byes are countered with more appropriate optimistic remarks concerning pets and returns to normalcy. I would do well to heed such advice.

It’s obvious that music plays a large part in my life, but mostly as background.

I’m remembering, right now, an album I listened to endlessly, often drugged but always with feeling. It was Jefferson Starship, an album about how all the cool people would travel to the stars. I don’t know if Grace Slick and Paul Kantner knew about Hitchiker, or if it was even out yet.

The line I recall most often has to do with tears. As is said, if you ask a Western man, he’ll tell you about salt, carbon, and water, but if you ask an Eastern one he’ll talk about pain and sorrow, and the love of a man and a woman.

Different tools, that’s all. Each misses the other.

It’s still quiet and nearly noon.

I feel spaced and dazed, but it’s not at all unpleasant, almost like the feeling after an orgasm, a calm drifting, directionless, and with a glowing pleasure. And, no, I did not just have an orgasm.

I’m feeling full and justified, but still wanting validation. I never get enough of that, and I guess that’s what I most want to make my life complete. I’m comfortable when I’m sitting up, or laying down to rest, but reclining to sleep in a bed summons up much rib movement. The pain is muted or non-existant, but I’m still surprised and afraid of rearranging my ribs.

It’s as if they adopt to one position when I’m erect and another in repose.

Sleep has been something of a struggle. I wake up often, and I think I want to claim my more familiar position on my side. I can’t sleep that way, and feel bad about sleeping on my back, which I know makes me snore. I hate being a guest and snoring, but haven’t gotten any complaints yet.

I do wish the accident hadn’t happened. My impulse is still to run, to refuse to deal with it, but I’m being led step by step to being a more functional human being. There are times, of course, when I wish to crawl in a hole and pull it all in over me, to not deal with it, but there are people and things to consider and a selfish act like suicide isn’t much of an option.

I feel better than I have in days. Not so much physically or mentally, but emotionally. I think I’ve been on a roller coaster, as they say, and I’m pleased I’ve survived it and learned from it. I want to give, I want to give a lot, and I hope I’m not frustrated.

The nights are the worst part.

It’s quiet, I’m alone, and everything that happens is intensified from the lack of distractions, from competition. My mind cries out for answers, develops questions, invents scenes and resolves them unfavorably. There are a few certainties, but even the cause of their certitude is open for debate. I can only speak for myself, and my thoughts aren’t the ones I question.

There’s the pain, too. Incidental during the day, at night I can’t find a good position for resting. Each move unsettles tentative ribs, shooting me with pain I don’t feel during the day. Shallow breaths are taken, are cursed as being wrong. Shallow thoughts accompany them, and are also ridiculed.

I want so much to be whole, to be enjoyed, to be complete.

I’m about 6′1″ tall and weigh a little less than two hundred pounds. I guess I’m knda big, but the shadow I cast over other people’s lives is huge.

I don’t think it’s a good shade, either. Nothing to relax in or to enjoy. I bring with me a host of problems, new ones for people to deal with and ones that are particular to me. I make people adapt, and not pleasantly, to make adjustments they hadn’t planned on, to modify their behavior to permit me room. I shove aside intentions and replace them with adjustments, made mostly to please and mollify me.

Normal life is disrupted by my presence, ruined and tattered. The people I meet are usually doing fine before I enter their lives, then their hopes and plans have to be modified because of my arrival and actions, and they are left with less than they once had.

I always say I want to be harmless, to go through my life without injuring others, but I fail horribly in that task. People minding their own business, relying on me, find my irresponsibility detrimental to their continued existence. I don’t mean to storm through lives, but I do, and I hate the results I make in the good and decent family members and friends I touch.

It is a wonderful life, but my travels through it serve mostly as a example of what to avoid.

I understand that those who are abducted by aliens usually lose about seven minutes of their lives to the process. These minutes are gone forever, sometimes resisiting even the most fervent attacks by pschologists to retrieve them. In exchange for a ride in a spacecraft, these poor people lose a bit of their lives.

Lucky bastards.

I got in a car wreck the other day and figure I lost about four hours. I was driving…I was in a MRI machine, being yelled at for moving. I have no idea what I hit, or who, or anything. All I do know is that I spent a great deal of time running my hands over my face trying to pick out new painful places and scars. Not any easy thing to do with IVs and monitoring equipment.

To cover the highlights, I discovered I was naked, I was wearing a neck brace, I was on a back board, and when I sat up and looked around, I was very dizzy and it felt as if my ribs were detaching themselves from the breastbone.

The doctors say “nothing broken or fractured.”

I like it when I’m mistaken, especially if I’ve been wrong on the downside, underestimating things. It buoys my spirits tremendously to find things are better than I thought, and I don’t often have that sensation.

It’s been nearly three days since I’ve smoked a whole cigarette. Yeah, I’ve weakened and a few puffs here and there, but I can’t enjoy it and toss them out immediately. It could be said I haven’t really quit, but I’m going through the process and losing the habit. It’s been rough on those around me, and I regret putting them through it. I’m hoping by next week at this time, say, that I’ll have more of my emotions under control.

I can live with the headaches.

Surprising things can be beautiful and can touch me in ways I’m not prepared for. I think I’ll get glee, or relief, and instead get touched deeply on emotional levels I don’t anticipate. I like that about the world, nothing is ever as contained as I think, as limited as I sometimes want. Pain includes fear and maybe humiliation, pride carries with it aspects of fulfillment, and simple, natural acts can transcend the entire spectrum of feelings and delight, excite, comfort, and soothe me. I expect a one to one reaction, and sometimes receive a Sears catalogue of wonder when I expect a single item packing slip.

I can be more wrong about people than anything else. I often ascribe to them thoughts I can imagine myself having, but fail to consider the depth and variety others experience. I think I’m good with people, I mostly just project my triggers and reactions onto them, but that cheats everyone. You may not be able to have any internal sensation I don’t understand, but I sell you short when I limit you the way I do myself.

I feel as good as I can recall. I like that.

I can build anything having to do with me into drama.

I’m done beating myself up, and am just lying around hurt, not even bothering to lick my wounds. I’m feeling sorry for myself, of course, concentrating on the past instead of embracing the future, and doing everything I can to brand myself as “unique” or “special.” I have no patience, and nothing to be patient for.

My life is unwinding now, spilling out like the intestines of a Seppuku practitioneer, in slow motion. I watch it, distanced, without interest, neither caring nor alarmed. I’m not bored by it, nor by anything in it, but what’s happening is all stuff outside of my control, and gravity more than intention, decides everything.

I make a difficult patient, I’m sure of it.

I claim to enjoy simplicity, but demand much that is outside normalcy.

I rebuff those who want to give to me, watch that coil spill to the floor at my feet, and work on making it their fault.

I do, so, want things.

I want to cry, want to summon purging tears over my recent losses, but need to be strong and decent and act as adult as expected. Growing up would solve my problems, as would being decent. There’s no way I could barf up everything inside me, no matter how much I may want to do that. And, even in that process, instead of wondrous objects of horror I’d find laughably small nuggets, for nothing I obsess about is anything anyone else would even notice.

I so would like to have everyone else’s perspective on things, a rational, realistic one.

Not sure about this mood thing today. It’s the strangest three yet, but I feel okay so I’m sticking with it.

I’m a curious mix at the moment. A little bit tired (I had a poor night’s sleep with many awakenings) and drained, with some anxiety hiding beneath a lot of eager excitement. Today, one way or another, things will begin changing in my life, and I’m both eager to begin the process and wary of it.

I may not have many more opportunities for life-changing events, so I’ll be certain to take careful notes and document the process. In the past, before I was writing, I’d keep occasional journals, but had no idea what was important to note and record. Now I have a better idea of what will interest the future Russell, or at least what interests the current one, so it’s easier to write shit down than it used to be.

It’s human nature to plan, at least I think it is. Some people do it well and about half the time I do a pretty good job of it. Other times I get too caught up in details. It helps. of course, to know what one is planning for. Now, today, I have an end goal in mind, but not much worked out as to the process to achieve it. Vague checkpoints exist, but the reality and nature of the journey is pretty much out of my control. I think that’s a good thing. It doesn’t take much too realize that my best efforts, my picking and choosing, has led to an unfulfilling life. I wish I’d learned years ago to accept more and to struggle and manipulate less. Freedom is, indeed, a very scary thing, but I think it’s better for me.

I need to get a handle on my tendency to overreact. I need to stop making myself feel dreadful. I need to react to events as freshly as possible, but I always have preconceptions and prejudices. I’d like to be more responsive and less concerned.

I’ve decided if I don’t officially recognize summer now it may be over before I can. Since I’m not society cool the arrival of summer is not met with seersucker suits, white shoes, and a new skimmer purchase on Memorial Day weekend.

It is, however, usually noticed by me by the change from coffee to ice tea. I may officially begin ordering that now at coffee shops. I’m not sure if I like iced tea or not, but I drink a lot of it sometimes. It’s easy to swallow, I’ll give it that. At home I make sun tea on occasion, but don’t know if there’s a recipe or not. I just put the big container out until it turns some sort of color, then toss in some lemon juice and call it quits.

I was warm all day, from my toes to the top of my recently cut hair. The top of my head hurts, almost like I hit it on sometime, and I was sweating so much when I drove back home today the clerk in Vons commented on it. This was after half an hour shopping, too.

Still, it was a glorious day out today, but that word’s inadequate to express how I feel right now. Very much at peace, as opposed to yesterday’s trepidation, calm within, and not even obsessing over failures. I’ve received some good advice (calm the fuck down) which I should probably take.

Cooked. Wrote a little. Thought a lot. Pretended to clean, but it was too warm. I need to move my computers from point A to point B, maybe just to say I did. The machines are easy enough, it’s all the goddamn peripherals and cabling that make it such a chore.

I don’t think I made many mistakes today. Maybe disappointed people, maybe not. I’m far from godlike.