Monthly Archives: October 2017

Rough Day

All About Me, Home Life, Pets, , , , ,

Ever have one of those days when you really wish Jesus would quit fooling around and just come back already? You know what I mean; we all have days that we know going in are going to be bad, but then they turn out to be so much worse than we expected. This has been one of those days for me.

It started almost immediately: the wonderful but occasionally absent-minded and mildly careless Jess forgot to set her alarm and overslept, so I had to get up, take care of the dogs, fix her coffee and stuff. I really didn’t mind that. It happens fairly regularly, so it’s a minor hiccup–I figure, at least I get to go back to bed, she has to go to work. Then, later, when I do get up, my sister-in-law Andie is up fooling around in the kitchen.

I love Andie and look forward to her visits. However, we were expecting her today, and I figured I’d have time to clean up the house before she got here. She got here yesterday instead.

Now, neither Jess nor I are what you’d call neat freaks. We’re basically feral and, since the amazing and diligent Jess went back to work I’ve been responsible for housekeeping. Needless to say, Andie’s version of clean and mine are pretty different. She likes things to be neat, organized, and genuinely clean, while I feel pretty strongly that as long as nobody sticks to anything they lean on and I know what’s in the piles of stuff, well that’s good enough.

So the first thing I say to Andie as I’m taking the dogs out is that I’m going to take care of the dishes in a little bit. By the time I come back in, she’s already doing the dishes, she’s put away the clean dishes, “put away” some of the piles, and reorganized the remaining piles. She’s standing there waiting for me to tell her where the stuff in the remaining piles belongs. I’m like “right there.” I like to think that Jess and I aren’t the only people on the planet who don’t actually have a “place for everything.” To be honest, I don’t even know what half of that stuff is, much less where to put it.

She wanted me to do something about the recyclables, and then seemed shocked when that “something” turned out to be tying the bags shut and lobbing them down the stairs to the basement (don’t worry, next time I go downstairs, I’ll kick them over to where they belong).

Anyway, I had bigger fish to fry: I’m supposed to get my first colonoscopy (and endoscopy too! Hope they use a different tube for that one, or at least do the endoscopy first.) tomorrow, and so I had to swill down half of a giant bottle of Turbo-Lax to start my day off (gotta make sure I’m squeaky clean inside!). I get to get up at 6 tomorrow morning to drink the other half–yay.

So already the day is not great. When that Turbo-Lax kicks in, it’s not fooling around. I’m pretty sure I’m going to be taking my colon to the hospital in a bucket tomorrow. It’s also kind of tough discovering that I am literally as full of shit as people have always told me (well, not any more, so there!).

Then, Molly, our golden retriever that was my mom’s dog, collapsed on the porch. She hasn’t been doing well for a while, and apparently today was the day. I called Jess and asked her to make an appointment for Molly at the vet, so she did that and then took off early to go with us. While I waited for Jess, I alternated between sitting next to Molly, petting and talking to her, and running to the bathroom.

We got her to the vet, and it was as bad as we had feared: we had to make the call that nobody ever wants to make. They gave us a little more time with her and we both sat on the floor with her petting her and telling her she was a good girl while we both bawled like babies. I told her to go kick Harry’s (another one of our former dogs, who was kind of a jerk) ass, and Jess laughed and then said Molly’d be too busy looking for mom. That really set off the waterworks. I never could look at Molly without thinking of Mom. Molly was the last thing that Mom really recognized. Mom couldn’t remember her name, but she’d cup Molly’s head in her hands, lean forward and say “You’re my dog. Yes you are, you’re my dog.” Then she’d kiss the top of Molly’s head.

Anyway, we’re bawling our eyes out, and the girl came in and gave Molly THE SHOT. She was gone in just a few seconds. She was such a good girl. One of the sweetest dogs I’ve ever known.

Then we come home, and Andie’s cooking chili. The air is thick with the smell of frying hamburger, venison, and bacon. BACON! Who the hell puts BACON in chili? And what kind of monster does it on a day when one of the world’s great bacon lovers and chili lovers is on a clear liquid diet? The sister-in-law kind of monster, that’s what kind.

So my eyes hurt from crying, my ass hurts from . . . well you can imagine, although I recommend you don’t try too hard . . . and I’ve got to take even more laxatives, while smelling all that good food. Food that I CAN’T HAVE!!!!!

I go outside to have a smoke, and there’s a good breeze blowing. I turn my back to the wind, and all of a sudden, there’s a sound . . . a weird sound . . . a sound like somebody blowing across the top of a giant, empty, coke bottle. Halfway through the cigarette, I had to rush back inside, and the sound stopped. I’m pretty sure that, after today, the doctor won’t have to worry about using the micro-camera equipment–he’ll be able to just grab a camcorder and shove his arm up there. I think there’ll be plenty of room.

Needless to say, I’m not looking forward to tomorrow. Maybe I’ll get lucky and Jesus’ll come back tonight.

Writing X-rays

All About Me, Arts, Books and Literature, Culture, Politics, Politics & Culture

“Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly–they’ll go through anything.” Aldous Huxley, Brave New World.

I’m a writer (or at least I flatter myself that I am), so words are kind of my thing. Every once in a while, I’ll run across something that seriously changes my outlook, or how I think, or even my world. A few days ago, I was reading Huxley’s Brave New World, and I came across the line that starts this post. I read that, and my brain just kind of melted.

Over the years, I’ve had thoughts similar to that, but Huxley actually articulated what I’ve always thought, far better than I ever did, and actually put my ambition into words: I want to write X-rays. I want to write words in a way that cuts through to the heart of the matter, whatever the matter happens to be. Words that illuminate the hidden problems and that help to solve them. Words that make people think. Words that make people think, “That’s what I’ve been thinking!” Words that make people think, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Ever since I was a kid, certain phrases or sayings have stuck with me that either changed my life or formed the way I thought. Phrases like “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,” which I always thought was said by Patrick Henry, but was apparently originally written by Evelyn Beatrice Hall in her book The Friends of Voltaire, published in 1906. That saying, to my young mind, represented the entire idea of Free Speech, and much of what it meant to be an American. I remember a time when Americans were proud to quote that phrase.

Patrick Henry’s famous “Give me liberty, or give me death!” is another phrase that formed the way I saw the world. To this day, I resent anything I see as an intrusion of my liberty. Of course, I’ve come to understand that there is no such thing as absolute liberty. In any society, there are necessarily going to be limits to what members of that society are at liberty to do. I think the closest we can get to absolute liberty is a society where every member is actually treated equally, regardless of sex, race, religion, or financial status.

It’s funny how so much of my identity as a person is tied to my identity as an American. I really believe the words “All men are created equal” but it troubles me that, as a country, we still have trouble accepting it. I don’t think that any objective observer looking at our country would really believe that it is, or ever has been, a central tenet of our national consciousness. That bothers me, both as a person, and as an American. In our defense, I will say that we are closer than we were at the beginning, and I do think that we’re continually making progress in that direction, but clearly, we’ve got a long way to go.

Perhaps all the kerfuffle over Columbus Day has brought another phrase that has haunted me, and informed how I see the world, to the forefront of my mind. I first read The Lord of the Rings when I was 10 or 11 years old. In his forward to The Lord of the Rings, Peter S. Beagle wrote, “We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers–thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses.”

Even though I was too young to understand what he meant, I knew that what he was saying was important, and more importantly, right. As I got older and began to study history, and especially as I began to study history outside of history class, I came to see how right he was. Columbus’ “discovery” of America began centuries of genocide and exploitation so vile that it makes the Nazis look like pikers. Much of it was carried out under the guise of Christian Evangelism and Manifest Destiny, and, in a thousand little ways, in a thousand little places out of the way enough that we don’t notice, it continues to this day, but under the guise of economic pragmatism.

Don’t believe me? Just go to Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in S. Dakota, or the Navajo or Apache reservations in Arizona, or the inner city of, well, pretty much any city in America, or the coal country of Appalachia, or the factory towns of the rust belt. The machine doesn’t care about your race, or your color; it just cares about being fed and moving on.

Another saying that really puzzled me as a kid was “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” Samuel Johnson said that back in 1775. As a kid in love with the America I learned about in school and by watching John Wayne defeat not only the Indians, but the Japanese, and thrilling to the hyper-patriotic fervor of the Bicentennial, it just didn’t make sense. It didn’t make sense, but it just wouldn’t let me go, either. Once again, as I grew, and studied, I came to see what he meant, and to realize that he was right. Or almost right. Patriotism isn’t the “last refuge” any more (if it ever was).

It isn’t the scoundrel’s Alamo, where they make their last stand; these days it’s their launching pad, from which the flag-pin wearing bastards use the flag-draped caskets of dead soldiers to justify stripping away our rights, to brand those who protest injustice as unAmerican, to present themselves as the only ones who can save us from all of the “evils” that they have worked so hard to make us afraid of.

I want to write words like that. Words and phrases that cut through the constant 24-7 barrage of bullshit that we’re all dealing with. Of course, if you’ve read to this point, you’re probably thinking, “Well, you’re not there yet,” and you’re right, my writing (and my thinking) is still a work in progress. Hopefully though, I’m getting there. Hopefully, at this point, I’m at least making you think.