Pearls

My stepfather is in the intensive care ward now, moved to a different wing. Not a life-support situation. Intensive rehab, or something. For two months. Trying to build up some muscle mass. Of course, it was the month he spent away in "respite care" that degenerated him so much. So there you go then. It's too dramatic to call it a death sentence. But people die all the time. So, fuck.

He's one of the few people I've allowed myself to love. Sorry about that. I should be more loving. It's just that it hurts a lot to love. So much betrayal. I met him something over 30 years ago, as a teen. He was dating my recently-divorced mother, lately castaway by my father. Who wanted a much younger woman. A teenager, in fact. A girl. One year older than I was. I could hear them fucking. She was a screamer. I should say, I could hear them fucking from down the street, when I went out for a late-night run. So, fuck, and thank you for that iridescent dollop of memory.

But I digress. My brothers didn't like M, my not-yet stepfather. They had no respect for him. He was a simple man, has never read a book in his life, or the paper, no hobbies, no interests -- maybe a Lakers game on TV. He just worked, and ate, and watched TV. But he was loyal. He deserved more respect than he got. But he got it from me, as much as I was able, in those days. So that's good. And after some years, my brothers, at least one of them, came around. "M is a pretty good guy," said one of them. "You just noticed that?"

But we can't save anyone. I preached for years about a better diet, but it never took. Now he's living the outworking of his lifestyle. He never drank or smoked, but as I've said, decades of fast crap food makes you old before your time. And no gesture, and no feeling, can ever redeem anyone from the consequences of entropy. Nowadays, there are only spiritual miracles. Any physical healing will have to do with the immune system.

Maybe I'm wrong. But Thomas is my favorite apostle, and Berea my favorite polis, and a first spiritual truth is to test all things, and hold fast only to that which is true.

Which brings me once more to hugs. I've just implied that gestures are adulterated with futility. Which is as much as to say that communication is futile. Well, yes. But still we must communicate. It is not good for man to be alone. And of all forms of communication, touch is most direct. Does that make it most powerful? Think about sex, and that may be an answer. Fortunately not all touch is sex. Yuck. Even so, it's powerful. I'm aware of this more than most, I suppose. With me, there's hardly any casual touching. When I see people all high-fiving each other, I get busy looking preoccupied with some very important and engrossing task. Obvious, I know, but allow me my frailties.

From the very first month of this blog, I've had a few on-and-off consistent readers. One was a teenager whose blog I found, and it was simple and joyful and delightful. Now he's in his mid-20s, and I've watched, monitored, his growth from afar, pleased with the increasing maturity and wisdom I've noticed. I'm not a "chatter", but one does get a feel for these things. Here's a bit of what he just sent me, in response to the previous post: "I don't think it exists in this life, the action I would want to express the feeling that I have. What I want to do is an action that affirms who you are, and the good decisions you make, and the compassion in your heart."

I don't know that hugs can undo the violence that fathers might work upon the souls of their sons. I don't know how healing takes place. I don't dare hope for miracles, some healing touch that straightens crooked limbs or cleans what is unclean. I don't know that any lasting peace can be found. But I know that it matters, that we be heard, and understood, and that some attempt be made to soothe the unrest and despair that may pervade our distressed hearts. It matters, that we touch, and try to touch one another. Without compassion, how unbearable life is.

It has such a high price, compassion. Like pearls.

J

Favorite Fruit

I'm hearing this radio food show, all about people planning dates or Hanukkah meals or stuff. It's so very strange. Not that I don't eat, and I have been known to enjoy someone's cooking -- but to actually have a conversation about it? So strange. Someone asked me the other day what my favorite fruit was. I have no idea. I had to reframe it, away from nutritional content, into her frame of reference. So while I was stalling, she said, "Well, how about vegetable?" And I had the same problem. There are foods that I eat, but the idea that they would be a favorite seems like putting too much effort into having an opinion. I know what she wanted. She was planning on cooking something.

Then one of them came at me like she was going to hug me goodbye. And I said, "I know what you're thinking. No hugging." She wanted to give me a lecture about how to talk to 'girls.' "No, baby, I'll tell you how to talk to girls." Not really. My editor works most of the time. But I did say that thing about hugs, and she wanted to be offended. Lord. It's so much work, futile, even trying. Please, give me an opportunity to be offended.

Therefore I've been thinking about my father again, conversations, or diatribes, that I myself have never had. Please, disown me. Leave me out of your will. Never call, please never send me a letter, never talk about me, never think about me. Please. I am completely capable of saying that. I already think it. But we have to play the game -- you know, that game God set the rules for, about keeping our mouths shut sometimes.

The specific this time is the cold burning shame-laden memory of one of the times he asked me if I was gay. I was in my mid-thirties. "Uh, no, I'm not gay." And he argued with me. Gave evidence, as he considered it. And I was too, what, taken aback? -- to answer the fool according to his folly. I don't actually remember the evidence. I listened to classical music? I read books? I didn't care about sports? Faggy stuff like that.

But later I figured it out. I was helping him coach his son, my half-brother, on a baseball team, 9- and 10-year-olds. My son, same age, was on it too. And I was fond of some of the boys, and hugged them. One in particular. Sorry, I know, creepy. But he had an older asshole brother, and I was empathetic.

That's it. That's the evidence, the real. I figured it out. So the proper question from my father, dad, should have been, "Are you a homosexual pedophile?"

And indeed, later I was a foster parent, single, to young boys. So there you go then. That's not a story I've actually told before. What do you do with that. What crime, what offense, did I commit, to earn that? Now it's stored up like a treasure in my heart, and I suppose I'll come if I'm summoned, for more and continuing weirdness yet again, and go to his funeral. Because there's no such thing as freedom. Either you sear your conscience, or it sears you.

That's what I spend my Saturdays thinking about. Almost always, it's so hard to be around people.


J

MAD

Mohammed Mohamud. A name so great they spelled it twice. Let us pause, Gentle Reader, and consider this young American and the life course his night visions charted out for him. "Go ye, my child, and take unto thyself a bomb of great power, and use it, O Chosen One, to vaporize into a mist most holy the corpulent flesh of your corrupt fellow American heretics and their children. I mean fellow Americans, who are heretics, no, I mean infidels, not fellow heretics, for thou art not an heretic, er, infidel, but verily a True Hero is Islam!!!" (Author's reconstruction.) So he contacted the FBI to help him achieve his Moslem-American Dream, and BAM, almost made it! Dang explosives dint go off? Like, wuzzup wit dat, y'know? Cheap bomb shit, musta bin made in like, y'know, um, someplaste where they don't know how to build bombs good. Fuckin Ebay. Shit, Allah be praised.

It will be remembered that it was here, in the trenchant pages of Forgotten Prophets™, the observation was made: For any given terrorist act, there is a fifty-fifty chance that somewhere in the hero's name will appear some variation of the name Mohammad. This particular Mad Mo doubles that statistic ... although my math may be a bit off -- point five times point five is point two-five. Well, that doesn't seem right. And to be fair the little scamp's name is -- presumably in full ... although one never knows with these Third-World-Americans -- Mohammed Osman Mohamud. So, maybe he's Mormon? Is there an anagram in there?

• Madman ammo mushed Homo! A Portland headline we'd never expect to see.
• Oh Ammo-Demon! Damm USA, hm? An islamist prayer?
• Ahead! Summon doom! Ah! Mmm! A call to arms?
• Amuse doom, Madman ... ho hmm. An appeal to conscience?
• Mum, mom ... ashamed manhood. Psychoanalysis, of islam. Ism.
• Hush, mom, dad, mama ... men. Oom.... Cuz it's about family, and inner peace.

Muy a propósito, as we Mexicans say. Only in America. Portland is in America, right? Like California? California is in America, right?

What a world.

J

Drag

My stepfather can't get out of bed anymore. Falls down and lies in a heap for an hour while my poor stupid mother tugs and cries. Finally she calls me and I come and load him up, and he hobbles about, Parkinsons, one slow dragging foot and then the other. He fell and broke the bathroom sink yesterday. Today my mother said to me, in front of him, that she understands "mercy killing". She has a lot of anger and resentment. I was quite harsh about that. She can think it, and say it, but not in front of him. "Oh, he doesn't understand." Nevertheless. This, from a woman who will not train her four little incessantly-barking dogs not to piss in the house.

He's in the hospital now.

I'm not at all sympathetic. We call these things down upon ourselves. If she had not squandered all her money on her grandchildren and my brother, she'd have resources now. If he had not eaten at Jack in the Box every day for thirty years, he wouldn't be dying a slow and degrading death. If I had been prudent and sociable, I would be surrounded by loved ones and material wealth.

Today a friend of mine -- undoubtedly the best friend I've ever had -- told a story about how his wife was upset because he'd thrown out an empty printer cartridge that was by the trash. She got all huffy about it, or snippy, or indignant, or whatever. It was disappointment. She had this idea in her head about how things should be, and her plan was foiled. He joked with her about it later, when maybe she could hear it. But it was still on his mind too. That's how we are. We like things to be the way we'd like them to be. The Buddhists are not wrong -- the cause of suffering is desire. A cause.

I got a sore throat last night, before I went to bed. Not very sore. But I couldn't sleep, again, and I'm not feeling well. Ate too many almonds. Nothing unreasonable, but one must prepare oneself. Sleep deprived again and unwell is not a great combination. So I'll try to get seven hours tonight. I have ongoing early-morning obligations. Not an easy thing. This weekend was the first two days in a row that I've had to myself for six months. Then I had to eat too many almonds. Too much of a good thing. Hope I don't degenerate and need to be mercy killed.

Who will love me if I'm not strong, and wise?

So love her, or him, even when she's weak, or foolish. It's not even that God is watching. It's that kindness should come, first, to humans.

J

Really Good Books

Of course Raymond Chandler and Ross MacDonald. Anything by them, almost. Not so much the very early books of Macdonald, and with Chandler there's weakness in the last few, but still worth reading, if only for the gloaming. I reread Chandler every five years or so. All of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe books. Just good storytelling and prose exactly what it needs to be. Nothing necessarily scintillating, but masterful. I gave the whole box full of them to my former wife as a birthday present. She loved them, but I wish I still had them. Worth rereading.

The Parker books by "Richard Stark" -- Westlake. They make Micky Spillane look like, well, the untalented hack that he was. The three "hard" books by Dan Simmons, worth reading, and in a pinch maybe a reread.

Any of Alan Furst's night soldier books. He is superb, absolutely unmatched. Every page has something good on it. A rare thing. From The Polish Officer: "...his hands were trembling. He was ashamed of that, so had wedged them in his pockets as though he were a street-corner tough who whistled at girls." This, of a very minor character. Furst is brilliant. I'm into the third, and I will read them all. That's how I am.

I seem to have found a few more good authors, but haven't read them yet. It's really hard to come up with anything truly worth while. I finished off three or so books in the past few days. Irritating isn't the half of it. You'd think a historical mystery featuring Leonardo da Vinci would be great. "The Queen's Gambit." It's so bad I am tempted to write a review on Amazon. Written for junior high, only not. Told from the perspective of a young apprentice ... who's really a girl!!! "The Master is so smart and talented and handsome, and strong and a vegetarian too, but not gay. And he called me to help him solve the mystery of the murder that the Duke wanted solved, and I was a chess bishop in a big game, and trapped in a crypt, and the Master invented a giant metal robot if I knew that word, operated by a box, maybe radio, I don't know, but somehow with strings, and anyway the brass automaton fell over onto one of the murderers who was so sexy and bad." I actually skimmed it. Authoress doesn't know when to use whom, and a little shaky on how commas, work.

Another historical series -- I do like series -- about a detective in Victorian England, told from the perspective of his young apprentice, a real boy, manboy, and isn't it good that Barker is so interesting and stuff, because nothing that happens in either of the two and only books I've read is interesting at all. Barker the mysterious master hero detective throws sharpened coins and can stick-fight really well, and he wears mysterious dark glasses all the time, and other things happen too. That's interesting right? Or not? Well, whatever. It's instructive, at least, to read about how people wash and stuff.

And then something by Joe Gores, who isn't bad, just not worth reading again. Has a very good reputation, so that was disappointing.

Really good books come from really good authors. Apparently it's not enough to want to be a writer so much that you actually write books. One should also be talented. But who am I to speak? So very talented, brilliant even, wry, insightful, succinct ... no, pithy, just amazing. Yet search the shelves though you may, no surviving fiction may be found from Jack H. What an artist the world loses in me.

Still, someone has to criticize. If not me, whom? If not now, when?

J

Weak in Review

I realized a couple days ago that I don't trust smiles. They're such an easy manipulation. A tension of muscle fibers, voluntary, like the strings of a puppet. No honesty needed, or passion. Social viagra. But why should expression be more honest than words? As I have so wisely said, words are what we use to tell lies. Corollary: smiles are for deceiving. And also for telling the truth. How are we to discern?

One of the reasons I'm such a stick is that I withhold judgment. Don't trust. But don't distrust either. Wait and see. Twenty-five and more years ago, early in my marriage, my then-wife told me that one of her friends had figured out why I was so socially abrasive. Well, first, I'm abrasive? But it was that I was testing people, seeing if they could be trusted. Y'know what? The friend was right. An unconscious mechanism on my part, brought into the light by an insightful woman. I've toned it down, way down, in the ensuing decades, but trust is still the heart of the matter.

I've had a couple days off, for the holy day. That was nice. Caught up on some missed sleep. Finished reading three books. Thinking about eating more, and focusing again on training. Maybe get a microwave -- maybe I'll find one on the side of the road? It's been a desultory few months. Thinking about starting a long-delayed project. Hard to find the time, yet sleep deprived, and need the energy, and food. Ah well. It's another one of those turning-point moments, so often missed.

So I need to do met-cons at least three times a week. Been neglecting that. And strength training. Need to focus on chinups and double-unders, and rowing. Want a treadmill, that goes at least 14 mph, for intervals. Most productive. So much to do, so little reason to do it.

Legalized marijuana. Medical. Medical. Doesn't that mean it should be regulated as a pharmaceutical? Not the over-the-counter kind of drug, that you just buy cuz you want it. And not under-the-counter. Prescribed. What are these quasi-criminal dispensaries doing, being semi-legal? If you need a prescription to get medical marijuana, then it should be supplied only by pharmacies. The not-online kind.

I have this fantasy, where someone identifies drug dealers and shoots them down like mad dogs, as a public service. When public safety institutions fail, we need vigilantes. Need. But, sadly, courts are a part of the public safety establishment, which means that righteous men, who stand up for justice, go to jail.

The 60 Year War was hot again for a few minutes, this week. North Korea. Murdered a few soldiers, if that's possible. A few dozen sailors some months back. Ah well, what's a country to do. I mean, it's not as if we have any leverage with China, NoKo's sponsor. What, have WalMart buy from India instead? Unthinkable. That would cost 2 cents more. Sure, an ally is an ally, but 2 cents ain't hay. We're talking real money after a while, and what's a few dead South Koreans compared to that? Don't rock the boat baby. Let NoKo sink it. Who needs boats anyway. We can fly. It's a right, and it has the added bonus nowadays of us getting our junk twisted publicly by fat men in uniforms. Ahh. I always wanted to be famous for being naked on the internet, even if it's only backsplatter imaging. Yeah, you heard right baby. It's so dirty and fine. So it all ties in together. We bend over for all the Second World despots and Third World hard guys, and, uh, well, I can't think of a way to end this sentence, but as long as the West remains complacent everything is fine, and dirty.

So I went online to see if I could find more images of penises. Slim picklings. Sort of surprising. But I'll upload what I found. Mostly autopsy photos, but isn't that appropriate, coming from our sterile and dying civilization? Now Arab penises, and North Korean! I can't think of a way to finish that thought, but it would be great if I could. Something about explosions and missiles and suchlike.

That's Danny Bonaduce. We live after all in a celebriticentric culture. Dude takes steroids. Frankly, not attractive.

So that's everything I could find on the web about penises. Since you insisted. Next week I'll try to find boobs.

Hey, don't be so uptight. Try smiling.

J

Wind

For the past three or so weeks I hadn't slept for more than two or three hours a night. Scandinavians have a high incidence of restless leg syndrome, RLS. I cured it, as it were, by wearing pants in bed. I figured it would interfere with the feedback loop, and it did. So far. The sleep loss was a problem. As for the restless leg syndrome, it's trivial to the point of absurdity. We'll call it Wittmaack–Ekbom syndrome. Yes. I read some time ago that it had some correlation with magnesium, or potassium, or zinc, or something. At the time I didn't bother to remember. It comes and goes, across the decades. Had it when I was a kid. Not even worth talking about.

When I was 17 I tore up the cartilage in my knee. It swelled up and got tight and clicked. Healed of course, but still wonky. It never occurred to me to talk about it with my parents. I would never have done that. Unthinkable. I've gone over this before.

Now it's the season of childhood, turbid and invigorating, feasts and gift-giving. A lovely time. My father's birthday approaches. Sometimes I've considered the obligations of duty. But is this sort of thing necessary? He clearly dislikes me, has said so with actual words in English. And I'm less and less Christlike in my willingness to turn the other cheek. I don't understand the need to be so toxic. But I do understand it.

I am highly unmotivated to workout. It's been this way for half a year. Just not motivated. Been busy, after a manner of speaking, and that diffuses my energies, but it's not been actually taxing. Problem is, time is slipping away. Other men my age have position and accomplishments. I have a lost decade. My income has constricted, and will remain so for the foreseeable future. My energy and motivation have diminished. Well, there's a whole list I could check off. The as it were bright side is that I'm currently too muted to be depressed. Past Novembers have been nightmarish. So muted is good.

But we're told that unused talents will be taken away. You know, like in the afterlife. It would be justice, no, mercy, since to live with talents that are greater than one's eternal position of stewardship would be an imperfection, in Paradise. Better to lose IQ points, in the resurrection. I know, it's a paradox.

So much, so little. It's unmotivating to be unmotivated.

J

Bah

I don't know. I think I can see it.

I think I see it. Them. Is "junk" a plural? Testicles, clearly, and a penis. Yep. There it is. Them. And ... stand up straight, boy. You're having your picture taken. Suck in your gut. Have some pride.

What have we become, that we can no longer travel by commercial airline without being felt up, actual probing hand to genitals, or gray and grainy images memorializing our, to use the biblical term, nakedness? That we stand placidly in line -- perhaps slightly uncomfortable, but what is one to do after all -- and have government functionaries grope us publicly? Liberty? Bend over, bitch. Backwards. Imagine your mother, your sister, your wife, your daughter. Heh heh. Cute little titties, sweetie. Or not. Your teenage son. Nice dick, junior. Mine's bigger. "Passengers?" Is that the right word? Objects, with TSA-certified anal cavities.

No worries though. We can always take the bus. That is the only other option. Ground travel. So much for the flight of eagles. Unfeltup air travel is not a human right. You know you want it. You don't stand in line for something you don't want. Faggot.

Churchill described Germans, back in the day, their hay day, the salad days of the Third Reich, as a nation of carnivorous sheep. Americans? Scarecrows stuffed with money? Maybe that's the Swiss. Some sort of porcine imagery? Deodorized and trying to lose weight. No matter. In any case, increasingly irradiated. GMO. Grope My Organ. And increasingly European. Line up and shut up. Have your union card ready for checking. Papers, get out your papers, citizens ... illegals need not bother.

The debt is completely unsustainable. A few years ago I lacked the imagination to see how the housing bubble could ever burst. I was aware of the constant rise, and it was clearly unsustainable. I knew that. But I couldn't see the outline of the catastrophe. The government hadn't bodyscanned it for me, to reveal its penis. Well, now I have the precedent, and I can see what's coming.

We have been betrayed. Whether conspiracy or incompetence or rank greed, our tulips are found to be worthless, and our craze for housing and liberty is a madness of the crowd. Humanity is not meant to live in freedom. So the force of history should have informed us.

I'm thinking the dude is circumcised. Wish it was clearer. Maybe it's Obama, leading by example. Mine's bigger.


J

Signs

Someone mentioned having seen Obobo's signature today. Made him feel ... odd. Sort of a creepy feeling. Well. I had to look. I'd never seen it before. I must not be much of a reader. But these "computers" you kids are always talking about make it easy, so I had it instantly at my as it were fingertips.

Yes. It is odd. Took a moment to put words to it. It looks like something you'd see spray painted under a bridge. It's like a symbol. Very adolescent. Somebody -- it couldn't have been me -- said the B looks like a penis. And a mouth. PacMan?

So we got to wondering. George W Bush?

Not very neat, but at least it doesn't look like graffiti. Look at how tiny the W is. You know what that means, right? Big shoes.

clinton?

I'm sorry it's so small. That's just how it is. Look at the LLs. Biii clinton. But nothing here looks like a penis. How ... odd.

HW?

Nothing to see here, move along. Just a fast signature.

Reagan.

An actor's signature, he said. Indeed, someone who acts. Bold, decisive. Sort of fills the screen. Interesting.

Carter.

Pow. I'd vote for that signature. That's what politics is about, though. Upfront flash. A big, big, big open smile. Disillusioning. But that's good -- who needs illusions.

Ford

Penmanship. No Is to dot or Ts to cross. Note the period though. He'd have made a good lawyer.

Nixon.

Clear, unambiguous. Yeah, I'd vote for him. That got me thinking about Laugh In, how Nixon appeared on it -- Sock it to ME? -- and we had to look at that via YouTube. Did they ever rerun that show? My pal had never seen it. So very very hip, and now so dated.

Take away lessons? There is a dividing line, generational, that determines legibility of penmanship, evinced in presidential signatures. There's a lesson in that. Obobo has the strangest signature. Carter has the nicest. This must have meaning.

I said it would make a good book, a coffeetable book. This will have to do.

J

The Stupidest State

California. Man. Stupid. Magic bean stupid. Girls Gone Wild stupid. Just stupid. Stupid. Jerry Brown is as of this writing apparently the next governor. The guy who unionized public employees in the 70s. You know, the reason the state is bankrupt now, paying for the incredibly exorbitant pensions of these sign-holders and form-fillers.

And Brabra Boxer is back. Stupid stupid stupid. The nastiest please-call-me-senator-I-worked-so-HARD-for-that-TITLE senator. She works hard for the title. Not for California. Git it? Of course, the MSM are calling the race for Boxer while it is a 47 47 tie, and before conservative Orange County has been counted yet. But that’s par for the course. In any case, stupid stupid stupid California.

Like America. Most blessed land, populated by morons. That’s everywhere of course, but you’d think we’d realize why we’re so blessed, and seek to preserve that. But no. No, that would be too smart. So let Californians endlessly Hope for Change, as promised by the least presidential but most imperial and oh so elegant in his mien Dude in Chief, and support the revolution and elect all socialists, as we continue to do, by any other name. Sure, New York did the same thing as California, elect or reelect the dregs. But New York isn’t the promised land. It’s just a big important state. People actually come to California, for itself. Even though it’s being ruined by dregs, foreign and domestic.

And the Stupidest State has preserved its Save the Planet job killer, and tossed out the idea that a supermajority should be required to raise pass the “budget.” These pigs, now, can operate doorknobs. So of course the pantry will be empty. Aside from heaping piles of pig droppings.

So there’s that. But as for what’s important, my bjj is moving along apace – slowly, but apace. Practicing combinations more now, which is frankly the only intelligent way to learn, once you’re passed the basics. Little things, like calling it the hip escape rather than the snake move -- figure it out -- and teach it with the double pop. Seems like a good idea. As I may have said, the Brazilians know all the moves, but showing and teaching are two different things.

Looks like I'll have to wait two years for more good news. What a stupid world.

J

Contact

Sometimes it takes a long time to see obvious things. I just realized, in the sense that I put it into words, that it takes a long time for me to allow someone into my very small circle of trust. I find myself on occasion in the company of huggers. Well, I'm a hugger, with a few people. Like kids that I love. All that's in the past now though. Very very few adults. And that doesn't include family, except for my son. So how do I handle it, with these causal huggers? Which is ruder? -- me, with my icy rigidity, or them with their sloppy demand to trespass into my space? Do I make them as uncomfortable with my social distance as they make me with their attempt at envelopment? I think I have the better case. But there shouldn't be a need for a case. We should respect each others' boundaries. Our boundaries should not include tearing other peoples' boundaries down.

So there's that.

I've been thinking about how I was taught bjj. One move at a time. Sounds sensible. But it's not. Bjj is not about discrete things, one move and then another different move. It's a move always followed by another move. Clear? It's combinations. So techniques should be taught that way. As a logical progression. Steps in a series. Where I used to train, sometimes combinations would be taught. But I'm using "taught" in a non-standard sense. Demonstrated. Taught would mean learned, and I didn't learn it -- because to learn you have to practice, which means repeatedly, day after day. Drill simple moves, the increments, and drill complex moves, entire techniques and combinations. Like in gymnastics, back in the day, when we put together a whole routine, one move after another, and then performed it. Don't some martial arts do that? I think so. Mostly dance, those, but dance is useful.

This is a very good idea.

Chess isn't about one move and then some other move. The masters think ahead. That capacity is trained. To hope that it eventually develops is to depend on hope. What a brilliant analogy. I'm brilliant. Mat time will make you good, eventually. The process can be sped up by good teaching. Randomness has its virtues. So does method. Teaching should be methodical. Testing should be randomized. You heard it here first.

I'm finally feeling like "mastery" of jiu jitsu is not an impossibility. If only all that mat time had been under competent tutelage. No disrespect meant to my erstwhile instructors. It's just that they weren't teachers. They were athletes, trying to teach, mostly by demonstrating moves. I actually talked to the guy who was always there, telling him about lesson plans, and about posting them. Nothing ever came of it. Sort of sends a message. Cuz I do know what I'm talking about. Develop lessons, teach them, review them, test them, add to them. Duh.

Ah well. Enough of how fantastic I am.

J

Note Taking

I gave her a dry peck on the cheek, goodbye. She turned quickly and kissed my mouth, warm and hot and an eternity.

"Don't do that," I said.

Mockery flitted in her eyes. "Why not?"

"Because I will love you, and you aren't worthy of my love."

-----

Words are so strange. They're supposed to be our most objective way of communicating. But they're so arbitrary.

Take "progress," and "progressive." The political "progressive," a Leftist of course, is progressing toward ... what? There is a goal. It's just that the goal is a theory. Marx and his dictatorship of the proletariat. An impossible fantasy, a philosophical construct, by which is meant, an ideal. An ideal is something that can never exist.

As opposed to progress. A deeply conservative value. Westward Ho. It's about the real world. Science, technology, geography -- mastery of the concrete.

-----

I'm keeping a record of bjj now -- techniques and their combinations. I'm convinced that when the black belts show 17 variations of some move, it should be just one, and a move that logically follows. Not 5 or 8 or 12 techniques -- two, or three. I understand the temptation of the teacher. There are so many fascinating things-- show them all! But no. Show what can be learned. Not everything that exists. Teaching is about what the student learns, not what the instructor knows. Give plenty of time to drill the move, review the previous lessons, drill the basics. It is, sadly, about rote. Instant mastery is for geniuses in science fiction books. Everyone else has to practice.

-----

Of course she is worthy of my love. But she still has to court it.

J

Syphilis Is Natural

To summarize, CrossFit is a booty call. It gets the job done. Jiu Jitsu, you marry.

Talking about a well-known CF workout, I said, "Cindy is a bitch. But she's not a slut. She's not easy." You had to be there.

The big news is about Juan Williams being fired from NPR for having said that when he's in the airport and sees religionists in "Moslem garb", he feels anxious. And he was fired for that. That. Um, was it his feeling he got fired for, or being honest about his feeling? Hard to know. Got a multimillion dollar deal with FOX out of it though. Point is, the Totalitarian Left is like that. Thought control. Purity of the secret heart. Every Revolution eats its own. The Terror of the French, the Purges of the Soviets. They make witch-burners look like pikers. Understanding of course the meaning of the word "revolution". Not the same as a war of independence.

I just can't get over it, even though I know it so well. The hypocrisy. They urge Tolerance. Hm. Huh. Um. Huh.

Speaking of which, Obobo was in LA today, tying up traffic, doing a sparsely-attended fundraiser to take money out of Southern California. You know, cuz he's so good for the economy and shit. Cali has some sort of Madam senator, who worked so hard for her titties, some sort of schnauzer or weener dog name, and this Ma'am needs Obobo to get us all fired up. He needs us all fired up. Cuz of hope and change we keep hoping for. Keep hoping for the change, he needs us to keep hoping.

Hey. Asshole. Less talk. You can't control your incompetence. You can turn down the noise level though. Please? We'll carve you into Mount Rushmore if you'll do that for us. Deal? Cuz you're so great ... we don't want you to water down how great a speaker you are with any multiplication of ... um, uh ... er ... ... .... uh ... um, um ... eloquentness.

Oh, and drilling. Did I say drilling? Just the grinding out of moves, bjj moves, to make it automatic. Rote is a good thing. On a regular basis. 50 may be a bit much. But 30? An even number. A couple of moves then, armbar and triangle, or this sweep or that, uh, um, er, well, you know. I'm not very eloquent. Maybe paired moves, combinations, drill drill drill. Cuz all you have under pressure is instinct -- instinct or character.

Well, there have been many other ways I've been brilliant recently, but I just don't feel like sharing it right now. You're barely paying attention anyway.

Syphilis is natural? Never mind. Just something I texted to my son just now.

J

MAD

I'm uploading some more of Most Ancient Days. Feel free. HERE. It's amazing.

J

Only BJJ from Now On

I seem to be marginally involved in teaching bjj nowadays. Haven't rolled in, like, a year, and I am very rusty and stupid. I refuse to fake it though, so I may be teaching my one occasional student the same thing over and over and over, until I remember something else competently. But it's got me thinking again about teaching, how to teach.

First, be prepared -- not just generally, knowing the material. Specifically. Plan the lesson ahead of time, not on the spot. Otherwise there may very well be details neglected, and I'd have to play catch up. Hate it when that happens. Unprofessional. Like Obama. Talking until he thinks of something to say. Know what you're going to say.

So, work it out by the numbers. Identify the clear steps, find a verbal formula to express it, show it one step at a time. Incrementally. Break it into discrete parts. Demonstrate the steps alone and then serially. Yeah, like math. I remember. Don't suppose that beginners are capable of assimilating more than one thing at a time. Them have them do each individual movement, then the parts integrated. Say, show, do.

Write it down, not just as notes, but for show. Show them writing. I'm a visual and kinetic learner. I need verbal formulas because they help me see and do. Put the steps on the board. Fine details, maybe. Gross movements definitely.

And review. What bjj guys do is drill something and then move on. No. Be organized. It's not a mental thing, cognitive. It's doing doing doing. Different part of the brain, that doesn't speak a human language, and can't form a thought at all. How do you train a dog? Show it a thing and then move on? Good dog. Perfect dog. Genius dog. No. Day after day, repetition and consistency.

And have the boys keep notes. Show them an effective method, and take three minutes for writing time. Have them reproduce the movement using only their notes. Clarify errors and obscurities. Have them teach me.

And ritual. I'm just a little unimportant purple belt, rusty and ungifted. Very smart, brilliant in fact, don't get me wrong. I'm amazing. But not actually gifted at bjj. Good, because I have spent a lot of time on the mat. But most anyone else in my body with my training time would be better. (But I'm amazing.) I'd feel like a fraud, doing a formal closing of a class. But the line up and handshaking at the end of a class is important. I'm not inclined to that sort of thing, personally. It's just important, psychologically. I won't go into the reasons. When I've done it, where we line up by belt, and the instructor shakes hands right down the line, each guy taking his place behind the last, so everyone goes through everyone -- well, it's meaningful in a way that I'm not inclined to verbalize.

When I had kids as students, I knew this. There are procedures, that give order, which is necessary for optimal learning. Like adult authority with kids. Kids need the structure. It's a kind of safety. Everyone who knows anything knows this. It's not something that can be shirked. If nothing else, it's a respect thing.

But it's hard, being organized. It's a hassle, preparing notes, or keeping them. I don't want to do it, really I don't. So, maybe I won't. No one would know. I can fake it, and deal with the guilt, and sear my conscience or just ignore it. That is after all how I make my living. I steal purses from old ladies. It's really easy, but sometimes the screaming and begging bothers me a little. But I just ignore it.

No one has died yet, in my extended family. No other news I care to share. Elections coming up. The incredibly stupid American population may correct the horrific aberration from common sense it indulged in two years ago. Correct it a little, like learning how to walk after cutting of a leg. It's a kind of walking. Some of the idiots have seen through the particular mountebank that Obobo is, but we are not lacking in wizards and witches to lead us.

Here in Cali the Dhems have thrust Jerry Brown forward again, who as gov in the 70s empowered the public unions, that have ruined us with their tax funded pensions. He should be elected, even though someone in his office called Whitman, his Rep gov opponent, a whore. Because Whitman fired her illegal alien housekeeper of nine years, who got hired with forged papers. See? -- you can't fire illegals. That's evil, like capitalism is, and so Meg can't be governor. The whore. And "Whitman" sounds like whiteman, so that's even worse. "Brown" sounds, somehow, good and honest and noble. Yeah.

But I'm regressing to an older version of me. I'm sorry. Only BJJ from now on.

J

Pills

I'll be stopping by my mommy's house everyday now, to feed my stepfather. He's aged 15 years in the last five weeks. Must have lost 40 pounds. He's been declining for a few years, barely ambulatory, Parkinsonian, Alzheimeric, diabetic, etc. Deaf. I pat him and rub him and speak to him, but I'm not good at that sort of thing, not real friendly. But he's dying.

He spent a month at the VA, respite care, a government thing to give caregivers, my mother, a break. He seems to have stopped eating, there. She got to leave the state for a week, visit her sister for the first time in decades, and it was only a week, but the VA policy requires a whole month.

A necessary thing then. Sort of lethal.

So I'm making a berry smoothie, very low glycemic, laced with omega 3 and flax seed oil and protein powder and all sorts of anti oxidants and probiotics. DHEA. It may not be too late. Put it in a few glasses in the fridge, give it to him every hour or so. Try to fatten him up.

It's not that my mother is stupid. She's overwhelmed. I've drained my resources over the past few years, holding her afloat. I've been overwhelmed though in my own way. But she just jabs him with the insulin needle, without checking his blood sugar, without swabbing his skin, reusing the same needle. Don't tell anyone this. It's past tense. I've stressed that this is not acceptable. You see my point. Who will care for the caregivers.

Still, I come sweeping in and take over, for a few hours. Teach us to care and not to care. Because not many years ago I had him on an anti-aging supplement program that was reversing his problems. He didn't like taking so many pills though, and stopped. See? I will not care more than someone will care for themselves. We do our best, or close to it, and allow fate and free will their respective sovereignties.

Now I ask him if he'd like a drink, and he always says yes, and guzzles it down. It's a berry smoothie after all, like ice cream fer cripe's sake, muy delicioso, and even though it has some odd aftertastes in it, like intestinal flora pills and alpha lipoic acid, capsules pulled open and the powder poured in -- even so I say, he likes it.

Maybe he won't die very soon.

What a world, where we love other people. What an idea, love. How strange. Parallel universes colliding, passing through each other, mutually insubstantial, occasional antimatter catastrophes but generally imperfectly perceived, somehow sharing gravity. Attraction is the strongest law, more so even than repulsion.

You think I've been joking, when I say I could never see most of my family again and feel none the poorer for it. But I'm not normal, very. If I have familial love for them, it is love without attraction. Some sort of duty-bound love. The obligation, the sentiment of genetics, the unfortunate coincidence of specific alleles and a somewhat shared upbringing. I'd be happier if I'd been an only child, and more normal if I'd been an orphan.

But we can chose to love. It's not only proximity. I love my step father, my mother's husband. I love my mother. I have a friend that I love, the way it must be to love a brother. My son. Myself. Jesus. That's not many people to love. My universe is small. My father and my brothers are just duties, avoided mostly.

Well, that's enough. How've you been?

J

Hinges

Was I busy this weekend? Not very. I don't know what to do with my Sundays. Sleep, mostly. But I heard on NPR about a short story contest, ending in, like, an hour, and I had to do it. The rules: no more than 600 words long; must start with the phrase "Some people swore that the house was haunted" and end with "Nothing was ever the same again after that." That's pretty much it.

Well. Aren't those crappy sentence? Cliches. Some people? Who? And they swore? Awfully vehement, isn't it? And, golly, a haunted house! Brr. And then the vapid nothing was ever the same again after that. Don't you just love that "again"? And the "ever"? And the "after that"? Four precious words of the allotted 600, wasted! Let's see how many useless words we can insert: "And then there was nothing at all that was ever in any way the same or similar again, not even close, after all of that exciting and very interesting stuff that happened in that scary haunted house that was so frightening to everyone who all swore about how haunted it was. The End."

But even so though and however, I decided to bless them, the NPR dudes, with the succulent fruit of my genius. And you will of course recall that I have recently written that I didn't know what to do with a certain idea. The moment I heard the rules, I had the story. Voila. And here it is. Pardon the recycling of several ideas. And themes. I do only a few things, but brilliantly. La!

Hinges

Some people swore that the house was haunted. Of course it wasn’t. There’s no such thing as ghosts. Like I told my daughter, once, when she was little: there are no monsters – there are only people. Young as she was, she did not hear the horror embedded in that statement. And there are no haunted houses. Only empty ones.

The horror in that statement could make a man mad with grief.

It had been on the market for, what, three years. Nice neighbourhood, good schools, location location location. Set apart at the very end of the street. House of the Green Door.

Later, after she’d stopped believing in monsters, a teenager now, my daughter let someone in, into the house. Knock knock, oh excuse me might I use your phone for my car has broken down. Well. She didn’t believe in monsters you see, so she didn’t ask, I hadn’t thought to teach her to ask what he was doing at the end of a quiet street, with no door to knock on but hers, alone and after dark.

There are monsters. I came home and found her. I’ll spare you the images.

So the house was empty. How could I live there. How could I live. I hardly did. But eventually I pulled in the strings of my soul and had some realtor company put the house on their listings. One must be practical after all. Can’t live in the past. Move on, just move on.

It wasn’t a fly-by-night company, but the house was hard to sell, and it was not their priority, or mine. So it started to look like a haunted house.

And here’s all I could think about, for all the long months and years that followed. All I could think about was Pandora’s box, out of which every dark thing poured, and one bright thing, hope. But that’s not it. All I could think about was the empty box. What happened to the box? I think of it as the universe, so infinite and empty that any light there is must be a statistical nullity. I think of it as hell, because for all that there are no horrors left in it, no hope is there either, and hell is where there is no hope.

I think of it as a house with a green door at the end of a pretty street, into which every horror poured, and hope left.

A few weeks ago I filled four 5 gallon bottles with gasoline, walked past the green door and through the dark halls, empty rooms, splashing out a trail of gas as I went. Paint the picture yourself. A wooden match, and I burned the house to the ground. Sirens and flashing lights -- I know, it’s a public hazard. But I can plead insanity, right? Mad with grief? Even though I’m so coldly self aware?

The world ends in fire and ice. The world ends with the swing of hinges. Everything changes, everything has to have an end. Even if we have to take matters into our own hands. But this is not the end of my little story. My story ended three years ago, and a few weeks. Because nothing was ever the same again after that.

There are a few tweaks I could have made, but it is basically first draft. Dude, I only had an hour, and I just wrote it. Took about 20 minutes. I just can't get over how fantastic I am. I took that hackneyed dribble, and made it profound and moving and beautiful. Amazing. I'm just amazing.

If you would like to share about how amazing you agree I am, comments are open.


J

Box

I'm pretty tired. Tired of being weak, and soft, and slow, and old. Tired of not being the man I should have been. Tired of not sleeping. Tired of eating, and not eating. Tired of myself. Tired of loneliness. So that's a list of things to be depressed about.

And I have always inclined to melancholy. The eternal adolescent.

But I have been happy today. I'm a little goofy, and that makes me tender toward myself. I won't do that I'm tougher on myself than on anyone else thing. All that would mean is that I'd be unfair to everyone. And even though I'm just now trying to figure out what to do with my time, I'm doing some useful stuff. And for the first time in my adult life I have a friend. Isn't that pathetic? But it's been a choice, no denying it. Pathos is a choice.

Over the weekend I built a thing that does a thing in a good way. Nothing I do is pretty, but I build to last. And it's a good design. Simple and utilitarian. Efficient. Form following function in a feng shui way. If you ask very very nicely I may, may allow you to see a picture. I have a television phone from the future now, that takes and transmits photographs to computers and other devices. But on second thought, no, I'm not going to show you. Your admiration would be insufficiently informed to appreciate it to the degree it merits. That's my biggest problem. Even I don't admire myself enough.

I know you miss me, only a little. Justice, earn, deserve -- the meanings are so close.

I don't know yet what to do with this idea: After Pandora opened Pandora's box, and every dark thing poured out, and one bright thing, hope ... what happened to the box? Somehow, I think, it must be hell. Because for all that there is no horror left in it, there is no hope either. And hell is where there is no hope.

J

Late but Not Very Late. It Just Feels Late

I've been all over the place today, re mood. Manic a few times, and deeply depressed. I haven't noticed that happening before. Now I'm depressed. It's late, and I'm getting some grunt work computer stuff done, and it's cycled back to depressed. Very tired. Not much sleep lately. My days are filled with odd responsibilities, where I'm alone a fair bit, but occupied, and then not alone, a lot, and I just don't have much free time that's free. So I stay up later than I should, and stay tired. I need a cot.

I need, I need, I need something.

Somebody emailed me re that last brilliant post, pause. "Who are you talking to?" I said, "Allow, please, the artist his shadows." Everything I do is good. But, indeed, who am I talking to.

I might envy you your normality, your family, your wise life choices. But your happiness pleases me. If I'd had it as a model when I was young, I would be a better man now.

J

pause

What will I do

The air is so hot now it feels like rain
or maybe it's raining and hot
or it's so hot it sounds like rain.
But there's hardly any weather at all
just heat, oh and sweat that feels
like rain. That's it.

                            when you stop loving me?


J

You can be

brave or you can be free.

Discuss.

J

C

Well this is sort of complicated, and way too long. Tough. Skip it if you want to wallow in your ignorance. Turned out to be a study in futility. This blog however has been about a very few things -- mostly about emotion, and its communication. So the following would be a case study in the failure, and hopelessness, of communication, clouded as it must be by emotion.

C, who will have appeared in these pages in earlier years in fleeting references, found me somehow on facebook, and sent me a touch or a squeeze or whatever the jargon. He did so under an alias, in the persona of a dog. Okay, humor -- but I don't know anyone by that name, so I pretty much ignored the missive.

Here then, below, is a subsequent series of contacts. C, bear in mind, was my good friend in 10th grade. He was my intellectual match, although he was numbers and I was words. Then he got into alcohol, and later drugs, and I moved to Oz and we had some contact in the 80s and early 90s, and then I withdrew from all social contact and had some adventures and some tragedies, and it's been over 15 years since I've heard from C. In any case I had noticed, even in the 80s, that he was not of the same caliber that he had been. The edge was noticeably less sharp. Most wouldn't notice it. But I did, and sadly do still. Drugs will do that.

Thus:


Maggi Top --
First - a belated happy birthday.
Second - I just remember Ms. R being the Speech Coach but Forensic Club sounds so much better. [a reference to a facebook birthday wish]
Third - does cheese also get snarkier with age? [I had said in fb that, like cheese, I improve with age.]
Fourth - I have to believe you know who this is so have I fallen out of your good graces?
Fifth - how about friending me - or at least messaging me back. my fragile ego so depends on this.

Jack H --
I do not know a Maggi Top. I would normally take you for a sophisticated Viagra spam. However, your plaintive whinings prompted me to deduce that you are an actual person, some vague shadow from my past. The name will come to me, no doubt, some time. Until then you will wait patiently. [I still hadn't bothered to think about who this was. Incurious you say?]

Maggi Top --
Patience is a skill I have developed. But I must say, I have provided you with numerous and unique clues and since you cannot figure me out I wonder if this is the [full name deleted] I remember from HHS. Let's see: blonde hair, one time bassoon player, founding member of the PDN, resident of O then S St in [name deleted], maniacal green bug driver (as opposed to black velvet ones) - remember racing around the Hollywood Hills playing car tag? - ex-husband of S, father of N, builder of southern hemisphere structures, [..., ..., ...] - how are M and M? (that front page story about [...] was as dramatic as those [...] were hilarious) - and dubious wit. The real Jack H would have figured me out in a heartbeat - this Jack H seems to be a spug. "Death is a songbird ...." Oh - and you wouldn't know Maggi and Top - they are my two dogs and I did not have dogs back then. Come on, my friend - try just a little harder. And I am insulted that you would term someone with such sophisticated recollections as a vague shadow. NOW EXACTLY HOW MANY PEOPLE DO YOU KNOW WHO COULD PRODUCE SUCH MEMORIES? I would say probably one. But I would be happy to reveal myself if you tire of this sport.

Oh ya - and if it were not for you, I would not know my wife - she even threw you out of a party once.

Jack H --
too long. edit it down and I'll read it. [Hilarious. Of course I knew who it was. One of my few friends.]

Maggi Top --
My how disingenuous of you! I'd be more than happy to help you out - which way did you come in? Anyway, here we go:

Patience ... sport.

Arf.

Jack H --
Yeah, I get it. Yer a dog. Har. And a cat too. Meow. [His fb icon was a cat.]

Maggi Top --
And if you are Calvin then where is Hobbes? The more things are different, the more they stay the same. Roar.

Jack H --
We'll avoid the obvious pussy allusions. Please?

Maggi Top --
Hmmm ... I suggest it would be more appropriate for you to use "illusions." BTW, I wish you would address me by my given name, Jack.

Jack H --
I thought I knew who this was, but then you mentioned a wife, and that dude was totally gay. Closeted, but really feminine. A real game player, in complete denial. Not that there's anything wrong with it. [This is where it went south. My fault.]

Maggi Top --
I can see from your reply that you have been exploring alternate sexualities. I am sorry that I am not gay - and I am truly honored that you would try to hit on me - but I doubt I would fall for someone as surly as you.

D says that someone as sharp as you should be able to figure me out given all the set of unique identifiers I have supplied (don't get your panties in a bunch, Mr. Secretive - I did not share the info) but I had to suggest that perhaps you have simply become addlepated in your golden years. [And he is correct. I didn't like it at all, having details of the past, however innocuous, discussed. This was fb messaging, which I googled and found was private ... but it made me uneasy.]

Or perhaps you do know who I am and are simply being coy - or continuing the struggle for control that we enjoyed oh so long ago.

I can't quite figure you out - but then, that pleases you, doesn't it? [No, I don't think so. I had thought we were on the same page. I can miss it too, sometimes. He was being sincere -- sort of leaden-footed, but sincere.]

Arf.

Jack H --
Dear Maggi --

This is indeed a puzzler. An epicene (presumably heterosexually) married man with gender issues, self-identified as a female, hopefully neutered dog, with a pussycat as an icon, obsessed with injecting "alternate sexualities" into conversations, who says of himself "I am sorry that I am not gay...", with deep projection issues and a thinly masked craving to be desirable.... Nope, I don't think I'd ever have associated with anyone like that. The years can do a lot of damage however, so perhaps some overwhelming cascade of traumas has perverted someone in my past into the self-invalidating caricature I am confronted with.

This "D" person, if not a psychotic delusion, is correct: I have you figure doubt. [Yeah, it's me who has the communication problem. I was still thinking he got it, and was as sharp as he had once been. No insult meant. But someone who knows or knew me should have gotten it. We communicate best by looking past the words. Note to self.]

Maggi Top --
I'm glad you have me figured doubt.

More than ever before, I now understand that a steady diet of FOX News and Tea Party mailings can take a reasonable mind with conservative Christian values such as yours and warp it into a mere tool as manifested by your most recent posting. [Had he found FP? It's sort of become an Obama-bashing site. Sorry for that. I just gotta say something, though, right?]

Not to pry but I was wondering if you made it to D.C. last weekend to rejoice with your fellow homophobic teabaggers to rejoice in St. Martin Luther Beck's "I Have a Delusion" campaign speech?

I doubt that you and K and - your other brother's name momentarily escapes me - were allowed to keep pets in your childhood but you should consider it now. Animals make us human and besides: think of all the repressed issues you could handle if you got a male dog and slept with your best friend every night.

I'm just saying ....

As far as your doubt that you would have ever associated with anyone like me, I would have the say the recollections I have so far provided - and there are many more - would tend to make that statement wishful thinking at best.

In retrospect, my being the smarter one must have always caused you great self-loathing - and still does. I regret that.

I think that D would enjoy being termed a "delusion." I'm not sure what the implications of your friending delusions are however.

BTW, I understand your comfort level has been exceeded by my various profile pictures so I have put up one (with you in mind - hence the warning) of my male dog. [He had removed the cat picture and replaced it with a dog in an enclosure, with a sign reading "Keep out of the dog." Cute.]

Kisses and Shit,

Arf.

Jack H --
Yep, figureddd oubt. Having dribbled out the last sludgey gob of your wayward libido, you turn to politics. We shall pass over both, as nobility is silent in the face of shame. [Good line. I just didn't want to do the politics thing.] Funny though how your advice for happiness focuses on sleeping with your best male friend.

But ... no, still no bells. It's just this gay thing of yours. I knew guys who'd joke about it, but to make it the center of your life as you have ... I avoided characters like that. You know, low. Not that there's anything wrong with it. Lord. Who would name their male dog Maggi? And then call himself that? Or Top. Really? Top? Really? Not Bottom, or Catcher, or the Holland Tunnel, or the Receptive Anus? I mean, dogs reflect the nature of their owners.

I appreciate the stab at philosophy, but, uh, "animals make us human"? To correct you would be cruel. I'll leave it for you to ponder. [My implication was that being a parent is better. I didn't actually say it, because it's hitting below the belt. But not saying it isn't any better. I'd apologize, but ... well, I just won't. Next he calls me hypocritical. This must be what he meant. He's right.]

Maggi Top --
I tire of your hypocracy. You slander gays yet your texts riff on your homophobia in spite of your hastily added qualifiers. Your words speak loud and clear while you just mumble. You take your marching orders from others and free thought has passed from your mind. You deflect political commentary because your positions cannot stand scrutiny. You are no longer the person I once knew and considered a friend and that is sad. [I take it here that he really is mad. This seems to be a genuine attempt to get at me.]

Moreover, this feigned ignorance does not serve you well and only indicates a mind that has been allowed to fester and rot in solitude for too long, Facebook be damned. "Who would name their male dog Maggi?" etc. Calling that droll would be to give it undeserved praise. [It must be that I hurt him. I was just being silly. Sorry.]

BTW, I don't want you to think that homosexuality is something I spend undue attention on - I most certainly don't - but it just seems that your pitiable bag of topics is running low these days and so I allowed myself to be sucked in (there - that comment should provide fodder for some shoddy humor).

I do not know what has happened to you, Jack, but it is significantly unpleasant. I contacted you with a desire to reconnect but a view of your wall postings shows you ultimately no longer able to engage in a concept apparently alien to you - reciprocal friendship. And while my cryptic behavior may be justly called juvenile, if you represent the alternative, I think I will just continue on my way. [He is sincere and honest here. My bad.]

As far as pets are concerned, well even though you will never know it, the loss is entirely yours. [Years ago, I liked animals, and he didn't. Now I've outgrown the need of them. They exist to teach us how to be tender, and how to prepare for grief.]

I can only hope that N took after his mother because the alternative is just too harrowing.

I sincerely wish you the best, Jack, but this thread has just become too tedious.

"Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game."

Farewell - no one is worth working this hard for to merely have a friend request accepted - not even "nobility" such as yourself.

C T [full name deleted]


BTW, it was not my intention for a friendly outreach to take this turn. Everything for you is attempt to control and dominate - has your ego truly remained this weak? I even made attempts to locate you in the past like when you lived above the OSH on S St. but to no avail as you crave privacy as part of this mystique you cultivate. It is now difficult for me to believe how transparently embittered you have become but so be it. I await either your silence or your caustic reply as there really is no other option for you, is there? C [Again, he is honest and sincere. When I pasted all this in, I had thought he was the problem.]

Jack H --
Oh, C. Good lord. Take a pill. You don't get it? Just a little shift in perspective, and you'd smile instead of take offense. Who talks that way? "...nobility is silent in the face of shame." Yes, it is good. Worthy of me. But the perspective you appear to think I'm coming from escapes me. [And it did.]

It was news to me that you'd married A. [Whose name appears on the dog's fb page as its mother.] Congrats, belatedly. You appear in her fb picture, so I don't suppose it was a struggle to pierce the mystery of who Maggi Top, MT, was. I'd thought you were in on the joke.

As for the stern statements in your most recent communiques, I take them as the product of misunderstanding. Forgive my clumsiness. I find that particular character quite amusing, but not everyone appreciates him, and it's clearly been too many years for you to remember the precise nature of my malfunction. [And I'm being honest and sincere.]

On the other hand, don't be such an uptight asshole.

N is a phenomenon. Five and a half years in the military, combat in Iraq, back for several years now. I used to save his voicemails, for obvious, dark and rather sad reasons. But he came back unharmed. My hero. See? Dogs are great. But I recommend sons.

I don't know how to friend people. I get emails sometimes via FB that tell me people have communicated, and there's a button to press, but so much of it is a scam, and I ignore most of it. Enough crap in the world, eh?

If you really want a discussion on politics, bend over sweetheart. I'll do you hard. That goes for the gay thing too. Didn't you see Seinfeld? [All right, I still think it's funny -- juvenile, but that's the context I thought I was in.]

J

Maggi Top --
Oh Jack ... I was at lunch on a visit to Denver, surfing the wifi, when I read your last installment and A said "what the fuck is wrong with you two children anyway?" I had to pause for reflection - she is entirely too sensible sometimes ....

Our thread was becoming onerous and repetitive anyway and I had limited options in terminating it: it was either just let myself sheepishly out the door or make a scene and slam it on the way out. I've never been a fan of option one, esp. around you.

My ultimate motivation in using my dog's names was so my students would not find me and be able to follow my inane ramblings but now I rather enjoy posting and responding from the dog's point of view - much like you enjoy your own sometimes unappreciated persona. I only speak as a human - albeit one with a potentially stern persona - in private messages so I can maintain my FB illusion. You seem to carry on regardless. [Yes, I do seem to have done that.] And that seems to have backed us both into a corner. [Indeed. It's not that I'm insensitive. I am, but that's not it. It's that the people who value me have to understand my limits, and remind me of them. Gently, please.]

BTW, that picture of A and another man? That's not me! That's Rudi Protrudi, lead singer of the Fuzztones, a group she is particularly infatuated with! But ummmm thanks anyway? [Whatever. After 15 years, it could be him, and I knew Maggi was him anyway, so, uh, there.]

In my latter years I am far from uptight (although I may still be an asshole) and have settled into a rather pedestrian existence living in a home in [city name] with two dogs, two cats, an aquarium and a good woman (although you told me long ago that she was not worth it but I fortunately didn't listen to you).

I agree that children (daughters are useful too) are a good thing but you reproduced in your 20s while we would be reproducing in our 40s and that introduces all kind of complications. So the pets became our obvious surrogates.

I totally respect N given what you told me - he most obviously did not grow up to be like you!

Politics? I am totally apolitical and am proud/ashamed to have never voted in my life. The "gay thing?" I spend no time contemplating it which is why the thread started to bore me and with A's prodding, I started thinking about exit strategies. [Well, she owes me nothing, and is looking out for him. Good for her. But she apparently has a foul mouth.]

Forgive me if my particular clumsiness became overly personal but you undoubtedly are as thick-skinned as ever so I was not particularly worried. BTW I have never watched an episode of Seinfeld in my life - my absurdist humor is more attracted to Monty Python and Firesign Theatre. The concept of a "show about nothing" is far too deep for me.

"I don't know how to friend people." Why should anything ahve changed? Buwahahahahaha!

Welcome back, Jack.

Arf.

Jack H --
Of course you are lying about the supposed Fuzztone guy. Although I did meet a guy at an improv place named C Forest or Forester who was so much your double that I went up to him and assumed it was you. Probably six years ago. Nevertheless, you lie. [I don't know when to stop. I admit it. I thought it was the old C, you know, from 10th grade.]

A is right of course, except it was you who got all bitchy and heavy. You misread my intent and meaning entirely. It is all your fault. [Humor.] To imagine that I would bring attitude to a situation like this is a puzzlement to me. You will please note that you started with a game. That I continued it and riffed on the rules can hardly be a surprise. "Guess who *I* am!" "I can't, it's too hard, but I'm amazing." This was hard for you to see? Meanwhile, I am amazing. [A rhetorical device -- intellectual posing followed by an absurdist twist.]

Pets are to children as masturbation is to sex. Adopt. [A comment destined I now see to be offensive.]

You appear to have remembered an inconsequential or throw-away comment from me re A. I remember her as a person of quality. How a putz like you ended up with her I cannot fathom. What a world. [My ego at work, excused as humor.]

My wonderful amazing son is exactly like me in every way. If I ever see you I will scratch your eyes out. [I'm on a roll.]

Re politics, you have no right to an opinion. You will notice how skillfully I castrated you in this regard. And you're gay. [Rimshot.]

It is doubtful that I'm back. [Because it's so very very hard.]

Communication like this is clearly inadequate, given how thoroughly you misread my tone. [Well, he did.] I'm tired of misunderstandings. [No matter whose fault.] And of pettiness and self-absorption. [Ambiguous.] If I may wax existential. I've had a strange life, and I started out strange, so I do what I can to avoid drama. Who loves, is hostage to fate. Having spoken of being human, you will understand my meaning. [Mysterious. I'm sort of an asshole.]

So, be gentle and patient with your bride, fierce in your love for her, and enjoy every pleasure that is not a vice. [Good line. You may use it. I thought I was being sincere. In context it doesn't work.]

Go in peace. [Go in peace.]

J

Maggi Top --
My memory is fantastic and my words are true so I believe the only appropriate response is "whatever." [Dismissive.]

Jack H --
I'm posting this thread on one of my blogs -- names and identifying details omitted. The blog deals, primarily, with the futility of communication. I draw a vague inference, given your political references, that you may have found it. Well, I have to write something, every once in a while. No matter.

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Indeed. No matter. That's where we leave it. I understand that a cold reading of my, uh, threads can misunderstand, savagely, my tone. But this guy knew me, my absurdist humor and my jokey personas. I suppose even then he didn't quite get it. But it's on me.

Sorry, C. This is how I really am. I don't mean to be this way. Someone jokingly ... half-jokingly called me a mad genius. Both have a cost. All that humor, what works and what doesn't, is deflection and misdirection. Here I am, don't see me. I've said it every way I know how. About isolation, and futility, and being buried alive. We dig our own graves.

So. No matter.

Oh. This just in:

Maggi Top --
Just one more wrong inference [about finding FP] but I agree that this communication has been futile so I have withdrawn the friend request and am terminating this thread. What entertained us in our youth has grown tired now and if this is all there is, then I will simply block you and be done with it. That saddens me but I believe the term you used is "a man of action."

It is your world Jack and we are all just in it.

Arf

-----

So.

Whatever.


J