Thieves of Time

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye.”  ~  Jim Henson

“Reality continues to ruin my life.”  ~  Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbs)

“If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”  ~  E. B. White

And that leaves me where?! I’ve been following Presidential politics and have done so this morning as well. Maybe not the best idea. I began, then got hooked, when I was unemployed. There is some kind of obscure irony in there someplace. The dawn is coming up nicely, reliably. Some songbird has been singing just up the hill, but he has now gone silent. The turkey, I know, is out atop the coop waiting for me to get my assets out there. The chickens are starting to makes noise. The traffic sounds are ratcheting up, and I am now without coffee. This morning’s coffee was quite good, fresh Bustello; Cuban coffee. Yum. I will be going out to do the retail thing in a couple of hours. There was a time when I was sick of being a retail worker. But now I am seeing it differently, seeing that there is, or can be, love exchanged through commerce. Laughter, good will. I work in a hardware store. There’s a lot needs fixin’ in this scary crazy world. I’m on the front lines, but I’ve known that for years. I learned that through philosophically stepping back during my years as a cashier at the natural foods supermarket. I’ve got Flower Child perspective tools in my toolbox and I ain’t afraid to use them, for whatever good that may do. Yet here I sit, puffy eyes, sleep-tousled hair, sixty years of wear on my flesh and bones vehicle. Needs a tuneup for sure. I know well the pain that aging so generously delivers, both physically and mentally, and I have yet to learn how to go all proactive and stuff with the gently alarming things that changes in the memory app are bringing. You can’t really download a new app. Not for memory, because human memory is not really a brain thing, not when you think about it. Moving forward  –  I have been finding my eyes get all misty with tears lately. I’ve attributed this to allergies and my dysfunctional tear ducts, but I don’t give myself enough credit with such attributions. There are both tears for the precarious plight of mankind and tears of joy to consider. Why not those? Huh?! Why not?! Tears of frustration. Tears over the truly profound ignorance and non-aligned meanness of Donald Trump. Now, at this point I’ve a desire to continue laying out some more words, text, whatever. And meaning. The Big Dogs, the 1%, are poaching meaning and time, taking from us and not wanting to let it go once taken. I think of the “Time Bankers” in Michael Ende’s intriguing and beautiful novel Momo (click here). He said that when we save time it ends up in somebody else’s hands, and, as I said, they won’t let go. We save it but we never get to use that which we have saved. There are thieves of time afoot in the world. What’s up with that, right? I’d best go on my way, friends. Feed and medicate the cat. Cleanse and groom and dress myself. And go out into the world until the 5 o’clock rush ensues. There’s a pint of ale waiting for me then, after my drive home. See y’all tomorrow.

Peace out, y’all. Goof gloriously!

Cartoons and Pop Philosophy

“Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, something is out of tune. ”  ~  C. G. Jung

I suppose you get used to things. So why can’t I get used to the ringing in my ears? It is simply always there. But I know it’s not my ears doing it. Some manner of conspiracy of neural pathways in my brain are chronically reacting to some sinus condition, or just the the general vacancy in my head. I’ll never figure it out, right? I won’t even try. A few years back I was at sea level, visiting. My ears didn’t ring there. Maybe this is just my own mysterious version of Rocky Mountain High. I don’t know, I just wish it would stop, at any time, at any altitude. It didn’t prevent me from hearing the chorus of coyotes an hour ago. Neighborhood dogs as well. It’s a good sound. Meanwhile, moving forward, that is all in the past. Let it go, dude. There is no past. You can’t go there so it ain’t there. Whatever. I could, right now, dive right in to a nice session of pop philosophy. But what good would that do? And then I remind myself that this blog is a workshop/playground. I can friggin do as I please. Okay? Some mornings I end up free writing just hoping to break pace and outrun my superego for a while. At first this seems to be a noble and enlightened cause, to leave the superego in the dust, but then I remember that it always implores me to hurry up. This is Trickster stuff. This is Wiley Coyote and Roadrunner stuff. Did you ever stop to consider that Coyote is always trying to kill Roadrunner? What are we teaching our children with this stuff?! Even Bugs Bunny had more compassion for Elmer Fudd. And as much as Rocky the Flying Squirrel might fly far afield he always returned to Bullwinkle. There was love there. But Coyote always had some kind of device or contraption. The writers of the show didn’t really know Coyote at all, did they? Coyote of legend uses myths and liminal magic to achieve his goals, if he has any. Mmmm – I think I’ll step out onto the deck before the pre-dawn light get too far along. Busy backson.

The light is coming up fast. I’ve grown weary of Summer. It’s the Autumn of my Madness, I suppose. But I did catch the last hints of lavender light before everything went to blue. The long hours of light are what makes  .  .  .  I guess I’ll just take a nap when I get home from work; sleep until the chickens go to roost and the turkey reclaims his post atop the coop. Get up, close the coop door, then go back to sleep for the night. Sounds like a plan. Today is a National holiday. Twill be a busy retail day at work. I’m already tired. The day will pass quickly. I’m smiling. That’s the main thing.

Peace out, y’all. Goof gloriously.

A Chance Meeting of Two Good Souls

  “Everything takes time. Bees have to move very fast to stay still.”~  David Foster Wallace

“You can’t study the darkness by flooding it with light.”  ~  Edward Abbey

I met an old friend yesterday, quite by chance, out front of the corporate supermarket across the highway from my place of employment. She’s a friend to this day but she started out as my psychotherapist, not long after I moved to Taos. She was a good one too, having used multiple modalities to approach my inner turmoil. She’s just turned 70; that’s 20 years older than when we first met. Neither of us look our age; not to us. When I think about it I realize that she knows me better than most any person I know. I’m remembering one day when she used tuning forks and singing bowls on me. I was flat on my back on the massage table. I’m a musician, right? I say that to preface telling you about the totally astounding sounds she set loose into the room. I felt them wash over and through me. Then spirits came. There was a cadre of spirits who attend to give me council at appropriate times. So many of them at one time. This had never happened before, not in my conscious awareness. No, I could not see them. I have no memory of just how this experience – or if – aided me in my endeavors to feel a little more adequate in this life. That’s how I feel a good part of the time, even to this day. Inadequate. Barely relevant. That kind of shit. I could say right here that this is the source of my sometimes rampant anxiety, but I sure ain’t gonna step away from a holistic point of view just to get a definitive answer to a problem that has no answer. Life comes at us from all directions, and that sound-saturating experience gave me, like a drink of cool water, relief from the friction I experience in mingling with crowds of people, any time I go into town. I’m an empath and an introvert. Sometimes it just hurts, that’s all. So let’s stay holistic. It all happens at once. My friend knows this. We stood face to face, quite close, and held steady eye contact as we chatted. Her blue eyes held me still. Our relationship is not what it was. She asked me how I have been doing and my expression faltered momentarily. She caught that and shot back a gesture of concern. I told her the truth, that the fight to stay strong within the bipolar awareness I struggle with is getting me down, much more than I care to admit. It was an intimate moment, our faces not even two feet apart, when her eyes sparkled briefly, and her gentle smile made me sigh. She knows my story and my pain. No, we could not, way back when, fix any of it. There’s nothing to fix: that’s the point. When I expressed all this with only a briefing confession she simply reached out and placed her right palm against me heart. “You’re a good soul”, said she. I said, “So are you”. We embraced, right there at the entry way to the honkin’ big market, smack in the middle of a crowd of holiday shoppers, then went our separate ways. It was good. I feel more at peace this morning. Seventy. Who knew, right? Yeah, our equipment is showing age; our bodies and brains and stuff; but we have not aged, we have just gathered wisdom along the way. Dude there’s no time dude because it’s like all illusion and stuff dude. The embrace was good. C’est la vie.

Peace out, y’all. Goof gloriously.

A Sometimes Sacred Procedure

“I never, even for a moment, doubted what they’d told me. This is why it is that adults and even parents can, unwittingly, be cruel: they cannot imagine doubt’s complete absence. They have forgotten.”  ~  David Foster Wallace

Lately I’ve been full of doubts. More than full; overflowing. But the coffee was good this morning and the cat is content. Also lately, I’ve been letting my mind drift into some of the more science fiction spaces I indulged so freely back in my coming of age phase. Fact is I never did come of age, but that’s a different story. What went wrong? Maybe nothing went wrong. Maybe it’s alright as it is. Were I to practice mindfulness, which I often do, I would like totally accept that coming of age was a choice I took a pass on. Acceptance is a powerful practice. As a bearer of Bipolar 2 disorder I can attest to the intimate moment when acceptance returns as a reminder that it’s all gonna be alright. PTSD, which I also bear, is a tougher nut to crack. PTSD can be a cosmic carjacker. When at the physical therapist, as I was yesterday, doing my exercises, I sometimes get overwhelmed by emotion. It’s simply the deep toxins of suppressed feelings being released back into the world, a world, where they have no bearing other than to verify the humanity that I share with so many others. I let them come, let them unfold from Bohm’s Implicate Order, and I let them sit and get their bearings, if at all possible. Yesterday the head therapist passed my treatment off to her student, a teenage girl. I don’t know if she saw me crying softly, and I don’t mind if she did. After therapy I meandered for a while and then dug in to some earthy work for my ex; pulling weeds and pretty much making things all pretty and stuff. Getting my hands down into the earth is always a boon to me. I’m not going into that this morning, however, because it’s like ya know kind of a personal thing for the time being. Communing with Mother Earth is sometimes a sacred procedure, and this particular procedure is unstructured and profound. So  .  .  .  ummm  .  .  .  what about the science fiction? I recently read about a Nazi science project called the Nazi Bell; a device with which the Nazi scientists were able to open up a wormhole to a parallel universe. No easy task. When the Nazi house of cards was coming down they were able to send Adolph through the wormhole so that he could hang out until the time was ripe for him to return to this universe and finally conquer the human race. He never found a way of accomplishing this until an experiment at the Large Hadron Collider actually did open a door into another universe, and it just happened to be that very same one. But when Adolph, turned on to the doorway by those otherworldly scientists in the Universe next door, tried to re-enter his home world he found that Astral travel was the only applicable option. He could not take his body with him. His advisors were put to the task and they concluded that they would have to find a suitable “empty suit”, a man with so little soul that Adolph could feasibly inhabit the man without much effort. So Adolph took the plunge, found such a man, and proceeded to break on through to the other side, where he found the worm, and made a deal with the man’s raisin-like soul. That soul was good at deals. That’s what he did. And he had the best words. They make a great team, my friends. They would like to be your President. Do you mind?

I made that all up. Never happened. It is fiction, k? Bullshit. That having been said I am going to get ready for work.

Peace out, y’all. Goof gloriously.

A Small Bit of Scraggly

“Nervous means you want to play. Scared means you don’t want to play.”  ~  Sherman Alexie 

Yet another day, I don’t feel like writing. No matter. It’s not hard to do, so why not. There’s a dark gray sky to inspire me toward the path I won’t take today, that being hiding at home, curtains drawn, nursing the ache of protest that feeds from the anxiety rushes from my heart chakra. Dammit, I have obligations. It’s physical therapy at 7:30. That’s a helper indeed when I feel like this. Push on through the stodgy reticence. Do it now. Arm bicycle first, then .  .  .  ? I don’t know yet. It depends on which therapist I get today. Then it’s pick up a fresh box of insulin syringes for the cat. Syringes remind me of the benign yet scary condition I have in my spinal cord: syringomyelia, which is little cysts filled with spinal fluid, nestled within the spinal cord, in the channel that is supposed to be empty. These cysts are call “syringes”. If they start growing pressure is applied, from the inside out. The nerves become stressed. The neurosurgeon told me it would never give me trouble in this lifetime. Well, almost. He pulled it up from the internet and gave me a little seminar on the comparison of my cysts, displayed in an MRI, with the dangerous kind. I got his point. Yet it haunts me at times, like lately. I tend to slouch down and to the right, and it is a posture that might indicate that the condition ain’t quite so benign anymore. But I worry too much, right? No, I don’t think that the condition has become active. I’m just scared, of the poor state of posture I have allowed to set in, and of the behavioral, emotional field I have grappled with in striving to right myself, to stand tall as a matter of course rather than as a result of conscious effort. Yes, I would love to indulge my desire to stay home and hide. But  .  .  .  the finch that was singing earlier has ceased so the morning has become a tad more quiet. I was enjoying his chirpy song in the dark. Now, moving forward, I reach down to scratch the cat’s head, tell her she’s a pretty girl. I’ll have to feed and medicate her soon, because therapy time approaches. Shower. Maybe shave? Do I want to raggedy Don Johnson look today? Do I want to look sloppy instead? I think I will skip shaving today. My beard always looks like an afterthought anyway. Allowing a small bit of scraggly will be like wearing my heart on my sleeve, except it will be wearing my mood on my face. Gee, gosh, by golly, I wish I could stay home today.

Peace out, y’all. Goof gloriously.

Persephone’s Plight

“When you can begin to see the similarities between you and your work colleagues in respect of ‘being human’ and the collective challenges we all face, it makes life much easier to deal with, especially when met with overbearing behavior.”   ~  Christopher Dines

“It’s important to make sure that we’re talking with each other in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds.”  ~  Barak Obama

It’s this because of this. First light spreads across the dark sky; cantankerous cat within my reach, so she gets pets every once in a while; and the day will include rest, if, and only if, I can unplug from the crafted chaos beyond these walls. I’ve a psychotherapy session at noon and a side job pulling weeds after that. The similarity between the two events does not escape me. I say bring it on. At this very moment I really oughtta start another pot of coffee; it’s gonna be a long day. I splurged and bought Starbucks French roast whole bean coffee this time. There’s some thing about GMOs when it comes to Starbuck’s, but I got some anyway because it reminds me of my ex-wife and our time on the borderlands of the University of Washington, in Seattle, way back when. I would ride my bicycle across campus to purchase a bag of freshly roasted and freshly ground beans. Starbucks had roasters in each outlet back then. It smelled good in there. And there was an old movie theater in those borderlands as well, where she and I watched Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre on a double bill; black and white films awash in color. I wonder where she is now? We walked home that night.

Between this paragraph and the last I made that second pot of coffee. It’s now light enough, at 5:22 AM, to let the chickens out of the coop soon, which means Oscar the turkey will be fluttering down from the coop’s roof soon as well. I’ll have to take a nap; I did not have enough sleep last night. The cat woke me a 2 AM, when she was going bugfuck with some papers left on the floor. The daily news, right?  Noisy danged critter. Cats are on my mind this morning. I’ve often wondered why I can’t let that go, that being my time of employment at the animal shelter, as a cat caregiver. I don’t give myself enough credit. That job was way stressful. Human politics on top of the innate stress of the job did not help at all. In the biz they call it compassion fatigue. In the psych treatment biz they call it STSD, which like PTSD can play havoc with a soul. That’s me in a nutshell. I’ve got PTSD, and probably STSD as well. That’s a lot of letters to describe a lot of wounds. Wounded while giving love. Something poignant and demure about that, right? Why “demure”? Well, let me put it this way. It’s this because of this. When someone asks you about your work with captive, formerly stray, animals you have to keep it cool and on the level, using a rational approach in your description. You can’t just scream and sob, so you have to be demure. I remember when Persephone was brought into the shelter. She had no name at first. There was a more pressing problem. Persephone had a leather collar that she had placed below her armpit when she tried to get it off of her neck by placing her left foreleg through the collar. Apparently she was still growing at the time, so as she grew the collar cut into her flesh. I pulled her out of the carry kennel to get a look at her, and my hand went right into the wound in doing so. I cringed. When the chief med tech and I put her up on the exam table the med lady took one look at the wound and she also cringed. I began to cry at that point. That’s why I named the cat Persephone, because she came back from the depths of hell and lived to tell about it. She went on to be adopted. That’s why we were there. What does this all has to do with today? Beats the hell out of me. PTSD grips you from inside out and it won’t let go. It’s hard to think.

Let’s leave it at that. I’ve waves of anxiety rising up from my guts today. Tomorrow is my physical therapy session, and of course I am hoping to be working with the strawberry blond therapist. No, I’m not being sexist. Don’t even go there. Today is the psychotherapy session. I may cry there and smile tomorrow. Who knows? It’s this because of this, right?

Peace out, y’all. Goof gloriously.

 

 

 

Who’s Dream Is It?

“He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.”  ~  Douglas Adams

Just wanted to touch base here. The wifi bandwidth sucked earlier so there was no way of getting to the WordPress composition screen to write a post. Got it now but it is pretty much too late to do much about writing something deep or substantial. Not that I would anyway, right? I’m in a philosophical state of mind, and the state is trending toward the hapless wondering of just why do people treat others so poorly. Egos, lost in thought, pain in ass, it’s nobody of consequence anyway. Cynical, I know. Don’t blame it on ego. That is flat down too friggin easy. I’m saying cop out is what that is. Whatever. I’m smiling and I have to go to work. I will have time to write more fully tomorrow – if my ego will let me.

Peace out, y’all. Goof gloriously.

 

Equanimity in Malevolent Climes

“Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”  ~  H. L. Mencken

“Often, moreover, it is…that aspect of our being that society finds eccentric, ridiculous, or disagreeable, that holds our sweet waters, our secret well of happiness, the key to our equanimity in malevolent climes.”  ~  Tom Robbins

That second quote? I like that, especially the phrase “equanimity in malevolent climes”. Equanimity is an activity well worth pursuing. There are times when I am sure that I have it, but there are also times when I am totally wrong. Numbness is not equanimity. I will admit to being comfortably numb more often than is comfortable; at least for me.

After that last, first, whatever, paragraph I went outside. It’s cold. I didn’t expect that, but 36º at 4:30 AM is what’s on the plate this morning. Mars and egg-shaped moon to the south. Saturn and Pluto are right up there with them as well, but the moonlight overpowers them. There was a little ruckus in the chicken coop, and I listened in case some varmint was in there, but it turned out to be chicken stuff, so I left them to their own business. Cat at my side looking content in her sleep. She’s been quite aggressive lately. I keep a spray bottle with water, set on thin stream, next to this chair, where I spend most of my waking time when not at my day job. A few squirts will calm her down, but I always feel bad when squashing true expression in most anyone. She seeks at times to obtain dominance and that cannot happen until she takes over the rent payments. But back to that equanimity thing, one of the women I worked with at the animal shelter surprised me one day. She was strident at times and this was one of them. She turned suddenly, while we were working together in the cat intake area, and said “That’s what it is about you. You can never tell what you are feeling”. The words just kind of burst from her mouth, like doves taking to flight. I looked at her and chuckled and told her I know. What else could I say? Working with cats requires equanimity as a prerequisite to ease in dealing with a small but dangerous animal. Cats are little empaths. You can’t just act calm, you have to achieve calm and keep it there. They know the difference and they fully appreciate your cooperation. But that woman and I did not really get along very well. There was tension there. I often felt patronized by her. It’s not that I resented that; I know that my behavior at times can be hard to deal with. We never resolved anything. I feel sad about that failure but I just don’t think she liked me very much. Not much I can do about that, but I miss the cats.

There’s a note of deep melancholy humming in my ears this morning. I bow to its beckoning tone. So I will leave this post now and take a slow start of the workday.

Peace out, y’all. Goof gloriously.

 

A Lure or Allure

“If there is a single definition of healing it is to enter with mercy and awareness those pains, mental and physical, from which we have withdrawn in judgment and dismay.”  ~  Stephen Levine

Having nine hours of sleep on Saturday night was a rare and highly blessed relief. A depressive without adequate sleep is in trouble, a kind of trouble that lingers on and on and on and mocks happiness. I’m just easing out of a hypomanic phase that was spoiling for a fight, and I gave it one. Boy howdy, it just came high time and I rose to the challenge. The worst times were in the mornings, but I fed it coffee, which calmed it down for a spell. Shades of Ritalin, right? Use speed to fight speed. That’s what I say. Its a matter of  –  hey, wait a minute, don’t that sound like ADHD? Yer darned tootin it does! Mental health, illness, whatever, lies on a spectrum that sure ain’t no rainbow.

“He knows that you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy”  ~  Ken Kesey

I keep thinking back, seeing nearly clearly how thought itself can be a disease at times, to my physical therapy session last week. I could go obsessive over that but I don’t want to. It may have been mostly fantasy, but that makes little difference when it comes to purpose. That shining therapist with her quirky ways – well, let’s just say she opened up a constricted flow in my mind. I also think of David Bohm’s Implicate and Explicate Order. Remember – underlined words in these posts are usually links. That one was. The concept of these two orders feeds me dearly these days. Something unfolded that usually does not unfold. Am I confusing you yet? And then there is, from Chaos Theory, the concept of “Strange Attractors.” Some things keep happening but you never know when or where they might pop up. There are patterns in life, and to that physical therapist, who helped activate a nice one, I must say thank you ma’am. Physical therapy and psychotherapy bleed together in regards to the PTSD that haunts me. My ex-wife was a strange attractor. Boy howdy was she ever! Yes dear, I miss you and would be mildly happy to see you again. Yeesh. I feel pretty good this morning. That’s my point. We loosened up some tight muscles and tendons last Thursday. Her hair is strawberry blond and she is well trained, and applies that training very well. The other part, a blend of smiles and words and fantasy, also loosened up a lot of stuff that sorely needed loosening as well. Thank you ma’am. Positive thinking works best when you don’t push things. Pushing tends toward contraction and pulling lends toward expansion. A lure, allure, whatever. It’s all good, right? It is what it is. Yeah, it worked pretty good.

Peace out, y’all.

A Harmonic of Serenity

“The peace of the gardens and the kindly lights in the windows poured a tender influence into his restless heart.”   ~  James Joyce

“But we are living in a skeptical and, if I may use the phrase, a thought-tormented age; and sometimes I fear that this new generation, educated or hypereducated as it is, will lack those qualities of humanity, of hospitality, of kindly humor which belonged to an older day.”  ~  James Joyce

Irony. I really don’t need that right now, but I am in a Taoist inclination this morning, so I am pretty much stuck with it; running late with the writing of a blog post; almost forgetting that a fresh pot of coffee is sitting on the warming plate; I’m a mess, and everything is erie mon. No worries bro. Everything is everything. Yet I keep tensing up. Don’t know why. I started doing that so long ago that the beginning has faded far into the past, so far back as if to signify that this whole life has been as such. Food for thought, right? That kind of mental food is high fructose candy for the soul. It is most certainly, all things considered, possible to heal those past versions of my self. I’m on that today. All the way. All day. And tensing up will just have to do. Odd – when I was with the physical therapist the other day the tension shapeshifted for an hour, thanks to the lovely therapist and her flirty double entendres. I always forget about shapeshifting. I learned it’s value from an old book by John Perkins: Shapeshifting. Maybe I’ll do that today. Fly with a raven, shuffle with an old man, be a smile that momentarily makes an old woman feel young again. I could have been the meadowlark’s song just before sunrise this morning but I totally spaced it out. Dude, what do you want from me dude? My life is a prayer dude, and I walk all funny and stuff just to keep it that way. Dude. I friggin do not like Sundays. Too many implied tears. Twas a mere two decades ago that I last attended church, at St. James, a Catholic joint on Plantation Key, nearby the veterinary clinic that had a statue of St. Francis out front in the garden. I remember sitting in a rear pew, watching a little sort of procession, and wondering if all of these parishioners could see what I saw, those lights in the air, and could they hear the smiling whispers that advised the altar to get some rest. I did like the part where everybody shook hands with, or hugged, everyone around them and nearby. They would say “peace be with you” and I would almost say “Blessed Be” but I knew better. In the recent RCIA class Father John had notified us that tarot cards are the work of the Devil. I don’t have a Devil in my world, but some people do get pretty dark and clever at times. I never went back to the RCIA class, but I did continue to do Sunday Mass for a while. It served as a good buffer, in the computer science respect, for me to lean on while I got used to my serotonin levels being tweaked by Prozac. All right peeps, I know all about the greed and deception of the Pharma dark lords, and I know all about the mind control thingy, and I also know a thing or two about how the psychiatric profession ain’t good for no one; no way, no how; BUT, my friends, the Prozac worked for me! It worked. That’s all I’m saying. And BTW, why was I in church and RCIA? I was chasing a woman; an articulate and very hot woman from a better neighborhood in Atlanta. Awe, dude. What was I thinking? What was I thinking? And speaking of messed up minds, I saw a former psychotherapist of mine, in the hardware store, just as I was leaving from work yesterday. She apologized to me for the abrupt cessation of our sessions together. She’d been an intern at the time, and I felt a great vibe with her. Turns out they up and fired her, and forbid her from contacting her regular patients to let them know she was gone. I was traumatized by her vanishing act, and by the fact that the clinic, our local mental health clinic, kinda fumbled, bumbled, whatever, around for a few weeks, failing at hooking me up with a new therapist, even though they said they would, and nearly exasperated I finally complained to my psychiatrist, who was top of the chain of command round there, and she picked up the phone right away, kinda yanked it off the hook, and got the ball rolling in the right direction. There was a lot of mismanagement at the clinic back then, and it was odd because the dynamics of the growing crisis there, the crisis that sent the intern packing, were eerily congruent with the crisis that was growing at the animal shelter where I worked at the time. Both crises reached their denouement at nearly the same time. And the two orgs were in the same neighborhood, not even a quarter mile apart. Weird. So, not long after I lost my job my psychiatrist said bueno bye after fulfilling her given notice. I say all of this because I still at times have to bat down the trauma I incurred from the shelter crisis. I fought a good fight. I loved on the cats as long as they let me. And I knew in my heart that there are seemingly misguided boneheads everywhere these days. My anger rode shotgun with my sadness. The anger has since dismounted the coach. Ain’t no shootin’ or falutin needed no more. There’s a kinda sorta harmonic of serenity by this time. A resonance that moderates, at some level, my righteousness. Whatever, right? Gotta go now. Today’s Sunday, laundry day. Bueno bye.

Peace out, y’all. Goof gloriously.