I'm sticking my neck out a bit further from the tortoise shell again. I'm considering getting back to the writing grind in earnest and foraying into a writers group that meets Tuesdays for the summer. Of course this necessitates the dropping of some greenbacks, the end result being yours truely will show up on time with his homework done, if only out of fearing The Lovely Red-Head at home and "not getting my freaking money's worth." Or something.
It was business as usual in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Children's Hospital here in Seattle.
On some level, they come, they go and you never see them again. The nurses, the neonatologists, the respiratory therapists, social workers and surgeons maintain a professional distance. But empathy and compassion and skill draw them to the most fragile of beings. You can't walk in and walk out without knowing.
A nurse told me once that they had a little one who passed after a year in their care. The German Sheppard that is brought in to cheer up the older kids made a visit to the lobby of the NICU that morning - for all who knew that little boy needed some levity, their sorrow so great. They'll need him to come by again, I suspect.
The eyes of our world were watching. His story was on the radio, subjects of journals - data supreme. The exception. The marvelous miraculous example to us all. One tough little guy who wanted it. A gamer who put on his hard hat on, brought his lunch box and stayed all day - for over 10 months.
He was in my daughters room. And was part of the healing process like so many before him.
It's hard, sitting on this side of the fence and looking in on the proceedings. All I know is happy endings - I did imagine and continue to imagine what Loss of this magnitude feels like. Condolences, hugs and memorials aside, the beauty and curse of the death of your child ensures you have that angel on your shoulder forever.
When I'M ninety, I'll be dreaming of the little man that was and what might or might not have been with my daughter. His parents ...
As it is, it was a sunny day. The most beautiful day of the year thus far. 10:06 AM, he chose to ride on.
Thanks for the memories, stories and photos little B.
Watching people around me slowly, inexorably turn into their mothers and fathers.
MTV's Dance Party dancer turned mom and still California Big Screen dreaming (no, she never went down THAT path).
I ingrained the naughty/devious grin on her face in the nuclei of the atoms of my retinas (whence they move, the knowledge is bound to them, teeming and replicating throughout my body). She caught me though, glancing up from the phone, knowing then that I had seen and understood. This is how it starts.
Crapola on the comments. We'll see what we can do ...
I dunno if it's gonna work but I tried to add a comments section ... We'll see.
Many things bopping around in my tired noggin this evening. Everything from an article I recently read regarding the somewhat sudden proliferation (eighty's style?) of conservative independent newspapers on college campuses to the resignation of Ari Fliescher as White House Press secretary.
But the funniest thing had to be from yesterday when my buddy Matt was helping my wife and I decide where we were going to hang our American flag off our home. He said "I didn't think you would get one of these ..." He's such a bastard at times =).
For the record, I know full well that I'm absolutely blessed to live in this country. I'm a lucky person to be able to speak my mind and not be shot or gagged for it. Just like you.
Never forget this honor we share. Rise up and fight for it if need be. Voting - and getting other like-minded folks to the polls - is how you do it. You can still make a difference.
Off the suds crate.
My daughter got tubes in her ears this morning. She's a tough cookie. My wife threatened (mildly) the surgeon - told him to do a good job.
Excerpts from an article by Scott Peterson for the Christian Science Monitor
No one has warned the vendor in the faded, threadbare black gown to keep the toxic and radioactive dust off her produce. The children haven't been told not to play with the radioactive debris. They gather around as a Geiger counter carried by a visiting reporter starts singing when it nears a DU bullet fragment no bigger than a pencil eraser. It registers nearly 1,000 times normal background radiation levels on the digital readout.
In the first partial Pentagon disclosure of the amount of DU used in Iraq, a US Central Command spokesman told the Monitor that A-10 Warthog aircraft - the same planes that shot at the Iraqi planning ministry - fired 300,000 bullets. The normal combat mix for these 30-mm rounds is five DU bullets to 1 - a mix that would have left about 75 tons of DU in Iraq.
Pentagon officials say that DU is relatively harmless and a necessary part of modern warfare. "There is not really any danger, at least that we know about, for the people of Iraq," said Lt. Col. Michael Sigmon, deputy surgeon for the US Army's V Corps, told journalists in Baghdad last week. He asserted that children playing with expended tank shells would have to eat and then practically suffocate on DU residue to cause harm.
"After we shoot something with DU, we're not supposed to go around it, due to the fact that it could cause cancer," says a sergeant in Baghdad from New York, assigned to a Bradley, who asked not to be further identified.
"We don't know the effects of what it could do," says the sergeant. "If one of our vehicles burnt with a DU round inside, or an ammo truck, we wouldn't go near it, even if it had important documents inside. We play it safe."
Six American vehicles struck with DU "friendly fire" in 1991 were deemed to be too contaminated to take home, and were buried in Saudi Arabia. Of 16 more brought back to a purpose-built facility in South Carolina, six had to be buried in a low-level radioactive waste dump.
"We were buttoned up when we drove by that - all our hatches were closed," the US sergeant says. "If we saw anything on fire, we wouldn't stop anywhere near it. We would just keep on driving."
That's an option that produce seller Hamid doesn't have.
The Sign Said, "XXX," But They Were Talking About Rootbeer
Well, before we all turn into meat-sicles from self-induced nuclear winter, let me get this off my chest: If your life is starting to look like Nails' song "88 lines about 44 women" (or men, or both - we're egalitarian 'round here) it might be time to grow up.
While we can all be on it, we can't all be Grade A class, number one in our divisions. So, necessarily, we have to find a way to shut up and be happy in our existences of quiet desperation. Or so we think.
A good friend of mine posed the problematic juxtaposition of finding herself in charge of helping some very troubled youth to conform to societal norms while at the same time fostering some sense of healthy self. Individual conformity. Horatio Alger for the Sexual Predator Set.
Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead Moment: Are we really all in each other's presence - in our worlds of soup - armed only with forks ...?
Just to clear up the last entry: I've never been a b-boy standing in a b-boy stance. But I always thought it might have been cool to try it. The times I've tried in front of the mirror made me laugh. Which is good, because I'm the biggest dork who lives inside my own skin. The rest of them are pretty cool - but me? Nah.
These things happen when you listen to Old School Rap:
(STICKY FINGAZ)
I'm a b-boy
Standin in my b-boy stance
Hurry up and give me the microphone before I bust in my pants
The mad author of anguish
My language, Polluted
Onyx is heavyweight (Sonsee: And still undisputed!!)
He took the words right out my mouth and walked a mile in my shoes
I've paid so many dues, I feel used and abused
And I'm.... so confused
umm, excuse me, for example
I'm the inspiration, for a WHOLE generation
And unless you got 10 SSsssticky Fingers
Its straight immitation
A figment, of your imagination
But but but but wait it gets worse!!
I'm not watered down so I'm dyin of thirst
Comin thru wit a scam, a fullproof plan
B-boys make some noise, and just, JUST SLAM!
SLAM! duuh duuh duuh, duuh duuh duuh Let the boys be boys!
SLAM! duuh duuh duuh, duuh duuh duuh Let the boys be boys!
SLAM! duuh duuh duuh, duuh duuh duuh Let the boys be boys!
SLAM! duuh duuh duuh, duuh duuh duuh Let the boys be boys!
SLAM! duuh duuh duuh, duuh duuh duuh Let the boys be boys!
SLAM! duuh duuh duuh, duuh duuh duuh Let the boys be boys!
SLAM! duuh duuh duuh, duuh duuh duuh Let the boys be boys!
SLAM! duuh duuh duuh, duuh duuh duuh Let the boys be boys!
SLAM! duuh duuh duuh, duuh duuh duuh Let the boys be boys!
SLAM!
I used to think that what I had to say wasn't important. That the metavoices of the world is all there is. Maybe that is how it's "supposed" to be given the structure of discourse in our society.
It's only lately that I've discovered that those of us out there attempting to synthesize the world of "how we grew up" (which metamorphoses with each record or non-record of what happened) with the constantly changing here and now, is becoming an increasingly important endeavor.
With the advent of companies who's sole role is archiving net traffic and discourse (not unlike this one) as a record for future generation, the reminder that we are without a physical record (letters, books, journals - all in the physical realm) of some of our recent offerings from all over the planet is apparent.
In the future, harvesting hardrives will suplant finding the brilliant offerings in a sock drawer when auntie dies.
I've come to a dead end
Ends divide the means
Meaning's lost on me
Me and my handy rake
Raking the river beautifies the world
Worlds spent apart from you
You and your flacid baggage
Baggage requiring me to stand up
Up high above, over the top
Topping it all, we're just extras
Extras looking for our bit roles
Roles in a play where the understading's been lost
Lost to dark matter and background noise
Noise (white), light (spectrum), Heat (absolute zero K)
Kelvin, that's what his name is, yes
Yes, you should be careful who you walk next to
The afterglow of the Comedy
Wore off as we left the party
"That was easy," his poster-boy face
smiled, wreaking, pressed too close to mine.
I showed him my teeth
(compliance)
We stepped on, light from the Tiki kitsch
showing the way.
"You realize," he went on, "that my CEO
is a Wall Holder when he pees?
(It's true.)
I see him do it all the time in the
Executive Washroom." He extended
his arm, and paused his step, laughing.
It was late and I was beginning to feel
ill again.
He was going non-stop now, whatever
it was he ingested was taking hold,
"What do you think of when you hear the word
'cockpit?'" I shrugged
(indifference)
"I mean, do you visualize an airplane, a cock
fighting ring in rural Mexico (or next door, I thought),
or a six foot pit, ringed with dildos and cocks sticking
through holes?"
I don't answer
We stumble on - it's dark now, torches gone
"Hell," he says, "I'm heading back up there. That idea's
too good to waste."
I'm about to ask which one he thinks of when he turns on his
(drunken) heel
and half-whispers "Maybe they'll let me do
a few more in front of their mothers while they build it ..."
And then I know
The sun came up
& shot through the blinds
Today was the day
& I was already behind ...
My God, I was raised on TV, just like so many of you I see around me.
Nothin' to live or die for, no religion too.
Take it away, but I want more and more.
One day I'm gonna loose the war.
The Blues are still required.
She said, "Sorry I can't go on with this ..."
We've been dancin' with Mr. Brownstone,
He won't leave me alone.
Nobody ever got a medal for being Mr./Miss Chipper 24/7
(Nobody ever got one for being an complete and total asshole constantly either ... well, I suppose that's debatable)
I don't know what to believe
Sometimes, I even forget ...
A list of shit I avoid at all costs starts with the invocation of womens' wrath.
silence swimming in a pool of dreams
beneath its depths the forgotten streams
above, the city of the evening star
behind its walls, the grand bazaar
"Did you kill the man who killed you William Blake?"
"But I'm not dead ..."
There's no simple explanation
for anything important any of us do ...
Diving in at the gun with riff's peeling from "New Orleans Is Sinking" tearing through your auditory essence
(I'll see you on Arizona Bay)
Just hold on, 'cause I'm comin'.
I'm so glad we made it.
Come on, come on
You and whose army?
Dropping off the edge sideways
only to land on your feet and plunge
headlong into a dive
sometimes, sometimes (you look up and half the year is gone and your 17-month-old daughter is giving you a knowing grin before pulling the wool over your eyes one more time)
Time, place, and the associations of music in our psyches and who we are, who we were and who we will be. I had the experience this afternoon of hearing a song I hadn't heard in awhile, and it brought me right back to the teenage mindframe that I had developed, nurtured, known and loved.
Now people have beaten this "music is the soundtrack of our lives" (thanks "Dick" Clark) horse to death a long, long time ago, so all I can do is pitch in my two cents (sense) and see where it goes.
