This may or may not be finished, but it's a resting place at any rate.
All The Fighters Have Left
If I live to die an old man
Will I have lived my life in vain?
Could I have lived for something more than
Just to see the sun again?
If you fight hard enough to help the powerless
Those who have power will see you dead
If you are meek, minding only your own business
You will inherit all the fighters have left
Come join in the struggle
When all of the others
Agree to peace
And sharing the best
A new world is forming
You’ll wake up one morn and
Discover all
The fighters have left
I don’t trust permanence or institutions for
Self-preservation is their only aim
Money and politics stay out of governance,
medicine, art, education and faith.
If you fight hard enough to help the powerless
Those who have power will see you dead
If you are meek, minding only your own business
You will inherit all the fighters have left
Go to the cul-de-sacs
Go to the mountain shacks
Go to the places
That Fear calls home
Dare to stay single
Find faith that everything will be
All right when you find
You’re fighting alone
If I fail fatherhood can I still be a man
Making no children to roam on the earth?
If I never marry will I always carry
The stigma of never learning to care?
If my love is strong enough to help the powerless
Will I have anything left for myself?
If I am meek, minding only my own business
Can I do good for anyone else?
Monday, August 30, 2010
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Dr. Update
I think I got dumped by my doctor. A message on the answering machine said I should call the Dr.'s office. I never did get ahold of anyone who claimed to be the person with whom I should be speaking, but they all seemed to know that I needed to pick up some files.
Some files?
I got there this A.M. and there was my entire medical record. Why am I receiving this? No one knows. I think maybe the Dr. decided that, since I might be splitting town in a year there was no point in his holding on to my records any longer.
I put the file into my satchel and continued on toward work. I began to feel as though I'd had a spat with my girlfriend one morning then came home to find my furniture and dirty laundry on the sidewalk.
The file feels like that egg I carried in 7th grade to learn the responsibilities of child-rearing and to scare us into safe or no sex. There's this delicate and important thing living in my much-abused bag, the shoe leather of my intellectual existence in which everything else is transported.
I took a few moments at the office to look through the file. There were few surprises, some astoundingly bad handwriting, the whole lengthy story told in reverse. A few scattered notes of tests and updates with scribbles about career developments and a dearth of health insurance in the margin, then a sudden crisis starting softly, pleased at the recovery progress leading back to the surgeries themselves, like watching a feather floating up off the floor. Then the surgeries with a eerie lack of crisis, though the notes to captures some of the malaise and depression between bouts with the scalpel. Then a long, drawn out, growing hope out of the despair and certainty--the word inexorable was applied to my condition at one point. Then scattered notes on inoculations and vaccinations.
When the uber-diagnosis's term first appeared (in standard chronology) there were several articles on the condition collected by a curious doctor unschooled in its ins and outs. One examined a suggested connection between the diagnosis and schizophrenia. The article described a study that found no link between them but suggestion has its power and my moments of troubled mind seem all the more sinister.
The troubled mind denies all hope. With a troubled mind where can there be love or professional achievement?
The study found no connection, and yet...
The language of the medical file is strange: "patient denies...", which suggests to me that I'm hiding something.
--
My closest chum has reexamined his career choices. He and his wife are in different branches the same obscure field, both finishing up their dissertations while attending to a five month old. Jobs are few and the politics around them is rife, and he basically thinks his branch is awash in bullshit and doesn't want to play the game. So he's done his research, identified what he wants and needs in a job and has decided to become an actuary.
I can't fault him.
I know what I want/need to do, but I don't see how to get there from here. It requires either a PhD. or MFA. I don't want to do the politics of the PhD. and I can't see how I can acquire the prerequisite of three years' professional experience to get accepted into an MFA program.
I feel like I'm in the only job for which I'm qualified. Is this it? Is this the top of my career? Is there nowhere else to go?
Pieces are coming into place that may allow me to finally stage something. The production values are miniscule. I could do the thing on my own but would prefer to do it with others. Others may be on hand.
We shall see what comes of this.
Some files?
I got there this A.M. and there was my entire medical record. Why am I receiving this? No one knows. I think maybe the Dr. decided that, since I might be splitting town in a year there was no point in his holding on to my records any longer.
I put the file into my satchel and continued on toward work. I began to feel as though I'd had a spat with my girlfriend one morning then came home to find my furniture and dirty laundry on the sidewalk.
The file feels like that egg I carried in 7th grade to learn the responsibilities of child-rearing and to scare us into safe or no sex. There's this delicate and important thing living in my much-abused bag, the shoe leather of my intellectual existence in which everything else is transported.
I took a few moments at the office to look through the file. There were few surprises, some astoundingly bad handwriting, the whole lengthy story told in reverse. A few scattered notes of tests and updates with scribbles about career developments and a dearth of health insurance in the margin, then a sudden crisis starting softly, pleased at the recovery progress leading back to the surgeries themselves, like watching a feather floating up off the floor. Then the surgeries with a eerie lack of crisis, though the notes to captures some of the malaise and depression between bouts with the scalpel. Then a long, drawn out, growing hope out of the despair and certainty--the word inexorable was applied to my condition at one point. Then scattered notes on inoculations and vaccinations.
When the uber-diagnosis's term first appeared (in standard chronology) there were several articles on the condition collected by a curious doctor unschooled in its ins and outs. One examined a suggested connection between the diagnosis and schizophrenia. The article described a study that found no link between them but suggestion has its power and my moments of troubled mind seem all the more sinister.
The troubled mind denies all hope. With a troubled mind where can there be love or professional achievement?
The study found no connection, and yet...
The language of the medical file is strange: "patient denies...", which suggests to me that I'm hiding something.
--
My closest chum has reexamined his career choices. He and his wife are in different branches the same obscure field, both finishing up their dissertations while attending to a five month old. Jobs are few and the politics around them is rife, and he basically thinks his branch is awash in bullshit and doesn't want to play the game. So he's done his research, identified what he wants and needs in a job and has decided to become an actuary.
I can't fault him.
I know what I want/need to do, but I don't see how to get there from here. It requires either a PhD. or MFA. I don't want to do the politics of the PhD. and I can't see how I can acquire the prerequisite of three years' professional experience to get accepted into an MFA program.
I feel like I'm in the only job for which I'm qualified. Is this it? Is this the top of my career? Is there nowhere else to go?
Pieces are coming into place that may allow me to finally stage something. The production values are miniscule. I could do the thing on my own but would prefer to do it with others. Others may be on hand.
We shall see what comes of this.
Friday, August 20, 2010
Another Lyric
My head is much more in protest-song land right now, but revisiting something sweeter is a pleasant respite.
This came pouring out of the uke at the start of the summer.
I still like it.
Come To Me Tonight
There’s a cream of wheat moon breaking the horizon
Porch-light melting into sweet cream butter
All the whole wide world is hoping
you’ll come to me tonight
There’s a cross-town bus blowing on the meadow
Reminding us of all we left behind
You can taste its tang against the cool
If only you will come to me tonight
Fireflies are dancing in my eyes
Drunk with dreaming I’ll procrastinate the sunrise
Meadowlark is singing in the dark
I'm afraid that rooster’s got my number
Yes, I’ve tried my best to fathom your address
Touched each doorbell and dialed every phone
Come to me or I will be
Alone--forever yours--all my life
So please
Come to me tonight
This came pouring out of the uke at the start of the summer.
I still like it.
Come To Me Tonight
There’s a cream of wheat moon breaking the horizon
Porch-light melting into sweet cream butter
All the whole wide world is hoping
you’ll come to me tonight
There’s a cross-town bus blowing on the meadow
Reminding us of all we left behind
You can taste its tang against the cool
If only you will come to me tonight
Fireflies are dancing in my eyes
Drunk with dreaming I’ll procrastinate the sunrise
Meadowlark is singing in the dark
I'm afraid that rooster’s got my number
Yes, I’ve tried my best to fathom your address
Touched each doorbell and dialed every phone
Come to me or I will be
Alone--forever yours--all my life
So please
Come to me tonight
Thursday, August 19, 2010
the battles never end
Seeing the Dr. yesterday left me...
Embarrassed for one thing, as I made lame excuses (are there any other kind?) for my weight loss. Ten pounds over a year and a half may seem like nothing to others but my minimum just-got-out-of-the-hospital-and-resemble-a-skeleton is 140 so 155 is not so good and, admittedly the cheeks look a little hollow.
How strange to worry about weighing enough in a society of obesity, where my boss, who looks healthy, is obsessively judgmental of weight in others and herself. Luckily I now have one colleague who is also hideously thin, but she's getting past a history of eating disorders. She says she's past it. That finality seems suspect.
--I once came to tears in an acting class because I thought I'd gotten past being "in my head" and the instructor had used that exact term to describe me. When I gave the reason for my sudden flush of emotion she said, "Frankly, that's terribly naive." Ah, acting instructors, such delightful sadists.--
The question of why I'd lost ten pounds stuck on me bringing up memories of an anorexic ex-GF (it's not about appearance, it's about control) and my needs for control, the distance I've retracted from the peace and ease I had following the four week acting intensive this winter.
I've forgotten how to be human again. I resemble my father more and more--awkward, tightly wound, flailing out in inopportune moments, living in the world inside my head, disconnected from everyone else's perception and experience just enough to be off-putting.
I had been thinking I'd quit ragging on Sunhole--good practice. Truth be told I can't tell you today what those significant differences are between the cultures of the east versus the west, but I know they're there. Dr. gave me the big test on that, first question: you're new here, how are you liking Sunhole? I tried to be relatively positive but failed. Ten minutes of conversation about Sunhole culture and he says "I really think you should stay". It makes me angry. I can understand civic pride, but why force it on others? If I could understand that evident need in this town then maybe I wouldn't be so angry when faced with it.
The curious discovery in all this (though I've known it for some time I haven't fully appreciated it before) is that I like the next town over quite a lot. Gattaca's tiny, overwhelmed by its university. Why is it more appealing? Does it have to do with the fact that downtown Sunhole resembles nothing so much as Disneyland? That even the river can be turned off and on--currently off for renovations--they're building artificial rocks to change the low-water season flow! Gattaca does seem more real--surreal maybe, given its moonscape of a landscape. It doesn't put on any airs whatsoever.
Let's wrap this up neatly and suggest that, despite my intense focus on integrity I still go in for a lot of image control. I'm not past that yet. Being more like Gattaca and less like Sunhole is a life's work. We never stop being (anorexic, alcoholic, in our heads, our father's sons) we can only hope to stop doing by doing something else.
Maybe that's too facile but I've got wrap this and get to work.
Embarrassed for one thing, as I made lame excuses (are there any other kind?) for my weight loss. Ten pounds over a year and a half may seem like nothing to others but my minimum just-got-out-of-the-hospital-and-resemble-a-skeleton is 140 so 155 is not so good and, admittedly the cheeks look a little hollow.
How strange to worry about weighing enough in a society of obesity, where my boss, who looks healthy, is obsessively judgmental of weight in others and herself. Luckily I now have one colleague who is also hideously thin, but she's getting past a history of eating disorders. She says she's past it. That finality seems suspect.
--I once came to tears in an acting class because I thought I'd gotten past being "in my head" and the instructor had used that exact term to describe me. When I gave the reason for my sudden flush of emotion she said, "Frankly, that's terribly naive." Ah, acting instructors, such delightful sadists.--
The question of why I'd lost ten pounds stuck on me bringing up memories of an anorexic ex-GF (it's not about appearance, it's about control) and my needs for control, the distance I've retracted from the peace and ease I had following the four week acting intensive this winter.
I've forgotten how to be human again. I resemble my father more and more--awkward, tightly wound, flailing out in inopportune moments, living in the world inside my head, disconnected from everyone else's perception and experience just enough to be off-putting.
I had been thinking I'd quit ragging on Sunhole--good practice. Truth be told I can't tell you today what those significant differences are between the cultures of the east versus the west, but I know they're there. Dr. gave me the big test on that, first question: you're new here, how are you liking Sunhole? I tried to be relatively positive but failed. Ten minutes of conversation about Sunhole culture and he says "I really think you should stay". It makes me angry. I can understand civic pride, but why force it on others? If I could understand that evident need in this town then maybe I wouldn't be so angry when faced with it.
The curious discovery in all this (though I've known it for some time I haven't fully appreciated it before) is that I like the next town over quite a lot. Gattaca's tiny, overwhelmed by its university. Why is it more appealing? Does it have to do with the fact that downtown Sunhole resembles nothing so much as Disneyland? That even the river can be turned off and on--currently off for renovations--they're building artificial rocks to change the low-water season flow! Gattaca does seem more real--surreal maybe, given its moonscape of a landscape. It doesn't put on any airs whatsoever.
Let's wrap this up neatly and suggest that, despite my intense focus on integrity I still go in for a lot of image control. I'm not past that yet. Being more like Gattaca and less like Sunhole is a life's work. We never stop being (anorexic, alcoholic, in our heads, our father's sons) we can only hope to stop doing by doing something else.
Maybe that's too facile but I've got wrap this and get to work.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Off-Day
I feel like my personality does not help me achieve my ends. I fear losing my identity in pursuing my visions and dreams. This reminds me of the claustrophobia in my longer relationships. Perhaps losing myself is necessary to allow the relationship help me be a better person.
On the other hand
Context:
This morning I talked to a new colleague as I often did to my recently departed colleagues, spewing updates on my life, observations on the world and my responses to it. Her response was “wow, I’m getting a lot of judgment and bitterness” said in her usual valley-girl voice. I had a strong negative response to this.
I feel like judging a statement as judgmental has become the only unimpeachable opinion. I don’t buy it.
I judge judgment. I think people who identify judgment are frequently judging it in their too-noble and enlightened voices, temple bell smooth and lush in tone. Why can’t I have an opinion? Why can’t I have an overtly negative response? Why is that not allowed? Why is that judging and why is that bad?
There are things I don’t like. I don’t want to participate in those things if I don’t have to. I don’t like your town. This doesn’t mean I don’t like you. This doesn’t mean I think you’re less of a person for liking it. I judge this to be not mine.
On the other hand
Context:
This morning I talked to a new colleague as I often did to my recently departed colleagues, spewing updates on my life, observations on the world and my responses to it. Her response was “wow, I’m getting a lot of judgment and bitterness” said in her usual valley-girl voice. I had a strong negative response to this.
I feel like judging a statement as judgmental has become the only unimpeachable opinion. I don’t buy it.
I judge judgment. I think people who identify judgment are frequently judging it in their too-noble and enlightened voices, temple bell smooth and lush in tone. Why can’t I have an opinion? Why can’t I have an overtly negative response? Why is that not allowed? Why is that judging and why is that bad?
There are things I don’t like. I don’t want to participate in those things if I don’t have to. I don’t like your town. This doesn’t mean I don’t like you. This doesn’t mean I think you’re less of a person for liking it. I judge this to be not mine.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Another Purpose
This blog lacks focus.
This blog lacks updates.
This blogger lacks follow-through(?)--initiative(?)--persistence(?)--commitment(?)...
This blogger lacks a thorough understanding of copyright and the means for attaining it.
Therefore
a new vein.
I've been doing a lot of songwriting.
Music was part of the family story but not part of family life. The guitar didn't see much action, disappeared in a robbery and wasn't missed. My grandfather and great grandfather were said to value music but no one ever played.
I grew up with a piano in the house. I have vague recollections of a piano being moved up the 72 steps to my childhood home. At some point that piano was replaced by a smaller one from my grandparents.
--
I wonder what happened to the old one--I never did understand what happened to it, only that my mother insisted that the replacement was better. Could it be that we sold the old one in hopes of shoring up our then shaky finances? I never liked the new one. It had an odd buzz in it and seemed small and unimpressive compared with the old one.
--
My sister took piano lessons sporadically. I picked out tunes for a couple songs by ear. My mother annually peeled back the cover and painfully plunked out Christmas carols, but the piano saw little action.
I took recorder lessons for a while, but never learned to read music. I never even learned to associate finger positions with note names, just relying on my ability to play by ear and memorize the playing patterns to avoid admitting my ignorance or struggling to learn something hard--a life pattern I'm working to change.
I took up the tin whistle and played joyfully and primitively (without instruction) but alway aspired to more.
I took a semester of piano lessons, facing my embarrassment at sounding stupid running scales and making mistakes in practice and at having skills contemporary to a pre-teen. Ultimately that embarrassment defeated me--I refused to perform at the recital and quit.
I sang a lot--in an internationally touring boy choir, in high school choirs, in college choir (till the high bass line of Beethoven's Ninth led me to quit in frustration). I took voice lessons, tired of being stuck in the chorus, determined to solo. I took music theory, but quit after scoring in the 40s on the first couple quizzes.
I worked at a theatre at the turn of the millennium where a colleague learned to play ukulele for a show. The uke made sense, like the tin whistle which had holes for the fingers where the fingers naturally fell. The six strings of the guitar made no sense to my four fingers.
Seven and a half years ago I went looking for a protest in response to our invasion of Iraq. Unable to find one I stumbled upon and into a music shop. The first thing I saw was a tiny banjo with four strings, a banjo-ukulele. I touched it and something in me responded to the sound. I couldn't stomach the $150 cost there and then but returned the next day to buy it and was playing songs in no time.
I'd written songs since my teens, a kind of heightened poetry with a strong tune. I wrote several songs while trying to live in NYC following college. I wrote songs driving to and from my first serious girlfriend's house. I wrote songs during grad school, inspired by a novel and with half an idea that they might form a musical theatre adaptation of that work. I wrote songs while teaching at a remote boarding school, and now I'm writing songs here in Sunhole.
Last Christmas, at my sister's request, I laid down a few tracks on the Mac app. Garageband and gave CDs of those tracks to family and a colleague whose taste in music was impeccable. The colleague's husband, a harmonica player, liked the songs and we started playing together. I hit a few open mics, built confidence. I keep writing songs.
So now I think I'll lay down some lyrics here. Maybe I'll mention some backstory.
One of the better and more popular numbers is something I call
Sprague Ave.
Standing on this railway platform
cold wind blowing down the track
Don't know where I'm going
hope I won't be back
Got to get around these wives,
husbands, children, little lives
are calling me
to join them
Calling me back now
And every little town I pass
looks exactly like the rest
Factories, broken backs,
a riverbank palimpsest
Every railside face I see
seems to say that same thing
they're calling me
to join them
Calling me back now
But a one-way ticket doesn't mean a thing
It's a two-tongued promise, no guarantee
Every step I take to leave
is another step
returning me again
Trust the good in everyone's
the hardest lesson I have learned
Best intentions come undone
cruel-hearted fools leave you burned
So many I have loved and hurt
for fear that they would hurt me first
but still they call
me to join them
Calling me back now
A one-way ticket doesn't mean a thing
It's a two-tongued promise, no guarantee
Every step I take to leave
is another step
returning me again
Can't you hear that bell a clanging?
Can't you see that flashing light?
Drifter's dreamride gently fading
in the arms of this good night
Got no reason left to rage
the curtain falls on my seventh age
Rhe light will die
and I will join them
Going back there now
A one-way ticket doesn't mean a thing
It's a two-tonged promise, no guarantee
Every step I take to leave
is another step
returning me again
written fall 2009
This blog lacks updates.
This blogger lacks follow-through(?)--initiative(?)--persistence(?)--commitment(?)...
This blogger lacks a thorough understanding of copyright and the means for attaining it.
Therefore
a new vein.
I've been doing a lot of songwriting.
Music was part of the family story but not part of family life. The guitar didn't see much action, disappeared in a robbery and wasn't missed. My grandfather and great grandfather were said to value music but no one ever played.
I grew up with a piano in the house. I have vague recollections of a piano being moved up the 72 steps to my childhood home. At some point that piano was replaced by a smaller one from my grandparents.
--
I wonder what happened to the old one--I never did understand what happened to it, only that my mother insisted that the replacement was better. Could it be that we sold the old one in hopes of shoring up our then shaky finances? I never liked the new one. It had an odd buzz in it and seemed small and unimpressive compared with the old one.
--
My sister took piano lessons sporadically. I picked out tunes for a couple songs by ear. My mother annually peeled back the cover and painfully plunked out Christmas carols, but the piano saw little action.
I took recorder lessons for a while, but never learned to read music. I never even learned to associate finger positions with note names, just relying on my ability to play by ear and memorize the playing patterns to avoid admitting my ignorance or struggling to learn something hard--a life pattern I'm working to change.
I took up the tin whistle and played joyfully and primitively (without instruction) but alway aspired to more.
I took a semester of piano lessons, facing my embarrassment at sounding stupid running scales and making mistakes in practice and at having skills contemporary to a pre-teen. Ultimately that embarrassment defeated me--I refused to perform at the recital and quit.
I sang a lot--in an internationally touring boy choir, in high school choirs, in college choir (till the high bass line of Beethoven's Ninth led me to quit in frustration). I took voice lessons, tired of being stuck in the chorus, determined to solo. I took music theory, but quit after scoring in the 40s on the first couple quizzes.
I worked at a theatre at the turn of the millennium where a colleague learned to play ukulele for a show. The uke made sense, like the tin whistle which had holes for the fingers where the fingers naturally fell. The six strings of the guitar made no sense to my four fingers.
Seven and a half years ago I went looking for a protest in response to our invasion of Iraq. Unable to find one I stumbled upon and into a music shop. The first thing I saw was a tiny banjo with four strings, a banjo-ukulele. I touched it and something in me responded to the sound. I couldn't stomach the $150 cost there and then but returned the next day to buy it and was playing songs in no time.
I'd written songs since my teens, a kind of heightened poetry with a strong tune. I wrote several songs while trying to live in NYC following college. I wrote songs driving to and from my first serious girlfriend's house. I wrote songs during grad school, inspired by a novel and with half an idea that they might form a musical theatre adaptation of that work. I wrote songs while teaching at a remote boarding school, and now I'm writing songs here in Sunhole.
Last Christmas, at my sister's request, I laid down a few tracks on the Mac app. Garageband and gave CDs of those tracks to family and a colleague whose taste in music was impeccable. The colleague's husband, a harmonica player, liked the songs and we started playing together. I hit a few open mics, built confidence. I keep writing songs.
So now I think I'll lay down some lyrics here. Maybe I'll mention some backstory.
One of the better and more popular numbers is something I call
Sprague Ave.
Standing on this railway platform
cold wind blowing down the track
Don't know where I'm going
hope I won't be back
Got to get around these wives,
husbands, children, little lives
are calling me
to join them
Calling me back now
And every little town I pass
looks exactly like the rest
Factories, broken backs,
a riverbank palimpsest
Every railside face I see
seems to say that same thing
they're calling me
to join them
Calling me back now
But a one-way ticket doesn't mean a thing
It's a two-tongued promise, no guarantee
Every step I take to leave
is another step
returning me again
Trust the good in everyone's
the hardest lesson I have learned
Best intentions come undone
cruel-hearted fools leave you burned
So many I have loved and hurt
for fear that they would hurt me first
but still they call
me to join them
Calling me back now
A one-way ticket doesn't mean a thing
It's a two-tongued promise, no guarantee
Every step I take to leave
is another step
returning me again
Can't you hear that bell a clanging?
Can't you see that flashing light?
Drifter's dreamride gently fading
in the arms of this good night
Got no reason left to rage
the curtain falls on my seventh age
Rhe light will die
and I will join them
Going back there now
A one-way ticket doesn't mean a thing
It's a two-tonged promise, no guarantee
Every step I take to leave
is another step
returning me again
written fall 2009
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