Baubles

Napoleon once said that "It is with baubles that men are led."  He should probably know he led a lot of men, smart men, men who were headstrong enough not to be easily led.  Making someone the Count of somewhere, or the Duke of something, is probably a good way to get some fence sitting jackass to come around to your way of thinking. Handing out baubles like they are xmas candy is a good way to get men to suddenly think you might be worth making a whole horde of infidels die for their country.

I recently acquired/backed into/ obtained a bauble. A bauble of outstanding beauty, and one that I probably have no right to possess. One look at this bauble, and you would wonder how an idiot like myself was able to find himself possessing it. Well, that is a story that I can't quite explain. It was mostly an accident, or maybe the fates are just playing a cruel joke on me. Fates like to do that from time to time, play cruel jokes on unsuspecting, idiot mortals, and in spite of my best efforts, I am all three. Unsuspecting, an idiot, and all too mortal.  None of these things, except maybe the idiot part can I really do anything about. Perhaps someday I will get around to attempt to fix the idiot problem that I posses, but today's task is to just simply to enjoy the bauble that I possess. After all that is what pretty baubles are for, and I've been told by several people that my bauble is quite pretty.

I didn't realize the possession (if that is really the right word) of the bauble would led to such happy consequences. One of these consequences has been that suddenly I am a much better person. At least to the people that see me and my bauble together. I don't know why these people seem to think that I have suddenly unlocked the key to non-idiocy, but they do. All of a sudden, with no real change to my base personality, or looks, I have become some sort of genius. Like some cosmonaut that has successfully returned alive from space despite long odds, and a dysfunctional space capsule.

Truth be told, I am still the same asshole I was pre-bauble, that I am post bauble. I have not changed one whit. I am not any smarter, skinner, or better looking than I was the day before I found/acquired this bauble, and I will be the same asshole after I manage to lose this bauble. Because, sadly, I know that I will. Lose the bauble that is. One day, probably not in the none too distant future, I will awake and be suddenly sans bauble. Then, I will come crashing back to earth like that aforementioned cosmonaut. Disgraced, and fallen back to earth, I will look around, and all the glory, and accolades that I have been basking in while in possession of this bauble will be gone. Poof! like the smoke dissipating after a musket being fired.

I could write pages and pages of fiction describing this bauble, line upon line explaining the happy effects that this bauble is having upon my usually dreary life. All of these pages, and all of these lines will not rid me of two very important things. One the, all too brief, happiness, that having this bauble in my life is providing me, and two the (eventual) crushing sadness that will come when this bauble slips out of my control. All of those lines that I could pollute the blog sphere with, will not rid my bones of that sadness that is as sure to come as the sun rising tomorrow in the right direction.

In fact, the possession of this bauble is a terrifying experience. It scares the ever loving hell out of me that some damn fool like me, and I am a damn fool, has fallen ass backwards onto this high terrain. It is an unusual position for the likes of me, and I am not exactly sure if I am quite ready to fall from such high terrain. The days are about to start to turn cold, and this bauble does not exactly provide warmth in the convention sense, it does, at times, give me a bit of a warm, fuzzy feeling. Or, that could just be the booze, I am not sure which, and am not really going to investigate too closely.  I don't want to let this bauble down, it is very pretty, very shiny, and quite bright. A bauble that is quite beyond my ordinary skill to obtain.

Though, possession of this bauble has effected a subtle change upon me, other than the fact that other people now think I am some sort of bloody genius, that effect is something I can do nothing about, even if I wanted to. Which I am pretty sure I don't. The subtle change wrought by this newly acquired bauble is simply this. I can see, off in the middle distance, the clouds that non-possession will bring. I know they are there. It is similar to seeing the dust cloud of the desert nomads that are going to overrun the fort you and your fellow 'legionaries' control. Overwhelming numbers, and large clouds are coming your way. But, quite simply put, I don't care. I  will have this bauble for all too brief of a time, and losing it will be heart breaking, but at least after all that dust settles, and the heart mends itself (because that is what hearts do, they mend eventually), I will have possessed this bauble, and all the king's horses, and all the king's men will never be able to change that fact. It is, for me at least, one of life's little victories, and I didn't have to kill one infidel to achieve it. 

Concentrated

"The men are too concentrated, sir" Wilson muttered with a sniff, he is the sickly type, and always has some complaint be it a cold or Bright's Disease, Wilson was always suffering from something. Me, I was mostly suffering from an overdose of Wilson. "Gods damn it, Wilson. Not more than a few moments ago, you were telling me they were too scattered." "How in the blue fuck did I get to be in charge of this rabble." Wilson smirked and replied "You umm were elected sir. The vote was unanimous, I might add.' That caused me to pause and ponder the day of the 'election'. "And, where was I during this election that acclaimed me the fearless leader of this rabble?" Wilson looked out over the parapet, and replied "I believe you were" cough cough "recovering from a bout of the Solomon flu sir." That was Wilson's way of saying that I had been a a three day drunk, and was snoring away the better part of a gloomy November afternoon during the time I was 'elected' to led this group of reprobates. Funny how a many can get nominated, seconded, and elected all in the course of sleeping away the day.

The sad part was, once again, the bastard was right. Looking out into the courtyard I came to the conclusion that one well placed bomb, would kill us all, and since all included me, I had a vested interest in his opinion whether or not I had solicited it or not.  Of course, being right and being Wilson, were to Wilson at least, synonymous.  "Perhaps we should created a reserve sir, some percentage of the men to hold back in another location in case of disaster."  Once again sound advice, and advice that I would, eventually, follow. In spite of my election to the leadership of this group, I realized I am not, in fact, a leader of men.  I realized this, Wilson realized this, but sadly the men themselves, clearly not that bright, had yet to figure it out. New elections should be called, and I would be damn sure to be there to reject any attempt to re-elect me to a position for which I was clearly unsuited.

However, until that glorious day when I would be voted out of the position of power that I currently unhappily occupied, it was time to issued the orders to get this mob sorted out with as little trouble as possible, which of course would still be three time more trouble that was necessary. Did I mention they were a mob of reprobates? The group of malcontents that had elected me their leader, were not the top of the line, front rank type of troops that you would cheer yourself hoarse for as they marched (using the term very loosely) down the main street of whatever village they happened to be liberating at the time. No, these fellows inspired a more "lock up the family jewels, bury the money in the back yard, and sent the daughters to another village quickly" type of troops. Not a group that would inspire confidence, unless you were confident of disaster striking. 

There lies the problem with the whole leadership thing. Heavy is the head that wears the crown, and if this rabble were to be exterminated like so many cockroaches, and I was lucky enough to survive alive, my life would probably not be worth living when the letter came from the Captain-General asking me to explain myself. Never been the best at explaining myself, it's a character flaw common with all the males members of my family.  "It's always best to have an extra reserve, just in case things break bad sir. You know like an extra 8 of anchors in a game of Issam."  "Well yes Wilson, if all the world's problems could be boiled down to a soldier's game of cards, then we'd all just have a merry fucking christmas wouldn't we?" The rebuke to the reply was standard with us, Wilson fancied himself a great card player, and I was beginning to suspect that he was getting ideas above his station. Which is why, in the only stroke of genius I've managed to have in command. I immediately told him the lovely news. "You are right Wilson, we are too concentrated, and guess what I've decided to do about it?"  Waving away his attempt to protest I said "you get the pleasure of taking a third of this lot, and be thankful its only a third, and wandering off on your own for a bit, that way if disaster overtakes either of us, the other one will still be around to claim it was all someone other than their fault." The joys of command, perhaps that election wasn't as rigged as I had thought.

Scattered

'The men are entirely too scattered to be of any real use, Sir.' Those words muttered by my second in command Wilson, brought me up short. Wilson and I have been together for several years, and despite the fact that I consider him a gloomy bastard, I generally give his advice some considerable thought before I chose to ignore it.  As usual, he was right, he generally is which is the reason that I keep him around in spite of his gloominess. Well, it's one of the reasons, there are several other but I don't want to catalog them all, just in case he reads this, and starts to get ideas above his station. One never knows when the 'loyal' second in command will decided to throw you into a ditch, and take control of the company.

His comment, in the case, did give me pause. A pause that I used to take stock of the company which I was, in theory at least, the leader of. They were scattered, strung out along a line that was entirely too long, and too many of them were clearly not keeping up. When the men of which you are in charge become as scattered, as the men of my company had, there is only (sadly) one person to blame. That person being yours truly. It is not all sunshine and lollipops at the top of the command pyramid. The pause also gave me another moment to consider Wilson. A thinking man's man, thin as a rail, dressed like it was the dead of winter, when it was only early fall. A man that was always cold, and I wasn't sure that the coldness came from the environment, or from inside. Because I was fairly certain that Wilson has a block of ice where his heart should have been. I guess that is what makes him a good number two, coldness is something that helps when giving advice to a fellow (i.e. me) who generally doesn't take it very well.

It wasn't like I didn't know the scattering of my men was a bad idea. I know it's a bad plan, but I am nothing if not a master of making bad plans. Shitty terrain, approaching bad weather (or so Wilson says, he is always saying bad weather is approaching), and a group of men that have trouble taking direction, is an absolute prescription for disaster.  The main problem was how I was going to solve this problem. Scattered men are a lot harder to control than men that who are in some sort of actual compact formation. By scattering them, I had wasted my advantage, and I am the kind of person who needs all the advantages I can get. I realized that I was violating all the 'rules of war' and that scattering my strength was not a good idea. It was just all spiraling a bit out of my control, and it seemed as if Wilson was just not going to being of any use at all.

Maybe he had gotten tired of being number two, maybe he figured that one bone crushing defeat who either get my fool ass killed, or at least have the effect of making the men more agreeable to throwing me into that convenient ditch. Even I wasn't sure why the scattering of my men had taken place, it wasn't like they didn't know better, they just seemed to refuse to do better, and therein lay the rub. A group of men, who are trained better, who know better, should fucking DO better. It is not as if this disaster was hard to predict. The trifecta at the Derby is hard to predict, this, this could be seen coming from a mile away by a man possessing only one good eye.

'Maybe, just maybe, my dear Wilson, the men are to blame for this, and not, for once, me' was my tired reply. Tired because after all these years leading this group of lewd, mouth breathing bunglers, I was getting tired of herding them like so many violent sheep. 'Perhaps, they need to learn a lesson' I said as I tried for the hundredth time to fathom why my second in command couldn't really be trusted. Whatever chemicals he took, and I was fairly certain he took some chemicals no one can stay awake as much as he does without taking something, were probably part of the reason for the distrust. After all, can you trust a skinny guy who doesn't ever seem to either eat or sleep, and drinks very sparingly? Never fully trust a man that you haven't seen drunk at least twice in your life.


  Wilson. I had seen drunk exactly once in all the years I had known him, and even then the only reason I knew him to be drunk was because of the drops, made from a particular type of flower that only grows in a particular place in the world, that I had put into his small beer one night at some flop house of a tavern which we were staying. The clever fellow that I had purchased the drops from assured me that 'whomever drinks this will be as drunk as a lord within the hour, and will wake up feeling as fresh as a daisy.' I couldn't resist that sales pitch, after all, I wanted to know what Wilson knew, but wasn't telling me. Good thing for me that I did because when he became drunk, Wilson told me exactly what he thought of me, my leadership ability, and just for fun, mentioned a few things he would like to do to or with my sister. None of these things did I find particularly pleasant, as for my sister, well that you would have to ask her.

Since that night, I have never felt the need to see Wilson drunk again, and I've also never felt the need to introduce him to my sister. I knew from that one night exactly how far (and no further) that I could trust him, and that is exactly how far I trusted him.  The scattering of the men had been an idea of mine just to see how he would react, and he reacted much the way I expected him to.  That idea was not exactly my crowning achievement, and I begin to realize that perhaps I should have found other, less dangerous ways to test my number two. As usual, wisdom comes late, and in this case, late was bad. Very, very bad. Bad things were about to begin to happen to me, to Wilson, and to the scattered set of fools that were nominally under my command. Perhaps, and it is only just perhaps, that if I survive these bad things I will begin to understand that men are not like hash browns at a Waffle House, scattered, smothered, and covered is not a good way to have them.

Le Batard

"Bon Soir, tu magnifique batard.  Those are the last words that I leaned over and whispered to my recently departed uncle.  Today was his funeral, and I am quite good at coming up with last words at funerals (see "A Lovely Little Secret).  You can learn a lot of things at funerals, some of those things you would rather not know, and some of those things you wish you had known years ago. I attended my uncle Mike's  funeral today with a very heavy heart because the man being buried was my favorite uncle, and after a long illness that was making his life not worth living, he decided to put a bullet into his brain, and bring his time on this mortal coil to an end.

Suicide is, according to a lot of people, a very selfish move. It supposedly the most self-centered thing a person can do to the people that they leave behind. Those of us left on this side of the dirt are left to wonder what if. What if I had done the 'right' thing, and gone to see him during the last week before he died, what if I had at least had the decency to call him, and remind him that he was the single, greatest, live male influence in my miserable life.  What if a thousand other things happened that didn't, the two most dangerous words in the English language are "what if." The fact that he was the greatest male influence in my life is, in some respects, not saying a whole lot, but in others is saying all that needs to be said.  As I have mentioned several times before the paterfamilias was not the type of man that I felt the need to be around for any length of time. When Uncle Mike was in town, and could be bothered to humor his preteen nephew, all was right in the world.

The problem that I have with today's events are twofold. First, I was told by some preacher fellow that my uncle, the hard drinking, hard driving, bastard that I knew him to be, had 'found Jesus' about a month before he died. That may be true, but I (who have yet to find this Jesus of which he spoke) do not want to believe it. There is a school of thought that says that you can live the most dissolute of lives, and convert on your death bed, and find your way to this 'kingdom of heaven' where the streets are paved with gold ( I shit you not, the preacher actually used that analogy today during his 'service').  As the service wore on, I begin to detect a shift in its focus, it became less and less about the guest of honour, i.e. my uncle Mike, and more about trying to convince the live audience to 'accept Jesus Christ as our personal saviour. All well in good, for a Sunday service, but not something I want to hear when I am struggling (very hard) to contain the grief I feel at the death of my favorite uncle. You can proselytize some other day, brother. Today, I want you to remind me what a kick ass fucking uncle I am here to bury.

Secondly, I realized that the kick ass uncle I was there to bury, wasn't the same guy I remember. I remember him as ten feet tall, and bullet proof. Truth is, he was about my height, and as events proved, not bullet proof.  However, that is how I want to choose to remember him. Not the dying man, struggling to breathe that, I like to think, hedged his bets (he was a gambling man) by finding Jesus a month before his death.  He was a bastard, he was not a religious man, and it was because he was a bastard that I worshiped the ground he walked upon.  It took all of my self-control, and I realize it makes me sound like a bastard, to not get up and walk out of his funeral today in disgust. Disgust at the man the preacher was describing, because that man was not my Uncle Mike.

I realize that last line makes me sound like the most ungrateful, unfeeling, nephew in the wide world, but I also realized (about half way through the service) that the man being buried today was not the uncle of my childhood. He was not the guy who taught me how to shoot a gun, not the guy who taught me how to play cards, not the guy who taught me how to play the ponies, and not the guy who used me as 'bait' to attract the ladies in dive bars. No, he was the older, more mature, version of that guy. The guy who had been married to the same woman that he loved beyond compare for 33 years. The guy who was a fantastic step father to that woman's children, so much so that one of them called him 'Dad' in the few words she tearfully recited at his funeral.  He was not the hard living, truck driving manic that a youthful me put on the highest of pedestals (only to watch him fall off of it because no mortal man could have met my 10 year old expectations). 

No, he had aged, and like all of us mortals, age had slowed him down. In many ways, I am glad I moved away from where he lived, it helped me miss that slowing down. It helped me miss my Uncle Mike becoming an premature old man.  He was still Uncle Mike the man who taught me all the things I needed to know, but that persistent cough that I had always noticed, but ignored had become more of a defining characteristic that I realized.  It was that cough that was a sign of the disease that was going to (if he had allowed it) kill him. He knew it, his doctors knew it, and all his loved ones knew it. Uncle Mike was dying, quickly, and there was exactly fuck all any of us could do about it, except, as it turns out, him. Uncle Mike was of the generation of men who didn't ask for help, didn't need help, and belonged to a class of men "who couldn’t be tempted or swayed by the pleasant but boring dream of one day waking up at sunrise in their own bed with no one to run from and no one to apologize to."

That last comment in the quotation marks is from a website called Modern Drunkard magazine, and in many ways my Uncle Mike was a modern drunkard. He was a man's man, someone who you didn't want to fuck with. If provoked he would just as soon shoot or stab you as not.  He wasn't John Wayne by any one's standards, and I am quite sure that some of my recollections of him are quite romanticized, but for all of those things he taught me, he was one of my heroes. Not one of the 366 heroes I have already written about, but a true hero, one that I actually had the pleasure (not taken nearly often enough) of knowing, learning, and worshiping from up close. Those words that I leaned over his coffin to whisper into his unhearing ears, are the truest things that I, no matter how hard I try, will ever say.  Good night you magnificent bastard.

Detester

There are about seven billion people on the rock that I presently call home. Not that I have a lot of choices as to which rock I call home.  Seven billion is a shit ton of people, it is a number that I can not even attempt to wrap my mind around.  Of course, there are quite of number people who are dead, and are not longer of any concern to those of us that are alive. Until very recently, out of all the seven billion alive, and several millions dead people in all of recorded history, I hated exactly two of them. Today, after some not some calm, recent reflection, that number became three. Do not get me wrong, I do not like people as a whole, and have been a card carrying misanthrope for quite a number of years. But, I understand that the whole 'hating' people thing is a bit of a waste of time. It generally just brings you down as a person, and usually the other person doesn't give two shits about whether you hate them or not.

The two people, using the term very loosely that I hate before today, were Oliver Cromwell (for reasons that need not detain us), and the sperm donor that called himself my father. Those reasons are well documented, and until today I had hopes that he would have to be the last person I hated. Silly me for thinking that I would able to live out the rest of my existence without having someone to hate. I guess I should have known better.  Don't get me wrong the person that became number three on my hate parade was someone that I wasn't overly fond of before today, but quite recently they did something that pushed them over the top. It was a long process, and it wasn't necessarily something that they did today, but a long term accumulation of things that just eventually broke through the indifference I usually feel for my fellow human beings (that is if this person is actually a human being, there have been claims that they are, in fact, Satan or at least one of his minions).

Having a living person to hate is not a new experience for me, after all the sperm donor and I lived in the same small house for nearly 25 years together, and that experience made me a good hater. And trust me on this, I am a fantastic hater. I want this person to die, I want them to die slowly, painfully, and if possible screaming (while I watch). I know that makes me an awful person, but I never claimed to be anything but and awful person. Maybe this person hates me back, and maybe they don't. It matters not one little shit to me. I hate them, I will never stop hating them, and I wish them active ill.  I might not be proud of it, but there it is.  No tears of mine will be shed if this person manages to die while I am still alive. No, whatever tears that are lost in the rain, will not be shed by me. I am sure there are people who like this person, hell I even suspect there are people that love them, more the fool to them. Let them weep for them. I will be celebrating their demise like the Vikings just won the fucking Super Bowl.

 I know that all of this hate is probably not an attractive quality, and I should 'turn the other cheek' and all that bullshit, but I can not and will not forgive the thousand injuries and insults that this person has visited upon me.  In an ironical way it makes me sad to hate this person, not that I believe they have any redeeming qualities, but that the fact I hate them with just passion must mean I care.  People that know me well, and there aren't that many of them running around, will tell you (if you cared to ask them) that I am not a man that is overloaded with emotions. I pride myself on my lack of feeling and or emotions. I do not suffer fools gladly, and I do not wear my heart (if I have one) on my sleeve.

I was raised by one wolf, and she was not the type to cuddle her only male cub. I am not someone you need to come to if you are seeking empathy.Do not come to be all dressed in sound, and expect me to solve your life's problems. I have my own life, and it is littered with problems of its own, problems that I can not solve.  Again, I am sure that makes me an awful person, but it is who/what I am, take it or leave it, it matter not one whit to me. This hate, this now all consuming passion that this person die, is burning inside of me like a nuclear core gone critical. It might just implode me from the inside, but for now it is heating me like a nice warm fire on a cold December day in Stockholm. There is no, and will no be turning back this is a hate for life. Something that (sad to say) will now define me, and there aren't really a lot of things that define me (if you take away my loyalty to certain, poor performing sports clubs).  Another irony of this is that I also hope this person burns in hell, the irony of that is that if there is a hell I will probably be stuck beside this person for all eternity.  At least I know I won't be alone.

The identity of this person has to, for now, to remain a secret. After all, if they were to suddenly 'accidentally' fall down a flight of stairs, I might be one of the first people that would have to explain my whereabouts to the local gendarme. Not that am their only enemy, but I am, whether they know it or not, there most bitter one. There is no happy note to end this post on, no quick witticism that will allow me to redeem all the hate flowing from my proverbial pen. It is a poison pen post, and one that I probably will (eventually) be ashamed of, but for now it has to stand on the few merits it possess. After all, the person is it about possesses exactly zero merits.

Mon Oncle

A very good friend of mine did two things today that are beyond awesome. First, and more importantly he became a father for the second time. Secondly, but still important (at least to me) he wandered back in the writing world. He is the bastard that got me into blogging, so blame him for the dross I produce, I do. He is also fairly close to being like a brother to me, and I wish that he could have met the title character of this piece, they would have gotten along like a house on fire.


This is going to make you cry, or at least it should, because it is going to be sad, and I am have been on the verge of tears myself while I was 'composing' it at my local for the last two hours. Life has to have some sad stories, or it wouldn't really be worth living. This is a post about living, but more so it is a post about dying. Because the title character is dying, and he is my favorite uncle. This post, as poorly written as it may be is my elegy to my favorite uncle. Stop now if you can't deal with elegies.


My uncle M is (or was) my favorite uncle, he is (or was) that uncle that every boy of a certain age dreams of having. By that I mean he is (or was) Steve McQueen cool, and just ever so easy to look up to, and not just because he was tall.  He also had the major advantage of not being my father. If you peruse these pages, you will know that my paterfamilias and I were not close. We did not understand either other, and I rejoiced at his funeral. I understand that makes me an awful person, but I am the son of an absolute asshole.  I know some people who do science, but I've never asked them if they knew of anyone or any organization that was looking for the 'asshole' gene, if they are I can point them to the spot to start digging in order to find it.

My uncle M is (or was) the opposite of the bastard that donated the sperm that brought me into existence. He was an over the road trucker for years and years, and therefore wasn't around on a day to day basis, and maybe that gave him the advantage. His time around was limited, and therefore much more appreciated by me.  He was like a really good Christmas present that came a few more times a year. He wasn't around all the time, and he was always about to leave so his time was valuable and limited. Looking back, I also realize how lucky I was to get any of his time at all. After all, what guy wants to spend time with his preteen nephew when they was beer to drink, and women to bed.  Don't get me wrong I absolutely adored my uncle. The expression 'worshiped the ground he walked on' barely does justice to how I felt (and still feel) about uncle M.

He is (or was) just like every other red-blooded male in our family, he liked his beer, and he liked the ladies. In fact, he is the man that took me to the first bar I ever graced with my presence. I was somewhere around 9 or 10 years old, and since I wanted to be in his presence always he would take me to this dive bar (back before dive bars were all hipster chic) called the Western Corral.  He would buy me a soda, and set me at the bar and wait. I realized several years ago, what he was doing, he was using me as bait. Because the ladies just loved a little 8 year old tow headed child such as myself sitting at the big boy bar drinking a coke. It was a way for my uncle to get some female attention, and it was both fucking brilliant, and worked like a charm. Once I had sufficiently charmed the ladies, I was bundled off to the car, to 'wait' for my uncle M.  Many a child hour of mine was spent waiting in a car for my uncle to come back from where ever him and the ladies wandered off to. I suppose in today's politically correct world he would be accused of child abuse, but I loved every minute of it.

Eventually like most heroes my uncle fell from grace. One of those ladies stole his heart, and he married her. That decision ended the hero worship for me. He told me later that I wouldn't have anything to do with him for a long time after he married his lady friend. We joked later, years after the inevitable divorce, that I was right about cutting him out of my life, since the marriage failed. I was clearly the better judge of character even at 9 years old. It is a funny story, but the truth was my 9 year old heart was broken because some bitch had taken my Uncle M from me, and I was inconsolable.

He is (or was) also the man that helped foster my love of gambling and the ponies. He was with me when I picked the first horse I ever picked to win a race, and after that horse (Pleasant Colony see "Birth of a Gambler") won,  told me then that when I got to be old enough he was taking me to the track. He is (or was) Burt Reynolds, Steve McQueen, and Clint Eastwood all rolled into one. He took me out on his truck one summer while I was still in the hero worship stage, and when we got back told me that 'if I ever got behind the wheel of a truck like that, he would kick my entire ass.' He realized that I was the brains of the family, and that I should be able to 'do better' than just drive a truck for a living.

He also spent a lot of time teaching me to play cards, which I suppose goes back to the gambler in him, and while he is (or was) way more reckless of a card player than I ever will be, it was a valuable lesson that I am very grateful for. I guess in many ways he was the father I wished I would have had, and in many ways I am glad he wasn't my father. I suppose he had two advantages over my actual father, one was his absence, since he was gone a lot it was easier for him to be my hero because when he came around it was an 'event', and two, while he is (or was) a bit of an asshole himself, he wasn't close to as big of one as my actual father.

Don't get me wrong, my uncle is (or was) not a saint in any shape, form, or fashion. Much like his favorite nephew (since I was his only nephew I won that title) he was a frequenter of low dives, and places of ill-repute. I remember one time when he took me to a 'floating' crap game where there was a light over the door that would come on when the cops where circling the block. He had a child out of wedlock, and was probably more of a bastard than I will ever know about. I remember having to go with the wolf that raised me to bail him out of jail on more than one occasion. I can't not remember what it was he did to get himself in jail, and that is probably for the best. When I lost my head, for the first, but not the last, time over a woman, and was making stupid decisions, the family sent him to talk to me, because they knew it would work, and it did (at least that time).

 And now, my uncle, my hero, the man who made me (in many ways) the man I am today is dying, and there is fuck all I or anyone else can do about it. He is lying in an hospital bed as I type this struggling to breath, and knowing that his time on the planet is drawing to an end. I am going to do my final nephew duty, and go see him, even though I am sure he is not going to look like the man I remember and revere. It is not going to be fun, and I do not really want to do it, but he is my hero and I have to. Going to watch your hero deal with dying is not something that you should have to do more than once. He told the wolf that raised me i.e. his older sister that he isn't afraid to die, and that might be the final act of his that makes him just as cool as he was all of those years ago.  I do not have the words or the talent to express my sadness fully at the passing of my uncle. I can only hope that when the time does actually come, I am half as cool as he is (or was).

Ouvrir

Many, many moons ago, I wrote a post about writing for the desk drawer in which I discussed, very briefly, how a writer can not just write for the desk drawer. A writer has to eventually write to be read, and then considered. Writing as an exercise is all well and good, but eventually you need to write to be read.

That is a giant leap of faith, and it is not to be taken lightly. It is a huge paradigm shift for anyone. It is the shift from writing for yourself, and that entails, to writing for someone other person or group of people. Their expectations are certainly going to be different from your own, and are going to vary widely among the group as a whole. You will not, no matter how hard you try, be able to meet all of those expectations. It is just simply impossible. This group of people that you might have the gall to call your 'audience' are most certainly a diverse group of people. If they are not diverse, then you have not been living your life correctly. Everyone needs a wide cross section of friends, and if you don't possess one, then you are losing out on a lot of seriously important life experiences.

This shift can be quite paralyzing, after all, now you are writing for someone to read. It is like becoming a director instead of an actor. Your point of view will change whether you want it to or not, and it will be a lot harder to understand how that shift is to be accomplished.  After all, spending a certain number of years writing only for yourself has probably led you to have some bad habits in your writing.  The idea that you are now writing for people, as you like to call the people you want to read you, is going to force you to be a little more careful. Not that writing for yourself didn't require some care. There are at least seven blog posts in my 'draft' folder that I can not quite bring myself to publish. Some are just too painful, some are too mean, and one could be life altering.

I have a couple of companions that fancy themselves writers, one I have read, and one that I have not. I had occasion to speak to both of them last night over a few drinks, and I exhorted both of them to 'just bloody write something'.  Perhaps that is what 'real' writers do, encourage each other to write things for the other to read. I am not by any stretch of the imagination (which I lack) a writer, and maybe they aren't yet either, but each of us feels the tug to shove words into sentences, marshal sentences into paragraphs, and stack paragraphs upon a page for other people to read.  It may or may not be dross, but there a quite a few people who are living large by writing dross.

The idea that these talented friends of mine will take my advice and write something for me to read is quite exciting, and also a bit terrifying. After all, they are going to make the same demands upon me, and I must needs get my shit together and accept their challenge. Writers, if they are going to succeed, need to be read, they need to be challenged, and they need to be edited (which of course is always the most painful part). It is a bit like singing like no one is listening, this writing for other people, we know we might warble a little bit off key, and some of the keystrokes we make are not as sad and delicate as they should be, but we have to continue to try. Because trying is the first step, be it in failing, or in succeeding, you have to try first. And in that trying, in that putting our words out there we take that first step away from the desk drawer into the great unknown.

This post is dedicated, in a small way, to those two geniuses that inspired me (without realizing it) last evening to get my fat ass back behind the keyboard, and to try to effect the shift from writing for the desk drawer, to writing to be read. I am both grateful to them for that inspiration, and terrified that I will not be able to meet whatever odd ball expectations that I place upon myself.  I can only hope that they feel the same way, and they see that in spite of the obstacles and despite our growing fears, they will write something fantastic that I will have the joy of reading.

Finally, there is one friend of long standing that I would like to invite back into the 'writing' fold. The one that challenged me, all those years ago, to write, and whom without (for better or worse) this blog would not exist. I know this person's life has taken a new, and exciting direction, and that life has taken a large chunk out of their creative time, but the writing world (such as I know it) is a much poorer place for their absence. Hopefully this will inspire them to at least attempt to come back to the fold, and write the brilliant stuff of which I know they are capable.  

All our Yesterdays

A sudden realization struck me the other day, and by sudden I mean out of nowhere, and by struck me I mean someone wiser than myself (not hard to be) sat me down, and explained it to me much like you explain Lego monsters to a two year old. I would imagine that your average two year old's attention span and mine are about the same length, and I would also figure that the two year old would have been quicker on the uptake about this realization than I was.

That brilliant piece of mentoring provided me with the knowledge that all of our yesterdays are rolled into today. The today I am currently experiencing, which has been as dull as watching paint dry, is the end product of all the yesterdays that came before it. All the left rather than right (in more ways than one) turns that I have made in my life have led me to this exact point in time. I understand that the universe is really, really, really big, and somewhere the odds of 'another' me having a much different, and for his sake I hope better, life are quite high. But for me, for right now, all of my yesterdays have led me here.  This point in time, which is rapidly passing me by, is only one point in time at which I could have arrived.  All the victories, defeats, and draws that I have inflicted, or had inflicted upon me have led me to this point.

This point, whatever it may be, isn't really something that I could have foreseen, because if I could have it is more likely than not I would have taken one of those aforementioned 'right' turns that I blew past like a damn fool on the road to perdition.  This point in the comedy known as my life could always be worse. After all, I have access to (more) than enough calories to keep me alive, I have shelter over my head, and a warm (or cool depending on the season) place to sleep. The fact of the matter is that this point in time, this today, that I have, for the most part, wasted isn't as bad as it could have been. Of course, neither is it as good as it could have been. Those left turns, and all the attending road signs so blithely ignored have led me to this point where the 'good' things in my life are food, shelter, and a job.

All of those things are important, and I am lucky, considering what I have to work with, to have them but at some point, usually when one is bored to tears like I have been today, one has to look around at their so-called life and wonder if perhaps one has peaked.  At a certain age, life becomes more of an anchor rather than a sail, and starts to drag a bit, and starts to slow down, or at least you start to slow down. Because life has piled a whole lot of yesterdays on top of you, and they are getting harder and harder to carry into today, not to mention tomorrow, which will be even heavier. All of those yesterdays that contains all the decisions, good, bad, or indifferent that you have made, start to pile up, and they even include decisions made about you by other people. You are not, no matter how hard you try, an island. You are not alone in time, you are one of many people, place, and/or things in an really, really, really big universe, and that universe has batted you around like a kitten with a newly wound ball of yarn.

Those yesterdays creep up on you, sometimes when you least expect it. You are minding what appears to be your own business when the universe decides that your today isn't interesting enough. To combat that, the universe allows you to have memories, and then allows, or forces you to sometimes relive one of those yesterdays just for fun. The universe is like that, it needs to have its fun, and a certain amount of it is going to be had at your expense whether you like it or not. You don't control the universe, the universe controls you. The sooner you learn THAT life lesson the better off you will be, because somethings you just have to accept. I suppose that is why acceptance is a stage of grief, and one of the latter ones. Acceptance, of your fate at least, can sometimes be a large pill to swallow.

The problem that my wiser friend explained to me as simply as they could so I would understand it, happened quite a few yesterdays ago. It wasn't a yesterday that I was proud of, and it was more than one day, but they were all of a piece. A bit like an episode in the series of my life.  A plot device that had, I thought, been resolved one way, but (as usual) I was wrong. The problem had been resolved, but not quite in the way that I had figured. The knowledge that was given to me made it a little bit easier to understand some of my yesterdays, and even helped a little with today, but all of that wisdom can't 'fix' the problem. The problem remains, whether I like it or not, because the problem isn't something that has gone away, it is just moved forward in time. It is something that I seem to be, and have been deemed, incapable of fixing, and that is the sad part of this tale. No matter how many more yesterdays I have to live, I just can't seem to learn from them. And a person that can't learn from his or her yesterdays, in many ways doesn't deserve a tomorrow.

Little Victories

Today was not a raging success, in fact, if I were forced to classify today, it would be placed firmly in the failure file, and I would quickly try to forget it as quickly  as this beer will allow me.  We are awful sometimes, and my job sometimes brings out the awful in a lot of people, usually that is not a problem as long as it isn't me that the awful is overflowing from. Today it was, and I am not exactly sure I am okay with that.

I have, when asked, likened my job to bailing the ocean out with a slotted spoon, and that is a very apt description. It quickly becomes incumbent upon me to get by on little victories.  I have to learn to get by on those little victories, because usually the defeats are quite heavy. Another problem is the world does not stop and let you enjoy those little victories. The world is, quite simply, out to destroy you, and it will. You have to know, understand, and eventually accept the fact that world is going to drive you to your knees, and eventually force you flat on you back. You are the Sonny Liston and the world is Muhammad Ali just like that photograph that made Ali famous. However, it is quite unlikely that the world is going to make you famous.

To the world you are just another person/thing that it will destroy. It will catch you when you are awful, weaken you to your knees, and destroy you. It is just that simple. The knowledge of this, and the eventual acceptance of this is something that we each have to do in our own way, and in our own time. Providing of course the world lets us.  There is no referee to stop the world from pounding you while it has you in the corner. There are no standing eight counts in the you vs the world title match. A match that you are ill prepared for, and in which the only question is in what round you will go down for the count.

The world has already dug your grave, and it is just a matter of time before it puts you in it like a newly minted mother placing their new born in their first cradle. The grave is, in many ways, the 'mother' world placing you in your last cradle. Confidence in yourself, and your pathetic, in comparison to the world, skill or talent is about the only weapon you have. You  can't really fear what the world is going to do to you, mainly because there is no point in being afraid. It's going to happen, it is going to be a surprise, and it is going to hurt, and there is the square root of fuck all you can do to stop it.  The world will catch up to you, and will exact a terrible revenge upon you when it does. It has done it to far greater people than you, Shakespeare, Gandhi, JFK, and all the heroes of our youth have been counted out by the world, there is no escape we pay for the violence of our ancestors.

That violence that some cave dweller who happens to share your genetic make up visited upon the world back when the world was young, is going to have to paid for, and you are going to be the one writing the check.  And write it you will, and you are the only who can write it for you. No one else, no matter how good of a friend, lover, or even enemy can write that final check for you. Make sure you have a good pen handy, because that check will be both the last thing, and the toughest thing you will ever have to author. It might be the only thing of any importance that you ever author, but it will be yours. Even though the world is dictating the terms, you are still, even in the smallest of ways, necessary to the cashing of that check. The world is playing a scene with you daily, and your last scene, though unimportant to the world, means everything to you. After all, it is your last scene there is no next act, next scene bit in the tragicomedy of your life. The last bill has come due, and you have to pay it.

The trick is to pay it with as much aplomb as you can muster, which, in the grand scheme of things, isn't going to be much. It never is, it wasn't for all those dead heroes, or all those dead villains, or all those dead nameless clowns that no one even bothers to grieve over anymore. It isn't much, but it is all that you have, and it has to be enough.  That last time you are awful, that last time the world drives you to your knees just before it knocks you flat on your back, and finished you off is, in many ways, the defining moment of your 'play', and while we all can't go out like Butch and Sundance in the movies, we can at least learn to get by on the little victories.


P.S. Sometimes inspiration, such as the inspiration for this post has multiple sources, and sometimes those sources can cause quite different reactions. This source had one meaning until I took the trouble to trace it back to its beginnings, and when I did I discovered a rather unhappy alternative source. It is that alternative source, and the heavy defeat that it inflicted upon me, that somehow, someway, in spite of my best efforts, continues to inflict upon me that this post, poor as it may be, is dedicated.

What a Sweet Revenge

 This post is the end game of the post I wrote October 24th, 2010. Read that post first, then come back to this one.

Cross sectioning my life, this post is a more in-depth explanation of a status update on my Facebook page that I posted earlier today. It had to do with revenge, a dish best served cold, as we all know from our Start Trek, or our Talleyrand. Meaning that revenge like fine wine, should be bottled, placed on a shelf, and allowed to mature. Mature, and grow some 'body' something that will make the revenge be noticed.  A quick, hot revenge is something that is for the school yard. A bully pushes you down, and you reply by kicking him in the junk. A simple, quick, revenge, but not something that we, as adults, need to practice.

No, our revenge must be calmly thought out, and planned with detail that would do Sherlock Holmes proud. The egregious insult that we suffered all those years ago, must not be forgotten, and most certainly must be addressed. Also, a bit of planning is in order, after all the offending party went to all the trouble to insult, hurt, or injury you, and as the Scots say, "None shall injury me with impunity."  I happen to know a couple of Scotsmen, and I hope they don't mind me 'borrowing' their national motto for my own nefarious purposes. Considering the use that I put to the motto, I doubt they will mind overmuch.

It was a long time coming, and I had to do several things of which I would not normally be proud of, but my revenge came to fruition today of all days. It was actually a bit of a surprise to me that today was the endgame of my plan, which I guess shows me that maybe I not quite the Talleyrand that I thought I was, but then again there was only one Talleyrand.   I am sure there will be a school of thought that will say that I should be the bigger person, and let the insult go, after all it has been nearly three years. Those who know me, and realize that I am only the bigger person size wise, will understand why I would never do such a thing. I do not have to forgive, nor can I forget. That is just part of what makes me such a pleasant fellow to be around. I hold a grudge. I am, in fact, holding several more grudges as I type this. Some of them will eventually pay off like this one has, and some of them I will probably be holding till the day I shuffle off this mortal coil.

The sad part of this, if there is really a sad part, is the person upon whom I revenged myself has little to no clue that it happened, or why it happened. They are so self-absorbed that they will probably never understand what they did to deserve my revenge, nor will they figure out exactly why I did what I did. That does make the revenge slightly less than perfect, but one has to on occasion settle.  The person in question has no real concept of the fact that people are usually divided into two types. Those that use, and those are used. This person mistook me for the latter, when I am, for the  part, the latter. This lovely individual, who will never read this post, is a person who likes to use people. There are ways to use people gently, sometimes we have to use people, but that does not mean that we have to use them harshly. I am not meaning this as badly as it sounds, but the overall idea remains the same. Attempt to use me at your peril. I am just not a good person, and not a good person to try to use. I am sure that I have my uses, but they are, like my feelings, mine, and I tend not to try to share either my uses or my feelings.

It is probably true that pure revenge is a revenge that people have to notice, and have that 'I knew I should not have fucked with that guy' moment, and perhaps a public serving of revenge would also allow others to understand that 'fucking with that guy' is not such a good plan. I am not such a 'bad man' that people should not fuck with me, I am sure that several million people on this rock could, at their leisure, hand me my ass. I am also quite certain that a few would be willing to try, that isn't really the issue. I understand the limits of my ability, but some people do not. I possess a very limited ability for a lot of things, math for instance, but I have an affinity for revenge that has caused me to be a student of it for quite some time. One of my heroes is Talleyrand, look him up sometime, and one of my favourite novels is The Count of Monte Cristo, the ultimate revenge novel.

My revenge is complete, and I am quite happy with the form it took, though it is not perfect, few things are, it will have to suffice. It is a dish best served cold, and after almost three years my particular helping of it is almost frigid, and there is plenty of it to go around, but like many things revenge of this kind is something that you can't really share. You can tell people about it (obviously), but at the end of the day it is a dish that you must eat alone. Which, in my view, makes it all the more tasty,. 

Either/Or

The title of this post is stolen from the title of a book written by one of my favourite philosophers. A fellow by the name of Soren Kierkgaard wrote "Either/Or" in 1843, and it contrasts two particular life views. One, is the consciously hedonistic, and the other is one based on ethical duty and responsibility. Many, many, moons ago, while I was being classically educated, I read Either/Or. The details of that reading, and the memories of it that I still possess need not detain us here, the fact that I read it doesn't mean that I've figured out which life view I believe to be correct, nor does it give me any insight into the reason of this post.

I have discussed before how sometimes my unconscious self, the sleeping self, the dreaming self sometimes wages a very dirty, very effective war on my waking self. The dreams that I have are beyond the control of my waking self, and like all of us, sleep can be considered a gateway to a lottery. The lottery of dreams as it were, where Queen Mab with 'her wagon spokes made of long spinners' legs' allow dreamers, such as myself, to give birth to their dreams. A fairy that allows sleepers to experience dreams of wish-fulfillment. The unconscious self that is really in control of a lot more of your life than you are willing to admit, takes over once we sleep, and guides the mind where it wants it to go. Many times those are places that are best left unvisited, and places that the conscious mind, if it weren't 'asleep at the switch'as it were, would never revisit. 

Therein lies the rub, the conscious mind is asleep at the switch, and when that happens all sorts of shit can start to break bad. This is a glimpse into my own personal 'Either/Or', and trust me it has absolutely nothing to with an 19th century Danish philosopher, at least not that I can tell.  My dreams, as of late, have been taking two forms, hence the 'Either/Or' dilemma.  Either they are type A which is a dream about work, or something related to work. I had a long week at work last week, so part of this type of dream is understandable, and probably unavoidable. They weren't necessarily nightmares, but they were certainly not the type of dreams that inspire a desire to stay asleep. After all, I have to go to work, and 'live the dream' as it were, why should I be doubly punished/blessed by having work invade another 8 or so hours of my life. I recently made the conscious choice to try to avoid talking about my job that much while I am not actually at my job. I am trying, and failing, to not let my job define me as a human being. After 10+ years in the job, I am beginning to fear that is a problem that I might not be able to repair. My job is not taking pictures of half naked supermodels as they pose on piles of money, therefore dreaming about it isn't something that I particularly care to engage in that often. However, the good news, if there is any good news is that at least type A dreams are better than the 'Or' in this dichotomy of dreams. 

That 'Or' are what I call, for the sake of simplicity, type 'B' dreams. Type B dreams are very, very, very rarely pleasant. They involve any number of what could be deemed my 'ex's' flings, long term relationships, or fuck buddies, each have had their representative in my dreams. These are, for the most part, not happy dreams. Dreams of former fuck buddies hardly ever center on the activity that gave the particular girl her 'title'.  No these are not playboy channel type dreams, these are revenge dreams. Dreams in which an ex, any ex, plays the starring role. Sometimes it is merely a 'normal' dream about some everyday occurrence, but it has to have the ex in it just for the hell of it.  There is no reason, on its face, that the ex would have to be in this dream, other than the unconscious self deciding that she needs to be there. 

Those are the easiest of the type 'B' dreams to take the mostly normal ones. The ones were she is just there like window dressing to poke some sort of fun at my waking self.  A little nudge from the sleeping self to the waking self to remember it that the sleeping self hasn't forgotten. The other type of type 'B' dream are much, much worse they usually consist of the see the ex happy with new beau type of dreams, or hear the ex tell me what a total loss my life is since she had the pleasure of walking out of my life. Those are a little bit tougher to bear, maybe because the grain of truth in them is a bit too big for me to swallow. That grain of truth, which I must admit exits, keeps coming back almost nightly to haunt me. The leading actress, i.e. which ex my subconscious decides to torture me with, changes sometimes nightly, but that doesn't really help a lot. The only small bit of joy that I am able to get from these type of dreams is the bet with myself as to which ex will be the star of the show tonight. Not a bet that has a winner or a loser, but a bet that is both, a winner and a loser.

 The starlet that takes the stage probably isn't really the point, but the subconscious is a clever bastard. It has access to all the memories that even the waking self has forgotten, or stored away in some deep, dark compartment never to be opened again, and it makes my dreams a cinema of horrors designed especially for me. The subconscious self remembers all the details about each of the leading ladies, and is able, with seemingly little effort, fashion a dream that is very specific to the ex in question. It is an absurd bit of theatre that makes me want to stay awake as long as possible, but as I have mentioned before, sleep comes to everyone while we wait wide awake and blue.

Fuck you! Shakespeare

The title of this post is stolen from Pete Rose's reaction to whenever a fellow by the name of Jim Bouton pitched against his team. M. Bouton was the co-author of a book called "Ball Four" which is considered one of the most important sports books ever written. Feel free to read it, I never have, but I hear it is a pretty juicy book.

The reason I am stealing the title is because I stole a bit of Shakespeare myself this week, and I am not certain I am proud of that fact.  Those of you who both have the wonderful luck to know, and to read me, will know that I spent the last week in a murder trial. No it wasn't as exciting as the one in Florida that has everyone all in a flutter, but it was important to me, and very important to the victim's family.  It went as well as a murder trial can go, which is to say that every day when I came home all I could do was eat the crappy take out food I had purchased, and spend the rest of the night thinking about what I had done wrong that day, and what I would need to do the next day in order to fix those mistakes. Because, since I am actually not perfect, I made mistakes, some of them I thought were pretty important, and some of them I shouldn't have made, but they were made. And in their making they cost me a fair amount of sleep.

That was my week, half of the time I was in trial, the other half I spent thinking about trial. I did not do much else. And by that, I mean nothing else. My apartment has become a battleground between my garbage, which has taken over the kitchen, and my dirty laundry, which has taken over the bedroom. Both sides are now fighting over possession of the living room, each of them have advance scouts placed in strategic places, and it seems each side is prepared for a long struggle. My indolence coupled with my exhaustion have made it impossible for me to broker a peace agreement. In fact, I am beginning to believe that the key to the battle are the dirty dishes. They are also piling up, and I figure that whichever side they ally themselves with will be the eventual victor.

It is a sad thing to say that my life has not been my own for a week, and that cleaning up the flotsam scattered throughout my apartment is more work than  I feel up to undertaking at this moment. All I want to do is sit and stare at the walls, and to hell with the battle of the wastes.This week marked the seventh birthday of this blog, and I was so tired that I did not even manage to write my annual birthday of the blog post, it was, in case I didn't mention it, a long week.

  The week that just passed was, in many ways, the pinnacle of my so called professional career. In my world, it doesn't get much sexier than being 'first chair' on a 1st degree murder trial. Though, truth be told, my co-counsel was beyond brilliant, and I couldn't have done it without him.  It was a close as I will ever come to being what passes as a real lawyer. Not that I have any idea as to what or what does not constitute 'being a real lawyer'.  All I know is that I want to pack this week away, and not have it repeat itself too many more times, because after all if it does it means that someone, somewhere has died at the hands of a loved one, and that is the tragedy of the week. That some putative Romeo has killed their Juliet. And unlike the real Shakespeare I only want that play to happen once, but I can't seem to stop if from repeating. It is just the actors are different, the facts are a little different, but the underlying tragedy remains the same.

And it is that tragedy, or a tragedy that hasn't happened yet, but will that keeps me struggling out of my new favorite place, otherwise known as my bed, to try and save the fair Juliet from her sad fate. I know that I can't because that is not really my role. So the best I can do, the best I try and hope to do is see that our fair Juliet, even though she has met her sad fate, at least receives what some people call justice by taking our Romeo out of 'fair Verona' and putting him in a much darker place.

P.S.  At the end of the day, I realize that me and my co-counsel didn't 'win' this trial. Trials are not like baseball games. There are no real winners or losers, it is just a decision, a decision that is placed in the hands of 12 strangers, and a decision that I can only hope goes 'my way' and a one that I hope I can live with.  To all of those that helped me this week, thank you.

Konstantine

In less that one hour I will be another year older, a year that will weigh a little bit heavier due to the increasing number of them that have passed.  A day that is really nothing to the majority of the seven billion people on the planet, is, for me, something that is (in theory) supposed to be celebrated. I did manage to get the day off from my job to celebrate/mourn the day of my birth. As my loyal readers will know by now, if they bother to be either loyal or to read, I share my birthday with a fellow by the name of Eric Blair. Known to the general masses as one George Orwell. That is a tough thing for me to share.

George Orwell wrote some really fantastic books, and is one of my favorite authors. I write a shit ass blog post that might be five pages long, and is generally filled with either spelling or grammatical mistakes, and is probably not worth reading. See the difference? Perhaps I see it more clearly than other people because it is, at the end of the day, my difference. My inability to measure up to the standards that I have set for myself. I can't imagine, because I lack the imagination, where Herr Orwell got all that wonderful material for his books. Though some careful research has unearthed a couple of points of inspiration for a couple of his books. But, I still can not imagine all the things he saw, and all the things that he left out of his writing. How much of what he saw that even his genius could not capture on paper. Like it or not, I figure that a lot of any sort of 'inspiration' I have comes from my personal life, a life that has ticked over another number on its odometer.  A number that is only going to get higher until it reaches it final number, a number that I am not sure of, and am terrified to contemplate.

The 365 days that it has taken me to age another year have taught me a few things, but some things I just don't seem to be able to learn. The last year of my life has seen me make a decision that will affect the remaining years of my life, and it is a decision that was not taken lightly, and it will not be a popular decision, but me and popularity have never been close friends. I am not the popular type, and I never will be. I prefer to think of it, if I bother to think about it at all, that I am an acquired taste, and if you care to take the time to acquire me, you will probably regret it.  Regret is another thing that I have carried around with me for the last 365 days. Regrets, big and small, that, in many ways, have helped to define the last year of my life. Regrets have a tendency to do that, define things, for both good and bad, usually bad.

Regrets make us realize the mistakes that we made during the last year, but there is usually exactly fuck all we can do about them. Regret is a great teacher for students of life that are willing to listen and learn. I am not such a student, I am hard to teach, and no matter how much I listen I can't just seem to discern what I am being taught. It is a bit like listening to the last transmission of Vladimir Komarov aboard Soyruz 1. I know that he understands he is about to die, and that he is saying the last words that anyone will ever hear him speak, but he is speaking in Russian, and I don't understand a bleeding word of it, I just get the idea that he is trying his best to say all that he needs to say for a lifetime in about 22 seconds.  And all of this horror happened just over 2 years before I was born.

 Komarov didn't have the chance to die a peaceful death in his bed, he smashed to Earth at an incredible speed and all that was recovered of his body was a smashed heel bone. An entire of life of 40 years summed up in a brief transmission of rage at the damn fools that sent him to his death, and a state funeral for dying because of some other damn fool's incompetence.  Don't you think he deserved a little more? Red or not he was a brave fellow, far braver than I will ever be, and today who the fuck remembers him? For that matter, I realize that I won't die a heroes death, and the number of people that remember Komarov (no matter how small that number is) will still be more than will remember me. And that is exactly how it should be.

The truth of the matter is that tomorrow, while slightly disappointingly important to me, is just another indistinguishable day for the majority of the world. Which is also exactly how it should be, after all, the date of my birth is nothing to be celebrated, anymore than an atheist would celebrate Christmas as being the 'birth' of Jesus.  As the last seconds of my 43rd year on this planet tick away, and I am left facing a new age with its new problems, I realize that escape is impossible. We all pay for the violence, or foolishness of our ancestors, and a couple of my ancestors were very violent fools. 

 As that clock ticks away I am reliving the last year of my life at a supersonic speed. Trying to cram all of the emotions, both good and bad of the 43 year of my life into its last quarter of an hour. It is not a easy thing to do, and there were quite of number of mistakes made during this year that need a lot longer than a quarter of an hour to fix, if they can be fixed at all.  And now that the clock has struck midnight, and I am a year older, I realize that time is just as ruthless as gravity. It is a force that you can fight all you want to, but you are never, ever going to beat it. Time marches on, and you have to follow whether you like it or not, just like you hit the ground if you fall because gravity doesn't give two real shits about you. It just is gravity it takes no delight in what it does, or doesn't do, it just is. And maybe, just maybe as I thumb through my well read copy of "1984" I need to learn to realize that perhaps just being 'is' is the best I can hope for. Welcome to a new age.  

Mignon Maison

Recently, as in last week, I took a lovely little trip to sunny San Diego. It was quite fun, and I went alone, which was a bit of a shock for some people, but it was one sure way to make positive that I had as much fun as I wanted to have.  Part of going on vacation, for me at least, is the ability to eat when I am hungry, sleep when I am tired, and wear pants as little as possible. Those minor goals were achieved during this trip, and that makes me happy.

During my sojourn, a friend of mine text me and asked me 'when are you coming home?' I replied 'Sunday' but soon after I got to thinking that perhaps my friend had fallen into a similar trap that has snared the wolf that raised me.  That trap, one that assumes I have a 'home' to come back to, and one that I need to come back to. Neither of which is true. I realized that as I typed back my response. The realization that my 'home' as one would call it is, it exactly where I am at any given moment. Granted that doesn't include my office, or certain other public areas, but the truth of the matter is that I could have stayed in San Diego, and not missed one thing about my current 'home.'  Part of that might be the shit hole town that I live in, or the shit hole town that the wolf that raised me thinks I should call home, but the truth of the matter is that shit holes aside, I am a man that does not need to put down deep roots.

Those roots that a lot of people, and plants need in order to survive are not for me. For me they restrict, they restrict my movement, my thinking, my ability to breath, and all sorts of other things that I don't talk about in polite society (if I ever find myself in polite society).  These possessions that occupy my own grand maison are something that I can walk away from in 5 minutes flat. There are advantages to be a minimalist, and one of those is the ability to just turn your back and walk away. Of course, I did not stay in San Diego, and I caught my flight back to the city that I current call 'home' but there was that moment of regret as I boarded that aeroplane. That Sisyphus like moment when I realized that perhaps I could just turn away from my rock (in this case my life in this shit hole town), and be free from all of my so-called troubles. Not that my troubles are anything awful, and not something that anyone would be so frightened of as to run away from, but they are my troubles and they seem to have a great deal of sticking power. 

Troubles are like that, they have the ability to stick around and withstand your best attempt to solve them. After all, if I could solve them, then they would not be my troubles anymore. I am quite sure a new set of troubles would rise up to replace any of the ones I managed to solve, and thus the circle of life for troubles at least would continue. Perhaps troubles and I have one huge difference, a difference that binds us together more tightly the more I struggle against them. Perhaps, unlike me, my troubles have put down roots, and are here to stay. 

Polizeisptizel

My name has been lost to history. It wasn't a particularly impressive name, and there is no real reason that history should remember it. Let's just call me Otto, it isn't my real name, but what difference will that make to my story? So I am Otto a native of the grey city of Berlin, and I am nothing special. My mother, when she was alive, would have, and did let anyone who would stand still long enough to listen that 'her' Otto wasn't 'anyone that you would really want to count on in a pinch'. Well in many respects she was right, I am not a hero, nor am I quite the villain that this story will make me out to be.

At the time of this story, late 1937 and early 1938. I had been on the police payroll for just under 5 years. I was nothing special to look at, and not the brightest student in my school, and Mother's poor choice of marrying for love and not money, had left me with a limited educated, and even further limited job opportunities. The less said of my father the better, he stuck around long enough to get my mother pregnant, but didn't have the sticking power to stay around and watch me born.  I suppose my Mother did the best with what she had, but I was never going to turn out to amount to much, and as it turns out I didn't except once. There was one time where I was one of the most important cogs in the machine of state, and without me perhaps the history of my country, and the world might have been a little bit different.

By 1937, I had come to realize my niche in society, and it was not as a belle of the ball type. I was one of those 'grey' men that wouldn't attract any interest unless I was standing directly in your way. My looks were nothing to write home about, and my home life wasn't that great either. I was scraping by working on the edges of Berlin society, going nowhere fast. My life had it's routines, and its own sort of pace that I didn't really have a terrible amount of control over. I hustled money when and where I could, and I knew a lot of what most people would call 'low-lifes' the detritus of a society that was 5 years into the Nazi regime of one Adolf Hitler.

The Kripo, the Berlin police force, had found me a easy enough recruit, a simple arrest for a simple burglary, and a promise of 'making it all go away', and I was there newest informer. A dirty, stinking, awful thing to be, but to me, it beat the hell out of spending time in prison. Therefore, I began to sell that most dangerous of commodities, information. The Kripo were very careful about when and where I would reveal all of my information. There was an office belonging to some private dick on Alexanderplatz that I had to phone once a month, and make an appointment to see 'the Count.'

To this day, I still have no idea who 'the Count' was, or if he was a real count or not. I guess it doesn't matter, he treated me like the shit you scrape off the bottom of your shoe, and I am sure that to him that is exactly what I was, shit.  But, I made sure that I became a useful shit, and my information was always good, and always 'checked out'.  I preferred quality of information over quantity, and though this frustrated 'the Count' at first, he soon realized that my information was like gold, a little scare, but very valuable.  I wouldn't say I was proud of what I did, and I had hopes that someday I would be able to tell the Kripo, and 'the Count' to fuck all the way off because my informing days were behind me. However, like most jobs, informing became a sort of means of itself. I had hopes and dreams, but they just seem to be stillborn, and the money I made informing was just enough to keep me body and soul together, and to provide me with enough left over to indulge in my own, personal vices, but that is beside the point.

I wasn't and am not proud of my informing, but a fellow has to pay the rent somehow, and informing was a job that matched my disposition, and my inherent laziness. Manual labour was not something that I every felt any affinity for, and it didn't take a lot of effort to hang out at the the dives I hung out at, and just pay close attention to the rumours that floated slowly by.  My monthly meetings with 'the Count' weren't overly strenuous, and allowed me to have a lifestyle that, while not luxurious, keep me out of the soup line.  Then one day all of that changed. I came across a nice little announcement in the paper detailing the wedding of Herr von Blomberg to his former typist "Eva". Or at least that was the name that I knew her by, and knew her quite well.

That the 60 year old commander in chief of the German army married a 26 year old girl from the typing pool came as a bit of a shock to me, but once I stopped laughing at the absurdity of it all, I made my way to a little studio on Nurnberger Strasse. The kind of place that you could find all the female company you wanted as long as you were willing to pay for the time.  I knew a fellow there, his name is also not important, but he liked to take pictures. Pictures that some men liked to pay money for, and that some women, down on their luck and needing some extra money, posed for.

I knocked on the door of the studio, and the photographer opened it himself. I showed him the wedding announcement that contained a picture of the blushing bride, and told him that perhaps our fortune was made.  His smiled widened as he recognized the girl in the picture, told me that 'he'd be right back', and disappeared into the darkened interior of his studio. I remained waiting, and he came back with a nice brown envelope that contained the photos of the Generals young wife as naked as the day she was born, and posing quite prettily for the camera. I nodded, and grunted my thanks, told him that 'I'd be in touch' and left as quickly as my feet would carry me.

My next meeting with 'the Count' proved quite fruitful, when he asked if I had anything for him, I produced the pictures with a flourish, and leaned back to enjoy the surprise on his face. It was a look of total surprise that crossed his face as he looked at the pictures and began to put together what they would mean to certain members of his party. I didn't know much about the man, but I knew without really knowing how that he was a Nazi through and though.  He rubbed his hands together, promised to make me a 'very rich man' and left with a bounce in his step. I left a bit later, already spending the money that I figured was my due.

The rest of the tale is actually history, unlike me. The general married to a girl who posed for dirty pictures, and who was also probably a prostitute did not last much longer in his position. To his credit, when offered the chance to divorce her, he refused, and disappeared into the mists of history. The mists of history from which I never emerged. It will come as a surprise to no one, except me at the time, that the 'Count' was not one to live up to his promise of making me a rich man. In fact, he paid me what I considered to be a pittance, and expected me to thank him for it.  When I finished counting the money he had turned over to me, and it didn't take long to do, I made that critical error of inquiring if this was just the first installment.  The 'Count' cornflower blue eyes narrowed, and it seemed as if the temperature in the room dropped a few degrees. A smile that did not reach his eyes came across the lower part of his face as he told me 'Otto, that is all you are getting, and you should be happy for it.'

I suddenly decided that happy is what I should be, and plastered a big grin on my face as I thanked the 'Count' for his generosity. That was when I knew that my informing days were over, and my running days had begun.

The incredible noise of silence

Ever been in a situation where silence is oppressive? Of course you have, if you haven't then you probably are not living your life correctly.  Silence can be incredibly loud. It is a bit like a freight train, it might take a while to get started, and there may be only an 'engine' at first, but eventually it will lengthen. Just like that train, adding cars, and cars, some carrying hobos, some carrying coal, some carrying the hopes and dreams of random strangers.  Those 'cars of silence' will attach themselves to the engine, and the next thing you know, you have an entire train of silence, stretching out for miles into the distance.

It is that distance that you want, the distance away from this mournful train of silence that is oppressing your very soul, providing that you possess a soul (you might be a soulless ginger for all I know).  This train of silence is going to roll over you like a well oiled, well fueled Panzer division, and there is really not much you can do about it. Put a smile on your face, and wave to the crowd as you board your very own train of silence. However, it is unlikely that you are the conductor, engineer, or sole passenger on this train of silence. Single silence is much more easy to break. All it takes is the ability to talk to yourself. Group silence, and two people can be a group if they try hard enough, is a much more difficult task. It requires cooperation, and it is likely that non-cooperation is what got you on board the train of silence in the first place.  That non-cooperation probably happened way too fast for you to do anything but gawk in awe, and then sob in despair.

Dual (or more) silences become what 'they', whomever they are, will say become pregnant silences. I've never seen a silence give birth to anything that you want to wrap up in swaddling clothes and nurture. By the time pregnant silences give birth to their offspring it is generally too late. You've got fuck all to do, but try your best, which is rarely good enough, to break that silence. But, how do you go about that? Do you cough discreetly? Sneeze, or pretend some other bodily function to try to break the silence? After all, you were probably an equal party to the silence starting in the first place, and wouldn't it seem a sign of weakness if you were the first to break it?

For how long is this silence going to drag? It will begin to take on a life of its own if you or someone doesn't do something about it, and which one of you is going to blink, or draw first. You are, in many ways, like two Old West gunfighters staring each other down in front of the awed townspeople at high noon. Eventually one of you is going to either have to blink, or go for your pistol, and hope again hope that you make the right decision. Is blinking the better option? There is but one way to find out, or do you not back down? Do you reach for your iron, and hope that you get that first, vital shot in first.  It is also important, now that the chips are down, that you do not freeze. For freezing, no matter how cold the environment has become, is usually fatal.

The longer you stare across that dusty street at you companion, opponent, fellow traveler, or fellow idiot, the longer you have to think about your decision. It is an important one, one that you should not take lightly, and one that you can only hope will mesh with their decision. It might be easier to lie about your decision, but if the other person knows you at all, they will be able to see through your lies without even trying.  If those decisions are the same, well then the train of silence, that train that was rumbling over the tracks of despair laid down across your heart, will become a train of joy.  A train that we all want to catch, a train that we never tire of riding. A train that should come around your little outpost of desolation more often. Something wonderful, something quite beyond compare, and something that once missed, will cause you to regret the silence that you are now no longer sharing. 

Chains of Silver and Gold

All I do is miss you, which is quite daft of me in reality. How can I miss you when you aren't really gone? I mean you're here. Here in my day to day existence whether I want you to be or not. And I can't do anything about it, what ever magic I try to make you disappear from my life fails miserably.  I am not the type to miss people. People flit into and out of my life on a daily basis, and some of them barely leave a vapour trail.  But then there was you, you didn't really explode it to my life like some people think, no you were more insidious, like a dream that I kept having night after night until one lucky day the promise of the dream became the reality of my life.

It is like playing a scene over and over until the 'actors' get it right. It might entail a lot of 'takes' but when it works, man does it ever work. But, I am no Shakespeare and you are no Marlowe, and all I can do is miss you and be in love with you like some sad sack that knows better but is unable to do better.  There you were in my life without me even realizing how much space you took up until you were no longer there. Then the 'you' sized hole in my life gaped at me like a lion's jaws that were just begging me to stick my head inside.  The time I used to spend with you, I now spend wondering what you are doing, and who you are doing it with. Which is, I might add, a very, very unhealthy way to spend time.  As I try to ration the heartbeats that I waste on you, I realize that just doing that is part of the problem. The problem that is you are that impossible bridge too far of my life.  The problem of you that I, no matter how hard I tried, could not solve. Like my own personal Reimann hypothesis.

 You were a wild, wild chance that I just couldn't ever really take, and now you've passed me by, and I can not explain what just happened to me. Except to say that you happened to me, and I've never been quite the same. All of those cries and kisses, those first few times that we talked and realized we were falling in love with each other in spite of the many reasons that we should not have. Those reasons and reason itself eventually won out. Reason has a tendency to do that, win.  Win no matter what the cost is reason's way of doing things. After all, reason does not have to pay the price of losing. That is for me to pay. The illogical part of me, the part that I really didn't want to admit existed. The 'feeling' part of me that can only seem to feel despair, regret, and pain. All the while watching reason gloat about it's victory.

Once we made eye contact it was just all over but the crying, and little did I realize at the time that we would both be crying. Thoughts of you interrupt my day like my alarm clock interrupts the dreams of you that I can't control from invading my sleep. These passing thoughts of wondering what you are doing, and why  you are doing it make me want to take myself outside, stand me up against a wall, deny myself the benefit of a blindfold, and shoot me like the dumb dog I clearly am.  I realize that at some point, some point that I should have reached by now that I have to do whatever in my heart it takes to start to hate you.

That heart that you once made go 'thump' by just walking into the room has to, in order to survive, harden itself. It has to get past what you have done to it, and realize that I am the real problem. A problem of courage, or in my case a lack of courage. Courage to hate you, to say that it was all your fault, even if I know I am lying to myself. It is a lie that I have to convince myself to believe, just so I can continue to live with myself. I have to realize that I don't want what you want, and I can't feel what you want me to feel. I have to put that heart of mine into a cage, and make sure the key you once had no longer turns the lock.  It is really simple to write down, it is bloody hard as fuck to actually do.

I have to realize that I am not your King and you are not my Queen, of my heart or otherwise. You were a false dawn. A pretty dawn, but a false one nevertheless. It was fool's gold, and I thought it was real for far too long that is healthy for me, but fool's gold it remains. Fool's and gold are probably not a good match. So I will at some point look for silver, after all silver is a lot harder to fake. 

Not only Numb

After a small reverse yesterday, this is the result of too little sleep, and too much time to think.


Take a look around the room that you are presently occupying, how does it look? Through all that clutter and gloom, is there something, or some things that you can't live without? Maybe you need to get up, and take a look at the clutter and gloom in all the rooms of your present adobe. Take your time, I can wait. While you are doing this, think about each of the many or few possessions you have (depending on whether you are a minimalist or not).  They probably tell a story or two about you, or about the other person that you received them from either as a gift or a curse.  Ponder their back story, and then as the air gets thinner, ponder their future story. Is that story going to include you and your possessions staying together? Or is it possible that perhaps you are one garden gnome type knick knack away from being featured on an episode of Hoarders?

Do you treasure your possession more than you should? Or are they merely the driftwood of your (misspent) youth that you have just not managed to 'let go of' yet?  Is that clock really a family heirloom or is it just some ten dollar piece of shit clock you bought at Wal-Mart just to tell you the damn time?  Is that 60 inch TV really necessary? It does take up a large amount of the 'living space' allocated to you by the constraints of your budget, and do you really watch that much TV to justify the expense?  And what about the sound system? Did you really need 8 speakers and a gazillion watts just to crank it up once a year before the neighbors call the police with a noise complaint?

These things, these inanimate objects that clutter up your day to day existence, the items that you leave daily to go to work so that you can add more items to them, are they the sum total of your existence?  If you were, gods forbid, to fall over dead today, would the mourning be done by some obscure relative of yours saddened by the fact that the eldery aunt got to 'inherit' your TV?  Have you made the will to divide up your worldly possessions amongst the greedy few survivors of your friends and family?  Or are these possession that you've so carefully amassed, and so jealously guard, your own private hell? A set of objects that you feel connected to so much that you can't fathom life without them.  Is there something so important in the junk in your room that you can't imagine ever being without it again?

Surprisingly enough, I've heard the answer to that last question way too many times to be in the affirmative. People that think that some TV, sound system, or automobile are more important than even their own personal safety.  Sure that Persian rug is a remarkable shade of dark blue, and it really ties together the room, but is it worth a pint of piss in the grand scheme of things? Of course it's not, it is just a fucking rug, and no matter how unique it might be (which is unlikely since you are not the Prince of Persia) it is just quite simply at its core, a fucking rug. No more, and probably quite a bit less. There lies wisdom, understanding that even if that rug was the last thing your great-granny Marge ever gave to you, it is still just a rug. It is great-granny Marge that is the important bit, and sure she might be as dead as Montreal's chances of winning the Stanley Cup this year, it is still her that counts, not the gods damn rug that her pet dog Cupcake used as a toilet for 12 years before dying of the vapours.

Hell, why not take a wild chance, and just give that rug away? See how that makes you feel, its not like you are digging granny Marge up, and telling her that you hated her all those years for trying to feed you chicken salad that wasn't exactly up to par.  Hours will pass, and you will eventually forget that the damn rug was even a part of your estate.  Give it a shot, just for once, try to picture not caring about the things in your life, but the people in your life. There are people in your life aren't there? I mean who else would all of these possessions impress?  These people, those lucky few survivors of the college life you shared, or the professional life you currently share, or the fellow denizens of your local, are probably the important bit of your life that you really need to focus.

Don't let those people be a waste of your lungs, tell them the important stuff that you think they already know, because chances are they don't, and would fall over themselves with joy if you let them know that they are, in fact, more important than a flat screen plasma TV, or a Persian rug/piss pot.  You can almost always find someone selling a TV, people don't sell best friends at a shop for your convenience. Maybe, if you are like me, you have several 'best' friends because one just isn't enough, if so you are one lucky devil, and you should explain to each of them why they are important to you. And they are important to you, whether you want to admit it or not.  You don't have to get all maudlin about it, but a simple explanation will do. After all, they are your friends, they know that you are not the most articulate fellow in the world, if you were they probably wouldn't be able to understand the fucking words coming out of your mouth.

That is what friends do, understand the words, no matter how poorly strung together, that you use to express yourself, and the few feelings you have. It is not wasted breath, it is time well spent, and its own reward.  Remember though that life and friendships are a two way street, listening is a skill that you have to acquire, and something you must needs to learn how to do. After all, we are all in this play together, and nowhere in the script does it say you are the only leading man or woman. We all want to be the prince in the story, but sometimes being the butcher is just as, if not, more important. People to post decrees are very important, but there has to be people there to read them as well, or it all just fades to dust motes trapped in a sunbeam. 

Echec

Most of my devout readers know what I do for a so-called living. Those of you that don't well briefly speaking. I am an attorney that does only domestic violence cases. It is part and parcel of my job to prosecute men and women who are somehow even worse than I am at relationships. That bit is hard to believe, but it is all too true.  I like to think that I am good at my job, I mean who really thinks that they stink at their job? I like to think that, and I do not bother asking too many (i.e. any) people's opinion on my job performance.  After all, the people I would ask would probably be my 'friends' and would just tell me what they think I'd like to hear.

Either way that isn't really the point of this point (if there is a point at all). My job provides me all the drama that I need. TNT has nothing on my day to day existence. I know drama, and I live it daily at work, therefore I try to avoid it everywhere else. This drama filled job does provide me with enough ready coin to meet my daily needs of alcohol, which is necessary for my ability to survive the drama in the first place.  It is a bit of a never ending circle, but that is my lot in life. It's nothing awful, but I am sure that being a left handed relief pitcher is probably a bit more fun. It is a damn shame that I am not left handed.  This is a brief, and rare look into my professional life. Enjoy it because I certainly did not.

Two brief cautionary tales will serve to explain my typical week. This week I had to 'dry roast' a victim of a man that has beaten her several times over several years. The sad part of this particular tale is that the day this guy got out of jail, she ran to him like his house was on fire. After a lovely romantic interlude, and a few cold beers, things returned to normal when the fellow used her face to try to crush a beer can. Not a pleasant experience, from what the lady told me, and something that has landed him back in jail.  That dry roasting, that I gave consisted of what some people would call 'tough love', with me I focus more on the tough bit, and leave the love bit to others. I merely suggested to her, quite forcefully, that one day her paramour was going to kill her.  It was not a happy conversation for either of us, and it was not a something that I enjoyed doing. The bigger problem of this little chat was I had previously had the exact same conversation with the woman a little of a year ago. I told her then, and told her this week that one day I was going to have to explain to her next of kin why I had failed to keep her attacker from killing her.  That was failure number one.

The only 'good' thing, at least from my point of view was that I was at least able to keep the offender in jail. For how long is a different story, and when (not if) he gets out, I figure I will be having the same chat with the same woman again. At least, I hope I get to have the chance because if I can, then she will at least be alive. And here you thought TNT knew drama.

Failure number two arrived today, and it was expected which made it somehow even worse. Same type of situation. Boy meets girl, boys bangs girl, girl has boy's child, boy decided to beat the ever loving shit out of girl, rinse and repeat. This is the true American love story that I get to see on a daily basis, not the Tristian and Suzanna love of "Legends of the Fall". No, the love stories I see have there tragic bits as well but it isn't the lost my love of a lifetime type of tragedy. Our tragedies are more mundane, our feet are made of clay.  Out here on the perimeter of the world we don't have screen writers than can just make it all right in a certain time frame. 

This particular woman has been also a repeat victim of the father of her child  (otherwise known as 'baby's daddy).  And today thanks, in part, to yours truly, her abuser is out of custody, and she is probably waiting for the inevitable beating at his hands as I type this.  It was another unpleasant conversation, and while she understood (but was not pleased with the result), I still felt, and even told her that I had failed her. Once again a difficult thing to say, a difficult thing to feel, and a difficult thing to stomach. As far as failures go, it is not my first, nor my last, and it probably (I hope not even my biggest), but it was a failure nonetheless. And as far as all of that TNT drama goes, it just can't compare, and it can't be compared. Here's to the only solace that I will find this cold, April night, alcohol. I am so sorry.