Year: 2009
Flashback Weekend
Posted on December 17, 2009 in PTSD
The rain-bound weekend brought vile epiphanies. Little stories of my failures and my crimes, the times when I felt the blood boil. Old arguments and old confrontations blanked out my existence. My eyes would not see what was in front of me. The near-visions would be spawned by the slightest suggestions: a word in a book, an ad on a web page, a sentence in a conversation. They would cause me to shout out “Stop it! Stop it! I hate me!” And, I learned from my psychiatrist today, there is no pill I can take to end their reign of terror. These are flashbacks from many crimes and many horrors.
Crime is a relative term. I feel I must be punished for the stupid things I have said. Here I live in a world filled with charlatans who push their snake oil on the desperate, chief executives of insurance companies who skin their clients so they can give themselves salaries in the millions, and worse — but I feel that the cross is to be affixed to me. Then there is the rage — the demand of my spirit that those who hurt me in any way be punished. And behind that came the Final Guilt: that to feel angry was akin to an act of violence, the most abhorrent act I could possibly commit.
I do not have to be wholly the thrall of these emotions. I have learned to fight back and to affirm in myself that I have the right to fight back. When any of these overcome me I stop. Look. Look at the gray screen of the television set. The yellow-white flame bulbs of the chandelier. Boadicea with her nine grey stripes running down the back of her head. Drake lying in the blanket he expropriated from our bedroom. It is time to say to myself “Where are you? What time is it?” and face the reality that that which is haunting me is not here right now.
Some of my fellow bipolar sufferers don’t get this thing that happens. They suggest I get on anti-psychotics, but I am on these. I have had hallucinations and I have been paranoid. Neither is anything like the terrifying thoughts that cause me to stop where I am. You interact with a hallucination, treat it as part of the furniture. Flashbacks are a monster of their own and they can stop you cold.
To overcome them, I must reclaim my present. A member of one of my support groups suggested this: “Tell yourself that you are not as bad a person as you think you are.” I take comfort from that.
Good article that I read today: What’s wrong with positive thinking. Somebody finally said “Fuck you” to all those self-proclaimed experts who have only made me feel more depressed all these years — and backed it up with science.
War Tax
Posted on December 6, 2009 in War
I like the idea of a war tax. For years military expenditures have been a hidden cost, allowing our government to hide its overseas adventures. You may hear complaints about social spending but this is not our greatest expense. The military gobbles up more than anything else. It is at the root of our deficit.
When our country adds a war tax as it did in most of our wars, there is pressure to get the job done. There’s none of the loitering like we have seen in Afghanistan, fewer botched jobs like our failure to capture bin Laden several years ago. A war tax wakes up the taxpayer and makes her/him ask “How is the money being spent?” And “Is it worth it?”
Too bad they allow us to sleep.
Drake Shows a Bull Terrier
Posted on December 1, 2009 in Dogs Encounters
I took Drake out for an off-day walk — one where we do not go a long distance but stay close to home. This one took us through the back condo complex where we live into the front one and back into the back through a patch of grass where we often stop so Drake can drop doggy bombs. Today a pair of owners with a [[bull terrier]] and a small [[German Shepherd]] were on the spot first. When they saw me coming, they shouted at their dogs, forcing the Shepherd into a submissive, prone position. The bull terrier — who was held by the woman — and Drake took offense to each other. Drake growled and the bull terrier charged to the limits of his short leash. My dog did the same.
“You don’t have to show him,” I said.”
“Oh yes I do!” Drake responded as he jumped to the end of his tether.
I pulled him away, speaking quietly, while the other owners yelled at their dogs.
As I drew away, I heard the woman saying “Did you hear that dog growling? That dog was growling.”
She had no clue of her part in the little drama — the yelling that excited all the dogs into a frenzy regardless of who started growling at who.
Dream
Posted on December 1, 2009 in Dreams
The order in which these sequences are lost to me: it could go either way. In the first, I am called with another to deal with the problem of a cockroach infestation in a pair of break rooms at a recreation center. I tell the people that [[boric acid]] is the solution. Sure enough, after I spread it around the edges, huge heaps of vermin — including large hairy spiders — die in the night. To demonstrate how effective the cure is, I apply more in about a week and only a few tiny roaches turn up. “You can do this every six months,” I say, but change the number to every six weeks and then every month.
In the other sequence, I win a scholarship to explore the history of a coastal area. My sponsor — who is supposed to show me around — takes me to the top of a cinder cone from which we can see a long stretch of the seaboard. Room is close, however, and I feel that I am being pushed down the steep sides. I ask the other scholarship winners to move over and see that there’s lots of room in the crater. Later my sponsor shows me a place to buy hamburgers — I tell him that I am on a diet and must choose my meal carefully. He leaves me in a dorm room, but the next day comes to show me the coast. I’ve littered the room with [[Legos]], explaining that I have been working on some puzzles. He uses some to show me principles of faulting, then takes me where we can view some piny islands made of volcanic rock. I think how much this is like Maine.
Approaching the End
Posted on November 26, 2009 in NaNoWriMo
National Novel Writing Month is nearly over. As of this entry, I have spewed 50081 words into my [[OpenOffice]] Writer. There’s more to be written. I doubt that it is publishable, but it has been a good discipline for bringing me out of sleep at the beginning of the day and back into it at the end.
I’ve proceeded with a few principles in mind:
- Even though this is a first draft, I try to do it right the first time. I accept that I won’t do it right, but at least I will have tried.
- Just churning out words is boring and soul-killing.
- To hell with “Don’t tell, show.” Tell has its place as does show. Mix it up. When you tell, tell it well.
- If you have an inspiration to go back and rewrite a passage and that inspiration is strong, go ahead and do it. My original start sucked. If I had stuck with it, I would have stopped the project. So I went back and rewrote it. The fire I generated carried me through to the end.
- It’s OK to make a mental note to delete and rewrite passages if you don’t then have a clue how to replace them.
- My present plan is to shelve the work for a little while before I go back for the necessary task of rewriting the piece. Maybe the reading will reveal to me that it’s unsalvageable or needs a major overhaul. I don’t think that the passion — or deadness — of the first creation is going to be a trustworthy guide.
I will do this again next year.
NaNoWriMo
Posted on November 4, 2009 in NaNoWriMo
If I do not write much on this blog, know that I am working hard on National Novel Writing Month. I won’t be publishing my work online or in paperware until I have finished it and scoured it for apt revisions — especially the right word. So far I am 7244 words into the opus. If you keep score of such things, you can follow my progress here.
Surrendering Control
Posted on October 25, 2009 in Driving Vacation Fall 2009
Going on vacation — especially to Hawaii by way of LAX — can mean you place yourself in the hands of strange drivers. First there are the ones who drive you to and from the airport. On the morning of the fourteenth, we packed ourselves into a deep blue Supershuttle van. The chauffeur was kind, but traffic was not. Two thirds of the way it slowed to stop and go. If you live in one of the larger metropolitan areas, you knows what this means. Move forward just another to get your stomach sliding, then stop abruptly, letting it quiver and shake. Repeat ad nauseum. Literally ad nauseum.
We got to the airport only because the driver turned off and made the last leg by surface streets, an accomplishment that she thanked my queasiness for. I had no trouble on the plane because planes don’t do it for me just like ski lifts don’t trigger my acrophobia. We rented a car in Hilo, but there were two more situations when I surrendered control of the drive.
The first was aboard the boat to the lava flowing into the ocean near [[Kalapana,_Hawaii|Kalapana]]. Here was a curious experience. After meeting the chief guide at an Aloha gas station in the darkness near [[Pahoa]], we followed a long string of cars through jungles to [[Isaac Hale Beach Park]] where we unloaded in the darkness for bathroom breaks and a brief discussion of what to do in the case a [[lava bomb]] pierced a hole in the hull and we suddenly got a whiff of mortality. Then we got on the boat, a large catamaran which was sitting in the parking lot. This would be the worst part for me — I hated having to climb in using a cheap handyman’s ladder.
The cruise didn’t bother me because I had prepared myself with [[Dramamine]]. But near the [[lava tube|lava tubes]], the pilot went into stop-start-stop-start mode. I did okay with this until I took in a lungful of the sulfur steam from the [[fumarole]] and gagged.
Things cleared up as soon as the boat got moving again and I got a new lungful of fresh air. Had a great talk with one of the guys and a man from Kansas, trading fishing stories. They loved my story about how I caught a shark on light line ((He was barely 11 inches long, but he was a shark!)). Incredibly, the guide pointed out a spot in the open ocean where he had caught a record-breaking [[Wahoo|Ono]]. I tipped the crew well because — aside from my brief experience of nausea — I not only had a good time but felt entertained.
I make it a point to try to talk to the drivers as if they were human beings, but the one we had on the [[Mauna Kea]] trip existed in another place entirely. It’s not that he was nasty or inconsiderate. He just curled into his own head when I attempted to talk to him. When I mentioned hunting and fishing, he said “I hate fishing.” So I asked him a few questions about life on the island, a subject which he could describe best in grunts.
He was kind when my wife developed altitude sickness. When he dropped us off, he literally begged for his tip. I gave him $6.
Spam Spam Spam Spam
Posted on October 25, 2009 in Strange Vacation Fall 2009
I kid you not. Spam is considered a delicacy on the Big Island of Hawaii. There is absolutely no shame attached to the eating of this meat. They serve Spam for breakfast. You can buy Spam sandwiches. And most bizarre of all, a Kona sushi bar sells Spam [[nigiri]].
If you say anything other than “Spam is good” in Hawaii, you are summarily executed. And ground into Spam.
Goodbye to rampant greens and warm rains
Posted on October 21, 2009 in Reflections Vacation Fall 2009
My last therapist told me that I didn’t like change. I figure that this was just a standard line she used on people like me who defied her Rogerian expectations. I do like change. It’s changing back to the same old thing and feeling unable to do anything about it that undoes my contentedness.
So tomorrow at 4 pm, I’m going back to southern California. There are people there who are visiting for a week like I am visiting here and aching because they are returning to their ordinary. I will sing once more of the chaparral here, just as they will see the vivacity of their red autumns. A place is much like a person: no one location can fill your needs. I’ve been needing the rampant greens and warm rains. Lynn’s pocketbook limits what we can afford in the way of time. so it is goodbye to this personality. Hello to my everyday, insufficient and yet substantial. Life.
Hawaii’s Saddleback
Posted on October 21, 2009 in Vacation Fall 2009 Weather
Kona is the sunshine coast of the Big Island. Condos go up as fast as they did in 1990s Orange County (( Provided the land is not owned by the state or the federal government or the native Hawaiians)) . Leave downtown Kona on Highway190, however, and you quickly find yourself on the northern slopesof Mauna Loa. Cattle country, home of the Parker Ranch, a major Hawaiian beef producer and tourist attraction. A few miles shy of Waimea, another highway –numbered 200 — departs on the right for the rift between the two great mountains of the Big Island –Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea.
Nowhere are the night stars as vibrant as they are upon Mauna Kea. The trouble is that to see this spectacle, you must hazard the Saddleback Road. You must know a few things about this thoroughfare. First, it was constructed by the military during the Second World War. The planners wanted to link Kona and Hilo without making it attractive to either the Japanese or civilians. So, they made the bridges narrow, the slopes steep, and the way winding. Second, crouched between the Kona Coast and the turnoff for the Mauna Kea observatory lie those weather phenomena known as clouds. We who live in the lowlands experience these gangs of water droplets from beneath, but the clouds of the northern end of the Saddleback Road wait on the road. When you meet them, they close in on you as fog.
Now imagine the hell of the highway designed by military experts who wanted to discourage you from driving on it staffed by the demons of low-flying pre-precipitation. Inflict upon yourself strange moments when lights from oncoming cars descend from the road in front of you or cows materialize in your desired path seemingly out of the stuff of water vapor. Consider the happiness you feel when you get to the Hilo side of the valley where the clouds have the good grace to dissolve into torrential rain.
Welcome to Hawaii’s Saddleback. The hazardous weather might make you yearn for raging brushfires like the ones that sweep California’s.
Hilo
Posted on October 17, 2009 in Vacation Fall 2009
Hilo is an odd town, a splendid town where 130 inches of rain fall every year. The rain comes down in the middle of the night and during the first hours of light. Then the clouds part and you have a blue meadow grazed by cumulous. It’s a place where they serve sushi-sandwiches called mosubi: the meat is often Spam or red-red hot dog. On Wednesdays and Saturdays people go to the Farmer’s Market to buy odd delicacies such as these or fruits like atemoya, dragonfruit, star fruit, lingon, white pineapple, apple bananas, and durian. Dogs seem to be of toy varieties mostly and the cats, too, are small. You know that any animal you see is rabies-free because of the strict quarantine laws. Even the mongooses are small: the first I saw were mistakable for squirrels.
Only tourists rush to get anywhere. The locals yawn at the rumble of airports and keep to the speed limit. Lynn suggests, that the mood here derives from a diversity like that of New York or Los Angeles coupled with the easiness of the towns of Down East Maine.
If it weren’t for the necessary and abominable sacrifice of our pets, I could live here.
