Practice Makes... We'll See.

Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change. Invaribly they are both disappointed. -Einstein

2010-04-06T23:05:00.003-04:00

I wanted so much to be perfect
to be respected
to be loved
to be admired

I wanted you to be beautiful
to be engaging
to be loving
to be fun

I went searching for what I wanted.

You found me while I was falling.

You are fun
you are loving
you are engaging
you are beautiful

You admired me
you loved me
you respected me
you said I was perfect for you.

But I didn't see this until I stopped looking at me.

And then I saw you.

Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs. - Henry Ford

2008-05-27T15:15:00.004-04:00

Twelve Steps.

Pick it up. Pick it up! Just pick it up!! Now!
Ok. That's good. Good job, moved the right foot.
Now the left. Man, I'm thirsty!

I can't believe how heavy my foot is. I never noticed it before. How much walking have I done in my 32 years? Well, let's see. I'm told I took 4 steps right before bedtime on June 6, 1977. After that they accumulated too fast for anyone to keep track. I wonder if I thought about how heavy my feet were when I just started to walk?

Ok...left foot. Pick it up. Pick...it...up! That's it. And...step. Great.
Ok. Right foot again. Whew! I really am tired. I know I already went over this a million times, but this is definitely the most tired I've ever felt. And I'm really thirsty. I can't think about that.
Come on, right foot.

Ready...one...two...three...LIFT! And...step. Oh, yeah. Still movin'. Still heading toward the shade. Hello, shade. I can see you. You're shimmering...no, you're waving at me. You must have water, right? How else would there be trees? And those are trees making the shade. I'm certain. It's not very clear...I have to squint so much. Ready, left foot?

STEP! Awesome. That one almost felt easy. My left foot is lighter than my right. I never noticed that before. I know my right arm is stronger than my left. But I guess my left foot is lighter. Maybe to compensate for the extra weight on my right arm. Weird. Maybe I'll just step with my left foot. No. If I only step with one foot I'll turn. And I want to keep going toward the shade. Hello, shade. Right foot, move.

Move! Lift! Pick up! Come on, right foot! What did I do to you? Oh, yeah. I got mad and kicked that rock when the truck broke down. Why did I do that? I do that a lot...react to things that I can't really do anything about. At least my right foot stopped really hurting. Come to think of it, I can't feel it. I can see it down there. Well, I assume it's in my shoe. Ok, don't stop and stare at your shoe. Move the right foot already. And...STEP! AAARRRRHHH.

Good. Ok, no breaks. Let's keep moving. Ready, left?

GO. Pick up. Lift. Crap. Come on, lefty. Don't mess with me. You're on my good side right now! Let's go! Ssssssstep! There. Ok. Now the right. I have to stop contemplating the process and keep stepping or I'll never get to the shade. Shade? Oh, hello there. You're still there waiting. Good. I'm coming, shade. Don't worry. I'll be there before you know it. Ok, right. Don't make me drag you. Now...GO!

Pickup, pickup, pickup, pickup! GGGRRRRRRHHH. Yesss! Good job, right. I'll try to remember to soak you in some nice cool water later. Shoot. Don't say cool water! Dang it! I said cool water again. Crud!!! Quit saying coo...WAIT. I can't think about that right now. Left foot. Time to move the left foot.

Ok. Get ready. Get set. GO! Yes. It's nice to know you're still there for me left foot. Not like old gimpy over there. Let's go, gimper. Move one for the gimper! Gimp one for the mover! And...GO!

I...said...GO!! L...i....ft. Whew! I thought you weren't going to do it that time, righty. Maybe you're my clutch guy. Lefty keeps up the consistent performance, and you come through just in time when I really need you. You're a good team, feet. Ok, lefty, show 'em how it's done. Hey, lefty, lefty, lefty...LIFT!

And...step. Good. Hey, we must be getting closer to shade. Quick peek. Yep. Ok. Shade's still there, it's still hot, and I'm still thirsty. No. Don't go there. Shade will take care of us when we get there. Won't you, Shade? Shady. Shady lady. Lady Shady. Shady luck. Made in the shade. Ok, righty. It's all you. Actually, right foot, not to be picky, but right leg is doing all the real work. You're just down there all numb and slow and stuff. Help me out, right leg. Move that clunker. We'll do it together. Ready? MOVE!

My bad, right leg. I didn't say when. I will say "move" and THEN we'll move the right foot. Ready? MOVE! RRRRHHHHHGGG. Great! Nice job, leg. You da leg!

That has to be like a quarter of a mile, right? We're getting closer, Shade. I'll be there in a flash. Just hang on.

Historian: A broad-gauge gossip. - Ambrose Bierce

2008-05-22T08:57:00.004-04:00

Wow. Ok. This one has to be a sonnet. Check out details here. We'll start with an English sonnet.

Ode to History

Oh, history, you are to me a blight.
I've anguished many hours to learn your lore.
For teachers would not let me leave despite
My stomach's churning from your dreadful bore.
Oh, history, I've come to know you well.
You follow me with lessons long and dull.
And sometimes hidden in your sleepy hell
I nod and doze when I'm supposed to mull
Oh, history, I fell that I might die.
If I do not escape your heavy text.
So hatefully do I endure and sigh
While waiting for the bell to bring sweet next.
But if I learn not from your storied vaults
Then doomed am I to oft repeat your faults.
JLN2008

Communism is like prohibition, it's a good idea but it won't work. - Will Rogers

2008-05-21T10:03:00.003-04:00

Ideas that don't work. Clearly, prohibition didn't last and communism cannot account for ambition and greed - the cornerstones of the American Dream.

I have some personal experience with ideas that don't work.

In high school I wore boxer shorts under spandex from time to time. Maybe I liked the loose fit of the boxers paired with the lowered wind resistance of the spandex. Maybe I just had a really dumb idea.

I tried to fry a banana once. I was slightly familiar with the delectable treat that is fried plantain. But I didn't have a plantain. A plantain is a type of banana, I thought. So I can just fry a banana and it will do pretty much the same thing, right? Wrong. I did not enjoy cleaning up the banana mush soaked in very hot oil.

While water skiing I tried to put the handle of the pull line in my teeth and be a skiing showman. Only, I was never taught how to do that. So when I leaned slightly forward to bite the handle, the end of my skis dipped and I bit a great deal more. I gave the water a great deal of punishment with my face and, as I recall, I only had the minor inconvenience of my nostrils slapping my cheeks, my eyelids folded up my forehead and a burning sensation somewhere near the back of my eye sockets.

I took a slow test run over a bike ramp I built. That was actually a nice lesson in physics. The ramp was only about a foot high, but when you go slowly off a one foot ledge there is no momentum to carry you forward while the back tire comes off the ledge. So what happens is this: the front tire drops to the ground quickly, your legs fly forward off the pedal while you slide forward off the seat. You would land nicely on your feet if the bike wasn't so nicely centered between your legs. So the point is, you should wear a very sturdy cup if you want to take up biking slowly over small ramps. I got to learn that the painful way.

But the idea that tops this list has to be night basketball. It seemed like a good idea at the time. How many tragically comical stories have you heard begin that way? We lived in the Cinco Hermanos subdivision of the city of Manila. Cinco Hermanos means "five brothers" but it only took two brothers to turn a bad idea into an emergency room visit.

So it was night, maybe 9 pm, I don't recall exactly. The house across the street from us had a high fence with barb wire on top. It also had a floodlight that was just high enough so as to throw a little light over onto the neighborhood basketball court. The conventional play style on that court was "no-blood-no-foul" but we took that to a new level.

It was a close game. Normally, Jeff would beat me pretty easily. He was taller and his favorite move in any sport was to throw the ball over my head, run around me and catch the ball. It worked in football - well enough to drive me to plead my case before the court of common father to get Jeff to stop "cheating." By cheating I think I meant winning. So, Jeff's over-my-head self pass was working as always, but I had developed a crossover that allowed me to drive past him and score at will. So, there we were, deadlocked in a fierce and dim titanic struggle for fraternal supremacy.

Then Jeff adjusted. He realized that my move to the right was always a fake and that I would end up going left. His mental math was good and he shrugged off the fake right and easily stopped my next move. Now I was the underdog again, but now for long. If the fake worked so well for the first half of the game, I might be able to bring it home with a new double-fake move. Fake right, crossover, fake left, crossover again, and drive past him on the right. It was sheer genius and it worked like a charm. Almost.

When I did my new double-fake move, Jeff thought it was the original single-fake move and bit. So he was moving left as I faked the second time and moved right. To be precise, at that moment the only thing that mattered was that Jeff's forearm was moving right and my nose was moving left.

I called foul. Well, I wanted to call foul. What I actually did was say something like, "Uughh!" in response to the crunching noise my nose made as it move a quarter inch to the left and stayed there. I didn't cry, buy I won't be able to prove it because a sharp blow to the nose always results in tears even in the hardiest man.

Then I was running, then I was in Mom and Dad's bedroom, then I was pulling my hand away from my face saying, "I think I broke my nose." Mom had a doctor friend on speed dial (the nose wasn't an isolated incident for me). The doctor asked if I heard it break.
"Oh, yeah, it went crckch." Mom relayed the message.
"If he heard it, he broke it." That message from the friendly doctor set the rest of the evening's plan for us.

A broken nose is not the end of the world. It does require medical attention. And I'm pretty sure it qualifies as a foul, but we'll never know on that one.

So, I don't drink and I'm not a communist, but I do understand that some ideas should not be pursued. Maybe their purpose is just to make the other ideas look better. Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised. Playing basketball at night, taking an alcoholic's beer away, and telling people to give their money to other people could all result in broken noses.

Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist should have his head examined. - Samuel Goldwyn

2008-05-20T10:02:00.000-04:00

Seth doesn't believe in psychiatrists. He doesn't disagree with their findings. He doesn't quibble with their methods. He doesn't illigitemize their purpose. He simply believes they do not exist.

His mother told him for years about the great strides made in her visits to her shrink. Seth decided early on that when your husband leaves you for a woman he met on the subway, you get to take weekly trips wherever you want and then claim you were seeing a doctor. A little irrational behavior is fine when you consider the causes. At least Seth had the sense to leave her alone and not try to convince her she was a little more crazy than she knew. Right. Like there's really a doctor you can talk to and he can fix your head.

Seth did argue about this with Dale, though. Dale said, "I think your mom really goes to a doctor."
"She does not. There are no doctors that fix peoples' heads."
"So where does she go, then?"
"Macy's."
"Macy's!"
"Yeah, she goes shopping for an hour then comes home."
"So what does she buy?"
"Mostly clothes and sometimes she gets toys."
"I never see any of this stuff."
"You're usually not here when she gets home."
"Ok. Have you ever seen the stuff?"
"No. She likes to donate it to less fortunate people."
"Really."
Seth was deadpan. Dale seemed skeptical.
"Then how do you know she buys anything at all?"
"She told me I don't get a new set of encyclopedias because her 'doctor' costs too much. How would you explain that?"
Dale chuckled, "She's really going to a doctor."
"Yeah, right. I told you..."
"I know."
"...and she's allergic to perfume."
"What?"
"Yeah. She has to walk by the perfume counter every time she leaves the store. She's allergic to the perfume and so by the time she gets home her eyes are all red and it looks like she's been crying."
"Maybe she was crying...at the doctor's."
"Oh, come on."

That's as close as Dale ever gets to logic. He doesn't try to argue with Seth usually. Seth is smart. When Dale visits, he usually just asks questions.
"Where are we right now?"
"My room."
"No, jerk. What is the address here. I'm trying to find us on Google Earth."
"600 East 125th Street...we're in 714"
"Oh, there we are by the river. Just like outside the window."
"Yep."

At dinner time, Seth sits in his chair with his tray of food. Dale is gone. Mother came home an hour ago, eyes red as usual, but she never eats with Seth. He asks her if she had a good time and she says. He eats his dinner quietly, reads a little bit from his encyclopedia, Volume MNOP, and goes to bed.

Good progress. For the 2nd week in a row, Seth only sees Dale and his mother. Dale seems harmless and Seth will probably keep seeing his mother for a few more years. Maybe then he can begin to process that she's gone. But, it has only been a few months.

Seth Wilson patient progress notes.
May 19, 2007
Dr. John Shalk
Manhattan Psychiatric Center
Manhattan State Hospital
Case 1568769-A11

One a day...

2008-05-20T09:49:00.000-04:00

Some writing each day makes the block go away.

So I'm putting a random quote generator on the page and I'll try to write each day based on the quote. I'll try to avoid soap boxes here. That's what my other blog is for. Eventually I'll even link to that one so you don't have to jump to my profile to get to it. Good luck, self.