9/16

The regimen:
1/2 mile moderate jog.
1/4 mile reasonable sprint.
1/8 mile walk.
1/4 mile moderate-fast sprint.
1/8 mile walk.
1/8 mile fast sprint.
1/8 mile walk.

Then sprint the straights and jog the curves until your sprint can only become a walk.  Until you can no longer breathe. Until you can no longer remember anything.  The miles you ran, the checkbook that was stolen and used, the name, the eyes, the smell, the everloving and everlong.  You will know when your intervals have paid off when nothing matters and you have to consider calling a room mate for a ride home from the gym because you may not make it home. 

That is the secret of your body.  It holds the potential to heal your mind.  But it takes work and some pain.

Now this is not real pain.  This is not a contusion or a fracture or a bloody mouth.  This is the pain of lactic acid pouring into you. 

Lactic acid fermentation is a process of respiration where a living thing produces energy without using any oxygen.  The build up in a human of the byproduct of that respiration, lactic acid, causes pain.  That’s why your muscles burn and seem to itch when you push yourself past what you lungs are able to fuel.  Your body becomes an anoxic envrionment.  However, in nearly every physical activity you undertake greater than strolling or typing, at least briefly your muscles will begin lactic acid respiration.  

OBSERVATION: The acid and the pain and the starvation of your cells is a necessary part of being a living machine.

 You will not need to know when to end a good sprint, the sprint will end itself when all the fuel is gone and the muscles fail.  When you can once again walk and know that you did all you could, and now, walking is all you can do.

OBSERVATION:  In all the beauty of creation, there lives a truth and it screams forth from the rocks that life is pain.  And that pain is the fuel of all creation.

After the run, there is that girl on the stair stepper.  The one with the cherub smile and the nice eyes of a true angel, but below her waiste in those tiny college girl shorts, she’s got a James Jamerson bassline going on.  And on and on and back and forth (sorry female readers), the engine of her creation.  Life is pain, true, but pain is the beginning of hope. 

OBSERVATION:  Life is hope.

In comments:  James Jamerson bassline in her shorts: discuss.

Joke

So, a woman marries an Irishman who lost a leg in a blasting accident. She’s pure as the wind driven snow.

But she loves him.

The man in shame and anguish over his cruel fate, the terrors in his dreams, the ringing of his ears, the phantom pains coursing through his long gone limb, never tells her he is missing the leg. When he drinks too heavily and curses the world, her lilting words are soothing ointments on scars she is not aware of. He loves her as only a tragic cripple can love a virgin and his heart of hearts is rent every time he curses her in a drunken rage.

But she loves him.

They join before God and men and swear lasting loyalty and fidelity, and his angry drunkenness is totally undeserving of her affection. She knows no other man, and never will. She has already sworn to him that it is so, and she is as pure as the wind driven snow. And so, as he stands before her, he loves her. He was never going to show her the ragged stump, as it was a further ugliness already visited upon an ugly man.

But she loves him.

And as they pass through the procession of friends and family, all agape at her faithful pledge to an ugly and angry man, he changes. She is beautiful and pure as the wind driven snow, she does not deserve an ugly and angry man. He decides that night to show her the leg, without the prosthesis. She will see the ugliest of him, for while he can change the anger, he can’t change the ugly. He knows she deserves every beauty the world has to offer.

But she loves him.

They are home, in his small and cramped sod house, swept for the first time in angry decades. She smiles at him and runs her fingers along his wrinkled brow, reinforced fold from years of rage. She kisses him, like a woman pure as the wind driven snow. She turns as he disrobes and burrows into the quilts made by the sisterhood of the town. He leaves the wooden leg strapped in place under the covers, ashamed at his ugliness, but he wants her to know. He wants her to know him. He knows it is ugly.

But she loves him.

She says she loves him and that she’s never known a man. He tells her he loves her and he knows. He knows she is unsure of what to do, but she stands and removes her garments. She stands, an apparition in white shroud before him and reaches to quell the lamp. He gently halts her hand and tells her wait, wait. It is time she knew. He pulls his wooden stump off and pulls his veined and mangled stump out of the mound of quilts. He smiles a pained and self conscious smile. “What do you think of that?” he says. Her face flushes crimson. She speaks as she arranges herself delicately atop him:

“I don’t know, I guess we’ll just have to spit on it and give it a go.”

1/2 or 8/16

I ran somewhere between 2.5 and 3.5 miles last night, and then threw in ten flights of stairs.  No food in my stomach, only some whiskey left burning my throat and a little coffee that morning.  That shit was murder, son. 

I don’t mean it was murder on some small and insignificant scale.  I was the murderer.  I was murdering the person who would rather sit on the couch and watch The Office.  I was slaughtering the part of me that can stay home and sulk.  I was murdering the part of me that allowed softness to creep in and allowed rationality a holiday. 

I ran a hole in my lungs and I found the dark corners of those lungs filled with sedimented detritus from being sick a few weeks ago.  It was expectorated, which does nothing to civilize a man’s mood.  In fact, it makes him feel meaner.  I had no music, as I have lost another cheap MP3 player, it seems.  I needed none.  Murder ballads and long dead cadence and long gone memories of hardened men with their hair cut like mine screamed at me.  I ran a fire into my legs, the legs that I have allowed softness and a void where motivation used to abide.  And the motivation abides still, but has been encircled and embattled.  These legs than ran my first qual run for the Navy on a broken toe and through pneumonia.  The legs that could lift the tail of a thousand pound bomb with no assistance.  The legs that could drive and run and kick a hole in your chest.  The legs that could carry a loved one, or one not loved, out of danger.

My sides, grown weak and listless at the onslaught of poor choices and non-activity, they caught fire when I ran up the stairs, pretending every step was a face.  Those flanks died a little in cold air, but found life anew in the winnowing of the chaff. 

But the murdered most was the murdered last. 

I should explain.  I am a man.  Strength, dedication, and in a small corner of my once stronger and larger heart, honor, courage, commitment live and breathe.  I let it lag and fail under the addiction to comfort and the slow death of complacency.  However, the slow morphine drip of a committed relationship has been pulled from my arm and I bled a little.  I withdrew a little.  But as the fog of warmth left my mind, I remembered.  Man is not to be in comfort and comforted.  I have demons a plenty, but they are mine, and they are part of me.  I have coldness, and it is part of me.  These will not be murdered. 

I ran hard, and slowly, the last of the cobwebbed motivation and drive came alive to rally with the coup toppling the morphine.  They rallied to reintroduce to the invaded wilderness what I really am.  Muscles ached and internal parts strained with the exertion.  When I rounded the last turn and stopped, I knew then.  The war was not over, but the tide had turned. 

The murder would continue as long as I allowed.  I am not the person content and happy and willing to give away my life for nights into eternity laying next to someone.   I am not the person willing to settle for ease.  The last of the addiction in my veins and in my emotional core retreated to whatever cave those sorts of things find to hide and sometimes prey on weakness.  I walked into the corner store to buy a Gatorade dripping sweat and breathing full and deep for the first time in months.  The counter girl needed flirted with, and so I did. 

I’m back.  And I am the motherfucking man.

You have been warned. 

7/16

I once thought I was dying.  I was misdiagnosed with a terrible and creeping illness that slowly weakens your body and eventually makes you succumb to just about anything.  The doctor gave me the news in a hurry over the phone and had me come in for more tests.  The prognosis was terminal, only the months or years I had left needed determination.  More of my blood was taken, to get an understanding of how far I was along.

He explained to me that his particular medical establishment used a method of testing that was more or less infallible.  The odds that I was not going to die were about 1:55,000.  I was taking a stats class at the time.  I am also not a moron.  My days were over, not in a hurry, but over six months to twenty years of debilitating sickness.  I would die weak and as a side effect, alone.  Very alone.  Or worse, a burden.

So, while he waited on the labs for a time estimate, I found places to end it.  Going out slow and weak and doted on is not my style.  It is cold in March here, and there are caves and gullies and canyons where a person would never find you.  Jumping in the river at Black Rocks when the Colorado was rolling about 3500 cubic feet a second.  Going into the local hick bar and proclaiming myself as both atheist and feminist.  Since this part of Colorado is in an uplift/erosion time, eventually my carbon would have made it to the sea, Baja in this case, and would have been metabolized forever into coral and limestone.

As it turns out, I was 55,000 times luckier than average that day.  I have beat some odds.  That was the biggest odds I have ever beaten, but I remember some other times I gambled, or was forced to gamble, on mortal odds not in my favor and got away with it.  Some of those odds were stacked high and I thought I was done, but I wasn’t. 

Why am I rambling about this?

No idea.  It just seems important to point out to myself, and by extension the friends in my computer, that things have worked out of bad odds before.  Prognoses are not the end.  Even when they may be accurate. 

Shit happens.  That is the lesson of the day.

In Comments: What is the prognosis on me being able to post every day?

Anoxic Environs

I wrote a song.  It is not great, but it has a moment in it that I would love to develop.  The song moves in and out a middling cheery folky sort of acoustic riff, and then it turns into…I don’t know. A dirge.  That would be the best way to describe it.  It’s cold and dark and isolated.  No, I will not sing it.  I do not sing, really.

Anyway, the song deals with the virtual anoxic state of the surroundings of a person in any sort of personal cataclysm.  The overall theme would be one of asphyxiation, though only a perceived one.  Anyone whose had good friends die on you, or to a much lesser extent, love fail on you, knows the condition.  Not like drowning, that’s too easy.  With drowning, you can just give up, with asphyxiation, you slowly succumb and can’t help but fight.  But there is nothing to be done.  I read that before the Nazis switched over to the more efficient Zyclon B, they experimented with simply displacing a warehouse full of breathable atmosphere with CO₂ generated by massive marine diesels.  The effects were so absolutely inhumane that they were worried it would rob all motivation from the soldiers assigned the extermination duties.  People are singularly wicked organisms.

That feeling of the air displaced, or even that of a vessel in space venting atmosphere, was what I was going for.  I didn’t get close, but I formed a turn of phrase I like.  Choking on the blues. 

It works well inside an electric cacophonous dirge.  That makes me happy.  It is a grinding pain of a thing.  I wish I had the talent to do more with it, and I like the term well enough that should I ever write about something terrible and visceral enough, you will see that the subject is choking on the blues.

Maybe even sucking in the tragedy.  Gasping and they lose. Losing all they have to breathe. Choking on the blues.

That’s catchy.

6/16

Pulling through.  Not much of a day.  Had the last of the student/professor meeting today after missing an entire week to strep throat.  I nearly died, and honestly, I think my suppressed body is still depressing the hell out of me.  I have that weak and sick feeling hanging around, and the whiskey rage and the gym rage just isn’t enough most of the time.

 But sometimes it is.  And when it is, what does it do for me?

Nothing.

Now:

A huge market in the earth sciences anymore is reclamation.  If you mine anything at all, or even if you have to disturb an area temporarily, you must reclaim that area after you’re done.  There are a ton of environmental science firms out there that do nothing but consult on those sorts of jobs.  The money is huge and the absolute necessity of reclamation is obvious.  In Germany, they have entire wetland parks that used to be coal mines, and the US is slowly but surely catching up to what the rest of the world has figured out.  You can’t dig a hole and leave it, because then what remains?

Nothing.

Now:

I used to have a blog where the running theme was anthropomorphic geology. Meaning, I would have a brief definition of some rock science term or condition and then apply it to this developing humanity.  I could do that so easily with reclamation that I won’t even bother.  Dig a hole in the land, pull things out of it.  Try to restore the land it to its original beauty and natural state or develop it as farm land or some other resource.  It writes itself.  The effort required?

Nothing.

Now:

I am too lazy to do so.  And honestly, I think people are taking my writing lately a little too serious.  This is a blog, not a Cormac world assassination in Mexico.  So, draw your own conclusions on EnviroRec.  Tonight I’m going to run until my lungs fail and I go all hypoxic.  It’s a great time.  You have a religious experience, more or less.  I used to really believe in the power of breathing, and still do, just not in practice.  One time, by a specific type of focused breathing, I turned myself into a solid ball of rage.  I’m talking veins showing, muscles starting to pump, the whole deal.  Then it was channeled into someone’s face.  That was probably not what the breathing method was supposed to be used for.  Reason behind this ramble?

Nothing.

Today, I got nothing.

In comments:  I mispelled assassination twice.  Somebody make up a good definition for “assination.”

5/16

It was kind of GSR to point out a few days ago that my life has basically turned into the Cross Canadian Ragweed song Proud Souls, sans dog.  He is right, sorry to say, but let’s discuss this further, and possibly explore some other country song/Casey’s life possibilities. 

1. Proud Souls, Cross Canadian Ragweed

“Got drunk by myself last night
They say it’s no way to make things right
Just didn’t have anything better to do…”

Indeed.  However, besides the said lack of canine accompaniment, there are several problems with all of this.  One is that it assumes the protagonist is getting old, and is reminded of such by knees/ankles.  This is not the case with me.  If the heater were to break and the room get cold and my knees and ankles to speak up, which they would, they would remind me that my life has been kickass enough to leave me with lasting joint issues.  Also, I rarely wake up with my head on the telephone anymore.  A close one, but not close enough.

2. I Think I’ll Just Sit Here and Drink, Merle Haggard

“Hey, hurtin’ me now don’t mean a thing
Since love ain’t here I don’t feel a thing
My mind ain’t nothing but a total blank
I think I’ll just stay here and drink”

This is an old school Merle tune.  It has to do with Mr. Haggard’s means of treating his life’s discomforts.  The main chorus basically revolves around others not telling him what to think, he thinks it would be a good idea to sit stationary and drink.  At first blush, this song indeed sounds fairly close to my current situation, however there are problems with said song.  I am not much of a drinker anymore.  Though I will take a pull on the whiskey bottle on occasion, I am hardly a steely eyed shot pounder. Not anymore, the woman got me farther away from that person I used to be than I would like.  On the other hand, alcoholism is an expensive habit.  I’ll stick to walking. 

But whiskey sounds good. Damn good.  Too bad it’s not noon, yet.*

3. I Got To Get Drunk, Willie Nelson

“I got to get drunk, and I sure do dread it
Cause I know just what I’m gonna do…
I’ll spend my whole paycheck on some ol’ wreck
And I’ll wind up singin’ the blues”

I think what Mr. Nelson is getting at in this popping gypsy jazz inflected country song is a fairly close to my current motivation.  However, it fails to sing out my life the way a proper country song should.  The song sounds happy and pleasing, and it is a smidge upbeat.  I hate that.  At least right now, I do.  If I want to get drunk and regret it, then I don’t want it to be a happy drunk.  I want it to be a sinking cut-throat feeling where you wake up under a bridge and smell like cheap booze.  That’s the way to do it.

Here, Mr. Nelson seems to be making bad decisions, true, but they end up not being so bad.  Sure, he ends up with a scandalous woman, but he ends up taking home a woman.  So, how is this more than one of those funny bar stories you hear guys tell about some mistake they made, obviously borne out of heart-ache and tragedy, but ends up being funny later.   I have a few of those.  A website full over at archive.org.

4. He Stopped Loving Her Today, George Jones**

“He said I’ll love you till I die
She said you’ll forget in time
But as the years went passing by,
She still preyed upon his mind”

Holy hell.  This one needs some work to explain. 

“He stopped loving her today,
They placed a wreath upon his door,
And they’ll carry him away,
Because he stopped loving her today”

Yeah, the upside–he stopped loving her finally.  He’s got some peace.  The downside–he’s fucking dead.  Now, I’m not saying the girl was not an amazing beauty of heart and mind or that she was not a rare and precious specimen of humanity, but I think I’ll be over her before then, and I don’t see me tragically hanging on to our love until I get respite from mortality.  Unless I died right now. 

So, now I’m fucking paranoid.  Hypothetical situation:

Guy comes to class with a gun, which is entirely possible.  So, me being me, and being a big fucking idiot, I’m going to tackle the motherfucker while everyone with a brain is long gone running home to cry into their college coffee shop latte and blog.  I can’t quote the exact stats, but I’m pretty damn sure the odds are not in my favor in that situation.  So there I would be, three tour, highly decorated veteran, all around good guy, decent writer of blogs, and what would people think at my funeral? The nice funeral with my life laid out in memorabalia when She would walk up to my box/urn/hefty bag? 

“Hey, do you remember that old, whiny, dead guy George Jones song?”

5. I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry, Hank Fucking Williams

“Have you ever seen a robin weep, when leaves begin to die,
That means he’s lost the will to live, I’m so lonesome I could cry.
The silence of a falling star, lights up a purple sky
And as I wonder where you are, I’m so lonesome I could cry”

This one I would almost want my life to mimic.  Such a beautiful song, with power in metaphor and a simple plainative cry that country music has long since lost.  The pain in every single note played by every single instrument in the spare production jerks tears out of some lost forgotten corner of your chest and makes you want to lay down and shutter at the cold beauty of the all the world.  But you don’t forever, because the song is only two and a half minutes long. 

Now, Lovesick Blues, another Hank Williams song is tempting to put on this list.  I would recommend a listen.

 I think I’ll leave the list there for a while.  So, loyal two readers, try and figure which of these is going on to the finals.  I’m leaning heavy on a couple, but I have to admit it has more to do with liking the song that how well it matches my life.  Anything I might have missed?  Should this be an entry in The Five?

^{*11:53, close enough!
**A better version, at least to me, is Josh Turner’s off Live at the Ryman.}

Damn

Nothing like a hangover to make everything better.  It’s times like these I wish I was a drinker, then maybe I wouldn’t feel like dying from six beers. I got tore up.  And for no good reason.

 It’s one of my goals to be more social.  That just seems like a codeword for “spend money and catch hangovers.”  This socializing is bullshit.  I’m never leaving my house again.

That’s all I got today, folks.

3-4/16

Whatever.  That’s all I got today is a whatever.  I’m trying to care about things, but I ain’t got it. 

Now for observation:

Why do women circle like sharks at these sorts of times?  No shit, two opportunities for sad-ass in one night.  Tonight, I’m sure there will be a swarm around me the minute my sister and her friends manage to spread the news.  Or maybe it’s just a vibe I put off right now.  I have no idea.  Is there a sad-ass pheromone?  I move that there should be. 

I wonder why on Earth anyone would be wanting someone in a newly single state.  That’s just bad news.  Do you really have such compelling reasons to have someone imagining another girl while you’re naked?  What the hell is wrong with you?  Now, there’s also the fact that I have the above mentioned problem of just not giving a shit.  I mean, one second effort and we’re closing the deal.  But if I have to walk more than ten feet, I’m sorry, I’m not going after it.  But that won’t keep you from bothering me about it.

I mean, yeah.  The DJ is going to play Let’s Get It On, like they always do.  I’ll be drinking myself to distraction and wishing you were someone else.  But there you go. Groping on me and shit.  There ain’t much you’re going to get from me, hon.  Nothing, really, even if we do end up naked.  But you’ll try.  And I get the feeling we’ve both been through this before.

Now, this is not the worst immediately single situation I have ever found myself in.  No, that would be a few years ago.  And you know, I got the same sharks circling then.  But I was a real wreck that time.  I had people asking me if I was on chemo, I was so obviously fucked up.  It took me a couple bad decisions with some less than attractive women and a good fight with an angry boyfriend to figure out that anyone who found me that desirable in that condition was not my friend.  At some point in there I picked up mountain biking again and I quit making bad decisions with those kinds of women. 

 I had sort of forgot about all this shit. 

2/16

I think I got crumbs in my keyboard.  I’m not sure what exactly to do about that.  I know it means I should probably have been more careful with my cookie, but it may also mean that I have no ability to care for nice things in general.  At this point, I lean toward the latter. 

The thoughts I have right now easily drop into a pattern of neglect and overall being a fuck up on my part.  Self-hatred is an inviting trap, mostly because it removes culpability.  I can’t be held responsible for the state of things if I’m just naturally a fuckup.  Now, don’t be trying to jump in here with a bunch of fancy schmancy logic or reasoning.  This is a carefully maintained ruse I’m working on here. 

So, to maintain this delicate balance of illusion, I’m never paying bills again.  I also plan on using the last dwindling funds in my bank to run to Mexico.  There, I will be warm and live off of fruits and berries and hispaniolas.  I will live in Guadalupe building stupid trinkets and selling them to Stepford ass white women.  I will build a boat and run it up and down the gulf coast.  That is the kind of loser to be.  Of course, I could just quit being a bitch.

The sort of loser that spends all his money on a college education and working toward a better future is an alright loser in my mind.  I don’t want leisure, I’m not a fan of the fuit and nut diet, and I hate American tourists.  I guess that leaves sticking this out.  And that sucks.  I hate to have my options limited.

Of course, I could always go back to skanking around.  I did that last time I felt like this over someone.  I don’t remember, entirely, what the draw was.  I think it was just kicking back up on the horse after you get bucked off.  The odd thing was, the more obvious you made it you were a wreck and just needed some sad self-esteem ass, the luckier you got.  And the less you enjoyed it.  That’s lame.  Sad ass should be the best ass. 

I took a big pull of a bottle of cheap bourbon yesterday.  I burned like a motherfucker, and it made me remember why I ever went to whiskey.  It reminds you what real pain is.