Blah blah blog

I'm back...

2011-11-09T16:44:00.000-08:00

It's been a long time, and much has changed. I'll post something soon- just saying hello again, my friend.

Love,
Me

And it became two.

2009-10-06T18:57:00.001-07:00

The kindest people I've ever met
never had a dollar to spend
cause they spent it all on things like rent
and keeping their hungry mouths fed.

Lovin' their kids and their folks
and their pets and barely gettin' by.
But somehow the will of love
always provided the will to survive.

Twas rememberin' the days when I was in school
and chalkboards were still around.
we saluted the flag every mornin'
and didn't worry about the chemicals
on the playground

we were rich then, even though we were poor
we were happy because we didn't know.
or maybe we really did know
what mattered, that is.
Maybe it was easier to be happy back then
because we were just happy
to have a friend
my how the tables have turned
now we're too busy gettin' ahead.

I ask myself if I should have had my son.
wonderin' if the world will only break his heart.
askin' people to put down their guns
and open up their hearts
and their minds
and what little souls
they have left.

It's not too late you know.
If you dare to fight the good fight.
It's not too late you know
To make things right.

_________________________________

Twas thinkin'

2009-10-06T17:38:00.000-07:00

9.8%

I was thinkin' today
while lookin' out the window of a bus
headed to a job interview
for a job I pro'ly won't get
cause no one is hiring
and I have nothin' to bribe them with
other than the sad look in my eyes.

Maybe I should bring a recording
of my children's cries next time
and play that quietly in the background
as I talk about my ten years
of experience.

Nah, they'd only be drowned out
by the sorrows and the woes
of the woman who came before me,
and the man sittin' in the hall waitin' his turn.
And his sister and her husband
all lookin for jobs,
and their neighbors
who lost their house,
and their neighbor's neighbors who's brother
came home from a war

that dug a hole
in this country's heart
so deep that every
single
person
still
bleeds.

And how we all meet in line
at the wellfare office
and how even the playin' fields are now
cause we're all broken.
Some wait for food 'assistance'
because they can't afford the
payments on the houses
they couldn't afford to buy.
And some are waiting for food 'stamps'
cause they don't give a shit
what you call it,
they're hungry.

This is not the America we saluted in school.
This is not the country who's birthday
we celebrated with sparkling fireworks,
followed with the oohs and ahhs and the
sheer joy from believing there was a place
on this earth so beautiful that it deserved
to be loved this much.

And that that place was ours.

But this isn't our America anymore.
And one question kills me every morning as I
send my boy off to preschool
and ever night as I tuck him into bed.

What will his America be?

Finally some good news to share

2009-08-18T01:00:00.000-07:00

Dad has regained most of his ability to talk. He's even cracking jokes and talking about finances and whatnot. There are not words to express what this means to our family. Thank you for all your prayers and well wishes. If you believe enough in something, it can happen. I know this doesn't change the condition of his health, but at least we will be able to have our last great conversations while he is still here with us.

Massive Rant

2009-08-16T01:45:00.000-07:00

There's this place that your mind goes that is yours and only yours. Barricaded by concrete and impenetrable by any outsiders. I can only compare it to true nothingness. To a silence and stillness so vast that there are no echos. Numbness, in a way that isn't numb, because to be numb you would have to know what it is to feel, and behind these walls there are no senses. Nothing to compare to and nothing to want or need. Just to be. This is the place my mind goes when I wonder out of the hospital doors. Trying to digest the big picture. Trying to learn the lesson and find that ever winding path that's supposed to lead to somewhere better than here. Anywhere is better than here. Or is it? Maybe here is the best place to be for me, for now. Maybe this is exactly where I am supposed to be. But by believing that I am believing in a certain destiny, even a God maybe. And how the hell is that going to help me. By tomorrow maybe I'll throw my hands up in the air and say "let it happen, let it go!". Throw out the road map, the self help books, and flush the medicine cabinet. Give in to the impulses, indulge in the senses, become a hedonist lover of all things that simply 'are'. Because that is simply how life is. We live, and we die. But it isn't so simple is it? NO! Because in the midst of that simplicity is all this love and suffering. Because we as humans NEED things, lots of things. Jobs, healthcare, mortgage loans, medicine, doctors, daycares, fresh produce, traffic signals, iphones, blah blah blah fucking blah. None of it does you any good. Really. While your busy achieving all of these things, the people you love most are dieing, and your time is wasted not learning from them. Not talking to them and hold their hands and kissing their cheeks, not hugging and laughing, not LISTENING. I can't take it anymore! To hell with it all.

I have seen the end on the horizon since the beginning.

2009-08-15T00:00:00.000-07:00

Last year, after my Father's diagnosis w/ pulmonary hypertension, I knew it would not be long. I can remember saying to myself, that it felt like it was going to be Dad's last birthday last year. His 68th birthday is drawing near, just around the bend on September 6th. 68 is too young to die, but so many have tragically gone before their time,and my father has never let me to believe that I could be selfish enough to be ungrateful for the time I have had with him. If you read this and detect a tone of melancholy, you are right. I am saddened and my heart is breaking. No matter how old or how young a person maybe when they die, the ones left to grieve will do just that. Sometimes we are wise enough to rejoice in the same breath.

We received the news today from the doctors that his time is truly coming to an end. His heart is failing him, and there is nothing left to be done but make him comfortable. It could be this minute, tomorrow, or next year... but one thing is sure, it is trying to give up. And my father, with all his might is saying "No!" But sometimes the will to live outweighs the body's will to let go, and I am doing my best to prepare myself for this. What saddens me most, is that I did not take notes. That when he gave me advice as a youth, I turned a cheek out of arrogance. When he bestowed his wisdom to me as a parent, I quieted myself out of pride, and here now he can do no more than mumble my name and hold my hand. Here now, I trim his nails and brush his hair, and tell him about the beautiful tomatoes his grandson has grown in the garden as he looks off into the distance, seemingly gazing at the horizon of his life. I wish so much I knew what thoughts ran through his mind. His years in the Navy, his life by my mother's side, the sweet memories of his grandchildren and the sadness of leaving us all behind. A man with so many stories to tell. The epic novel of his life draws to an end so quietly, and is yet just a sorrowful chapter of my own tale. I hope he knows that all the greatness in me exists because of his love.

Dimensia...

2009-08-12T01:04:00.000-07:00

Is it the cost you pay for bringing one back from death's door? To spend an hour with a man you have known your whole life, only to catch glimpses of the amazing person you know him to be.

It is as if he were a flower, which withers from the inside out. Whose colour fades and petals change to leaves. Now unrecognizable, but for that lingering aroma. And through my memory, he is vibrant again. In those glimpses when his eyes glimmer with joy and that twinkle of charm permeates. My father. How I love him. How I pray he will bloom again for me once more.

The surreal places our minds go....

2009-08-11T15:59:00.000-07:00

Dad is awake again, and now physically safe and out of harms way. He is breathing on his own and able to talk again. For this, we are blessed and thankful, (I've realized in my old age, that you don not have to be Christian to feel blessed or be thankful). Now we face a new obstacle. Dad has suffered brain damage from being without oxygen, thanks to that second trip to the ER. This time, it is extremely noticeable. There are huge gaps in his memory. The most heartbreaking being, that he had to be told again of my sister's death, which happened in 1979. When reminded he seems to know what we are talking about. He recognized my brother, but called him John, when his name is Riley. He could not remember that Riley had a little boy and girl on the way. At times he believed he was still inthe Navy and spoke of his adventures as if they had happened this morning. It is so difficult to hear, but at the same time so interesting. In a way, this dementia has allowed us to hear his tales first hand and fresh. Full of the same excitement he felt as they occurred some forty years ago.

The most interesting observations have been that he has a southern accent. Raised in Florida the first twenty years of his life, but has spent a better part of the last forty seven years as a northerner, although he would strongly disagree. His stomach has always been Southern. Point being, he has not had an accent my entire life. So to hear him speak to me with a faint twang is unbelievable.

I will right more when I have time. Thanks for all of your kind words and support.

Floating thoughts adrift in sea of waiting.....

2009-08-02T21:47:00.000-07:00

Today, they removed the breathing tube from my father, and the woke him up. Again. After an epic fail by the ICU doctors @ Steven's Hospital. You see, he was admitted on th 18th of July for mysterious causes... high BP and insane blood sugar levels (720). He was then intubated and put into a medical coma while they treated him for sepsis. By wednesday the , he was awake and breathing on his own. Shortly followed by eating solid foods again and holding semi-normal conversations.

What you don't know is that my father is a brilliant man. A former intelligence officer for the US Navy. A former employee @ the pentagon. A man that has survived wealth and poverty... love and loss. He has been sick for 15 years this August, and it is now that I see him slipping. It is now, that I see his mind searching for words. I see the frustration in his eyes.... and there's this knowing that we have. That I can look at him and say "It's okay Daddy I know". He was trying to tell me about a nurse there who's Grandfather survived the battle of Midway, and he was soooo excited to tell me, (my dad has two obsessions, Zulu and the battle of Midway). But when he went to tell me, the words escaped him. Like butterflies flying out of his ears, they just slipped away. Words he had so eloquently spoken so many times.

But I looked at him, and said "Midway Daddy, was it Midway?"

"Yes, Midway. That was it." and he smiles, part because I share his excitment and part because I enable him to still be the hero, the genius behind the curtain of a failing body. I said something today that stuck with me. One of my 'tweets'. I said that I hate growing up. I hate seeing the people I love grow weak, just as I get wise enough to truly love them. Like this strange exchange of power as they fade...

My father....

They discharged him too early to an establishment that was unprepared to take care of him and within a couple of hours he was intubated again and under sedation. That was Monday July 27th.We are considering a lawsuit. We request he be transferred to another hospital.

Today August 2, 2009- my mother called from the ICU @ University of Washington Medical Center and held the phone up to my father's ear. I handed the phone to my son Jake, who recently turned 4, and told him, "It's Captain Stripes, but he's still sick and can't talk. He can hear you though so you go ahead and say whatever you want to". Jake paused for a minute and began to speak, "Hey Captain Stripes*, when are you going to come home? I miss you. I love you grandpa....bye."

Tears welled up in my eyes and I pulled the phone back to my own ear and spoke over choked back tears, "Hi Daddy, we miss you. Jake can' t wait to see you. He wakes up every morning like it's Christmas and says 'Maybe Captain Stripes is home today', and runs out looking for you. I love you daddy."

I could hear him sniffling on the line as my mother got back on and said, "He heard you, and he knows it's you. He heard Jake too. He is very emotional right now, I know he can't say it but he loves you both very much. There are tears rolling down his cheeks.

*Captain Stripes is a nickname Jake gave to my Dad. Retired naval Captain who lives in his striped PJ's. Jake is his Lueitenent and together they battle pirates and their arch nemesis Captain Dots. (I am adapting a children's series based on their adventures).

Dear John,

2009-06-27T02:09:00.001-07:00

Dear John,

It may be slightly insane that I am writing you about this, but sometimes you don't know what else to do. There is so much angst and energy that I feel the walls beginning to crumble in around me. You see John, my father is dieing, and with it I am losing my sanity. So much to the extent that I am writing you. Mostly knowing you won't ever read this letter and in some small way I can go crazy and have no one to bear witness to it but my silent friend. It's the same concept as crying in the shower with no one to see, except in some small way there is the possibility that you hear me. Or someone does. There is this infestation of emotion happening, and although I feel that I am weakend by it all, I know it as fact that I am only growing stronger. I live at home with my dad, and take care of him everyday, and for every day I am thankful.

I am and always have been the strong one in regards to my father's health. In truth, strength has nothing to do with it, but I am the dedicated daughter. Sometimes I wonder if that is my personal weakness. If staying and taking care of him is actually a type of codependency. If it is, then I am glad, because every day I am with him my son gets to love him a little bit more. I get to witness a grown man become a child before my eyes, and see life in it's entirety as they interact.

I don't know what I want honestly, or why I had to write it down. Maybe I just want to have my moment. I will mostly likely be the one with him when he goes, and inside I am freaking the fuck out. We've been dangerously close these passed few months to where I have had to ressuccitate him. I have gotten a taste of that grief, blanketed in fear. Inside I am hoping for someone to be there for me when he goes. I keep dating and dating, hoping to find someone in time to hold me when he dies. But no one can do it. No one can jut wrap their arms around me and make everything okay, not like my dad. It's a tumultuous time in my life right now. It feels like a painful rebirth. Like I am laboring and fighting waves of debilitating contractions, knowing it must happen, knowing it will hurt, and knowing that it is, in and of itself, beautiful. And when he dies, I will start to push and scream with all of my might to get through it. And maybe.... in this rebirth of mine I will become more cognisant of this life. Maybe I will finally be awake to what it is to live.

my father

2009-06-27T01:01:00.000-07:00

Everyday I think about the day he will die. I have done so since I was 12 years old. Since the day he collapsed on the lazy sidewalks of downtown Bozeman, MT shortly after our lunch together.

His story starts with a botched heart surgery. Although the surgery was needed thanks to years of cigarettes, scotch, and red meats.... it was still botched. During a routine triple bipass the surgeaon discovered my father was in need of a valve replacement. His body was not able to sustain being on ice so long and he went into cardiac arrest. As a result, his diaphram was paralyzed and he slipped into a coma. He was on life support for three months following that, and the doctors never believed he would pull through. I never believed he would die. He lay hooked up to machines that beathed for him and kept his heart beating, his beard was long and bushy and his hair grew passed his ears. I remember telling the nurse that the man in that bed was not my father, my father was a retired Naval Captain,and he was always clean cut and handsome. So, at the age of twelve I marched into my father's room in the ICU and trimmed his beard and hair. I put on his favourite aftershave and kissed him on his cheek. I knew that day that he wasn't leaving me yet.

He awoke from the coma, and within a few weeks was able to speak again. I remember the day he called. I had been fighting with my 14 year old brother, running around screaming as all teenagers do. When Riley yelled out "Dad's on the phone". I thought it was a cruel joke and that when I picked up the reciever my brothers friend Travis would be on the other line laughing away at my hope. But when i said hello.... my daddy said, in a hoarse and long rested voice "Hello baby." I sat on the floor and wept.

A few months later he came home from the hospital. He was a thin man, and weak. Still on a ventilator with a tracheaotomy. Still not in the clear, but home. My father had been the bread winner in our family,and when he suddenly fell ill, my mother had to work. She only had a highschool education and took a job at the then Bon Marche selling cosmetics. Somehow, she supported a family of four. I still to this day am baffled by how strong she is. My job was to take care of dad. Mom worked a lot and my brother was off rebeling. So I stayed home, cooked and cleaned. I bathed him and gave him shots, cleared his trache and regulated his medications. We did our breathing exercises, and spent our days getting to know eachother. for this I am grateful. It occured to me a few years ago, that if my father had never grown ill, I would not be able to say he is my bestfriend.

I caught him smoking about six months after he came home from the hospital, and I cursed him. I took a cigarette out of his pack and lit it up and said "every time you smoke, I smoke. Go ahead and kill us both". That worked for a while, but eventually we smoked together. But this is when we had our greatest conversations. This is when he told me stories about how he met my mother, and what it was like growing up in the 40's and 50's in Florida. About being an eagle Scout and canoeing the Everglades. About enlisting in the Navy and the Tonkin Gulf. About how he met my mother, and how he knew from the second he saw her in her green mohair coat, that she was it for him. He told me stories that his parents told him, and thier parents told them.He told me stories that not even my mother ever knew about. And he told me about my sister, whom I never knew. She passed at the age of ten in 1979. He told me of the funeral, and the emotions. He told me of the love that was there in the community and how amazing my mother was. He told me that my oldest brother Jimmy sat down with them and helped them plan another pregancy. They as a family decided that the only way to honour Justin Anne, was to bring joy and new life into the family again. So Riley was born in 1980, and I was born in 1982 to keep him company. He helped me to understand that loss in and of itself is life, and that if you are loving and wise enough you will see it's beauty.

(to be continued) (and organized eventually)

The edge.

2009-06-23T14:51:00.000-07:00

The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.- Hunter S. Thompson

I wish I could go over the edge, just to taste flight. Too many crowd around the middle where its safe. Trapped in the confines of a prison they have created with the limitations they have chosen to accept. I wish I could do more than simply stand at the edge and take in the view.

Aldous Huxley once said that we are a society of islands. No matter how hard we try to empathize, we will never truly understand another person. We can not crawl inside their mind and be them. We will never know another persons pain, joy, or contempt. No two people think, feel, taste or see the same way.

And with that, you will never even be sure of what shade of blue the sky is through my eyes. You just assume it is the same as yours. And I can not tell you differently. There are not enough words to truly show you. We spend our lives trying to share in our experiences. Watching movies that make us cry and laugh, reading books that make us think, talking to people that make us feel not so alone.

Writing is my only consolation to the constant thinking.

Oh Fibonacci orgasm

2009-06-23T14:50:00.001-07:00

Anything aesthetically pleasing is a weakness for me. Art is everywhere. I'm currently completely blown away by the Fibonacci sequence as it naturally occurs, and also with how it's been used in famous works of art. Simply amazing. I'll post some links below that I find interesting and you can check them out if you like. Just random things/concepts that are beautiful to me.

The Fibonacci Series/ Golden Mean (watch the videos).

http://mbhopkins.com/paintings/Yanyuwa.htm

http://joshuagough.blogspot.com/2007/06/da-vinci-code-reloaded-fibonacci.html

http://library.thinkquest.org/27890/goldenRatio3.html

A King Begonia Leaf-

http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/showimage/125283/

A NASA Chart (you can zoom in by click the image)

http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/2706/spaceb.jpg

Life in general.- philisophical, sleep deprived, short, and sweet rant.

2009-06-23T14:49:00.001-07:00

Friday, June 5, 2009 at 12:27am

Destiny. Fate. Choice. Life. Death. Happiness. Loneliness. Love. Desire. Agony. Pain. Enlightenment.

What makes life tolerable is that it has a beginning and an end. And from that same concept derives all of our anxieties.

If we are luck enough to become observers of the world we live in,
and not just players in this mad game,
if we are humble enough to stop demanding answers,
but instead be taken aback by random beauty.
we might catch a glimpse of what we search for
and if you (yes you) step far enough away from your life to see it,
you may stand a chance at actually living it.

Last kiss

2009-06-23T12:20:00.000-07:00

For my first love.

It was not good enough for me
or sweet enough
or long enough

I can't remember
I can't
remember

This is not how a love
that burned so fierce
and bright
should die.

The last good bye
should come with a warning
so you can hold on tighter
and embrace longer.

So you could take
the time to
imprint
that moment

the sounds
the smells
the tastes
imprint that forever
on my mind

forever on my mind.

If I had known
If I had known
If I had known

I would have kissed you
differently.

I would have given you a kiss
that held in it's soft lingering

everything that is in my heart.

A plea to my soldier

2009-06-23T11:50:00.000-07:00

I see your fury.
this red veil of pain.
I can not help you find a cure,
for this honorable plague.
the damnation from your sweet cherry lips,
words lash out from the gaping
jaws of a broken faith.
you strike in frustration, in fear.
hoping that will be enough
to push me away
hoping I will see you waving your white flag.

thought the desert sands have rendered you a quiet man
I remain by your side, and if it comes to be
that you doubt my love, look into my eyes and try to see
the depth of my devotion
rest your head upon my chest and
listen for that steady rhythm of compassion
and let it comfort you.
let the lowly beat of my heart break our silence.
and in these few, quiet moments,
may you find some peace.
for nothing, my darling
would bring me more joy.

A lover's gaze

2009-06-23T11:43:00.000-07:00

His eyes, like the ocean

But only in their depth.

And in their soft reflection

she sees remnants of herself.

Deep shades of courage ripple in the

breezes of his soul.

She would not believe
his sweet words,if not for those eyes.
looking at her. searching for a flaw,
his brow furrows with intensity,
and quickly softens with adoration

having not found any,

though she has many.

to remember my father

2009-06-23T11:14:00.000-07:00

To remember my father

The sweet and knowing scent of the 4711 aftershave and stale cigarettes,
with a hint of the the business section of the NYT, which smells
just a little more desperate than the rest of it.

What if I forget the way you smell...
will you transcend the universe and remind me?

She Listens

2009-06-23T11:11:00.000-07:00

She sits alone

A cigarette in one hand
poised between her fingers,
slowly dancing to her benevolent lips.
Her ears burn for soft spoken words.
Voices, upon voices, upon voices
Clamoring together, a chorus of the human condition.

Forks clank clank,
Plates rattle.
Laughter, whispers, chatter.
Somewhere in the background
Bob Dylan pays homage to Woody
And her blue eyes well up in waves,
like a tide slowly coming in.

Testing

2009-06-22T22:41:00.001-07:00

Let's see how this shit works.