WEEKLY WTF
10-14-24 Edition
The Bird
The Bird.
Do you know how long and at what excruciating effort it has taken me to gain approval to post a damn pic of our girl!? Alas, I have obtained one. Taken by her very own self by using a contraption with a device along with a thing-a-ma-bob in conjunction with a doo-dad and a whirly-gig, but nevertheless a pic she has taken herself. I’m not sure that I can convey what a big fucking deal that is, but it is.
It’s a big fucking deal.
Oh, and allow me to mention that I did her mascara. Never before have I ever imagined I’d have so much pride about such a thing. I am her go to mascara guy. Unless she reads this and decides to de-thrown me of my mascaral crown to lessen the increasing weight of my swelling Dad head.
Our beautiful, intense and fierce Bird with her RBF (Resting Boland Face) proudly displaying Dad’s amazeball mascara, but more significantly the almost healed incision through which they scooped aside her trachea and esophagus and whatever associated throat junk to bolt yet another plate to the inside of her spine. (I’m not even going to mention the plate on the back side with its 10 screws or the pacemaker scar). Oh the scars on our girl would make Frankenstein’s Monster whither in inadequacy. I used to think I had some cool scars. I’ve sadly been trumped by my own Daughter.
Anywho- I’m overdue for a Maisie Mae update.
A mere month ago I thought I’d never do another social media update or anything like that again. I thought, aside from Maisie’s care, I’d never do another anything again. But- unexpectedly and surprisingly I’ve found that folks actually give a shit and I seem to give a shit that they give a shit. Between the kind words online, the visits, the small kindnesses in the real world- the ridiculous outpouring of support as is evidenced by Maisie’s gofundme which some kind friends and my sister set up- turns out that people are a worthy substrate for consciousness after all.
Seriously, wtf.
With some difficulty but also resolve, I am reconciling an existence in which I really can’t fully dislike people anymore. Fuck- I mean, I really became comfortable as a curmudgeon but people, as it turns out, are fucking amazing. I mean that, I really, do. My leather heart has been tenderized by the hammer of kindness. I am currently re-weaving my paradigm. It’s very easy to be a sort of blasé “I hate people” kind of person. To sit on life’s shore and in a detached way just watch the social river of life go by not giving a shit. But oops, I stuck my damn toe in and the current of love has sucked me under. I am happy to swim and even to drown in such a compassionate waters.
It’s worth getting wet.
But let’s get back to the bird because that’s what this is supposed to be about.
As parents, when you’re with your kids all the time you don’t notice their growth. Grandparents do. Friends who live far away do. But we don’t because growth is so slow, so incremental.
So is healing. At least this kind of healing is- healing from a spinal cord injury. When the bird broke her wings she could not feel anything below her breast bone. She can now feel her entire body. To be clear she has no function in her fingers or her legs or her eliminatory functions. But she feels. That’s the difference from what’s called a complete (feels nothing and there is no function below the spinal injury) or an incomplete (some feeling and function below the spinal injury)
I have gratitude because it could always be worse. She could have bonked her head and ended up with brain damage. She could have been complete. She could have very easily been on a ventilator for life. It’s hard to even write this because I know some of you and yours have had this. I have heard from many whose kids did not survive. I write this with tears in my eyes to say that even in my heartache I know that it is nothing next to yours. We must all be grateful for the little bits of grace we’re given. And if your grace is to never know such heartache, I hope you can cherish it. Far too often we only appreciate what we have, until it has gone or been inexorably altered.
A particular conundrum of ours is that we find ourselves in limbo. You cannot mourn any loss just yet but you hesitate to hope for a particular future. That’s the reality of it. A Doctor here at the spinal rehab unit told us that our girl has a 50/50 chance of regaining strength. What strength and where is unknown and so it’s a moving target with which we aim our hopeful arrow. But ultimately for us, who love the bird, it’s not about targets or if’s and what’s, it’s about what she is going through right now and that is a thing I cannot write or convey because I can not possibly know. I can only know what she chooses to say and the way in which she chooses to say it. But it is infinitely more than I or anyone could adequately explain.
Her pragmatic mind is currently hoping for the best but planning for the worst. She is aiming for independence and to master whatever function does return. The emotions involved in navigating this very murky chasm of possibility are deep and sometimes difficult to behold.
What I can give is my viewpoint- in my own way. What you see here is a bad ass bitch. That doesn’t mean a person who is aloof and unfeeling, detached or uncaring. It’s a person who deeply feels and is suffering immensely. A person who has endured pain and nausea and despair in a way that we may never, but keeps going. I hope no one has to experience what she has… ever. She gets low, she gets distant. She shoos us out of the room so she can cry. She is pissed the fuck off. She mourns and she hopes. She is the most brave and remarkable person I have ever known. I have always known she is extraordinary but I wish it did not have to be illuminated in such an extreme & terrible way.
My Daughter, someone I thought I was supposed to teach, is schooling me in ways too dreadful to contemplate. I am in awe.
My Maisie update is this- she is feeling all the feels and yet doing all the hard things that need doing. Is there any 18 year old that could easily endure such a thwarting of life’s momentum? I know for a fact that there are other options. People say no. People say fuck it. People give up. I won’t pretend it hasn’t crossed her mind, of course it has. But she let it cross the barrier of what’s sequestered in her mental solitude through the demarcation of her mouth. She has said it aloud and as a result released it into the ether rather than letting it ferment. The strength it takes a person to verbally express such a feeling of weakness and yet act in direct opposition to it would make Sages weep and Angels cry. It makes me cry. True strength is definitive action while at your very weakest.
Sometimes a millimeter,
is a mile.
Sometimes your universe,
is a smile.
We don’t endure this,
for just a while.
It’s now our life,
not just some trial.
Familiarity died,
embrace the new.
Life is the lie,
that is now true.
It’s not always happy,
embrace the blue.
That’s all I’ve got,
now: Toodaloo.
Break
Is this what happens when a person breaks? Is there a pop or a twang? Is there a woosh and a bang? Is there a crack is there a quake? Is it happening to me for fucking fucks sake?
Perhaps it’s more of a sudden flick, as in the flick of a light switch which scatters surprised roaches towards the obscuring shadows.
Or imagine a wee mouse scurrying about on a dusty wooden floor illuminated by a single swinging lightbulb and suddenly *flick* the switch is thrown and it is plunged into darkness. Momentarily halted, a Pavlovian pause, triggering a pathological fear of the dark. But ultimately a light source is always sought by the seeking mouse.
Some human types board the ole’ bullet train and take the dark tracks through the valley of death towards whatever’s not next. A very permanent solution to a temporary problem.
Never shall I board that particular fucking conveyance- not by my own accord.
What happens though when you’re a happy mouse accustomed to the sanity and the measured order of daytime mousiness; fluffy bits and cheeses and such like, then suddenly- the fucking lights go out and you find yourself frozen in the dark? Well, naturally you exclaim “oh shit, oh cheesus” and then you attempt to seek the light.
And yeah, you look for the comfort of cheese. You’re a fucking mouse after all. Cheesus fucking Chri…
When chaos reveals himself as your indifferent overlord, you flee and seek the compassionate Mother of order to be smothered in her comforting and organized breast. To be rocked like a metronome and shushed by the hypnotic meter of a vast oceanic wave voice and told it’s all going to be a-o fucking kay. To be told there is meaning and that there is a plan discernible in life’s expanding experiential fractals.
So desperate is our need to force chaos through this sieve of order. So desperate for a soft measured stroke upon our hard troubled brow.
So desperate.
The first shadow perceived is the first shadow coveted by the pessimistic roach blinded by the unexpected light of truth.
The first glimmer of light seen by the optimistic mouse, previously frozen in the terror of darkness, becomes a most sought after salvation.
Thus do we seek sanctuary in the things most near- in accordance with our nature; In religion in depression, in spirituality in self pity, in activism in self harm, in compassion in vengeance. We are soft targets who by proximity alone become willing victims of the closest hungry shadow or blind zealots of the nearest convenient light, depending on whether one’s proclivity is more of a morose roach or hopeful mouse.
Roaches focus downward towards odiferous decaying things and burrow into the detritus of sorrow, content in the dark. Mice pause from cheese gathering to gaze upward wearily towards the bright and vast domain of the omnipotent divine Raptor.
In both extremes there is a kind of peace.
Which is why we must be oh so fucking careful if we do not want to be lulled. But I would not rob one of their small comforts, their sanctuary of narratives, nor the ordered illusion of sanity itself.
But what if you remain stalwart in yourself and you cannot find solace in either the darkness of misery or the temptation of non-existence? Nor can you buy into the meagerly reflected illumination of belief and hope as described by man with his myriad words laced with selfish poisons and spoiled by ill intent?
The tidal forces of chaos sometimes flood and they overcome the pristine sandy beach of illusion & order. And although the two forces are simply a yin pulling on a yang the pressure is too great and…
CRACK- you fucking break.
It’s not due to lack of trying that you shatter and fall apart. You demand of the light for it to coalesce and make of itself a beam or a bubble, a twinkle or a flash, or whatever the fuck- just come unto me in this darkness so that I may know that there’s more, that there’s light. That I am somehow special in my suffering- that it fucking means something. Lift the amnesiatic veil so that I may make all of this misery seem worth it.
And to the dark you whisper: “If you take me, then swallow me whole into the void so that there is nothing left of me that remembers the light.” The darkness yawns before you with its terrible rotten teeth but it seems to you that your misery is too great even for its eagerly consuming mouth. In truth though, the dark mouth of suffering cannot bear the astringent taste of your effulgent truth.
The stretch between the annihilating darkness and the comforting light is a gulf that measures far beyond any dualistic capabilities and…
Twang,
something snaps.
Revealing a truth.
A truth you inherently know. A truth so obvious but so unthinkable. Knowable but un-sayable. You don’t want to know,
but you do.
It’s that fucking contract. The one written before you were you. And though you wish with all your leather human heart that your beloved was healed and whole, that you could take their pain into yourself or even that you could just be content with boredom and doldrums and la-dee-da day to day shit…
You know.
And your knowing is an awful thing in the same way that the knowledge of inevitable death is a spark which sets aflame your temporary life. And though it mostly remains a subconscious sort or smoldering- you always smell its smoke.
You know a thing that somehow can never be spoken. It presents as a subtle background static, a type of primordial tinnitus that reminds you that all of this- is somehow contrived.
It’s like a veiled archetype unborn deep within the conscious womb- occasionally pushing upon your mind belly. It’s there in every lonely moment. Moments like this one- rocking back and forth sobbing in a trailer with the same warm neglected beer cradled within your folded arms, overwhelmed as the sequestered despair finally spews.
It also silently watches every small but monumental joy. Sideways smiles, a kind word, a hopeful thought, all the tender and beautiful things- but also things closer to its elusive self, subterranean things only half remembered. Things ethereally but woefully agreed upon prior to the quantum sea spitting the drop of you from its unknowable foam.
And you wonder how the fuck any iteration of you or even any version of pre- you could have agreed upon such a thing. For such things, it seems, must be mutually bargained upon. Do those close to you who also orbit within this terrible sphere remember too? Or are you alone in your knowing? Such a painful collaboration.
Such loneliness.
But nevertheless you know. And you hate that you know even though it brings a measure of peace and perspective.
This contract that can never be read by human eyes whispers its stipulations through your very molecules. In fact each atom seems an orchestrated antenna who broadcasts this unthinkable agreement upon the airwaves of fate even though you scream against its cruel transmissions.
But fate, you find, was a waveform decreed long ago. Decoded through the ancient cosmic radio into the vibratory sequences of an endless layered expansion born before time and whose frequency has become the characteristic static of your perceived freedoms.
A radiation that crystallizes into its very own meat antennae just to receive signals of itself.
A strange classroom of overhead wave projectors and particle chalk boards written in gluon chalk in which you are both the teacher and the taught.
But is it so? Any of it? ANY OF IT? One must ask of themself if they have accidentally become the optimistic mouse or the pessimistic roach darting to easy shadows or frantically racing towards the closest light. Our wrinkly pink meat antennae only picks up the smallest slice of the quantum signal- for our existential experiences depend upon an all pervasive amnesia amongst its many receivers.
Perhaps it’s enough that we ask. Perhaps in the asking there is an illumination occurring that is independent of actual light. A gray but revealing unified field in which we may find something behind both seeking and avoiding. The simple white light behind the strip of stuttering thought film that illuminates this strange and wonderful and terrible movie of our life.
Maybe it’s best to just let yourself fucking break.
To break and allow those deeper knowings to breathe themselves into the physical universe like a mist through the dreadful cracks in our broken paradigm. An acidic mist which dissolves our addiction to the illusion of linear and temporal order.
No matter the tragedy- behind it, is always a knowing. It is there. I swear it- it is there. It hides beneath all dualistic coping strategies. It is not easy to look at let alone navigate one’s way to. Mostly because we think distance and direction are involved. We think we must fit it into the framework of meaning and myth. It’s more a matter of position than proximity. Of stillness than motion. We find, if we stop paddling, stop explaining, lamenting or justifying, we find- we are already fucking there and somehow terribly- we already know. Too busy are we about the noise of life to hear the eternal silence behind our hearing. To know the knowing- behind the known.
The truth lies neither entirely behind, nor totally up front. Matter and consciousness, life & death, alpha & omega, love & hate, singularity and the plural must make of themselves an emulsification. That’s where life is lived. Only there. The great ineffable wakeful emptiness itself who only longs to experience somethingness, the envious Seraphim and innocent Cherubs, the unmanifest emerging souls still inundated by light- all gaze eagerly at our forsaken but holy ability- our ability to feel.
Our beautiful but terrible ability to feel, to feel it all.
TO FUCKING FEEL IT ALL.
In nightmares there is suffering only because the pulsating ocean of our dreaming consciousness creates a “me” as a reference point with which to experience something that we have forgotten is all actually just us interacting with ourselves. A reference point called “me”. A small temporary whirlpool who sucks apparent experience into itself. It’s all the same exact mind water but motion brings duality into apparent being. Sometimes our watery dreams becomes so terrible, we wake up. And upon awakening we no longer have anything or anyone outside of ourselves to blame for the suffering experienced within the dream world.
When this more persistent dream of physical life becomes a thing beyond what seems bearable, something similar occurs. It may not be a constant wakeful lucidity that’s attained but vast portals do yawn before you and you see through them and what is revealed is that you are just looking at yourself because what you thought of previously as yourself has been somewhat dissipated by damage. The line of demarcation between this and that has become wavy and distorted, murky and thin.
Madness and enlightenment may just be secret & unlikely bedfellows. An eternally arguing couple who every once in a while copulates- allowing a glimpse of an incalculable union. Dualistic spermatozoa enter into a singular egg. Thus experience is born, crying and wailing and shitting itself. Smiling and blubbering and reaching is the child of the absolute. Hello- I’m fucking talking about you here.
It’s not a thing communicable, this strange mash of suffering that distills into an elixir of love. it’s only a thing experienced, words don’t matter. A whirlpool whirling amongst whirlpools in a singular sea.
Though you are down in the deepest depths you look up and suddenly notice the surface illuminated by unimaginable light. But only in death does the fish get to leave the water and taste long forgotten air by unfurling its ethereal atrophied wings and expand its collapsed astral lungs once again. Though we swim with scales now- we may dimly remember our lost feathers somewhere deep behind memory and mind. But it’s very difficult for a fish to remember that it was always a bird.
I know, there are so many fucking words here, wtf.
Seriously wtf.
Meager attempts to make order out of chaos. To straighten the curved lines and untie the knots. A foolish attempt to turn art into some kind of math. To sink my mind teeth into a soup sandwich. But perhaps this is the strange purpose of ours. To write a script on the surface of life’s water. To define a great nothing by its little something’s. To stretch and fold, stretch and fold- like bread dough made of stardust kneaded by time and pressure to be baked in the oven of human experience to be consumed by the great and ineffable baker so it may taste of itself.
I’ve broken before and found extraordinary experiences on the other side of the breaking. I’ve been a cheerleader and proponent of breaking. You might say I’ve been a break dancer- but not like you’re thinking, not on a piece of cardboard. I’d split the crotch of my pants and slip a fucking disk. But A’breaking I have done. And so here I am again- time to walk the walk whilst my shattered bits of paradigm fall on the ground around me like tinkling glass.
My trail should be easy to follow but I don’t recommend doing it barefoot.
Snap crackle pop.
When Humpty Dumpty falls off the wall- he gets to put himself back together again however the fuck he wants. If a choice is not made then an egg shaped ego will reform by default, but it’s a shame to waste such a good breaking on such a lizard tale response. Only a broken Humpty knows the shell-less and naked freedom of the yolk of consciousness. The Dumpty part is what dumps, that’s what you are currently reading- a word dump. Be gentle in your perception of Humpty’s mending. Egg shells and continents can move both slowly and violently under the scrutiny of temporal pressures.
Should you ever take a fall off the wall of your own expectations- be sure to tell all the King’s horses and all the King’s men to fuck off. We put ourselves back together again.
We put OURSELVES back together again.
And again.
And again.
And again…
Scars
Scars
Like words
written on skin.
They speak of triumph
they whisper of sin.
Scars
Not ugly
even when old.
Make them kintsugi
fill them with gold.
Scars
Like cracks
in our meat shell.
They toughen our hide
we earn them in hell.
Scars
Like canyons
eroded by time.
Some fit a finger
some fit a dime.
Scars
Are lines
that show we’ve lived.
We got into scrapes
we got fucking shived.
Scars
We never
try to get cut.
We bonk our damn head
or fall on our butt.
Scars
Are happy
they mean we’re still here.
The danger has passed,
let go of your fear.
Scars
Like sails
let them unfurl.
Think you’re a bad ass?
Just look at my girl.
Scars
Are memories
written in meat.
They tell a story,
so fucking neat!
Scars
Like trails
things that you walk.
A scar tells the truth
more than your talk.
Scars
Display them
be fucking proud!
They sing from your skin
they sing fucking loud.
Scars
Are badges
earned when you live.
Some you have coming
some you must give.
Scars
Have meaning
they mean you are more.
You jumped from a plane
you danced on a floor.
Scars
Like bites
from a big shark.
Life has sharp teeth
life has a bark.
Scars
Expect them
but if none come.
You played it too safe
don’t be so dumb.
Scars
Good luck
beating this one.
If so you might die
be careful- have fun.
Scars
Don’t seek them
but duh- if you do:
You’ve missed the point
so don’t- toodaloo.
Dedicated to Miracle Maisie Mae
Toodaloo
