Confession time

Quite often I don't know what in the hell I am doing.

Now that I've got that off of my chest...

Holes

Those damn holes.  They keep getting bigger, deeper, and colder.  The holiday season makes the emptiness more profound.  I don't want to call anybody up and talk about it.  I just want it to go away.  It doesn't go away.  It just keeps getting bigger, deeper, and colder.

Maybe this is what getting older does to you.  It is inevitable to suffer loss and experience loneliness.  I see now that it isn't about having a "hole" in your life; rather, what do you do with the ones that you have.  Do you watch the edges crumble into the void all by yourself?  Do you throw those around you into your pit? Or do you build up barriers between you and your holes to stay out of them?  I say fill them full of water and go swimming, whatever the hell that means. 

I really don't know what you are supposed to do with those holes that never go away.  I'm talking about the holes or spaces left when people are taken away from you.  I know there are other types of holes, pits, and traps, but those are holes of a different nature.  Back to people, I guess I could imagine some kind of heavenly reunion and how great that would be, but then that would mean I was also dead.  I think I want to wait a good fifty years before that sort of thing happens.  So what do I do in the meantime?  

I need more good people around me.  That means opening myself to the world again.  Scary.  I didn't like the feeling when I opened myself up last time.  We remember pain too much, especially the last time we got hurt. I imagine at some point it gets better.  I'll work through this rough patch and find a way to make it better.  I need to improve at including other people into this process. 

Anyway, have a great Thanksgiving.  You Canadian have a great second Thanksgiving.

I am tired but what the hell

I remembered that I have a blog.  It's not that I am too busy to blog.  Well, I am busy enough at certain times and other times I suppose I'm just doing nothing at all.  There's no excuse for me not blogging.  I still love all my blog buddies.  Maybe it is just me feeling lonely on a cold November night, but I felt compelled to reach out to you all once again.  There's nothing cutting edge or thought provoking going on here, just showing a little pulse is all.  I hope all is well. Anyway, let's do this and see where it goes.

I started playing my guitar more.  I mean really playing it and trying to write songs again.  Hell, it's been years since that part of me was alive.  You'd think with all the events and trials I've been through that it would have inspired me.  I need to confess: I've been fairly dead creative wise.  I literally have felt that flame die in me.  It's taken the help of some young musicians to get me even near that horse again.  Damn, it sucks to have to admit that I'm an old man now.  Hell, it may not be that I'm old, but in comparison to these dudes, yeah, old.  At least the let me feel like their cool uncle.  

This interaction in helping these young musicians has helped fill in the void that I've had going on in my soul.  I've been beat down, feeling gutless and heart broken to the point where it was just easier to deny everything and embrace nothing.  Now I'm starting to feel less shitty that way.  My hiking also has a big part to play in that.

I want to try and write something good.  I can't say that what I did before was great, musically, but some of it was at least fun and rewarding.  A good deal of it makes me cringe now, but you have to figure that for every good song you write, there are about a dozen bad ones if you are lucky.  Oftentimes, you are so attached to a bad song because of what you went through to write it--you don't want to let it go.  It makes sense at the time.  Then you give that song to someone else to listen to and see them not get it.  Man, that is a bitch!  You equate the product with your person and your feelings.  I guess I didn't want to go through that process because of the strength of the emotions I've been burying these past years.

I have no ambitions anymore with regards to music, but I want to at least have it be back into my life to where I'm being creative again. I can impart my knowledge of the gear and some of what I learned about recording to these younger guys, and in return they help me feel somewhat relevant and useful.  

That'll do for now.

The Gambler Drops In

                                Proof that I am going to some kind of lesser glory. Anyway, you should see what I do with Watchtower magazines.

Nope, uh-uh, bag it!

I find this particularly funny. A certain slightly lower-than-normal functioning gentleman that I know always punctuates certain sentences in this fashion. Whenever he is telling about how he quit doing something or decided against something, he always ends by saying, "Nope, uh-uh, bag it". He also likes to place random "YEAH"s during your turn to talk. Whenever you go to ask him how he's doing, he always beats you to the punch by saying real loud "GOOD" or "FINE", so I never get past "How...". A couple of times after he cut me off this way I decided to change the question around in order to confuse him. It sorta went like this: 

Me: "How..." 
Dude who talks funny: "Fine!" 
Me: "How'd ya like to give me twenty bucks? 
Dude: "No!" 
Me: "You said you were fine with it." 
Dude: (smiling nervously): "No, I didn't say that." 
Me: "Oh, you must've been trying to read my mind again. What happened?" 
Dude: "You're trying to be funny." 
Me: "Yeah sorry, I just wanted to have fun with ya." 
Dude: "Yeah! (laughs) Okay." 
Me: "So, you're doing alright then?" 
Dude: "Yeah." 
Me: "But you're not gonna give me twenty bucks now?" 
Dude (gets a semi-serious look on his face): "No, uh-uh, bag it." 

I wish more people were fun like this.

Trepanation for Fingerman

(This post was started a few months ago after I drilled through a board and into my finger all the way to bone. I'm okay now, okay being a relative term. Anyway, I can't remember where I was going with it, so I am posting it somewhat finished, I think.)

My poor, evil middle finger.  It had a mind of its own.  I really had to watch out in public.  Heck, I even had to switch which hand I used to wipe my bottom, for fear of something taking the liberty to grab my attention.  Don't ask.

I think this all started early on in my life.  You see, my thumb and index finger saw all the action then.  My index finger got to point at things and pick my nose.  My thumb got to venture into my mouth, then when I got a little older, it helped me with my Fonzie impersonations. While the two end fingers knew their place on the hand, my middle finger became wildly jealous and started acting out.

My middle finger started getting in the way of things a bit too much as I grew older.  This was the beginning of the real trouble, or as I call them, the "Bird" years. My middle finger would tell the other fingers that when the master raised his arm to salute authority, or other dignitaries called "assholes, dickheads, and douche bags", that they should all take a bow.  Bow they did, all except my middle finger.  He thought it was hilarious.

It was after many years of getting in trouble from these bad habits of my middle finger that I came to the conclusion that it may have evil spirits trapped inside.  I researched this subject quite thoroughly and came to two solutions to my problem. First, I could try an exorcism. Second, I could try releasing the evil spirits through a ritual "trepanation", as performed by many ancient cultures.  I didn't trust being left alone with a priest, so I chose trepanation.

Trepanation is the ritual "opening up" of the skull to release trapped spirits inside the mind. This has seemed to work for some people, so I figured that it would work for me.  As far as working on my middle finger, I didn't know, but I was willing to take the risk.  One thing was for sure, I would have to deceive, lay a trap, for my middle finger because I knew it wouldn't cooperate on its own.

The perfect setup: I needed to drill some holes in a board. I blindfolded him with a work glove and put him in the line of fire.  Once the bit started boring into the plywood, I would slowly maneuver him into position.  I paid off his brothers by promising them a week's vacation from scratching stuff that smells and absolutely no probing duty for at least a month.  The plan went off without a hitch.

Blood dripped down my hand with a pulsating flow.  A black mist spewed out of the hole in my finger, and was sucked back into whatever hell it came from.  Sure, I felt pain, but I also felt a sense of relief.  I would no longer fear awkward social moments or ugly confrontations caused by my middle finger.  

And so it was, no more standing up, as it were, and I just laid back and took it in the ass.  My middle finger sits there staring off into a world of resignation, a seat next to the barred widows of the asylum.  This is what life is like without that middle finger, my little red imp that started it all.  I haven't much left in me in the way of "fuck off and die" anymore.  Their benevolent smiles hide one hell of a set of sharp teeth. Who are "they" anyway?  I know and I don't know, so don't ask me. I do know that I can't fight toe to toe and win.  I couldn't before when I had the guts to salute them right in front of their faces.  I killed off the one little thing that did stand up to conformity.  Why? Because I age and friends get farther away and fewer in number.  I need a break from the fight. It's a bit pointless to keep a good supply of piss and vinegar around these days, when there's little interest in fighting.

When all of us are queued up in perfect rows, running in perfect interlocking circles, listen closely to those hands holding the cash; that will be your only applause. I did a bad thing and laid down my middle finger.  I had a total bullshit overload this past year or so and just had to be silent for a while.  I may have rambled and I may have not made much sense here, but at least while I made the effort to finally publish this post, my middle finger was doing pushups and slowly getting back in the game.  

P.S. I say to "They": buzz off and feel slight discomfort!!!  HA! Well, I have to start off small or I'm likely to get a cramp.