062010

Do you know what it's like not to be able to walk anywhere? To have to get out a wheelchair if I want to go? I have secondary progressive MS, so mostly I feel my ability escaping from me daily. I am tired, I'm sick of having to accommodate the MS on a daily basis, I'm plastered. Life is tough when you feel your days escaping every minute you're alive. I hope I have someone to love. That's the only thing I care about.

--Facebook status update

*Poem*

Thorn in the Side

What happened to you?

Last I remember

we met for drinks and

I had not a clue

that you thought ill

of me. What happened

between that night,

when you were very

welcome to email

correspondence with

me, and today when I

email you and you act

as if I have no right

to reach out to you,

as if my overture were

completely unwelcome,

as if you would rather

not that I even exist?

Maybe you fell prey

to that former friend

Kate and began believing

her lies, maybe it's

just you never thought

of me as disabled and

the idea was too much

to bear, or maybe it's

what I've always thought:

you are godless

in the worst of ways,

and I was just one more

thorn in your side.

*China*

I met a woman once on an overnight train, and I can't remember her name. We hit it off; I woke up and there she was. She invited me back to her gift shop; we were in Changsha. The fact that this woman even owned a gift shop was remarkable. She was in her young 20s. After I'd seen her gift shop, and met her brother, also in his late teens/early 20s, we decided to go to a nearby guest house, where I found suitable accommodations. The parents of the two of them were nowhere to be found; I found they strongly disliked speaking of their parents. When I say this lady and I hit it off, I mean to say we spent every minute that I was in Changsha together. It was just romantic enough for me to enjoy.

I kissed her one night; that's what I remember. I kissed her and she was taken by surprise. I didn't mean anything by it; I was just doing what came naturally to me. When I went to leave in the next few days, I found my lady friend was extremely antagonistic to my continuing on my journey. "Did you mean it when you kissed me?" she asked. That was a thorny question. Did I mean it? To be sure, in the moment that I kissed her, I felt what I was doing was right. Did I mean I wanted to stay there with her? In my traveling mode, I couldn't imagine staying in one place more than a few days.

I've often thought of this lady over the past couple of decades. She meant for me to remember her. She sent me one letter with photos and a note. The note was unfortunately dense, and I couldn't see my way to translating it. The photos I still have, though. They make up for me the world as I knew it once, well-traveled and fancy free; one wrong choice I made, among many wrong choices, was to marry the woman I did. Where would I be now if I'd chosen to hang around the mainland? I can only hope my life would have turned out better; I am far too lonely for this to be the cosmos' plan for me.

*Quotations*

Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.

--Kahlil Gibran

The major contribution of Protestant thought to the knowledge of mankind is its massive proof that God is a bore.

--Henry Louis Mencken

Christianity has a built-in defense system: anything that questions a belief, no matter how logical the argument is, is the work of Satan by the very fact that it makes you question a belief. It's a very interesting defense mechanism and the only way to get by it--and believe me, I was raised Southern Baptist--is to take massive amounts of mushrooms, sit in a field, and just go, "Show me."

--Bill Hicks

Imagination allows us to escape the predictable. It enables us to reply to the common wisdom that we cannot soar by saying, "Just watch!"

--Bill Bradley

Most people think life sucks, and then you die. Not me. I beg to differ. I think life sucks, then you get cancer, then your dog dies, your wife leaves you, the cancer goes into remission, you get a new dog, you get remarried, you owe ten million dollars in medical bills but you work hard for thirty-five years and you pay it back and then--one day--you have a massive stroke, your whole right side is paralyzed, you have to limp along the streets and speak out of the left side of your mouth and drool but you go into rehabilitation and regain the power to walk and the power to talk and then--one day--you step off a curb at sixty-seventh Street, and BANG, you get hit by a city bus and then you die. Maybe.

--Dennis Leary

It could be that our faithlessness is a cowering cowardice born of our very smallness, a massive failure of imagination.

--Annie Dillard

Oppression involves a failure of the imagination: the failure to imagine the full humanity of other human beings.

--Margaret Atwood

Imagination has brought mankind through the dark ages to its present state of civilization. Imagination led Columbus to discover America. Imagination led Franklin to discover electricity. Imagination has given us the steam engine, the telephone, the talking-machine, and the automobile, for these things had to be dreamed of before they became realities. So I believe that dreams--daydreams, you know, with your eyes wide open and your brain machinery whizzing--are likely to lead to the betterment of the world. The imaginative child will become the imaginative man or woman most apt to invent, and therefore to foster, civilization.

--L Frank Baum

To see the world in a grain of sand and Heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.

--William Blake

I imagine therefore I belong and am free.

--Lawrence Durrel

*Music*

#%%&*! Smilers, Aimee Mann. This is exactly the record Aimee-Mann fans would love. It's got all the hallmarks which make Ms Mann's music comforting and in the groove. The instrumentation is rich, though I would say not any more rich than her old music. The writing is strong, as in the opener: "You've got a lot of money but you can't afford the freeway." This music is exactly what one would expect from Mann, and it remains to be seen: does it have the lasting power of her older work, such as Bachelor No. 2? The signs are good in the affirmative.

So Runs the World Away, Josh Ritter. This latest work from Ritter is especially unpredictable. While it sticks to its folk/country roots ("Folk Bloodbath" features stories and characters from folk/country's long history), this record nevertheless finds itself all over the map. It contains some material which will take me some time to absorb, but I'll be smiling the whole time.

Peace love and ATOM jazz