musician, writer, photographer, stroke survivor
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The Consistency of Emotional Tenses
It happens the same way every time.
I meet a new woman. The one-in-a-million type. I project all my hopes and dreams onto her. I see my future with her. I genuinely feel that I am able to commit myself to her love. That she is the last woman I am going to be with. I let myself love her. I tell my friends that “This time is different” and “I’ve never felt this way”.
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Thoughts on Therapy
(An exerpt from a conversation with a friend in France.)
The therapy thing is an interesting topic. I have many discussions about it with my American friends, but very few with my international friends. There is certainly a negative connotation to therapy. And in my experience, the folks who judge therapy as something for stupid, weak, uninformed people are often the ones who need it the most. (Clearly not talking about your past self here.)
Giving Up is Hard to Do
I give up.
I don’t want to help you anymore.
I don’t want to enable your disgusting habit of self-inflicted negativity and the ease of which you slide into it every time the circumstances lack perfection. You always seem to be waiting for the perfect circumstances: the perfect time, the perfect person, the perfect tone. The imperfections in the circumstances are what reveal perfection in us. The ability to adapt is this perfection. It’s inside of each of us and is revealed only through self-inquisition, self-reflection, and true revelation. Give me any situation and I will succeed. I don’t necessarily know what I’m going to do when I get there, but I know that when I get there, I’ll know what to do.
End of Year Wrap-Up
End of Year, Section 1: My 2012 Musical Wrap-Up
1. On October 29, 2011, I began listening to my iTunes library in alphabetical order by song title. On September 24, 2012 (that’s 332 days later), I finished. In the process, I rated each song and created a four-star and a five-star playlist of the corresponding ranked songs. I also deleted every album that contained more one- and two-star songs than three-, four-, or five-star songs. I rediscovered delightful pieces that slipped through the cracks months and years ago, discovered pieces I had procured but never listened to, and found other pieces that once affected me quite profoundly have since left me uninspired. Limiting myself to this task was a lesson in patience as well as observation. In the end, I pared down my iTunes to a hefty group of wonderful pieces of music that keep me company in my time at home and while on the move. I highly recommend setting something like this up for yourself to see what unfolds. (You’ll never believe how many songs begin with a form of the word you.)
Happy to Add “Stroke Survivor” to My Resumé
(This is an informational entry.)
On Tuesday, September 11, 2012, at 1:46pm, I suffered a stroke. I was rushed to the hospital and admitted a few hours later. But the doctors struggled to find the cause. Then on Wednesday, September 12, at around 3:00pm, I suffered another stroke. The doctors ran another barrage of MRIs, CT Scans, and ultrasounds and ultimately found a small tear in the vertebral artery wall on the right side of my brain. As the body does, it went into healing mode and a clot formed on the tear. That clot ultimately blocked the artery and caused the two strokes. Once they found this, the doctors quickly put me on proper medication to prevent further damage from taking place.
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The Color of Dream
Remnants of the blood red sun gave birth to an orange sky that lay quietly beyond the windshield. I twisted in my seat and fed the belt buckle into the clasp by my left hip. I looked directly at the driver’s face trying to determine who was in control, but the sun’s gaze skewed my view and kept her definable features hidden. Sensing another presence in the car, I inquisitively turned my head to the back seat. My eyes fed the image directly into my heart and it burst open with a joy unprecedented. In a small car seat she sat quietly, innocently looking into my eyes. My body convulsed as if thrown into an icy pool. My eyes cracked like an overstuffed dam. My heart was overflowing. I felt no fear. I felt no loneliness. The sun became a backdrop to this tiny ray of light. She was my daughter. My creation. My intention. I was in love with her. Nothing else mattered.
I immediately woke in the same state of emotion: tears soaking my pillow, chest heaving, heart speeding. The dream was real. It couldn’t have been a dream. My body felt its weight. My heart had never been so full. I clumsily slid open the drawer of my nightstand, uncapped the obedient pen, and wrote as many already fading details as my sluggish brain could recall. As I caught my breath, I felt my cheeks swell. My teeth revealed the impact of seeing my unborn and unconceived daughter only a few inches from the ends of my eyelashes. I had never been in love until that moment. And it was years until I fell again.
No Needles for Me, Please
I hate needles. They’re gross. I avoid them if at all possible. I don’t even donate blood. (I know, I know, I’m a bad citizen. Shoot me. But don’t poke me.)
But when it came to arthroscopic knee surgery, I couldn’t avoid the pointy little buggers. So after I slipped into my stylish johnny and hopped under the covers of my equally stylish and comfortable gurney at the Surgery Center of the Pacific, my nurse Ashley began “hooking up” the IV. Which, for those of you who don’t know, is a frickin needle.
The Pencil Request
First day of algebra class and I forget a pencil. Awesome.
Gotta ask someone sitting near me. Too bad the only person in earshot is the starting point guard for the varsity basketball team. And I’m definitely NOT the starting small forward. Or even a bench player. I’m just some 14-year-old kid who doesn’t have a pencil.
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