Tag: me

On Dying in Southern California

My great-uncle Lee spent his last few months in a well-run County hospital in the California high desert.

At least once a week we’d make the drive there to see him. The hospital was a few miles out of town, next door to a prison. Lee was in the quietest part of a quiet hospital, both inside and outside his room. Gardeners worked on the landscaping outside, but that’s all the activity I saw. The grounds were very well-kept.

After I talked to Lee, I’d go outside and wait for the others. Nothing ever happened at that place, so I have no idea how long I’d been there. It was just me, the constant desert wind, and some plants and flowers flopping gently around. I could hear the lines clanking on the flag pole. Periodically there would be an engine noise, or a gardener would go by with some machine or tool.

This week i’ve spent some time ill. Because my back and shoulder went out on me, I am in a different bed and bedroom than usual to get the big flat bed. It’s a quieter and darker end of the house, and the big window opens onto the back yard. The weather has been very warm. My neighborhood is quiet, and not much at all happens there. I found myself flat on my back, not wanting to move, and listening to the clink and clank of hanging plants, wind chimes at near dead stop, rustling leaves, and distant suburban background noises like lawnmowers and pool parties.

I felt as though Death Himself had arrived. Time to sit up, stand up, move into the other room, and hurt more. I know what happens if you get stuck in a slow, warm, quiet, breezy Southern California day full of manicured plants and long silences. YOU DIE, THAT’S WHAT.

a million little pizzas

A large-scale brain failure today caused me to believe that it was Thursday. Not much harm occurred, but I didn’t go in for my weekly in-person day at the office. I’m glad that I work with nice people who don’t scream at me for stuff like that.

I use cologne. I had two 99 cent start spray things of this stuff for a few years and then they ran out. I do not use very much cologne. The cologne was good, so I ordered an actual bottle of it. When I first bought it years ago, it was called “Prince Matchabelli New Musk for Men Under 30.” I was already over 30 but I cheated. They have since removed the bit about under 30. Vindication, cologne-wise.

This article and picture of Hillary with Scaife is something else: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/185608.php

Buy Ernest Hardy’s books. He’s a great writer, passionate and thoughtful. I don’t know who else is writing about music from a queer black perspective, but he’s sure good at it!

I probably won’t be there, but anyone who attends the last day of Dutton’s bookstore wake party please pour a little on the curb for me. It’s a big part of my L.A. life gone. LA Observed says it’s this Sunday at 5.

The Los Angeles Times has a new “Innovation” exec and he is broadcasting motivational gibberish from Planet Zinfandel. I had no idea that journalism was the new rock ‘n’ roll.

I have this thing where I need to whang on you with a tire iron.

There should be a word for this phenomenon, and perhaps there is.

I am making a complicated point, telling a joke, or relating a story that illustrates some new idea. It’s hard to get across, and after I make my point or tell my story, the other person doesn’t seem to get it. Finally, my conversational partner brightens up and fully comprehends the big idea. Then, he or she informs me happily of the complicated point or the reason for hilarity or the moral of the story, in a thoughtful but triumphant way. Clearly I hadn’t thought this quite through, but my story does lead to an interesting spot, had I only seen it!

It makes me want to kill people, with a shovel.

February is the adjectivest month

Influenza stalks Paradise this month. The health department has finally admitted that the flu status is “widespread,” and the emergency rooms are filling up with wheezing patients and the news crews that love them.

The worst of our influenza season falls in this half-Spring every year. The season see-saws between bright sunny butterfly-and-hummingbird days and windblown drizzle under grey. This has got to be harder on the butterflies but we hate it too. Be consistent! we yell and wave our tiny fists at whichever sky we’ve got that day.

Either I’m getting the influenza myself or it’s just postmodern anxiety. Exhaustion and dissociation are associated with both conditions, so the differential will be made with a thermometer before I go to bed.

Have you ever met a ghost of yourself? I met one today, and it’s been a few years. I saw myself as a very young child — like the one in the icon for this entry — playing on the floor in this house. The tile was different then, and because at close range each tile looked like a city block, I was driving a little Matchbox car along the street with my hand. No doubt there were vrooming noises. At one point in the journey the car encountered a furniture leg and whacked to a stop. Instead of going around, I just kept whacking the little toy car against the wood until some adult told me to knock it off.

And tonight I saw that kid in the dining room.

Maybe it’s the influenza.

GOOD MORNING.

I have no means to myself express how my brain feels right now, so I’m going to let my friend Karl-Heinz Stockhausen speak for me. With helicopters, a string quartet, and ululating.

And so to bed, at 5 am! Exit stage right pursued by bees.

zap.

Having electromyography (EMG) isn’t so much fun. First they zap various parts of you with electrical current, and then they stick needles in you and make you strain your muscles.

This was the second time I’ve had it so it wasn’t as bad, because I knew what to suspect and that it wasn’t going to kill me. But yecch.

Fortunately, it seems that the nerve conductivity in both of my arms is fine. And to be fair, the only time anyone HAS an EMG is when there’s something sufficiently nasty going on that you’re willing to have 45 minutes of discomfort.

The interesting part was listening to my muscle electricity as noise, rather like the static on a short wave radio. When I strained against pressure as instructed, I made VERY LOUD static.

Trim, bait, and burnt ends

I woke up at the shocking hour of 3 pm today, neatly missing Steve & Keri’s first visit to civilization in months. Damnit.

Also: 3 pm? What the hell?

I am now atoning for my sins by making a pot of delicious pea soup, with which I will feed my aging saintly mother.

I am going to try to work at the patio more this week, because I can and because getting out of the house seems like a BIG BONUS right now. See you there.