Now I'm All Serious

Humans need to have some work done on their stupefying human brains.

Here in Brunswick, Maine, we are out of oil, with perhaps a thimbleful remaining.

Anyhow, I've just adjusted the thermostat upwards by 20% to 60°, so that my wife and children don’t feel like they’re hostages on an involuntary sojourn to a distinctly frostful hinterland. It’ll definitely drain what remains in our tank, which had been relatively plentiful prior to a polar yestereve. But, consequences be damned, say I, when it comes to my family knowing at least a semblance of comfort in their shared slumber. I’m staying awake in preparation of the emergency-refill call that I know that I’ll have to place sooner than later, even though I’ve no means of paying for a delivery (due to a succession of foibles that is keeping the money that I’ve earned at arm’s length). People say that compensation is forthcoming, and I hope that it is.

Granted, the party (where’s the party?) line is that a person should lie in the bed that they made, which is perfectly aligned with the puritanical and punitive notions that founded this intermittently great land. “Serve the heavens with your deprivation.”

This is all well and good, but why do we live in a country that appears to be allergic to alternatives, even as it is ruled by profiteering? It is actually, legitimately preposterous. To fill our oil tank would cost—and this is no joke—$974.00! Without the $50 in fees that we’d be obliged to pay. Per month, at this rate. How on earth can a person afford that in addition to everything else? There is assistance available, but Governor Paul LePage has decided to cut the amount by 70% so that he can provide tax cuts for wealthy people. He says that this spurs job creation, but it does no such thing. What is does do is let people be cold. We won’t freeze to death (I am, as I've stated before, famously exothermic), but there are heaps of impoverished people in the middle of nowhere. Many of them are ancient and proud, and what will become of them in all of this? What will happen? We’ll have a sudden onslaught of AARPsicles, that’s what.

Research into alternative heating has proven to be a fruitless enterprise; a summer visit from a Solar-Power consultant confirmed that a switch away from oil is, more or less, cost-prohibitive ($20,000) for people like us; we could finance it, and there are (rather piddly) tax credits, but they don’t outweigh a bleak employment and income scenario, and they won’t defray initial costs to any appreciable extent. So, in this very nasty meanwhile, we have to continue to “shell” out for heat, which mandates that we’ll accrue no savings.

And this is how the Great, Big “Them” works. I don’t think that it was ever really possible for me to appreciate before this cardboard-salad sector of my life, just what a joke the notion of class mobility is for most people. I would not be writing this post had I not been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis during my final semester of graduate school, only to be shunned on multiple occasions by Social Security and others like them when I sought assistance regarding my disabilities.

It happens to people all the time—gradually, momentum is lost, and you’re suddenly embalmed in the formaldehyde of class rigidity. It’s assumed that you have nothing to contribute, or that you’re cognitively incapable, or that you’re unable to manage adult life. The people that think thus, and strive to impress that upon you so that your limitations are bandied about constantly, don’t see the OTHER, more pernicious, set of limitations—borne of the fact that this culture is fueled by judgment and hierarchy, and that that's the default that every one of us is beholden to examining. 

With a chronic and (supposedly) terminal disease like MS, it’s so often the case that nobody believes in any chance of your improvement, but they’ll placate you when you talk about it by refraining from yawning when you speak. But then, when you are experiencing wellness, expectations of you are frightfully unrealistic, like your health is a bank account that you MUST empty whenever possible—usually by way of exposing yourself to the same stress-filled nonsense that begot this whole cycle in the first place.

And now, there are my wonderful, wonderful children and my stunningly excellent wife, who is my best-ever friend. They’re so, so important to me. And, truly, the love that we have for each other serves as a barometer for a life that is lived harmoniously with my self. That is precisely why all of this tedium has got to, and (I hereby declare) is going to, STOP.

No Fun Intended

The vicissitudes of January in Maine bother the heck out of me. I will admit, however reluctantly, that I am grateful to be living on this frigid overcast unday, but just because my vocally espousing the alternative (i.e., not living) would abnegate all of the specific goodnesses, general greatness and so forth of this milieu, but today is like a hackneyed quip at which there is a perceived obligation to respond pleasantly, even though such denial is incrementally lethal.

This post was going to comprise bits that I'd begun but was too exhausted to complete, but no.

Instead, I'll talk about something else, in the hopes that it will improve my altogether-turdly disposition.

Ready? I bet you are.

I'm gonna write a book. (You don't have to read it or anything.)

"What kind of book?" is a rhetorical question that I refuse answer until the sentence that follows this sentence.

It'll be an encyclopædia that contains "facts" and "opinions" (including theories).

The subject? Popular music, because current studies indicate that popularity is sexier than intercourse itself.

Aaaannnd…because a claim of objectivity, like a clumsy generalization, is itself a recipe for betrayal on its own terms (never trust anything that identifies itself as "true" or "accurate," because I could broadcast the "fact" that I would bite myself if I were a dog, and the audience would have NO BASIS for dissension), there can be a caveat in the book's opening pages about the urgent importance of metaphor to describe "untranslatable" sentiments, events, trends, ad nauseam.


I posted an entry just now, for nobody's benefit, but then I removed it, for nobody's benefit. And I badly want to conclude this post, but first I'll tell you about young Desmond's new family of not-exactly-visible friends. What I find most thrilling about them is, I'll admit, a bit shallow. I will leave you with their names, preceded by household-member "type":

The Churches

Father: Sushi Church

Mother: Berkland Church

Child: Trash Night Church

Oh, how I swoon.

Rock against Restraint

in case anything happens

What a lovely day! We got a TON of snow, which is not/neither surprising nor enduringly enjoyable, but the sunlight is acutely exquisite.
I had a poem to post here, but I left the power supply to my old computer in Virginia, and I don't have access to any documents. (Plus, this new keyboard is quite an adjustment; typos abound accordingly.) So, I'm gonna give you an old and prized (but oft-neglected) post and go outside.

[This post dates originally from January 14, 2011 11:31 AM]

Rock against Restraint

Car seats. (What do cars eat?)

It has been suggested that one of the reasons for surging rates of childhood obesity is that parents wish to hasten the process of their child's reaching the weight requirements to sit in their OWN seats (without penalty to the parents), finally permitting them to discard their awful, monstrous, plastic carseat contraptions.

In Maine, the threshold for freedom is 80 pounds—upon hearing that, Molly said to me, "I weighed 80 pounds as a sophomore."

Funny that people get so uptight about all this, and no one should ever endanger their children if it is at all avoidable. Then explain school buses—thin metal, no seat belts or temperature control, variously enfeebled operators... but at home, they have to sit in a five-point harness when they go anywhere.

So, we strap 'em in, but what happens if we drive into a pond or lake? There's no emergency release button. Or if there's some kind of danger of explosion? These are the kinds of catastrophic happenings that we're being trained capitally to FEAR, but hyperdriven protective mechanisms of our own device jeopardize as much as they control. That is just like humans.

Anywise, Desmond is a slender chap, and I think about all of the expense (time, money, frustration) that we could spare if we put rolls of quarters into his pockets. But we don't have that kind of money.

Someone Says

I don't know the source of this truism.

(Gosh, well, that itself is a truism, innit.)

Neither do I know the source of the following truism (although I am quite sure that it's from a Goddard College student):

The perception of time within a finite experience is analogous to the lifespan of a toilet-tissue roll. It seems initially to be boundlessly present, and use (let's say a 1-foot segment) does little visibly to diminish its abundance perceptibly. But then, a threshold of sorts is crossed, and that same 1-foot segment means so much more to the girth of the roll, yet nothing can be done about it. The real-life applications of this axiom are both apt and irritating.