Sentimental Entropy

I’ve got a peg on a singular trust: that sequence is either everything or a passable facsimile thereof, and that "correct" collisions of matter and meaning and relative relevance will, in the sweetness of chance, befriend this still-arcane saga.

Select any unit of time—it does not, evidently, matter what the interval—and the chosen amount will amount to a single frame in a film that is recklessly sluggish. I continue, as ever, to strive for improvement of our fortunes, but it actually, well and truly, seems not to matter. A change of perspective, or the addition of for-now-italicized perspicacity, has been, and still is, the “thing” of it.

In response, I have come not only to realize, but also to accept, that I'm fastened to the overarching/underpinning conviction that there's a punchline somewhere. In frustrating proximity, probably. And furthermore, I have observed—with more humiliation than humility—that the extent to which I’ve aggrieved myself may have, at the end of all of this, served as my undoing. Like a scuba diver, surfacing with breath instinctively bated, developing an embolism. That's grim. 

It’s funnier than that, though. I have, in my rather-teensy lifetime, gone from being a person whose “success” was never at issue—my promise was such that I was regaled with hyperbole from all ilk of well-meaning adulty types (themselves incapable of accommodating the fact that I was merely biding my time with trifling muck until I could commit suicide)—to an adulty type whose legion attempts at establishing the level of self-sufficiency requisite to Life These Days have each and all met with ignominy of some sort or another. It seems nasty, but is more accurate than not, to say that, in the actualized primacy of this very-basic capacity, I am a failure.

But, dig this—what I’m saying is that that’s okay, because that definition of failure was tailored for those in situations like mine (certainly befitting me, by existing standards); it is seldom wielded publicly, because it’s divisive and rotten, and I can see a real argument for the thinker’s self-serving reluctance. Be that as it may, such discretion is not of any value to me—why not be frank? To consider today’s underfoot underclass as having failed is rather liberating, as it is not a treatise on anything but nomenclature, honest self-appraisal, and the obsolete values of an amorphous capitalistic thought virus. This process has been hell for untold numbers—sufferers and bystanders alike—that it's devastating to comprehend, but seeing myself as a failure actually EMPOWERS me. It allows the punishing yoke of boorish and reactive reeling to shift into revealing what life is rather than what life isn’t.

“Well, that’s great and grand and groovy, Benb, and now we know that you’re a frayed wick or something similarly screwy and ineffective,” says my projected Peanut Gallery. “But,” I protest, with immediacy, verve, and aplomb, “that’s the beauty of it—I haven't any choice but to forge forwardly! I've exhausted my own elastic in response to the vagaries of whatever contortion of my identity is demanded at a given moment. So, all that I can do is my best, in the devout service of maintaining what little stability we've managed to eke from the vast opacity of                                              ."

          (ABSTRACT NOUN)

I have always loved surprises, and ever have I shuddered at the plodding and prosaic attrition that lurks with rattling ubiquity in pockets and envelopes the world over. I can almost hear it breathe, slinking around me when alone in my car, on the toilet, or in the kitchen watching the mercury drop on a perfunctory thermometer. It was such an indelicate certainty that I had identified time as the antipode to spontaneity.

Anyway, I know (and will someday-maybe accept) that I’m in school, and I’ve had to acknowledge that the pervasive presence mentioned above is THE SAME INGREDIENT that

-         makes you so uncomfortable upon hearing certain music that you HAVE TO DANCE.

-         pushes swear words out your damn mouth at the dinner table when the exquisite experience of the food that you’re eating unbinds you and confiscates your manners.

-         turns sentences into paragraphs, for no reason other than that you are capsized with joy at being near the person with whom you’re speaking.

And this fact—that the niggling currents in and out of a day are the feckless eddies of a second, that it is not only a surprise, but the surprise—is a gargantuan surprise. Which is a scorcher of a punchline.

Adjective Heavens!

It is April. Welcome to that, for all that it may be (but, in my experience, typically isn't) worth. It seems nice enough outdoors, and it is, here in Baltimore. Not that I'd really know, having sat in uncomfortable proximity to my feelings over the weekend.

Sunday was Glenn's memorial service, and I attended. It was jocundity in the face of tragedy, with tenderness and laughter and uncharacteristically articulate accounts of Glenn when he was among us. New friendships were forged, by way of connectedness unearthed by the common vulnerability of our grief, that will doubtless span and endure decades. And, from everything that I could tell, none of it softened the precipitous sense of loss that we felt. But we all seemed to realize that there was little, if anything, that we could do to address that pain, so we tacitly agreed to transcend it with our unique respective love for our dear friend.

And here we sit, among the setting and trappings of April. Life is not moving as deliberately, nor with as much alacrity, as I would choose (if ever I were faced with a choice). I wonder if there's an April equivalent to the axiom that's wielded in concert with the idea of March. You've heard it a nauseating number of times, I'm sure: "in like a lion, out like a lamb." That's a very beautiful concept, and I do love beauty so, but what if the lamb gets eaten by the lion that will no doubt say, in arrogant Lionese, "April Fool!"?

I'll tell you what if. Everyone would be revealed as an outright sucker in that equation--including lions, dwellers of the jungle, having been left to suffer the failed fruits of their hunger with cold weather.

Having just said all of that, I am completely unaware of the current temperature or climate or whathaveyou. I long to see Molly, Desmond, and Ivor, I ponder just how I'll return home (awaiting a delinquent paycheck), and I'm reminded with maximal poignancy about all that I've learned to accept NOT having in life. This neither implies nor infers anything about what I DO have, as all of that is totally amazing. But it seems labor-intensive in a way that it shouldn't be. So, armed with some-or-other strength, I would like very much to declare the following for myself, I hope that you're ready. I am not ready.

1. I am not disabled. Yes, I have a disease and all of its accordant issues, but I remain aware of the world around me, am desperate to contribute to it,  and won't (although I'd love to) mail satchels of barf to all of the purveyors of abuse and hapless judgment that I have encountered regarding my health. To them, I have only to say: YOU ARE MAKING THIS INCALCULABLY WORSE.

2. I need a reliable job. This is more serious than it's possible to imagine. While it may seem reductive to say that this is all that I need, it is the agonizing truth. The stress that my family and I feel from the relentless drip-drab of freelancing and unpredictable pay cycles is positively lethal. I am able to work. I want badly to work. This New-Age bullshit of visualizing a bountiful future is all well and good, but I have applied to 1,400 jobs. It has been said (by Albert Einstein or Benjamin Franklin [or another person of far-greater financial means than meager old me, no doubt]) that "insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." Well, does that mean that I should refrain from applying for jobs?

3. I am committed to parenting. This supersedes everything else in my life, and the level of resentment that I feel toward those that have ignorantly drawn conclusions to the contrary cannot be exaggerated. I do not wish to inundate my children with television or plastic or sex-role stereotypes that will instill them with the same hinges and buttons, the same onus of irrelevant privilege, that I have worked tirelessly to surmount. My goal with my children is to help them be, without shame or fear, exactly themselves. And, despite, or even because of, my health, I am a capable and conscientious parent.

I have become so incensed with the well-meaning attempts to corral me that are actually deleterious that I am quite sure that I need to end here and possibly sleep.

New Things for Old

It would seem--nay, it DOES seem--that a new post is necessary. All of these convoluted incrementality blog spots are almost as irritating to oversee as they are to behold.

Oui, oui, all the way home.

What's this coming year to bring? (That's a fine thing to consider, Mr. Gallaher; if you repeat that with some frequency, then it stands to reason that the foolhardy construct of a calendar year will dissipate, and that can't be a bad thing. [The passing of time--the impossibly simpleminded way in which those of us ensnared by modernity measure things--is such a lousy barometer of success. First of all, it's elastic (boogie woogie woogie [clap clap]). Second, that same elasticity renders impossible an empirical determination of success.] So, it's better just to change subjects, is all I'm saying.)

So, it's been a lovely birthday, and it's been very much like any other day. I think that this type of thing is comforting--sexy, even. Why have a time that involves such a labor-intensive departure from normalcy in order to commemorate existence, when it's "normalcy" itself that deserves change into something more affirming.

For instance, I would have loved a party with all of my friends around. Of course, that couldn't happen, because we're all far away from each other, and it'd be an impracticable humor game to accomplish. Instead, there could exist options for envisioning (and perhaps enacting) life changes in order to address that issue of separation.

It's possible that it could even be as simple as a perspectival issue, which is something to which I am awakening. Seeing my life and my time spent in relatively remote circumstances not as being shrouded in lack, but supported by a wide-ranging and far-reaching abundance.

I'm going to try to watch the premiere of Mad Men. I've waited for so long.

Revisited Currency

I've been so kinda sad and screwed up over the passing of my friend Glenn that I haven't been able to think in any organized manner over these last two weeks.

What is there to say about it? Glenn Sorvisto was like no other person that ever existed, but I guess that that's true for/about everybody (cf. that whole snowflake milieu), so I'll have to expound, and this is where it gets inarticulate and intangibly sorrowful. And there's advance dread about it, so I'll get to it after an interval during which I'll perform mundane tasks and tend to reponsibilities like getting dressed.

I think that there are too many stories to tell, each of which is too difficult to parlay, so what follows is what I have gleaned as the gist of my friend.

Glenn was disarming, in many senses and senselessnesses of that word. While striking in appearance (not only handsome, but also with a peerless sense of style that featured, among many other items, alligator shoes, an easter-grass bowler hat, and simultaneous boisterous plaids), his personality was truly artful. A dazzling array of people each knew and remember Glenn differently. 

To many, Glenn is remembered for a loose-limbed eschewal of decorum that seemed to verge on haplessness—embodying a defiant and devilishly funny maelstrom of caustic and extemporaneous alchemy. Like a song that swings with such ferocity that it threatens constantly to come apart, until it is made apparent that such swinging is actually fundamental to the song. None of it was orchestrated but for every separate and collective memory of it.

Dozens were the occasions on which I experienced genuine discomfort in Glenn's company, although hindsight reveals its majesty. I'd say so now if I could: 

"YES, Glenn! I am so grateful that you smoked a cigarette in the banquet hall during that wedding ceremony. And inside the DMV that one time." 

Or, "It was brave of you to walk into that liquor store, grab a 6-pack of beer, and walk past the cashier, saying, 'Mañana!' Repeatedly. Until the clerk was so overcome with laughter that he allowed you to leave without paying."

These are among the more minor incidents to which I bore involuntary witness in the company of Glenn Sorvisto.

But that's all shallow nonsense on so many levels, because Glenn the person was so loving and gentle and kind that it's extraordinary for us human people to have been blessed with his presence for as long as we were. In all of the apparent chaos that surrounded him, there was always immense comfort. Glenn subverted my understanding of decency, because he was nothing if not singularly decent. He was deceptively sensitive and keenly thoughtful, even (especially?) in moments of alleged ignorance. He was always himself. He gave himself over to being himself.

There are bazillions of stories, but I don't feel like telling them at the moment, and I know that my facts are only as factual as the distance that separates me from them. I think about his love, Jody, and their incredible 18-year romance. I think about all of the friends that we shared, and the different ways in which each and all of these people experience this loss.

And a world without Glenn Sorvisto appears all the more daunting. But then, I remember that, irrespective of how daunting is any future, it remains inexorably destined for the same pile of pasts and precedents that houses hobbled former futures.

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.

Adjective Old Year

Plerase note here that nobody says, "Happy Old Year." On the day of New Year's Eve, I wonder why they give up so easily in considering this ever-scarcer 2011 to be entirely spent. Today, it would be just like saying, "Have a good one," which is hardly outside of the bell curve.

I would suggest that it is nothing short of foolhardy to look only a little bit ahead with such faux-rabidity. Holy crap. Why not just kiss each other now instead of waiting for Dick Clark or Anderson Cooper to administer the go ahead? You can always kiss each other later--you'll be just as special later on.

Gosh, and think even farther ahead to Monday, or whenever people return to work, feeling both wistful and daunted and still dating things with '2011' by accident: is that actually thrilling?

So, all that I'm trying to say is that the future might be exciting, but let's face it: so is THE PRESENT, except the present boasts the additional distinction of being here NOW. But happiness and love to you and yours, in both this old year and the one that is nearly nigh.

Correctifications

See, I didn't even realize yesterday that I'd posted this exceptional program (programme, for you Anglotypes) as a separate blog entry—I thought that it was part of "Watch and Observe." So, that should tell you something, but likely doesn't.

Nonetheless, when I awakened at 1:30 in the morning, haunted by heartbreak, I began to reflect upon everything in my life that I've done incorrectly. And this post came to mind. Its original title was "Molly F, filmed this masterpiece," but I'd intended that as a descriptive sentence. Then I saw that I'd already posted a link in "Watch and Observe," and I realized that I had created a miniature golf course from a molehill. I still have very little idea of how blogging works, but that's more than I can say for before now.

Cessation vs. Sensation

1/30/2011, 12:42 PM

Well, a return to Maine has occurred, along with compounded confusion. Twelve days in an unforgivably pleasant climate does things like change minds. There will, most assuredly, be more on that in future postings, but this time (i.e., now) requires a gesture of solidarity toward an old friend now suffering the throes of the
Mediocre Life of the Non-Smoker. I'll offer some pretext first:

Even though I "quit" on the 25th of May, 2004, I remain a staunch advocate of cigarette smoking, and my reasons for quitting were fairly obvious--with my MS, smoking a cigarette would cause instant paresis on the entire left side of my body. Yeah. Expletive.

While all sorts of impossible people will go on ad nauseum about conditions like cancer and emphysema, younger people tend not to give a care about such distant consequences. And I could never blame them--smoking is fantastic. However, the alarming proximity of my particular consequence did much to extract the carefree, yet intensely intentional, joy from smoking that I had always treasured. I had attempted quitting on many prior occasions, but this time really stuck, although I sometimes do indulge socially. My sons have never seen me smoke, and I prefer it that way.

This is a poem that I wrote in 2002, during one of my first bouts with quitting.

nicotine and my mind

i’m changing my relationship to boredom–

you’d think that we were sweethearts

if you weren’t always right

something something something

words like the big forever problem

to which i’ve possibly damn-fool sentenced myself

are problems

so let’s see i can get on with it or not

are those my only options?

day one

and another

day one and

another day one and another falling like dumb damn dominoes

they should give it some better or at least more-accurate names

like day in which you sweat all of the time despite temperature or

day on which you alienate all of your friends without even trying

and ouch are those things pricey

i mean, worth it

or, rather, deadly

and mysteriously beautiful sputum ingenious cancer phlegmatic wonder

i love to stink but not necessarily to smell and that’s just plain wrong or

i mean i love to smell just not with the

nose that i had when i was born but

i mean that everything that i say is

not true i love it i love it i’ll always

always love it

taking me somewhere while

killing my friends and

funding fascists and

looking at me loving it &

bemoaning its coincidences

cussing and kicking everybody

knows i’m deteriorating anyway

but i am standing standing strong

looking and acting like i actually know better

sopping with the snot of my suppression

okay

breathe and pretend and

remember that it hurts