been taking care of someone with sudden and severe onset of sciatica recently. refused to go the chiropractor route, but he did go the medical one, and got an x-ray (which revealed all is essentially OK and nothing serious going on) and got muscle relaxants and anti-inflammatory medication etc. he's had severe cramping and lots of pain. screaming, yelling, pounding, etc.

one morning he was carrying on, refused to let me help him because he thought i was hurting him, then screamed at me to DO SOMETHING because he was in pain, and it went back and forth like that for a while until i gave up and took a shower. could hear him yelling while in the shower, but didn't realize it was because my Bono Buddy cat had done a perfect hairball projectile vomit spray all over him, precisely outlining the stretch of pain running down his leg, and didn?t miss a drop of it anywhere else. he was laying on his good side and he couldn't move to clean it up.

cats are amazing.

i knew it was time for me to back off and just let him "lie in it" for a while.

that is, we had exchanged a few "words" during the first couple days, in some sort of battle of wills. and i realized that i shouldn't be trying to fix him, willing him to submit to my exercise regime, nagging him to move this way or that, trying to force him to cooperate and berate him for not complying, and also that he needed to decide he wanted to get better, and realize the fact that he needed help and accept it, and i needed to learn how and when to give it.

and it was amazing, but after the cat barf episode, things started to improve almost immediately. i spoiled him and took care of him as much as possible, but tried not to nag or boss or push him too much, and he started to relax and realize he needed help and that his rigid stubbornness and anger was compounding his situation. and he had to accept it -- just accept the pain and move through it. after the first couple days, he settled down and let me manipulate him a bit, and allowed me to convince him that stretching would help, and that drinking lots of water helps with muscle cramping, etc. i made him yummy things to eat, gave him fun books to read. he said please and thank you and smiled and read and relaxed and tried to exercise and leaned on me to help him.

we realized we were both being selfish control freaks.

there is a saying that pain is unavoidable -- inevitable, even. but suffering is optional.

for him, as long as he was angry and cursing and fighting his pain, stubbornly refusing to move, shaking his fists at the sky, the more he suffered.

for me, the more i insisted on fixing him, exerting my will over his recovery, the more i suffered.

once we both accepted the situation, we were able to deal with it quite effectively as a team, and with loving kindness and caring and gratitude for all.

anyway, a week later, after lots of rest and massage and stretching and some medication, he?s back up and moving and functioning and has once again, returned to gainful employment.

behold, the power of cat barf.

so full of cliches

with each turn of phrase

or snap of the wrist

in the blink of an eye

a twist of fate

at this moment in time

like an axis of evil

these hand crafted lattes

of poetic justice

just slip through my fingers

right out of the box

and into the void

the great beyond

never to be heard from again

until tomorrow

the eternal return

same time same channel

and round and around she goes

and where she stops nobody knows

the time is now

and this is the first day

of the rest of your life

six of one

or half a dozen of the other

in a heartbeat

underneath the covers

like an embedded journalist

drawing you a picture

for your viewing pleasure

skating on thin ice

without a safety net

going with the flow

visualizing world peace

praise the lord

and blessed be

amen

dreamed indian dreams sunday night and then dreamed 'em all again while working out this morning. sweating with a new rhythm, could almost feel the colors pulsing out of me. and now these bright indian dreams are wafting in on the breeze, singing and drumming in the late afternoon.

never been to a powwow deal like this before and well it is such an emotional thing. there is a great heart breaking heart pulling beating drumming heartbeat thing going on. can't avoid being seriously moved. but also am shy and felt sort of concerned in that self conscious way that as a basic waspy sort, maybe i shouldn't be allowed in or even welcome there. but was pleasantly surprised that instead, there was a huge sense of family and love and community.

that is, although our family history is a bit sketchy, there is probably little chance that there exists much, if any, native american blood in me. still i have always had a great pull and fascination for all things native. a longing for connection. for me, it's just impossible to feel close to the land and nature and watch the mountains and the light and the clouds and trees and not feel the ancestors of the land and sense both their loss and their presence. their energy is still so very strong.

brings out in me a respect for the people who loved and cared for this place long before we were here. and my ancestors loved this place too, in their own way. but they were surveyors, and they played a big part in mapping this place, gridding it out, turning the earth into a commercial commodity that was to be bought, sold, developed, used and disposed of as its "owners" saw fit. my ancestors cut down trees and burned things up and changed the landscape and the animals and the vegetation and irrigated the desert and built and built and constructed and paved and all that.

yeah some white person guilt, no doubt. feel something more akin to great longing and sadness for the native american indians though. my dad would say to me that they were "conquered fair and square" and that's how the world is, will to power and all that and we all wouldn't be here if our ancestors hadn't left europe and made this place.

i mean, such a wise and beautiful and strong and proud people lived here, and then white folks just pushed their way on in and took it from them in some of the most horrendous and unsettling ways. so easy for me to romanticize indians now i suppose, though. like what if i lived a hundred years ago, with my great grandparents homesteading in colorado, would i be afraid of indian attacks?

all i know is my heart connects to them somehow, in a very big way. and truly, forgive me for i am not a typical white person on an indian trip. that is, not claiming to be one, or trying to steal rituals and re-make them into a commercial new age commodity or anything like that.

nope, from me, only respect and awe. and also probably a wee bit of white person shame i feel. sure. but most of all a tremendous love and longing for them to return and show us how to take care of this place before it is too late.

that is, we've been in a terrible drought here now and it?s going to get worse. way over crowded and way too much construction and expansion going on. the smog is so bad you can barely see the flatirons, and all the glaciers that science teachers when i was kid told me would be here for the next 40,000 years have all melted in the last five to ten years and raw bare rocks are exposed that had previously been covered in snow for eons. you can feel the life just being sucked right out of the mountains with the water and the trees and the forest fires and the rising temperature. the place is choking and wilting and coughing. it is painful to watch each year as it gets worse. hotter and drier and more and more arid.

and i grew up in love with this place with such a sense of the sacred here, it is so magnificent. there is a feeling that gods dwell here. although it also feels like they might be leaving and moving on, maybe even giving up on us. i mean let's face it, we probably don't deserve their love and protection. we've trashed the place. each year this presence feels thinner and more faint, drier, dustier, trees dying in forest fires, plants choking, ashes to ashes and dust to dust. and meanwhile enormous mountain palace homes with a view continue to spring up and huge SUVs chug through the canyons and the smog and congestion thickens. and the place is on fire, it's burning up and still they build more stuff. and the deer are all suffering from chronic wasting disease. and now the elk are all sitting down and not moving and starving to death, just dying in some sort of sad slow paralysis from eating this weird lichen because of the drought conditions.

the thing is, the native american indian thing that is, it is such a fragile thing -- like the presence in the mountains that seems to be fading.

a few summers ago we drove up to south dakota for a brief camping trip to see things. and to me, mount rushmore about said it all. so hideous that thing is. total graffiti, with this steel and glass industrial government monument with a gucky cafeteria inside planted at the foot of it to show off itself in arrogance of its own magnificent achievement. i mean they might as well have chiseled a dollar bill into what once was a beautiful rock face because that's what it's all about. traded this beautiful sacred place for a quick buck and left us with a dollar green and grey institutional pile of metal from which one can gaze up at this amazing tribute to the glory of presidential heads and all that is material and this technological feat of engineering and so forth.

nearby of course, is the monument to crazy horse that is being put up in response, and the tiny little indian museum. very tiny. all that's left. the minute i walked through the door something grabbed my throat and the tears squeezed out. it was so beautiful and so touching and so tragic and so sad and so amazing. and they don't give up and they don't surrender and still they continue to keep the spirit alive and share it with anybody who bothers to care. the sheer bravery in the face of the giant carved dollar sign across the street just yanks at the heart and soul.

and when we walked into the coliseum for the powwow on sunday, they were right in the middle of a great flag presentation with warriors and veterans of wars and it sort of grabbed me in the chest and choked tears out of me right at the very start. if they can still be proud of this place and fight for this country and display american flags with such a sense of pride in spite of everything, man what a statement. what love, what undying unwavering love, what spirit. a lesson for all of us.

and in the hall, in all the dancing, there were very little if any specific tribal distinctions. there were categories like grass dancers and warriors and fancy dancers and jingle dancers and buckskin dancers. but it wasn't dissected or labeled into ute and arapahoe and cheyenne and lakota . . it was all one melted multi-colored indian conglomeration. like this is the show thing, and the communal thing, the thing that white folks like me get to see.

outside in the booths and stalls there were more specific kinds of things, like different strains of pottery and traditional things, lots of cool handmade things, beautiful things and art things and serious earrings and magic flutes and of course some touristy things. outside on the rim around the circle, each booth spoke of the individual artist?s bloodline or native geographical location or family clan.

but inside, it was all one thing. one great big funny thing. the microcosm and the macrocosm. the unity and peace that humanity longs for. and the powwow ran late. and they changed the program schedule right in the middle of it. and at one point a small child was held up by the announcer stating that the little girl knew exactly where she was, but her parents seemed to be lost. there were costumes draped over chairs and everybody was dressing and undressing and eating and dancing at the same time. and they sort of tried to keep it organized, but it just sort of all happened when it happened and took as much time as it took, and everybody was taking it all in stride without fuss or significant adherence to structure. we were on indian time. if they called out to a specific drum group to do the next song and there wasn't a drumbeat in response, they just moved on and asked the next available group to go, constantly adjusting and flowing accordingly. the whole place was electric in the most relaxed laid back sort of way. an organic mellow chaos. color and costumes and kids playing everywhere and such love and good will and sharing and this great party thing going just grooving together in a love fest.

there is a tremendous longing within me to see so many indians in one place all together, so powerful and so precious and so free. like being embraced by a beautiful old ghost of great grace. and there is also this sense of a spark of life reawakened. a sense of happy tragic glorious life renewed. of continuation. of rejuvenation and rebirth. the celebration of the spring equinox. hope. spirit.

so dreamed indian dreams again last night. and just now while calling in the cats from the backyard, the old trees outside, they knew it. they smiled at me and for just a few blurry moments the cement drainage ditch in the park morphed into a rocky weedy creek with scraggly bushes and sagebrush and tall grass and crooked trees and the clouds looked like buffalo and longs peak looked like a beaver crawling up the side toward the notch of the mountain and a hawk circled overhead and a coyote dashed across the highway through the traffic and i could smell the spring on the breeze. and maybe it will rain a little.

and i felt overcome with gratitude.

and happy. and touched. and blessed. and alive.

and free.

and still never tire of the shopping, either. got to keep looking, reading, feeling things out. have to let it all pour down into my head and stir around in my heart. like that sense of continual vibration you get from Blake?s grain of sand.

and of course even the most verbal of taoists is quick to tell you that the true tao is the tao that can not be spoken.

and so many mystics tell you the experience is beyond words. yes. yet still out of love they write volumes in an attempt to share it. just got to keep on effing that ineffable.

and there is knowledge and then there is knowledge. there is the accumulation of material, and there is understanding. there is my collection of piles of dharma teachings, sweet love snips, words of wisdom, philosophy quotes and texts, stacks of books and papers and disks and information everywhere.

still seeking. still reading. still yearning and longing, searching and learning.

sometimes, the search itself is all there is. and there is much rejoicing and gratitude. but sometimes, when trying to extract meaning or find something, you know maybe like an answer or something finite? like something to hang a hat on, or a soapbox to stand on, a sturdy foundation, a specific formula or maybe even some evidence of blueprints for a plan? well then the search seems vast and endless, possibly even hopeless.

still, many times there is a great sense of inter-connectedness, a brilliant display of interplay, cause and effect, magic and mystery. but other times, there is a feeling of being lost, stranded, complete confusion, and an inability to make sense of the simplest of things.

one minute there is progress and accomplishment, only to realize a moment later that nothing whatsoever has been gained and that there really isn't any goal to begin with.

just so much grasping and letting go, grasping and letting go. sort of like breathing in and breathing out.

and still we speak on and on about god and religion, of ethics and culture, of traditions and values, of dogma and rituals, of art and beauty, of morals and common sense, of social and political philosophy, of metaphysics and physics.

and why blog? why speak? why write? why enter into any sort of attempt to say anything?

and what is the practical side of this, you may ask? what does one get out of this sort of questioning? you may ask, yes you may.

only one thing is certain. and that is that i know nothing.

and really have nothing to say.

and yet still there is a desire to share it with you.

imagine that.

the time is now

this present infinity

filled to the brim with sweet emptiness

and a soft implied silence

in the turning of Om

this orbit of time

cycling through in spherical movements

this shiny bubble

floating on a lotus

in the sunshine

only today

at this moment

between the instants

inside a heartbeat

suspended in the current

glowing brightly

at this second

twinkling against the darkness

all together

and forever

sliding on a spiral

riding on the waves

tapping out the rhythm

underneath the surface

in the streetlight

pay attention

this is it

the time is now

growing up as a rather unhappy fat kid, coupled with what i believed to be some serious adult responsibilities at home, there was always a sense of alienation, if not downright martyrdom going down. bullied and teased and left out of things. isolated. terrorized. oppressed. fat is unforgivable. it is considered to be quite disgusting. a lack of self control, a lack of will. my mother was ashamed and disgusted and regularly told me so, and periodically tried to shame me into a life of carrot sticks.

enduring that sort of oppression isn't easy. and for me, it turned inward and created a great split, a chasm, a black hole. there was something wrong with me, fundamentally, i was positive. and to that end, began the war within.

deep within every sad and hopeless victim there is an angry warrior chomping at the bit that wants to stand up and fight back. some plot revenge against their oppressors. some wage the revenge against themselves. some lash out at other innocent victims, believing this is how it all works, how the world operates. and this is how the cycle of violence is fed and maintained.

hockey is a violent sport, and not one of my favorites. but lately, it's been taken to a whole new level. a canadian player, with forethought and malicious intent, not necessarily part of the passion of the game, announced to the world that he would get revenge on another player from colorado and attacked him. from behind, of course. the only way real bullies can operate. stalking. sneaking. hiding. whacked him, threw him down and broke his neck.

have to wonder if that really gave him the satisfaction he was looking for.

because no one sympathizes with him. never mind what this says to kids who play hockey, it seems only logical that there should be serious criminal charges, and that this man does not belong in society. in fact, whatever his argument might have been with this other player, it has been completely lost because the violence of his action has destroyed whatever statement he was trying to make, if he really even had one to begin with.

terrorism of all kinds depends upon the ability to take by force and blind-side an opponent through stealth. it is hidden. it comes from behind. it lurks in darkness and breeds in fear and plots revenge and believes this is its only option. it believes it has no other recourse. it believes it is so oppressed, so hurt, so bullied against such overwhelming odds, that this sort of violence is its only effective tool.

and yet, terrorism never works. whatever it hopes to accomplish, whatever statement it believes it is making, whatever it tries to accomplish, it utterly fails by its very nature. sure, it hurts. sure, it creates chaos and pain and suffering. but that's it. that's where it ends. it does not earn sympathy. it does not earn allies. it might gather a few like-minded bullies who assist out of fear. it does not win friends or influence people. it does not become powerful. it does not appear brave. it does not and can not achieve any objective other than more suffering. and its victims will never submit to its oppression. it does not work. it can not win. it never has. it is by its nature flawed because it is, at its core, only pain.

and while some may insist that humanity is violent by nature, few could possibly deny that we also find this very violence abhorrent. we create laws to protect ourselves from our own violent nature. we have shelters for battered women. we remove abused children from violent homes. we stop at the scene of an accident and try to save the injured. firemen rush into burning buildings, risking their own lives to save others.

and we cry and we hurt and we vow nevermore. and we work for peace. we desire peace. we realize that peace is always preferable to war. we know that peace is always difficult, because of this inherent violent nature of our inner beastie, and yet we become committed to finding peace within ourselves, so that we can work effectively for peace in a violent world.

and peace is radical because it forces the violent, angry, hurt part of us to look itself right in the eye. to look itself right in the eye and not react in return, not insist on being right, not rise up in self righteous indignation, but to choose a different path. to see the nature of violence for what it is.

fighting back is the natural response to fear. fighting back in anger is a reaction to pain. it is a biological, hurt animal response. it is fierce. it is terrifying. it is powerful. it can take on a will of its own. it is rage. and it can not be quenched. it can never be satisfied. it can become all consuming. seeing red. bloodlust. striking back. lashing out. it is the hurt and pain of the desire for self preservation. it is the will to power. and it is blind. and it is ignorant because there is ultimately no real power to be had. for death comes to us all and there is no power over it. the will to power is short-sighted. it is empty of consciousness. it is suffering. it is war. it will not lead to peace.

and when i was a kid, tormented by bullies, they won every time i tried to fight back. every time i complained, or told a teacher, or cried, or blamed myself, or lashed out, or hated myself, or wished i were someone different, or acted in anger or pain or plotted revenge. because as long as my reaction was violent in nature, either towards them or myself, they won. but they only won suffering.

and so for me, though it was hard come by through lots of painful experience, the only solution that worked for me, the only thing that didn't hurt myself more in the process, was simple. i learned to look my bullies in the eye. just look at them. stare them down, in a sense. look them right in the eye and see them. sometimes i would even say that out loud to them, very gently, "i see you." sometimes, i would simply ask "why?" it wasn't easy. and i can tell you from experience, this makes them very uncomfortable. their leers fade. they look away. they avert their gaze. often, they just back down because when you see them, they see themselves for a minute, and they see their own pain.

standing in your own truth is a powerful thing, and it has nothing to do with fighting for what you believe in. fighting reduces you, continues the cycle, returns the reaction, spreads the disease, begets violence. standing still is not a violent reaction. standing still is finding the nature of stillness itself and residing there. and it takes so much more courage than fighting back. standing in your own truth is facing the fight or flight mechanism and choosing neither. standing still is not buying into the dichotomy. not fighting. not running away. just standing.

and oh man but it's not easy. it's something i have to practice all the time. i am not by any means immune to anger, or my own ingrained baggage and chemical hormonal reactions. believe me. and punishing myself for not living up to my own ideal standards is an equally violent behavior.

but peace is an ideal and it is also a reality. and it can be found in a few deep breaths and only a few seconds of meditation and gazing within. and it is something to work towards. there will always be conflict. there will always be suffering. but this is no reason to give up trying. when i fall down, and i do regularly, (just ask my sister) i have promised myself that i will have to stand up again. sometimes it takes me longer to get up, but still i have to keep going, because to do otherwise would be dishonest.

and despite my natural reactions to the powerful emotions and passions that course through this fragile organic body of constant chemical explosions, still i would choose to stand here and face my fear and look it in the eye. and while i might not always manage it, i will continue to endeavor always to try to remain standing still. i will choose to stand. i will not run even though you chase me, and i will try my best not to respond in violence. i will stand, firmly rooted in the solidity of the earth, bending and swaying in the wind, but i will stand.

and so to all terrorists, to those who can not see beyond their own pain and hurt, know that as i stand here now and look you in the eye, i can see you. you might try to hide your eyes from me and i might not see your physical presence, i might not know your specific individual identity, but i can see you. i am looking right into your eyes and i can see you. i see your pain. i see you. i see your suffering. i see your ignorance. i see your unhappiness. i see you are at war within yourself. i see your need to be right. i see your need to teach me a lesson. i see your need to act out. i see your desire to feel powerful. i see your need to fix things that are beyond your control. i see your fear, your insecurity. everyone sees you. you can not hide. you can not justify your actions. i see you. i see the suffering you have caused. i see you. i see your heart of darkness. i can see you.

i can see you right now because i can see myself.

see me and know me as i know you.

look at me and see yourself.

see how we both suffer. see how we share the same desire for peace for ourselves and our loved ones. see our same desire for happiness. see our same fear. see our same innocence. see our same hope.

know that i can see you even though you hide behind your masks of religion or righteousness or terror or knowledge or power or money or guns or bombs or gangs or committees.

justice may be blind, but i can see you.

look at me as i stand here naked and vulnerable before you.

look at me and see yourself.

i can see you.

peace.

is it really difficult for me to get sentences out and type logically or am i just thinking about it too much?

one thing is certain, there has been a shift in perspective.

one minute, everything was dire and full of personal drama trauma. now, everything feels very fragile and precious.

from blinding headaches to sheer exhaustion to fear that things aren?t the same. struggling with words. had a rough time writing my own signature on a check. yet, auto-pilot is still in tact and can drive and workout and put the clothes in the dryer and slice potatoes and pet the cats and cry over the news and drive the old truck and argue with my sister.

and somehow want so much to start fresh. find it very important to be honest in some different kind of way. no more pleasing for the sake of smoothing things over and making it better for the sake of what i believed to be harmony (insert voice of friend: "oh you're such a libra") can see now that some of my previous, supposedly altruistic thoughts were often really about me. my comfort, my guilt, my need to feel better about things. the harmony ideal was rationalized to be created for everyone around me, but was really about me being a special kind of total control freak.

maybe that's why i still find myself torturing myself with the shoulds. shoulda shoulda. shouldn't have sighed. shouldn't have said anything. shouldn't have lost my temper. shouldn't have said that. shouldn't have insisted. shouldn't have taken that on. should have stayed out of it. should have stayed quiet. should have kept my disappointment to myself. should have kept a distance.

so easy to spend time feeling guilty rather than actually seeing my behavior for what it is.

because if i really could see it without passing judgment, just be truly aware of it, without excuses, rationalizations, fixing of things -- only what is . . . well it seems i've been looking away quite a bit.

trapped inside a tiny head prison and blind blind blind. yet inside this prison, i had been so very busy scribbling out all sorts of justifications, balancing equations, adjusting valences in combinations, building extensive mythologies and grand metaphoric head exercises and believed myself to the queen of my perspective, the hostess with the mostest, the mastermind of my magnificent solipsist universe.

yeah had it all worked out. and i knew everything. ultimately. had it all labeled neatly, anyhow.

now what am i going to do?

it's like all my sock thoughts are in the underwear drawer and all the large bowl thoughts are stacked precariously on top of the coffee cups and the green answers are scattered throughout the red shelves and the recipes are in the canceled check files and there are tools in the refrigerator and a bunch of junk is just, well, it's just scattered all over the floor.

still there is continuity. and there is logic. and there is basic functioning and there is hunger and eating and eliminating and there is sleeping and waking and typing typing typing and reading and talking and walking (but no gum chewing) and the same bliss that washes over in meditation and nothing is different, really.

or is it?

and, perhaps more importantly, does it matter?

that is, maybe things are different. so why grasp backwards into the past? was it really all that? what was it about my previous mental world that feels injured or different or morphed in some manner? why fixate on it? why try to cling to an earlier brain incarnation?

maybe it's not an injury but a teaching of some sort. a lesson. a painful lesson. with headaches. but a lesson.

hopefully not being graded. please no pop quizzes?

you see uh, i uh, hadn't prepared for this assignment. going to have to wing it.

hoping it's an essay and not multiple choice.

sharpening my number two pencils.

oh no ye godz i think it might be the worst most dreaded and feared kind of quiz.

it's true or false.

yesterday just completely lost it. full of all sorts of extreme selfish upset and ruined the birthday of most beloved person. like a giant pressurized zit, festering, all it took was a brief shock and then a sudden explosion and puss squirting everywhere, oozing, sliming squishing into every single crack in my mind, the more attempts to understand or explain, the more everything turned into blame and justifications and rationalizations.

the birthday i ruined, well . . he's oh so constantly depressed and tells me often that his life is shit. been spending extra time and effort, lots and lots of energy trying to make someone happy who isn't interested in being so. yeah oh what a volunteer for punishment perhaps. co-dependency in spades, squared -- no cubed -- and multiplied by a factor of a thousand. a whole lot, in other words.

making special dinners, lots of backrubs and head and neck massages, rented silly movies, brownies and wheat biscuits with herbed cream cheese and lots of cups of tea and still his life is shit. so ok.

then his father shows up with an incredibly expensive brand new motorcycle for his 40^th birthday. wow you might say. and not just any bike, but his dream bike, the one he's been lusting out on for about four years. and he's ecstatic. absolutely overjoyed.

and this is a good thing. a very good thing. he is happy. very good. even though it is transitory. even though it is brief. even though it is so easily bought and paid for, it is a very good thing to see him smile and be happy and surprised. a very good thing.

but the weirdest thing happened when his dad came to the door. my body went into some kind of shock state and quite literally felt as though a sharp object shot straight through my heart and i felt sick to my stomach and almost passed out. wham.

but it passed and we talked and talked and admired the beast and danced around it and took pictures and took it for a test drive and all of it. and then they leave because the bike is going to go back to his father's house to live, where his dad has a garage.

and here's the catch because his dad loves bikes almost as much, maybe moreso. and he's convinced him it's got to stay at his house because it could get stolen or messed with or something. and his dad can't afford it. really can't. and the bike isn't paid for. he put a bit down, but the balance is quite large and the payments are more than his current car payment.

and his dad has not always been on the up and up about financial matters and has on more than one occasion borrowed money in small to large quantities and never returned it. says he has money coming from europe. any day now if someone could just spot him a few. lost his business. lost his home. filed for bankruptcy a year or two ago. likes to party. likes to eat out. likes to eat my food. likes to talk and talk and tell stories and drink. likes to ride motorcycles. loves his son. but always has bills and can't afford to pay for his new false teeth but he's bought his kid a brand new motorcycle.

so . . they leave and take the bike back to his dad's house where his dad has decided it should live, in the protection of his garage.

and i panic.

so they leave to take the bike back and i start leaking tears pulling hair gnashing teeth the works. just flip out. sheer and utter panic. out of the blue. just a complete and total self inflicted trauma. fear the motorcycle. almost as if it could be the death vehicle or something. and crap he has other old bikes that he rides, ride with him, like to ride myself. he has old junk that he works on and fixes up and makes go and he's good and relatively safe and all of that and it's all very klingon you know, a good day to die and all of that, but this bike, this bike has this painful stab to it like it's the one. like it's the end.

fear central.

so he comes back all happy and gleeful and in shock about his brand new happy motorcycle best birthday ever big four-oh let's get ready to go out to dinner and a movie and wow oh wow what a great day . . and out comes the doubt and the fear and the panic and i have to ask him about the money and how did his day pay for it and how much is the insurance and why can?t he keep it himself instead of dad's house and isn't that going to make it hard for him to ride it to work tomorrow and how can he afford this and will he be able to make the payments when his dad defaults on the loan in a couple months?

just popped his happy pink birthday bubble with a sledge hammer.

what on earth? why? where did that come from? completely unnecessary for the moment. and then the drama and the shouting match and all the worst emotional stuff comes out of the box and we're wheeling and dealing in the ugliest sorts of hurtful painful junk and the shit is flying everywhere and not a single fan in sight.

i am a shrew.

and then the self loathing kicks in full strength. oh the shame. if only that censor could have spoken up a bit sooner? maybe before the act? but no. only afterward to beat myself over the head with a lead pipe whack bam boom what an idiot what a moron take that and that you selfish miserable dealer in the baddest of karma what were you thinking you fool why spoil everything why work so hard to make him happy and then yank the rug out from under him when he finally is for a few moments?

so try to meditate this morning, and manage a bit, but not much. mind is all over and painful and sharp and pointy and mean and ricocheting off the bookcases and the walls and the panic is overwhelming.

so go to work out work out and run around and sweat sweat sweat it out and let it go let it go process it process it let it go and sweat sweat sweat.

and heading home from the workout hit head-on by a woman in some big mini-van thing, talking on her cell phone, takes the corner and comes straight into my lane doesn't even look up as she smacks right into the front of poor tiny little car, only a year old, first new car ever, destroyed poof gone. sporting a golfball size knot on the back/side of my head and hurt all over, but essentially walk away just fine. she's fine too. all is ok. could be much worse. thankful thankful.

she gets a careless driving ticket. little car is gone. broken and oozing fluid and scraped away off to sit in a lot all alone and hurting.

and the birthday boy comes to help and takes me to the doctor and holds my hand and the guilt for yesterday is about as big and bright and shiny and bloated as it can be.

and he takes me out to lunch to cheer me up and my steamed vegetables arrive with unwashed mushrooms covered in mud and poo all over them with mud seeping into all the other veggies and mud in the sauce and have to send it back and don't really want to eat there anymore but he was trying to cheer me up and calm me down and there's mushroom mud and poo and whatever they grow mushrooms in swimming in the dish.

birthday boy makes cups of tea and talks on the phone and makes arrangements and deals with things and gives me pain killers and i'm so sorry so sorry for yesterday so sorry sorry sorry but there's no going back and there's no fixing what's done and sorry sorry sorry so sorry.

and all i can think about is this guy in the convenience store -- after the accident -- the tow truck drives off with my car and the police are gone and the ambulance and the firetruck and I?m standing on the corner holding my registration and pieces of paper and purse in pieces in my sweaty exercise clothes dropping things and this sweet lady comes out of the convenience store. she works there. her name is Corky. and she says honey hop in my car you're not going to walk home after that one. and i go into the store with her and she says get something to drink. so getting some water out of the case and this old guy looks kind of crazed dazed asks me where the eyedrops are and i look out into the store and point him over behind the catfood i say i don?t know maybe over there i really don't know and he wanders off behind the catfood and Corky has such a sweet face and she won?t let me pay for my water and puts me in her car and she has rainbows and bunnies and shamrocks on her dashboard and i start to cry and she drives me home and waits in the car to make sure while i go in the house.

and i wonder if the old guy got his eyedrops. my one moment to be genuinely helpful and i failed. can't make someone happy, can't let someone be happy, and can't give simple helpful directions. nope. can't take two seconds out and walk him over to the eyedrops. lost in my personal delusion and drama trauma missed a chance to actually do something. but no. couldn't manage it.

no eyedrops for him, no clarity for me. just plain lost sight of everything.