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The Grace of a Dollar

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  Just completed my “left hand doesn’t know what the right hand’s doing” pre-appointment check-in for an upcoming cardiologist appointment next Monday. Funny how I have to add things that you would assume they already knew. Like new medications and recent surgeries. But such as it is, in this so called world of modern medicine and corporate mergers. You see, the two cardiologists I deal with work for the same corporation at two different hospitals. Yet as I stated, “the left hand don’t know what the right hand’s doing”. When it comes to the health of us older Americans we walk through a maze of specialist. Long gone are the days of the family doctor, who coordinated your extended medical care. Now you are sent to specialist who never talk to each other, let alone sent notes to each other. Right now I deal with eight different specialist for my various conditions. None of which has had a word with the other, even though two of them share a building and five of them work for the ...
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Tolerance & Freedom

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  Through the shadows on the curtains, I can hear the roar of a CSX horn blow from across the road—a long line of tracks that run north from Atlanta, south to Brunswick’s Ports. It’s been an exhausting few weeks, first with relentless rain and then the humid heat, complicated by the fact we’ve had to suffer two weeks without a refrigerator. ​ But beyond all that bullshit we put up with, presented to us by the faceless shareholders of a corporation, we now live in a country determined to bring back nostalgia, like it’s some comfortable chain to wear around our necks. ​ I remember when the country turned 200 years old. It was 1976 and I was in the ninth grade. Our former Governor Jimmy Carter was running for President against President Gerald R. Ford. We had just lived through our uncles and our big brothers fighting in Vietnam, then witnessing every day as soaps and game shows were interrupted by the Watergate Hearings. The grownups were mad and I was mad, because I had to liste...
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Some Days

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  Some days are diamonds and some days are stone—that’s what I’ve heard my whole life. My parents were often too busy building for tomorrow or for themselves to really shape who I was. That job ended up being finished by my Grandma, my friends, and even my supposed enemies. The last few weeks have been a trial for me, between the stress of the surgery, the adventure with the fridge, and the malfunctioning of the fire alarm. Life seems to have handed me one stressor after another. My oldest child and I often just recognize it as our run of luck, where a few good things come our way only to be snatched up by an even longer run of bad luck. But inside, I still try to keep in mind that despite how much life mistreats you, you should never mistreat it. For years now, I’ve kept online relationships with a randomly chosen few people. It’s not like we have anything in common; it usually started with me or them admiring the work of the other. Recently, one of those friends was strugglin...
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Where You Is

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  To understand love, first you must learn to understand yourself. Looking back at my earliest memories I remember the emotions of joy and laughter. As I dig deeper though, I find emotions of being tolerated and ignored. Most of us I’m sure were given a little bit of both, much like a blended cotton shirt. A sturdy 80/20 blend with strong roots in faith and a little mental neglect sprinkled in for stretch. I suppose the main thing is, what parts stand out the most in your mind? Now I’m not making light of mental health struggles, cause Lord knows I’ve had my share. For nearly 30 years I’ve been diagnosed with PTSD, GAD, PD, and a host of other letters. I’ve spent nearly half my life focused on the causes and trying to get better. Funny thing is even with all that planning; I only made baby steps in my recovery. The one thing I now realize through all my searching is that, without taking a compassionate look at yourself, I never found peace. When understanding love, we first hav...
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By Those That Don't Care

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  After about three weeks in on my “Ignorance Is Bliss Tour”, which involved no national news and very little TV and Social media time. I was giving my mind a break from the amount of dopamine it was receiving. Till last night when I fell asleep just after dinner. Even as I spent the evening listening to the latest political novel, it didn’t seem to bother my rest at all. And do you want to know why?   ​ Because this clown show we call politics hasn’t changed a lick since I started voting in the early 1980s. What has changed is our insatiable need for hits of dopamine, that natural little drug (for lack of a better word) that fires up our pleasure sensors. I’ve been doing my damnest to pull myself away from that little booger. Allowing my mind instead to focus on silence and interesting conversation. I started going to the local Senior Center, if for nothing else but to soak up the atmosphere of community.   ​ For far too long for those of us on the left and the right...
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Dad Loves His Work

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  Right now my head is a jumbled mess of “what if’s” and “when’s it going to be over”. I mean I look perfectly together this morning after a shower and a shave. But last night and this morning my head is a jumble of insane messages my fractured mind wants to scream at me. In days past, I would simply sweep all that noise under a rug and go about my day working on some new half-finished project. Now that I have pretty much learned to embrace the silence, I allow those voices of panic to have their say. to most that might sound totally unproductive, but hear me out. I’ve learned by giving those parts of me (the panic, the fear) their say. I can then through mindfulness practice of living in the here and now, embrace those voices and acknowledge them and let them go. Now you might say to yourself, “All that kumbaya shit sounds great, if I was able to sit around and smell daisies all day. But hell! I got work to do and still have to stare at the damn problem all day”. Hey. I tota...
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Just Like Dad

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  I dreamed of a beautiful piece of poetry this morning about five o’clock. But I didn’t get up to jot it down for my wife was asleep on my arm. Sometimes words just don’t need to be said, when the flames of passion hover so close to the surface. I was a man brought up around a strong foundation of strong women. I mean there was my father and a whole pile of uncles around me. But even they seemed to be in awe of the women in their lives. While my father was a good provider, it was my mother that I was most comfortable around. I suppose it was because we were so close in age, and my mother having been raised in a house full of boys, it just came natural to her. Me and my dad struggled to find our way, till we finally did when I became a father. For those few years he had left, he was a doting grandpa. But it still makes me sad that now those clear images in my head are nothing but faded memories to my children. But the dawn woke up on this cloudy and humid morning, where I see t...
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