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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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Sliced & Diced

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 So I guess the current frat boys and future corporate CEOs got their wish last night and turned the People’s House into a fraternity house. I’m sure that’s been the wish of every wanna-be proud boy in the country. To take that nearly holy beacon “freedom for all” and paint it up like a cheap whore. But such as it is, as the country melts down to its lowest denominator. But what can I say, Happy Independence Day! Life around here is crawling back to normal; I’m still finding new aches and pains while others go down. My head has definitely cleared up from its weeks’ worth of fog, so maybe I can make sense now when I talk. But just as my doctors more than warned me, it’s the internal work that really needs healing. It’s funny how fragmented one can feel when diced and sliced from the inside. But despite the lack of external sutures, there's a great many on the inside. So while I wait for the hole in my heart to heal, and the plug to fit snug into place, and the entry point on m...
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Take Care Of Yourself

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The Road Home   Once again another sleepless night confounds me; tensions of the day haunt my dreams. Leaving me restless and out-of-sorts, anxious and ready for change. Usually before and after a major event, such as this surgery, I find myself searching for meaning, while at the same time putting up old habits that are my survival mode. I wear a nearly impenetrable mask of this happy-go-lucky man who doesn’t have a care in the world. But just as in the distant past, the building of that wall eventually cracks and crumbles. So I sit here with this weight once again, listening to wise words of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh about healing myself through a life in the present moment. Listening this evening to a friend nearly coming to tears about a past pain nearly brought me to tears myself. I wanted to say words of comfort, but instead I sat there and gave them some compassionate listening. But through my own suffering, I found myself falling to old habits of self-defense and w...
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Keep Living

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This is from last years surgery.   It’s creeping close to noon-time, and for the last few hours I’ve been scrolling through messages and social media posts. Some of the posts are funny, some sad, or enlightening; but all sent to stir up attention. Believe me I’m just as guilty as anyone else, if I weren’t I’d just keep my posts to myself. But I don’t, I share them. Last night was a little rough, I woke up cramping on the right side of my rib cage. With my life as a professional pill taker, my world is a crazy balance of making sure the medication I take to live, also doesn’t kill me. In other words, one medication I take to strengthen my heart can also lower my blood sugar dangerously low. So we have to adjust one other medicine, so I don’t lose too much fluid and dehydrate. All the while still taking that medicine to control excess fluid from building around my weakened heart. I know, it sounds crazy as shit. But I do what I got to do to keep the machine running. Kinda like an...
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