Scene for a roadside death

A short woman sat on the guard rail sobbing; her face as bright as a raspberry. Leaning forward, gasping for air, her swollen, over-ripe breasts were just shy of tumbling out of her nearly invisible bikini top.

She probably shouldn't have worn the swimsuit in the first place. She wasn't a small woman and later on, the details of the afternoon might come back to her in electrified flashes --but she didn't mind be stared at. Men like curvy women and what was wrong with liking being stared at on a sunny day by the river? Why not be looked at? What was wrong with feeling warm all the way through?

The woman's hair was wet and hung down the sides of her head, flat and oily. A friend, a sister maybe, had an arm latched around her shoulder. She held her stiffly, even fearfully, as the woman gasped out of grief and horror. The friend, the other woman, her face grim and ashen, her head turned away, mumbled something like prayers: things of no use to the living, things that could not be heard by the drowned.

A small crowd clumped around them, some, like the women, perched on the guard rail, near their vehicles. A few milled around in a schizophrenic shuffle; rocking one step here then one step there but never really going anywhere.

This was just the waiting around for news already lying on the doorstep.

The deliverers of that message, a small army of uniformed professionals, waited in the wings. They stood by polished, red trucks, leaned out the door of predatory police cruisers and watched with curiosity the drama unfolding without their help. They're only apparent purpose, the bulk of them, seemed to be to  separate the crowd of family and friends, soon to be mourners, from those working unseen, underwater, looking for a body.

Blues

I'd never been to the regional jail. A couple of hundred times riding the bus up to the book store and plenty of people sitting next to me or across from me were on their way to the jail to visit or to spring a boyfriend, a girlfriend, a husband, a wife. Sometimes they brought along kids. Sometimes they were only a couple of steps from incarceration themselves.

I remember the guy who was going to see his wife. She was in on a parole violation because of a domestic violence charge. She hit him upside the head with a boot with a stiletto heel. It cut an ugly gash down his face. He sat in the back with a guy, he thought, was a guard or a worker at the jail and explained to him what had happened.

The guy he told his story to worked at Target and could not get away soon enough.

I remember the tattooed grandmother with her grandkids hanging off her talking on the phone and selling drugs by the pill: Three dollars a piece for something. Pain killers. Muscle relaxers. Whatever gets you high.

There were others on that bus ride, going just a couple of stops further than I was, and I'd never been until yesterday.

In the lobby, most everybody had the same bruised and weary look. Some were on the verge of tears. Others fidgeted nervously in their chairs. Nobody really smiled.

The people waiting in the lobby had come to see people in holding; friends, lovers and family awaiting trial or transport to other facilities probably less gracious. Here and there, you could see legitimate heartbreak: a young woman 8 months pregnant; a middle-aged father and mother with hands clasped as tightly as links in a anchor chain; too many small children.

A round woman in a dirty fast food uniform came in wearing a dirty and grease spattered apron. Her skin was like a glazed donut and she had browning tic-tacs for teeth. It was her first time and she didn't know how to operate the lockers.

"You put in a quarter and take the key," someone explained to her.

Visitors aren't allowed to bring in much beyond their identification in the visiting area. Everything else has to be held by someone not going inside or else kept in a small, steel locker.

She couldn't get the locker to work and lost her quarter. It was her first time here, she said. She seemed resigned to a fate that dictated this was not going to go well.

But a couple of kids and their mother helped her. They got the locker to work and gave her the money back.

It was a little thing.

They let someone go. His sentence was up. An order was in. Time served. Whatever. It hardly matters, but a man came out from the other side, wearing street clothes and looking not relieved, but exhausted, as if he'd been pulled from the wreckage of some awful accident: a truth, perhaps. The accident being his life. His family greeted him. They wrapped their arms around him and held him. Each took their turn and nobody rushed.

He was returned to them and they, to him. Everyone was given permission to breathe again.

Sargosso 2

The paperwork arrived the other day for me to sign up to become a hospice volunteer. There was more to it than I expected. I figured all that was needed was a desire to do the job.

Apparently, not.

Reasonably, not. Shuffling off the mortal coil leaves you vulnerable. The news is full of stories about people who take advantage of the dying: thieves, rapists, con artists.

And to be honest, the soon to be deceased aren't always in a good place to make decisions. A few of the people I've given rides to through the Cancer society were so glad to talk to someone; so glad to have a little human contact. I could see where they might misplace some feelings, maybe pass along valuables better intended for grandchildren or friends, write checks when they shouldn't.

So... They're going to do a background check. They've also asked for personal reference. I've already gotten two friends to sign on to stand up for me -and on a lark, I sent a note to one of the guys at Mountain Stage, asking if he wouldn't mind being one of my personal reference. My name gets muttered darkly over there from time to time.

It seemed funny at the time. If he turns me down I'll pick somebody else.

There's more than just the background check. I'm also invited to get Hepatitis B shots on their dime. That sounds like a lot of fun and after this is all over, the class starts in October. If I make the cut and take the classes, I don't know how fast they'd put me to work, but I was given a list of possible job titles.

Some of these job titles are quite grim. The worst is Kid's Path Companion Volunteer. It's the one that sends a chill up my spine and makes me tear up just reading the description.

"Supports the Kid's Path patient and family in home setting or Hubbard Hospice House. Also rocks children as needed."

I believe I have found that thing which I do not want to do but must.

Presuming, I don't get assigned to help with the gardening.

I will not do this because I believe in God or because I don't. I am not doing it because there is some sort of cosmic merit or brownie points in taking on this kind of a job. I'm a Buddhist. Karma doesn't precisely work the way it's popularly portrayed. It's only action and I do not expect to benefit from this action in any tangible way.

Because I do this, nobody is going to love me any more than they already do. Because I do this, my life is not going to be happier. I will not grow taller or live longer because of this and if there is such a thing as reincarnation, I don't think it's going to get me a better seat for the next show.

I am not doing this because I believe this will make me feel better or that it will ease the awful weight on my own heart. This might be one of the most self-destructive things I've ever done, but maybe if I do it, the world around me will seem a little better. Maybe it will be a little closer to the world I wish I lived in.

That's about all I can really hope to get out of this.

Sargosso

It's been a hard thing to find any reason to write on this blog. Part of what I would occasionally write about has been surrendered to the Gazette. It fits there and that seems to be going as well as can be expected, which should leave plenty of room for my hellish misadventures and goofiness.

The problem is things have been quiet --or they have trampled into the territory of those things which I may not speak of. There are also things I just don't want to write about.

There is a lull. I don't know what to make of it.

My nerves are frayed. That much I can say without explaining the reasons why or describing in any detail the people responsible. Everything is raw. It's like an agonizing karmic sunburn. Moving in any direction hurts.

Yesterday, I went to the library, hoping to find inspiration, escape or God, if he happened to show up. I find lately that I miss talking to God or really, I miss hoping to get some sort of an answer.

As always, I follow my eyes, look at those things that draw me toward them and wonder why? It's never simple. I am always Alice following the white rabbit down the rabbit hole.

Down a block, I saw a slender woman in a figure hugging purple dress. The color was vibrant, almost hallucinagenic and completely wrong for a Monday afternoon downtown. She was pretty. In that dress, I could make out the shape of her underwear. She ought to have gone with the thong, but it wasn't exactly about sex. It was curiosity. I turned just to see where someone wearing what looked like something a woman might wear to a cocktail party would be going.

I turned the corner and saw a weary, middle-aged woman pushing a five-year old boy in a wheel chair. He was half asleep, head lolling to the side while his arms were curled rigidly to his chest.

The boy was handsome, with the well-scrubbed look of good health and a recent haircut. If he could stand, he'd be the kind of kid envious parents would say, "He should be a model." His clothes look like they'd come right off the rack that morning.

The woman's face was unspeakably sad. This was her child. This would always be her child.

I did my best not to stare and not to weep in the fucking street. The woman in purple was gone.

Instead, I continued on my path, returned a load of books I cared nothing about for another batch I hoped would show me something new or speak to me in a way that mattered. I came out with comic books about the zombie apocalypse --reading about the destruction of the world is somehow soothing --and the poet Rumi's big red book.

It was a whim, an idea that came from nowhere. Maybe there's an answer in there somewhere.

The woman in purple was on the corner across the street, waiting, when I came out. Our paths ran parallel almost until the exact place where I'd first seen her then she turned, I turned and we both disappeared.

Raging

One of the things I've tried to do with driving for the American Cancer Society is to face my own fears. Cancer is a frequent cause of death in my family. It's killed or contributed to the demise of three grandparents and a couple of great aunts and uncles. It's even affected my sisters. It will probably kill me.

The worst part about driving is watching from the sidelines as brittle lives collapse under the weight of sustained strain. It's painful and demoralizing to see men and women with grown children and spouses essentially facing their end almost alone. It's not just poverty --though sure, I've seen plenty of that. It's witnessing the forced poverty of the human spirit.

This is the future I fear the most. It's not the dying. Everybody dies. It's after a life spent as a father, friend and husband being too much of a bother to help any more. It's seeing that no matter what you give, how much you try, in the end it comes down to how much the people around you are willing to put up with. From what I've seen, if you linger too long, you inevitably cross a threshold and exhaust their patience and kindness. Love becomes detached by exhaustion and guilt. They start quietly hoping you'll die, just so they can start to heal from the grief.

Be the change you wish to see in the world.

I'd like my world to be a little kinder. I'd like when the end comes for me, there's someone there who doesn't mind so much. I'd like to be able to tell my stupid stories to an audience and if I want to feel lousy about circling the drain, it should be okay. I'd like to feel like there's still enough time to make one more friend.

So, I contacted Hospice and asked if I could volunteer. I don't have much in the way of skills to offer, but I can hang out. I can help with errands. I can listen. I can even talk if they want me to. I can be company and I can wait with them.

So, that's just what I'm gonna do.

Critters

The line led from a pair of double doors at an unremarkable salt cracker building and snaked around the edge of the parking lot. Many of the people looked like they only came out of the holler when they got a new circular from Walmart or when it was time to cash a monthly check.

This was a hardscrabble, blue collar bunch. They were conservative in what they smiled about and muddled through the wait with annoyed resignation. Somebody was going to get something they didn't get and the opportunity to eat buffalo, elk or kangaroo only came around once a year.

About half the people brought cans. There was a canned food drive as part of the meal. Donations were encouraged, but not necessary. Plenty counted on that and they arrived with their families. Others gave what they felt they could get away with: off brand corn, green beans or bags of dusty pinto beans.

The man behind me said he didn't much care for the rabbit here.

"They don't do it up right," he said. "Me? I boil mine for 45 minutes then flour it, add salt and pepper then fry it. That's just the way you do rabbit."

I didn't tell him I was a little queasy about doing this. I've been trying to cut back on eating animals and animal products as a way to live a little kinder. Instead, I said, "I haven't eaten rabbit since I was probably 10 years old."

His wife, clearly his second or third, hung on his shoulder and asked him if it was going to take so long. She was about 30 years his junior and maybe only half a dozen years older than the man's granddaughter who was trying to keep up with a 3 year-old.

The little girl kept trying to pick my pocket.

"Katie, stop that," the granddaughter said. "You leave the man's wallet alone. It's not yours."

Then she apologized. She apologized too much, actually, kind of giggled and I swear, she batted her eyelashes and smiled.

My first thought, "You have to be fucking kidding me."

She might have been 16, but I have my doubts.

The old guy told me about his farm and how he'd sort of taken advantage of the hard year for the squirrels and deer the year before. He'd set out food for them and when the season came, he'd taken what he wanted.

"Within the law," he said, but getting a deer had been no trouble at all and his eyesight was shot.

He was glad to get the deer, but disappointed, too. It wasn't as much fun. The sport had been removed from the hunt and it gave him little pleasure.

He'd hunted for decades and some years it fed him better than others. Many times, it had been necessary.

"I've been on my own since I was 12," he told me.

Now, he had to rely on others --his ridiculously young wife, his jail-bait granddaughter and the rest of the family living with him on his farm. He was used to providing, to being in command, but his control was beginning to slip. He could drive and get around, but he had to watch his sugar. He had to take pills.

"I hope they get the smoked turkey right," he said finally. "The stuff made me sick last year."

Phantom Limb

It's not something you notice at first, except the old guy in the marines t-shirt walks with just a hint of a limp. Barely that, it's more of a slight drag in his step. One leg is just a little out of sync with his pace.

Of course, if you follow the man's leg, you can't miss it. He doesn't hide it, doesn't cover it up with by wearing track pants or sweats. It is what it is. At the knee his leg tapers sharply before becoming a dull aluminum pipe that burrows like a screw into a tennis shoe.

It's something to watch him work out. Others his age conserve their strength. They step onto the treadmills like cows drowsily being led through the chutes at a slaughter house, but not him. He fights. He rages. His fists are clenched around the handles and he swings like he'd fucking kill you if you tried to stop him.

I understand.

Every now and again, someone asks him about it --his leg. It's a curiosity at the gym, though he isn't the only man to be missing a leg. There's another man, much younger, also ex-military, who comes in on crutches. He's still getting the hang of his, but the old marine is practiced. He lost his leg a long time ago. He's used to it.

"Does it hurt?"

The marine smiled and shrugged. "The funny thing is I still feel it. I can feel if it's turned the wrong way and just yesterday, I was sure, I was absolutely sure, somebody was standing on it."

Phantom pain, phantom sensations, he talks about and the mousy old man's eyes grow huge. He could not imagine.

"It still feels like it should be there," he said. "It's just not."

Iron

There's a cluster of middle-aged men at the gym who tend to hog the benches. They laugh too loud as they work out. They bray like donkeys and it distracts me, with my ear buds planted firmly in each ear canal, the music turned up so loud it starts to hurt after the second or third station.

They chatter and make jokes, talk about football, basketball and God. Politics used to come up, but they don't really agree so they don't talk about it. Everybody wants to be pals. They move from station to station like a herd of Galapagos turtles.

I am a soloist in the gym. I stick to myself, try not to gawk too much (not that it's really a problem in a place where some mornings I am the youngest guy in the room) and do my best not to draw any attention.

Three days a week, I lift weights. The other two days, I climb a machine, swing my arms and legs and quietly work toward a heart attack. This wouldn't be a bad way to go. It would look like you tried.

I think I've come close once or twice.

I am an angry exercise enthusiast. This is where I come to work out my rage, my aggression, my endless frustration and my ever-present sorrow. I do penance for the sins I have committed --both real and imagined. I do penance for the sins I have not committed --both real and imagined. I do not do it for love or for vanity or really even for my health, except to say that I need this. It has become my raft.

Pain is my constant companion. I overdo it and stay sore, particularly over the weekends after a leg workout. In high school, I used to dread squats. Now, I hate them, but I do them. The pain is a comfort. It is shelter against the numbness and the cold pit of indifference.

By accident, the exercise clears my head. Lying on a bench with a weighted bar slowly approaching my throat somehow quiets the noise. The crushing pressure of iron on my shoulders, pushing me to my knees, lances and drains the poison in my mind. This is where I find peace these days.

It lasts barely the length of a single day.

Watching the turtle men, meandering through their workouts, wasting time, laughing like a squad of junior high cheerleaders, I can't help but feel a little envious --not for their little morning communion, not for their fraternity, but that the weights I lift seem so much heavier.

Fraggle Rock

Blogging and other projects are pretty slow going at the moment due to the damned fraggles. Another couple of days and I'll have this weird affair done.

2010 ended in the emotional equivalent of a hail of bullets. The car cost me $450. I got another note from the Tax department, which will mean more to pay out and I crept across the finish line exhausted, fearful and feeling alone.

But I have not come to grieve for the losses of one year, but to look ahead. Onward, we move. New Year's day, I worked on the damned fraggles, to finish that promise, but also looked at reworking that old novel I've been carrying around with me for a few years. I looked at an old version and began my first steps toward making it the book it should be.

I also went through the first few dozen pages of the literary agents book I have (a fine gift from my wife and much appreciated). I marked the agencies I thought could represent the book. There were a lot and I wasn't even anywhere near the middle of the section. It was kind of exciting.

Part of what has always hung me up, I think, are expectations. I expect things to be a certain way. I expect people to behave in ways that make sense to me, which typically suit my needs and wants. This is the kind of thinking that dooms friendships, marriages and jobs.

I expected a long time ago to be a successful writer by now, to be financially secure and to be a man of leisure --kind of the dream, I think, of your average aspiring novelist --money enough to write and not have to worry about punching a clock. Everybody wants to be Stephen King --probably Stephen King does, too.

Last year was hard. I've felt almost crippling guilt at times at how envious I was over my sister-in-law's book. She made it look so easy and it's hard not to feel like shit when everybody says how great someone's book is when you've got two manuscripts sitting on the same bookshelf and a bunch of rejection letters. I've really grappled with it, with what she's accomplished and with how when she mentions working on a revision or a writing problem, it doesn't quite mean the same thing as when I say it.

Part of me wanted to dismiss her success as as a fluke, a lucky break. It could happen to anyone, but that does a disservice to her. She had the right book at the right time, but she was also the right writer. In order for her to be lucky, she had to be good first.

I think we learn in starts and stops. I find my lessons in the weirdest places. Lately, I've been bitching about the fraggle project. I started bitching about it almost from the minute I started it. This was supposed to be easy, something to burn through that maybe a few people would like and would help me clear my head. I now have 40,000 words written and the damned thing isn't done.

Keep in mind this is a project that will never be read by more than a handful of people --maybe a dozen. It will never earn me a dime. I'd call it satire and parody, but nobody makes money on that kind of thing (unless it's porn apparently, that seems to be booming from what I read) and the fraggle's lawyers would skin me alive in court, I imagine. I do not believe it can or will advance my writing career in any way. It is an epic time waster.

But here's the thing, it's been fun. I've spent many hours lost in that despicable world I've created and filled with not particularly admirable characters. There is no pressure to try and be good, though it would be kind of a joke if it accidentally turns out to be sort of good. It is pure creation and a joy --even if it's about the damned fraggles.

I have no expectations. It will be what it is. Maybe I could learn something from a fraggle.

Housecleaning

This is just a quick update. There won't be much blogging this week since I'm currently writing my Fraggle ass off. Sheesh... and I just wanted to do this in about 20,000 words (we are now at 27,000 and not done). Ah well, we write until it's finished and then it's finished. No revisions. No corrections. Once the last word is "published," I'll be abandoning the Fraggle romance genre to do something else.

I'm guessing 2011 will be another rebuilding year. I have a lot of those. Most of next month, I'll probably work on my old book and get ready to send it forth all sparkly and new in February. I'm still not ready to go back to my snakehandler story. Maybe sometime in February, while I'm anticipating the rejection letters and hoping for just one "yes" I'll pick that back up --or maybe not.

So far, my list of resolutions and plans for 2011 is staying pretty modest. Part of me has lost the will to give a shit. I'll keep going to the gym because I like to and because it feels good. However, I'm not making a lot of plans to travel or do things because that never works out. I really don't want to deal with the disappointment that comes at the end of twelve months when I look back at another year spent penned in my cubicle.

I'll continue to go to the library and take chances on different topics, different authors and if they dazzle me, great, but I'll still read a fair share of comic books.

I'm not making plans to make more money because one of the great truths of my existence is there is a very specific sort of thing that happens when I make even a little more money: new expenses crop up just as soon as I start earning even a dollar or two more. It's like fucking magic.

It is my lot to remain broke. The daycare center will always raise their rates just when I get a raise at work. My car will always break down and cost me $200 when I have $100 in my savings account. I will always be behind on the bills no matter how many weeks I go without taking a day off. There will never be enough money and every purchase over six bucks will come with a cold feeling the size of a grapefruit in the pit of my stomach.

This is my fate.

Still, I am going to follow my bliss, chase the things that make me happy, which is what I do already. I'm not really expecting to be any happier than I am right now. I have reached my median range of joy and happiness. This is it. I must take joy in the conflict and the struggle because there is no goal line. There is no touchdown dance or thousands of screaming fans waiting at the end. There is no Superbowl ring.

I am meant to slog, to work until the second before I die and to repeat the same routine until I can practically see the future.

Walnut

There is something almost spiritual about cracking walnuts. I don't mean the thin-shelled English variety you get at the grocery store in the cellophane bag. You put two of those in your hand, squeeze and nine times out of ten one of them breaks. You pick it apart, devour the heart of it and move on.

No, there's nothing spiritual or thought-provoking about that, but black walnuts... those motherfuckers are tough. They challenge you. They confound you. They demand your attention and if you want what's really there, you have to work for it.

First, you have to collect them from somewhere: off a farm, from the backyard of an elderly relative or in the middle of of the national forest. Nobody grows black walnuts deliberately any more --if they ever did. They're messy. In the early fall, a big black walnut tree rains down baseball sized fruit that dent cars, lay waste to picnic tables and will brain a dog too dumb to move its lazy ass out from under it.

You have to seek them out then gather them up and wait. You have to keep them away from the squirrels and the chipmunks. You have to hide them away from the spiders and centipedes, the maggots and the beetles. You have to wait for the hulls to turn black and greasy. You have to wait until they're juicy and rotting before you can do anything with one. You have to wait until just to hold one in your hand means your palm and fingers will look dirty for at least a week. The stain of a black walnut is as good as ink and it smells of decay.

From what I understand, the pulpy mess is poisonous --not enough to kill you, though I doubt anybody has tried --but enough to make you wish you were dead, enough to make you God awful sick.

To get at the nut, you have to peel away the slick, poisonous hull and extract the gore covered pit. Each time, you're witnessing something being born, watching something new being brought into the world.

The hulls are discarded. They dry in the sun and turn to dust. The nuts you clean up as best you can or you don't. Well-meaning guides suggest you should wash them, like you're cleaning off afterbirth, like the damned things need to be polished, like they can be turned into sparkling jewels. They are not jewels.

The exteriors are rough and gritty. They will remain that way even after they are eventually broken apart, but there's something attractive about them. They're durable and the ridges on the shell are like runes.

It takes a while for the nuts themselves to dry. You can put them in a window box and let the sun do the work. That is the old, country way. I put mine next to a heating vent in my house, in a box that used to hold copy paper. A month later, after a cold snap and all the color has gone out of the hills, they're ready to harvested.

They make contraptions for cracking nuts. At the grocery store, you can buy a simple hand cracker for a couple of bucks. They're shiny and impressive. The good ones can also be used to break into lobster claws --or so they claim. They're also useless when it comes to cracking a black walnut. Likewise, the nutcrackers kept in the heads of dolls are useless, as are a wide array of gadgets that promise they are up to the task.

I bought one of those --a Texas two-step-- twenty bucks on Amazon. It cracked two nuts before it warped so bad it couldn't be trusted to crack a peanut without crushing the fingers of the person holding it.

In the end, I settled on an old wooden stump, a couple of study nails driven halfway to the head into the slatted top of the wood and claw hammer. The crude design reminded me of something I'd seen in a Foxfire book. It was an inaccurate representation of a better idea, but serviceable. The nails held the nut in place, kept it from rolling away while I brought the hammer down.

It was a learning experience. Some of the nuts exploded when you hit them --too hard. Others were like tapping on the side of a battleship --too soft. Every now and again, one would break perfectly in perfect fragments where the oily meat inside could be gently dumped out in gorgeous chunks.

However, it hardly mattered how much force I put behind each individual stroke. You could not read the nuts by looking at them to tell how much or how little effort was required. Sometimes a gentle tap did the job. Other times, you had to pound the living hell out of it and you still got nowhere. Every once in a while, regardless of the time, the effort or the expectations, the inside was empty. There was nothing to be had, no matter how hard you tried.

Cracking walnuts is therapeutic. It's hard to think about trouble, the unpaid bills, your broken heart, when you're swinging a hammer down on a little hard nugget and trying very hard not to pulverize the thing. The whole process requires concentration and luck. It is a meditation. It is a form of prayer and like all prayers it is answered by an indifferent other that will only give to you what there is to give. It will never be enough.

pennies: mood ring

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been grappling with a couple of personal failures and rejections. The most significant has been the loss of a couple of friends.

Nobody died. They just went away.

A couple of months ago, a friend of mine called me from the road and told me she was through with Charleston and heading home to Texas. It was shocking and disorienting. We'd gotten close and I'd come to rely on her for moral support, as a sounding board for my writing and just someone to kind of get me out of my dull, gray brain.

Her own story is complicated and difficult, but the move wasn't entirely unexpected. She always planned to go. The timing was what was off. I just expected later rather than sooner.

A few weeks ago, she decided that things where she was weren't working the way she'd hoped they would. I really don't know what she thought, but she abruptly stopped communicating.

It scared me just a bit. In the weeks leading up to her dropping out, she'd filled my head with fears about old enemies, talk about a stalkerish new guy she'd sort of been seeing and even her own depressed state.

I imagined all kinds of things. I asked around a little and eventually found out that she was okay, but it hurt. I felt discarded and abandoned.

In the last couple of days, I lost another friend. This one, I've known for years. With him, it's the usual. We've always had a kind of adversarial friendship and snipe back and forth for laughs --sometimes to the point where it ceases to be funny and becomes kind of merciless. On some levels, we're very much alike. We have similar temperaments and ways of thinking, but I have a gift for cruelty. When provoked, I can be particularly hurtful and without really trying.

He can be a bastard, but he's really out of his weight class when it comes to me. I'm just that much more awful.

Anyway, I pissed him off --possibly because he pissed me off --and that was it. He cut me loose. It is probably for the best.

It may be that for my friend who fled to Texas, cutting me out was the best thing for her to do, too --to maybe cut some of the things that tethered her to a specific time in her life that just didn't work. Sometimes maybe you have to get rid of some of the old things to make room for the new in your life.

I've taken the rejections hard. Lately, I've been blathering almost non-stop about change. Well, there you go... change, right there. People change. Sometimes they change because they want to and sometimes they change because they need to. Sometimes it happens because of something you did and sometimes it happens because it happens and it has nothing to do with you at all.

I'm trying to find my peace with this. I've lost people from time to time, but I don't quit anybody. I do give them their space, however. Sometimes that's what they want in the first place --space away from me. I don't chase. I don't beg and I don't plead, but I keep a place open in my life for them in case they should want it.

Sometimes they do come back.

But not always.

Pennies: Resolutions again

My resolutions are coming together slowly and the list to the side is growing. I spoke to a guy about them yesterday, a drummer as it happens, who told me he didn't bother with them. He also said that losing weight or getting in shape was never a problem because he's married to a personal trainer. When he starts getting fat, she lets him know. Problem solved.

This was not particularly helpful.

Still, my little coffee cup reminds me, "Be the change you wish to see in the world."

At the library, looking for a copy of the Writer's Market for a friend --she writes erotic/pornographic short stories involving bondage, masochism, etc... and needs help locating magazines that might consider publishing, one of the librarians asked if I needed help. I didn't, but she seemed pretty unhappy to be shelving books so I shrugged and went along with it.

"Are you a writer?" She asked and I said, sure. I'm a writer.

"Are you?" I asked. She seemed pretty eager to help. She worked around books. She was human. All of these things contributed to the possibility that she might like to write.

She nodded. "I write science fiction and fantasy --but just a little."

"Lots of imagination," I acknowledged.

"Well, reality isn't as much fun."

I nodded, but thought that my friend who writes the porn is probably writing from her own experiences to some degree. Of course, not everybody likes sex or wants to be treated as a personal fuck toy.

The pope, for instance... probably... and maybe some of those guys on Fox News.

We looked for a little while and finally I explained what the book could do. It's a directory of where you could get published --if God loves you. She seemed interested, like maybe she'd wondered about that.

Finally, she located the book.

"Oh, it's in reference." She frowned. "You can't check it out. You can look at it, but you can't take it home."

Ah well, I told her. I can always buy it. It wouldn't kill me to buy something every once in a while.

As I was leaving, I remembered how many people encouraged me to write, how many people cut me slack or gave me a break. I've tried to do that with other aspirants. We are many. But I've never nailed it down as a personal policy. For 2011, it becomes policy. I still want to get published. I want that more than anything and I'm still going to try, but I can also do what I can to help other writers get read, too.

For my friend who writes the porn, I promised her I'd share my copy of the Writer's Market when I got it. I'm selling blood on Saturday. It should be enough to cover it.

Pennies: Christmas Wrap

I did a little Christmas shopping today. I tried last night, went to Toys R Us, but saw the crowd and decided I didn't want to be pressed up against that much flesh, not without a condom.

I tried Walmart, which is almost an annual trip. My chief objection to Walmart isn't the stuff, which is often less than it appears, but the general "go-fuck-yourself" attitude of both the shoppers and the staff. Nobody seems to want to be there, regardless of the deal and on the night of Thanksgiving, it felt like a fistfight was brewing in every other aisle.

Let those of you without sin throw the first punch.

It looks like it will be a good year for the kids at Christmas. For me, I never know. Some years are brutal and bitter and I tend to remember them more than I do the good years. The year we got kicked out of our apartment during the holidays and had to spend all of the money I'd saved to relocate. The years I spent Christmas alone or the years so full of strife and resentment I felt like my heart would explode, I remember those, too.

There were good times: being dewy-eyed in love and making out under the Christmas tree lights at half-past midnight, Chinese food in the afternoon instead of turkey, waking up in a warm bed and feeling giddy that there was actually snow on the ground --just like on a Christmas card.

It's just harder to remember the good times. Joy doesn't leave a scar.

I think of Christmas as a season of longing. It's a season of want. You want objects and experiences and feelings. You want peace and love and stuff. It's often a season of disappointment because there's never enough of what you really need and in the rush to try and satisfy insatiable hungers, people get hurt. They hurt themselves and each other.

Actual results, I realize, may vary, but for me, the holidays begin with hope, end in misery and precede the long walk into the gray dream of winter. Every year, the season begins earlier. This year is the earliest yet.

Pennies: Found object

Half a block down the street I saw her and sort of sped up. My heart was completely in my throat. She crossed the street and started into a parking lot full of cars.

It wasn't her. Not in a million years, but for a second, I thought... It was ridiculous. The girl looked the same --almost exactly the same. She had the right hair, the right skin and the right walk. She might be a little thinner and that's what finally woke me up.

She looked the same, like she did 20 years ago.

Nobody looks like they did 20 years ago -not with anything short of some kind of demonic contract. Some of us are passably close, but everybody wears down or "characters up." It happens and by now, it would have happened to her.

I let her drive away and disappear then went on with my errands, but remembering. The people you love, you always love, even when you also learn to hate them. They occupy a space in your heart that may shrink to the size of a thimble, but is never entirely vacated. Wounds heal, but the old injuries sometimes ache when you get a little cold.

Pennies: Clean and Jerk

Chicks do not dig me. This is a fact. I am not an attractive man --not hideous, but sort of average, nondescript. I've always gotten by with my brain and occasionally my cooking skills --at least with women. On the other hand, old men with easy, lecherous smiles and tufts of gray hair sprouting from their ears like cotton candy think I am the bomb.

This is less of a comfort than you might imagine.

This morning at the gym, one of my fans stopped me as I was trying to find Mastodon on my iPod. I thought I'd need something slightly aggressive to get through my leg work out. He put his hand on my shoulder, squeezed slightly then said, "You know, I was thinking about what sort of book I should bring you."

I looked up, smiled blandly and hoped he'd move his clammy paw from my shoulder, but there it stayed while he reminded me about a conversation we'd had weeks ago about my writing and what sort of things I should be writing about.

"I was going to bring you that book." Which I'd forgotten about. "But then I started reading this book about prostate health."

As our conversation turned undeniably weird, he explained how the book was basically a condemnation of how the medical establishment treats prostate ailments, particularly prostate cancer.

"Doctors just want to cut and cut," he said sourly and I shook my head in agreement.

Yep. Prostate Cancer sucks.

He said, "At your age, your prostate is probably something you should be thinking about."

And up until he mentioned it, I'd only given it a passing thought and mostly that was --ick, I hope I don't get prostate cancer. After that, I probably did something else, like made a sandwich, worked a word search puzzle or checked my local listings to see if there was an episode of "Quantum Leap" on somewhere.

The old guy gave my shoulder another friendly squeeze then released. "I got mine book at the library, but I ordered a copy online. Once it gets here, I'll bring it for you."

"Thanks," I said and really, it was kind of sweet.

No one has ever specifically worried about the condition of my prostate before. None of the women I've ever been involved with has ever said anything to suggest my prostate was important to them in any way.

Some of this is my own fault. I don't usually inspire that kind of interest. I don't suppose my prostate has ever been considered dynamic or attractive. It's always been something easy to ignore.

Certainly, no one has ever been drawn to me because of my prostate. Occasionally, I've been told I have nice eyes and that's about the extent of it. No one has ever said, "You have an amazing prostate. I could get lost in your prostate."

So, in this one little way, that creepy old guy loves me more than anyone else ever has. I'm not just a pretty face.