Just had a conversation with André about karma and how I see it as more than just about morality and acting ethically.
My view is that that type of thinking about karma is a superficial way of understanding something that is broad and deep.
To me, karma is about the bond you create with certain people in this life that may or may not be related to you through family, friends or work.
Like if you get into a car accident and kill someone, and that person was an organ donor and saved someone's life (indirectly) by giving them a new heart or liver, etc.
With that, there is a karmic bond between you and the person who died, and the person who died and the donor-recipient; and possibly even between you (the agent or origin) and the donor-recipient.
Karma transcends lifetimes into past and even future lives; until we can cut the knots that tie us in harmful way to other people.
This is why ahimsa, or non-harming / non-violence is such an important concept in relation to the concept of karma, in which they are intimately bound and entwined.
Tatiana has gone past the end of the hall (to the east) into an area where I can no longer see her...but voilà, there she is again!
One time she came at full-tilt down the hall and into the apartment and I never knew why she bolted so fast; it was amazing to watch her run / gallop so swiftly.
She seems bored and I should play with her for a little while.
I got Tatiana last winter as MC asked me at work if I wanted a cat that was found out in the snow. Her apartment building's custodian put the cat in the laundry room where she seemed happy as could be.
In some respects, that would have been the best place for her to remain until she had had her kittens; since the veterinarian had offered to abort her once I found out she was pregnant, and I made a split-decision to go ahead and let him spay her.
A decision that I now regret, as I regret giving up my Fyodor and Natasha for adoption.
I don't tend to make good decision unless I have a day or more to think over the issue.
Whenever I think about the mistakes that I've made in the past based on poor judgment, I feel like killing myself. The pain in my gut becomes so overwhelming that I wish that it would end and I with it would disappear.
And this is why Tatiana saves my life everyday; as I can't leave her alone in this world without knowing who's going to take care of her.
Sort of like I don't know who's taking care of Fyodor and Natasha, or whether they kept them together, since they were brother and sister from the same litter.
I have a photo of me holding them in my hands when they were kittens, and all I could ever notice was my hairy forearms. But now, all I would notice is the two little critters I once loved with all my heart and gave away for no good reason.
Wednesday, August 9, 2017
Friday -- 2 January, 2009 -- 8:49 p.m. -- Siam Thai Restaurant
This morning, I got up in time to go get an Egg McMorrie, but the cooks wouldn't be there until 11 a.m., which is the cut-off time for making Egg McMorries.
So I went home and picked up a couple of packages from the office package room. A pair of black jeans from Banana Republic and an iron that I got online from E-Bay at half-price.
Then I took a shower and got ready for work.
Tonight, we closed an hour early at 8 p.m., and we had to let the customers know that we were closing early.
So I came here (Siam), after RH drove me home with KM. But I had to bring Tatiana inside, so that I could go back out to eat.
She looked a little disappointed, but that's just me "reading" my cat with human eyes.
And in the mail was my grades for last quarter: two A's and a B (in Anatomy).
So, I finally find out that I passed the last anatomy exam which we took 2 Saturdays ago and it was extremely painful afterwards.
Tonight, I'm eating Pad Siew with beef, and a glass of red wine.
I sent JYG a link to the weblog last night. I guess that I may have to be careful of what I write if I choose to post the journal entries right away (which I will probably do unless there is some sensitive material that I should remove before posting, or save the post until I quit the bookstore).
But, of course, it is imperative to gloss over the material, the text, before I put it into "print".
The decontextualization and appropriation of ideas for ulterior motives is obviously a problem for anyone who is writing something that can later be intentionally misconstrued by a third party.
But that's only if I write anything influential or perhaps subversive.
Against the stream of mainstream thinking, to swim against the current, in rebellion to the doublespeak of contemporary media sources.
So I went home and picked up a couple of packages from the office package room. A pair of black jeans from Banana Republic and an iron that I got online from E-Bay at half-price.
Then I took a shower and got ready for work.
Tonight, we closed an hour early at 8 p.m., and we had to let the customers know that we were closing early.
So I came here (Siam), after RH drove me home with KM. But I had to bring Tatiana inside, so that I could go back out to eat.
She looked a little disappointed, but that's just me "reading" my cat with human eyes.
And in the mail was my grades for last quarter: two A's and a B (in Anatomy).
So, I finally find out that I passed the last anatomy exam which we took 2 Saturdays ago and it was extremely painful afterwards.
Tonight, I'm eating Pad Siew with beef, and a glass of red wine.
I sent JYG a link to the weblog last night. I guess that I may have to be careful of what I write if I choose to post the journal entries right away (which I will probably do unless there is some sensitive material that I should remove before posting, or save the post until I quit the bookstore).
But, of course, it is imperative to gloss over the material, the text, before I put it into "print".
The decontextualization and appropriation of ideas for ulterior motives is obviously a problem for anyone who is writing something that can later be intentionally misconstrued by a third party.
But that's only if I write anything influential or perhaps subversive.
Against the stream of mainstream thinking, to swim against the current, in rebellion to the doublespeak of contemporary media sources.
Thursday -- 1 January 2009 -- 7:33 p.m. -- 6th Floor Hall
A new year to start big projects...or small projects with greater likelihood for success.
The big project is still massage therapy school, which starts on 12 January...a little over a week.
The break has been nice, though textbook rush starts this weekend for the U of _ and I have to work 12-6 p.m. on Sunday (for two weekends).
And the small projects? Cleaning my apartment and perhaps getting rid of the excess books and other clutter that takes up space inside.
Another small project is to write a journal entry each day (if possible) and at the end of the year post them into my blog online: "Another Lousy Day at the Bookstore."
The music stopped on my stereo player, so I put in the Afro-Peruvian Classics CD from Lukabop (a company that David Byrne founded and put out 3 awesome CD's of Brazilian Classics that preceded this one).
I, also, poured myself a tall glass of Polish beer, "O.K. Beer - Okocim." It's a light, easy (and cheap, $1.50) pint of "full pale" ale.
Hopefully nobody minds my making the hallway into a little "living room" for me and my cat.
I'm sitting with my back against the wall, sitting on a zafu and zabuton set (both black), with a wooden dinner tray covered with books and a paper towel on it.
I have eight books out here, a poetry journal and this journal with my flip-flops (that my brother gave me almost a decade ago that a a couple of sizes too big, but I never seemed bothered with the extra space).
My cat's sleeping on the floor in front of me; her toys (a purple mouse, a green and orange "cat-sized" tennis ball, and a smaller ball of tin foil) lay scattered to my right.
I sit to the left of my door as I exit, to the right as I enter.
For me, this could be the happiest moment of my life and I wouldn't really notice it as anything especially unusual.
I love my cat, Tatiana, more than life itself and any other person.
The divorce made me assess my feelings towards other humans with their unforeseen capability for instant betrayal in a truly unholy moment.
That was the 'gift' S. left me with and sadly, it was all that I had left to take from our marriage.
The good times, the memories all swept away by a deliberate act of vengeance. How could it not have been? Setting me up with an ultimatum: "It's either me or the cats."
So I gave up my cats, the best birthday present I've ever received (and lost).
It was a cold, calculated act, well thought-out. How could it not have been?
A test of love that ultimately failed. My sacrifice surely couldn't have saved our marriage.
Had I done anything to deserve such contempt? Who knows?
It was all part and parcel of her plot to destroy our love and friendship.
She had fallen in love with J., a stroke-patient of hers.
And the day I got back from my trip to Kripalu, my marriage was over.
That and the "_" lost the Superbowl with "X.X." acting as scapegoat to the demise of my marriage. I had to blame someone and blaming myself entirely surely didn't make sense.
And nowadays, for the last two years (as of 18 March), I've taken to crying in the shower, now and again, as I remember the loss of my cats.
Fyodor and Natasha were the best cats in the world, and someone else ended up adopting my cats whom my friend JYG said I will one day meet, but how unlikely is that in a city of 8 million people? He's such a hopeless romantic!
But if I could ever see those cats again, I'd pay millions (if I'd won the Mega Millions lottery).
Now Tatiana is the best cat in the world and saved my life last winter after the separation.
A tortoiseshell cat karmically took the place of my orange tabbies.
They are all super-duper cats and I hope Fyodor and Natasha are in good hands.
The big project is still massage therapy school, which starts on 12 January...a little over a week.
The break has been nice, though textbook rush starts this weekend for the U of _ and I have to work 12-6 p.m. on Sunday (for two weekends).
And the small projects? Cleaning my apartment and perhaps getting rid of the excess books and other clutter that takes up space inside.
Another small project is to write a journal entry each day (if possible) and at the end of the year post them into my blog online: "Another Lousy Day at the Bookstore."
The music stopped on my stereo player, so I put in the Afro-Peruvian Classics CD from Lukabop (a company that David Byrne founded and put out 3 awesome CD's of Brazilian Classics that preceded this one).
I, also, poured myself a tall glass of Polish beer, "O.K. Beer - Okocim." It's a light, easy (and cheap, $1.50) pint of "full pale" ale.
Hopefully nobody minds my making the hallway into a little "living room" for me and my cat.
I'm sitting with my back against the wall, sitting on a zafu and zabuton set (both black), with a wooden dinner tray covered with books and a paper towel on it.
I have eight books out here, a poetry journal and this journal with my flip-flops (that my brother gave me almost a decade ago that a a couple of sizes too big, but I never seemed bothered with the extra space).
My cat's sleeping on the floor in front of me; her toys (a purple mouse, a green and orange "cat-sized" tennis ball, and a smaller ball of tin foil) lay scattered to my right.
I sit to the left of my door as I exit, to the right as I enter.
For me, this could be the happiest moment of my life and I wouldn't really notice it as anything especially unusual.
I love my cat, Tatiana, more than life itself and any other person.
The divorce made me assess my feelings towards other humans with their unforeseen capability for instant betrayal in a truly unholy moment.
That was the 'gift' S. left me with and sadly, it was all that I had left to take from our marriage.
The good times, the memories all swept away by a deliberate act of vengeance. How could it not have been? Setting me up with an ultimatum: "It's either me or the cats."
So I gave up my cats, the best birthday present I've ever received (and lost).
It was a cold, calculated act, well thought-out. How could it not have been?
A test of love that ultimately failed. My sacrifice surely couldn't have saved our marriage.
Had I done anything to deserve such contempt? Who knows?
It was all part and parcel of her plot to destroy our love and friendship.
She had fallen in love with J., a stroke-patient of hers.
And the day I got back from my trip to Kripalu, my marriage was over.
That and the "_" lost the Superbowl with "X.X." acting as scapegoat to the demise of my marriage. I had to blame someone and blaming myself entirely surely didn't make sense.
And nowadays, for the last two years (as of 18 March), I've taken to crying in the shower, now and again, as I remember the loss of my cats.
Fyodor and Natasha were the best cats in the world, and someone else ended up adopting my cats whom my friend JYG said I will one day meet, but how unlikely is that in a city of 8 million people? He's such a hopeless romantic!
But if I could ever see those cats again, I'd pay millions (if I'd won the Mega Millions lottery).
Now Tatiana is the best cat in the world and saved my life last winter after the separation.
A tortoiseshell cat karmically took the place of my orange tabbies.
They are all super-duper cats and I hope Fyodor and Natasha are in good hands.
Wallace Shawn's Ars Poetica ~ 6 August 2008
"It's easier to sleep if your head is elevated, and so people use pillows."
Thus starts the Introduction to the plays "Our Late Night" and "A Thought in Three Parts" by Wallace Shawn. It appears as if Mr. Shawn, a well-known actor (Manhattan, My Dinner with Andre, The Princess Bride, Clueless, and countless others), and playwright (Aunt Dan and Lemon, The Designated Mourner, and others), offers us a hint that his plays are pillow books of his life at the time which is filled with pillow talk, or talk between lovers in bed, with all the trappings involved surrounding such a reference.
The first play, "Our Late Night," takes place at an evening party for seven (4 men, 3 women) in "an apartment—high, very high, above a giant city." The other play, "A Thought in Three Parts," is three small plays in one. The first, "Summer Evening" takes place in a foreign country (unspecified) in a "pleasant hotel room" with "a couple in their late twenties." The second play, "The Youth Hostel," takes place in "two sparsely furnished rooms, not connected, dimly lit, with no windows" with three men and two women taking part in the action. The third play, "Mr. Frivolous," takes place at a breakfast table with a man in his early thirties delivering a soliloquy spoken to an imaginary being longed for in reminiscence.
Shawn introduces the plays by discussing their history in theatre and not their content. This is subterfuge as if to offer you a text that supposedly gives you clues about what you are about to read, yet tells you nothing about what you are about to read. He doesn't describe the plays beforehand, as he wants to surprise the reader with its content. And the reader will be surprised, as Shawn's plays in this book are intentionally shocking as a primitive type of raw energy flows through them, though the plays are totally unrefined, lacking in narrative, and purposefully crass and chaotic. And though, crude in nature, they are intimate studies of relations between heterosexual men and women that is full of humor and surrealistic charm. The lack of plot or narrative motion also seems to evoke a style reminiscent of Beckett's plays.
Shawn writes the Introduction to try to justify his writing and art to his readers and himself, but doesn't know exactly how to answer the question of why his writing merits attention. He wants to say that he writes through the voice of the society in which he lives. He's not trying to change the world with a vision; he describes a social atmosphere or environment to give it representation in the theater. Though his plays are a form of virile and potent masculine vigor, rooted in pleasure and violence, he writes urbanely in the Introduction, and later in the Afterword, tries to justify his reasons for the unsettling themes of the plays. The plays lack realism, and border on an unreality that is generally beyond the imagination of common audience goers. That the plays have rarely been performed in over thirty years is understandable given their outrageous subject matter.
But this is what makes the book so special. You may never get to see the plays for yourself in person, but you can imagine them as if you were in the audience, or even a director of the plays.
--
Our Late Night; and, A Thought in Three Parts: Two Plays by Wallace Shawn
Theatre Communications Group, New York, 2008. ISBN 978-1-55936-322-8
Thus starts the Introduction to the plays "Our Late Night" and "A Thought in Three Parts" by Wallace Shawn. It appears as if Mr. Shawn, a well-known actor (Manhattan, My Dinner with Andre, The Princess Bride, Clueless, and countless others), and playwright (Aunt Dan and Lemon, The Designated Mourner, and others), offers us a hint that his plays are pillow books of his life at the time which is filled with pillow talk, or talk between lovers in bed, with all the trappings involved surrounding such a reference.
The first play, "Our Late Night," takes place at an evening party for seven (4 men, 3 women) in "an apartment—high, very high, above a giant city." The other play, "A Thought in Three Parts," is three small plays in one. The first, "Summer Evening" takes place in a foreign country (unspecified) in a "pleasant hotel room" with "a couple in their late twenties." The second play, "The Youth Hostel," takes place in "two sparsely furnished rooms, not connected, dimly lit, with no windows" with three men and two women taking part in the action. The third play, "Mr. Frivolous," takes place at a breakfast table with a man in his early thirties delivering a soliloquy spoken to an imaginary being longed for in reminiscence.
Shawn introduces the plays by discussing their history in theatre and not their content. This is subterfuge as if to offer you a text that supposedly gives you clues about what you are about to read, yet tells you nothing about what you are about to read. He doesn't describe the plays beforehand, as he wants to surprise the reader with its content. And the reader will be surprised, as Shawn's plays in this book are intentionally shocking as a primitive type of raw energy flows through them, though the plays are totally unrefined, lacking in narrative, and purposefully crass and chaotic. And though, crude in nature, they are intimate studies of relations between heterosexual men and women that is full of humor and surrealistic charm. The lack of plot or narrative motion also seems to evoke a style reminiscent of Beckett's plays.
Shawn writes the Introduction to try to justify his writing and art to his readers and himself, but doesn't know exactly how to answer the question of why his writing merits attention. He wants to say that he writes through the voice of the society in which he lives. He's not trying to change the world with a vision; he describes a social atmosphere or environment to give it representation in the theater. Though his plays are a form of virile and potent masculine vigor, rooted in pleasure and violence, he writes urbanely in the Introduction, and later in the Afterword, tries to justify his reasons for the unsettling themes of the plays. The plays lack realism, and border on an unreality that is generally beyond the imagination of common audience goers. That the plays have rarely been performed in over thirty years is understandable given their outrageous subject matter.
But this is what makes the book so special. You may never get to see the plays for yourself in person, but you can imagine them as if you were in the audience, or even a director of the plays.
--
Our Late Night; and, A Thought in Three Parts: Two Plays by Wallace Shawn
Theatre Communications Group, New York, 2008. ISBN 978-1-55936-322-8
Oversleeping in the City of Big Shoulders ~ 28 April 2008
Today I woke up to my phone ringing, after I noticed that I'd overslept again and missed work for the last two hours. Of course it was one of my managers, whom I shall call "Beria". She wanted to know where I was and when I planned to make it to work. I told her that I'd be there within an hour (though it ended up to be 70 minutes).
After I got there, my general manager, "Jughashvili", decided that I needed to meet him in the classroom (with Beria) to have a talk about my work schedule.
Of course, being invited to the classroom is like being offered a swift kick in the teeth. Though you must accept the offer, you probably won't enjoy the results of the meeting.
They told me that if I were at any other retail job, I would have been fired. (So I should be grateful to only get my teeth kicked in, right?). They said that though I must be going through a rough period in my life (with my separation and pending divorce from my wife of six years), it was inconsiderate to my fellow employees to not call at the time I'm to be at work and let the management know that I will be running late. (I tend to laugh at words like these since most of my fellow employees couldn't care less when I get there, as long as I decide to work a full day's labor, like they themselves would expect to be treated).
Also, my job performance in the past few months has been less than usual (hmmm...suicidal depression caused by divorce may effect job performance??? Never!!!). And does the old man ever really know the extant to which I do work on the job, or is it just that he notices that I may look things up on the Internet now and again, during my time on the clock? (Like no one else is at fault in these matters, and that it only happens at our place of work, and nowhere else?).
So I was offered a different schedule, to work 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. instead of 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., which after much consideration, I decided to accept as a possible alternative. (Perhaps I could go running in the mornings, or go sit at the local café, drink coffee and read a book?).
But now perhaps my job is on the line, (especially if they happen across this weblog, but then of course, freedom of speech is honored highly at our bookstore, if not at all bookstores).
Maybe I should just chalk it up to another horrible Monday morning? (The Boomtown Rats had a song for that). And since I'm not writing this posting on company time, they can kiss my...you know the rest of this asinine statement. I may need to buy a new alarm clock or two...I use one alarm clock and my cell phone's alarm to try to wake up with, but today, to no avail.
I've been at the bookstore now for 5 years, after having worked at another bookstore for 11 years (in another city). Should I start looking for a new job, as this one is full of stress from Jughashvili and Beria being uptight all the time and tending to make their employees nervous with there presence? And they expect me to come to them when I feel that the job is getting too stressful or that I feel that I'm being overworked. They are the last people I wish to speak to of these matters, as they are the prime cause of stress for most employees at the bookstore.
All I know is I need this job until I get another job or have some means to pay my rent and have money to eat with and take care of my needs. This bookstore has good insurance, but the pay is trifiling, as can be expected at any bookstore. Perhaps I should get out of the bookstore business entirely? But where could I go, what could I do, who would hire me? I suppose I could open my Monster account again, which I haven't looked at in over 5 years.
And it's not that I don't love the bookstore, because I do, it's just physically exhausting, and I'm not getting any younger. And working 9, 10, 11 hour days means nothing to the management.
I don't think they appreciate what I have to offer the bookstore. I think that they believe that anyone can do my job just as well as I can, even though the person who was Receiving Manager before me, left a catastrophe that took a year to clean up with all the unprocessed shipments and damaged books and short ships not called in in a timely fashion.
I probably won't get another raise for a long while, and the cost of living in a big city is rather painful, to say the least about the City of Big Shoulders. So what my next plan of attack is, I'm really unsure, let's just say that I'm going to have to keep my nose clean until I'm in the clear of this place (and probably save this posting to Drafts until I find a new job, such a pity, but this is the way businesses are run, and employees are ruined).
Monday through Thursday...My Normal Routine. ~ 17 November 2007
Waking up in time to make it to work on time. Pissing my life away down the toilet with the water of time showing me that all the crap of my wasted life flushes away just like that. Eating oatmeal or cereal for breakfast. Brushing my teeth, using deodorant, putting forming cream in my hair and making it a little spiky, taking a bunch of meds to help me breathe and hopefully not have an asthma attack, and more meds to keep me from being way too f***ing depressed, getting dressed, listening to the weather report on my fancy weather-radio alarm clock, choosing which shoes to wear depending on whether rain is predicted or not, getting in the car and driving to the train station, sleeping on the train on the way downtown, asking the person beside me to get the f*** up (as politely as possible) so I can catch the next train to Hyde Park, walking for 8 blocks to the Van Buren Station from Union Station, again sleeping on the train (but for a moment), walking another 8 blocks to the bookstore, entering the seminary, walking into the mailroom, saying 'Good Morning' to Joe, drinking a 16 oz lo-carb Monster Energy drink, reading the in-store messages, reading personal store messages to me, checking the register schedule, looking up who's died for the day on the Obituaries page of The New York Times online (yeah, at 8:00 in the morning - just the ghoul in me), listening for the morning smart quiz (and hoping no one is talking too loudly to hear it clearly at the same time), saying 'bye' to Joe and going downstairs to the first level of the basement we commonly know to be Hades, figuring out who left what bullshit on my desk without a message and that I have to figure out why it is there and what I need to do to remedy any problem, work 8+ hours in the bookstore, have lunch in the mailroom if it is not too crowded or occupied, check my e-mails, leave work at the end of the day, catch more trains, write in my journal for a page or two, read the newspaper (The NY Times) from cover to cover (mostly glossing and reading specific articles: book reviews, etc., and trying to keep an eye on the foreign exchange rates, the sports pages, and of course the obituaries in print edition), getting back into town (Naperville), driving home, drinking a pub mug full of lactose-free chocolate milk, perhaps eating dinner or going to the library (to satisfy my bibliomania), reading The TLS book reviews, perhaps having a drink (i.e. a nightcap) to help me deal with the long day and realize that my depression is never going to go away if I keep on drinking alcohol, going online to various websites to satisfy my utterly hopeless sense of boredom, trying to learn some new information from the internet and remembering that it's just the same old crap in a new candy wrapper, staying up way too late, taking a shower, taking more meds to keep me from becoming psychotic (i.e. progressively catatonic), taking sleeping pills to help me keep from thinking all night long, brushing and flossing my teeth, perhaps shaving (once or twice a week, if even that often), getting into some form of pajamas (a t-shirt and boxers - with cartoon characters on them - and maybe a sweat shirt and actual pajama bottoms - if it's cold outside, since I sleep right beside the window), trying to read something to help me fall asleep easier, taking more sleeping pills when I am still awake, getting about 3-4 hours sleep on the weeknights, and getting up in the morning to make it to work on time, if I'm lucky, getting up 20 minutes early to catch the 6:17 Express, so I can spend 20 minutes in Intelligentsia Coffee to get either a mocha expresso (yummy) or a traditional cappuccino (bitter, but lovely), and write in my journal for a page or two.
Sunday...Before Labor Day ~ 3 September 2007
I got to work at around 3 p.m. and decided to work until 6 p.m. (when the store closes) at the latest. I had a bunch of shipments to get through with no one to help me, but I was fine with that since I worked better alone than when I have to answer questions about processing from my other associates in receiving. However, since I needed to put out the new titles that come out on Tuesday from Random House, HarperCollins, etc. I planned to stay a little later than 6 p.m.
So I talked with Kythera and asked her to lock me into the backroom (literally) so that I could process and that I'd set the alarm before I left. She was fine with that...and so I ended up staying until 11:15 p.m., processing for 8 hours without really taking a break. Such is life...but I was plenty hungry, so I text my friend Osip if he wanted to go drink a few beers and have a burger with me at The Tap. He called and agreed that we'd meet at 11:30 p.m. at the bar.
I drove to Walgreen's to get some cash from the Chase ATM, $40. I drank a half and half before I text Osip asking him, "Where you be?" (As if I were cool and could use hip-hop type of lingo). He said he'd get on his bike and be there in 5 minutes. We drank until 2 a.m. when the bar closed...I haven't closed a bar in years (though I did start awful late). And so we left talked some outside and went our own ways.
I had an hour drive ahead of me, but I had only had three beers and pretty much stopped drinking around 1 a.m. and started drinking water (to rehydrate, not really much help in sobering up, as if you could dilute the alcohol in the bloodstream). I listen to Carmina Burana all the way home to the suburbs, Naperville, and got home safe without getting pulled over by the cops, especially since it was the beginning of the month and they are out in force then.
I try never to drive when I'm not sober, as the consequences can be tragic...killing someone with your car or getting thrown in jail and ending up getting raped, is not my idea of a good way to end a night of drinking. And so, I make sure that I'm sober enough that my driving is as good as I am when I'm sober, even though my reaction speed might be slower...and so, I end up driving slower and more safely than when I'm sober and have better control of the wheel (funny, huh?).
During my time processing I was listening to the usual fare: Wire (On Returning) and The Jam (SNAP!, Sound Affects, Setting Sons, and All Mod Cons). I got pretty emotional listening to songs like Thick as Thieves and Private Hell, so I e-mailed my buddy in L.A., Dogstar, and let him know how sad I was and putting myself through the same old masochistic travails listening to old Weller tunes. Dogstar is married, like myself, and he and his wife have a recent addition to the family, a girl named Hana.
I got to see him and his wife Gina at a small reunion of friends at the Irvine Spectrum where we drank Margaritas at Javier's, ate dinner and talked for most of the night. Esteban drove down from Hollywood that night to be with us too. All three of us used to hang out with each other since we were in grade school. Now we were all in our late 30's and only Esteban was still a musician, playing jazz guitar in L.A. Dogstar took his fine arts degree and went to work for some magazines, and is now at Vegetarian Times. But now they live in L.A. and I in the suburbs of Chicago, that's why listening to The Jam is so painful, it hits home as to the reality of our older selves no longer having any real relation to our younger selves. And though I've not gotten a reply yet, I'm sure I'll hear from old Dogstar sometime in the near future.
So I talked with Kythera and asked her to lock me into the backroom (literally) so that I could process and that I'd set the alarm before I left. She was fine with that...and so I ended up staying until 11:15 p.m., processing for 8 hours without really taking a break. Such is life...but I was plenty hungry, so I text my friend Osip if he wanted to go drink a few beers and have a burger with me at The Tap. He called and agreed that we'd meet at 11:30 p.m. at the bar.
I drove to Walgreen's to get some cash from the Chase ATM, $40. I drank a half and half before I text Osip asking him, "Where you be?" (As if I were cool and could use hip-hop type of lingo). He said he'd get on his bike and be there in 5 minutes. We drank until 2 a.m. when the bar closed...I haven't closed a bar in years (though I did start awful late). And so we left talked some outside and went our own ways.
I had an hour drive ahead of me, but I had only had three beers and pretty much stopped drinking around 1 a.m. and started drinking water (to rehydrate, not really much help in sobering up, as if you could dilute the alcohol in the bloodstream). I listen to Carmina Burana all the way home to the suburbs, Naperville, and got home safe without getting pulled over by the cops, especially since it was the beginning of the month and they are out in force then.
I try never to drive when I'm not sober, as the consequences can be tragic...killing someone with your car or getting thrown in jail and ending up getting raped, is not my idea of a good way to end a night of drinking. And so, I make sure that I'm sober enough that my driving is as good as I am when I'm sober, even though my reaction speed might be slower...and so, I end up driving slower and more safely than when I'm sober and have better control of the wheel (funny, huh?).
During my time processing I was listening to the usual fare: Wire (On Returning) and The Jam (SNAP!, Sound Affects, Setting Sons, and All Mod Cons). I got pretty emotional listening to songs like Thick as Thieves and Private Hell, so I e-mailed my buddy in L.A., Dogstar, and let him know how sad I was and putting myself through the same old masochistic travails listening to old Weller tunes. Dogstar is married, like myself, and he and his wife have a recent addition to the family, a girl named Hana.
I got to see him and his wife Gina at a small reunion of friends at the Irvine Spectrum where we drank Margaritas at Javier's, ate dinner and talked for most of the night. Esteban drove down from Hollywood that night to be with us too. All three of us used to hang out with each other since we were in grade school. Now we were all in our late 30's and only Esteban was still a musician, playing jazz guitar in L.A. Dogstar took his fine arts degree and went to work for some magazines, and is now at Vegetarian Times. But now they live in L.A. and I in the suburbs of Chicago, that's why listening to The Jam is so painful, it hits home as to the reality of our older selves no longer having any real relation to our younger selves. And though I've not gotten a reply yet, I'm sure I'll hear from old Dogstar sometime in the near future.
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