EmEmEx

I've fallen upon 2010 kind of haphazardly.  I've bought into a lot of that hype that it's a new decade, a new beginning, a new era.  It's been so long since I blogged about anything, that I had to sit and reread all of these older posts to remember where I was, which space in my head, when I felt the need to share.  Then it dawned on me.  I am now where I was wishing I could be at the height of my blogging.  I was missing the midwest, missing my family, looking for a better job, higher pay, trying to figure my way out of my horrible relationship, & trying to navigate all of these changes through waters that I kept very calm from the outside looking in.  All of these changes were a bit of a shock to most of those around me at the time.  I didn't let on too much how unhappy I was in the world.  It's hard to enact change & keep up the status quo at the same time.  I mastered it.  
Now I live in the midwest.  I have a great job.  I get paid almost twice as much as I did two years ago.  I have broken off that horrible relationship once & for all.  I slowly & surely showed my friends & family how unhappy I was & moved on.  
So why does it still feel like I'm struggling? 
It feels this way because, as with all things in life, the road to the goal is often littered with compromise & adjustment.  
I'm resurrecting this blog to flesh out these feelings & these struggles.  Get some perspective.  I need it.  I need an outlet.  

In other news....

What is it about fallen Serbian politicians/war criminals that make them think they should represent themselves in court? Is there some errant episode of L.A.Law on reruns over there, where Harry Hamlin loses a case to a crazy Eastern European millionaire, making every Timur, Dosev and Radko think they can take on Western judiciaries?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25810899/

Oh, and I would be remiss if I didn't also mention that it is now perfectly legal to refer to women who prefer women as Lesbians. The courts of Lesbos have struck down a lawsuit that would have opened a legal path for residents of the flannel wearing Mediterranean isle to sue those who identified themselves as lesbians, or use the term in advertising or marketing, unless they were actually legal citizens of Lesbos. With this challenge decided, the gay community has now turned its full attention to an ongoing legal battle between a group of same-sex partners and the residents of Ass Pirate Cove, Florida.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25798114/

A knock on the door at 2:30am

Here I sit, at 2:30am, creeped out and quite awake after an encounter with a stranger at my front door. My dog, Fred, jumped out of bed and started barking ferociously in the front room. When I finally realized that this bark was not the bark he uses to scare away passing dogs from the front windows, but a much more angry bark, I got up and instinctively grabbed my cell phone. I have a large glass front door, and standing in my doorway was a young kid, probably 18 or so, shakily holding on to my front door with his eyes closed. When I approached the door I asked him what he wanted. He lazily opened his eyes and then mumbled that he wanted a glass of water. I told him that he needed to leave. He stood there for another minute, eyes closed. I told him again that he needed to leave and that I was calling the police, at which point he took off his baseball cap and held it above his head, then opened his eyes and stared me down. I called 911, and asked if they could send someone out. The kid staggered away.
The exchange was quite creepy. I'm pretty sure the kid was messed up on something, be it weed or booze, and just didn't know where he was, but for someone just coming out of a deep sleep, it was eerie and gave me that sick feeling in my gut that you get when your heart starts racing and your brain tries to suppress the flood of fight or flight chemicals that come with a startling situation. Thankfully, I have Freddy here to keep watch over the house and yard, but even Fred doesn't want to leave the front room, now, in case something happens or the stranger comes back.
Sitting here, listening for every creak and thump from the outside world, I can't help but chide myself for watching all of those reality crime "investigations" on MSNBC. Especially the one about the four people in Wichita, who responded to a knock on their front door and endured hours of assault, rape and finally, death. The logical part of me knows that the chances of that happening to me are quite astronomical, but now that the thought was planted there by the ominous reporting staff at MSNBC, there is a part of me, living inside the irrational part of my brain, that is terrified and assuming that I just thwarted a full scale robbery and assault with the help of my trusty sidekick, Fred, and my cell phone.
While I know that I'm lucky in many ways, after all, the police are currently darting up and down my street, and the adjoining side streets, with flood lights attached to powerful SUVs, I also hate living in the city during times like this. I have being exposed to crime and crazy and the chaotic randomness of things, because of my surroundings. I know that crime exists everywhere, but that doesn't make me feel any better at 3:00am, wondering who that kid was, and whether or not he was simply a person genuinely in need of water and help, or if he was really playing passive to gain entry to my home. There is a part of me that wants to believe that people are generally good, and that we have become a nation of freaked out potential victims because of our daily exposure to all the bad news and crimes we hear about on the news. The news organs know we can't resist hearing about the latest rape & robbery, or the gruesome details of a home invasion or car jacking, but I think the fascination is more about our curiosity of seeing a car accident and craning our heads to see the gory details than it is about educating ourselves about the surrounding environment and protecting ourselves and our loved ones. But then there is a voice in the back of my head that tells me that part of me is naive, and that I should be wary of everyone, and trust nothing.
I'd like to hope that those two voices meet somewhere in the middle, and that I can believe in the good of people without becoming a victim, and be cautious and street smart without living a life of angry, grinchy, selfishness.
I'd also like to get some sleep - but those two voices are still yelling at each other.

Digging in and digging up

I have wracked my brain the last week, trying to put into words my complex mother issues, having just recently visited her for her birthday. I can't. Stay with me for this one, folks....
Remember Pulp Fiction? It's one of my all time favorite movies, for many reasons, some very obvious, some very personal. Remember the mysterious brief case that seemed to be the focus of much of the movie, albeit wonderfully distracted by the mayhem of dialogue and editing? My mother issues are the contents of that brief case. Every once and a while I have the occasion to crack open that case, and when I do my eyes bug out and my face is bathed in it's dysfunctional golden glow. Slack jawed and without words to begin to describe the depth of horror and guilt and wonderment and ludicrosity, that's right I made up a word - deal with it!, I have to just slowly shut the case and move on. I just can't articulate what it is. All I know is that it is present in me, and it rears it's head on occasion.

One of the main reasons I haven't been able to concentrate on my mother issues is that I was contacted this week by an ex-girlfriend. That's right - there was a time back during the Jurassic Era, when I roamed the boggy lands of the Great Plains, that I dated a girl. In fact, she was kind of the last serious girl I dated before evolving into the wonderfully talented and wise gay you have come to know and love. And she saw me on Facebook and emailed me. And I was kind of rocked back on my heels by it, I have to say.
I don't want to give too much of the juice away, more to protect the dignity of those involved and to allow the past to stay buried, but she was the last big deal, so to speak. I casually dated a girl or two after her, but only for appearances, and I selfishly let everyone around me know that this woman had broken my heart and should never be forgiven for doing so. When I left Omaha, to start a new life in the gay friendly red state of Arizona, I would bring her up in conversation from time to time, as the girl I almost married. The truth is that there was never a ring on her finger. I was saved from that embarrassment before I could actually buy the ring - but I had decided shortly before we broke up that I was going to buy a diamond and get down on one knee and propose to her, and came within days of doing so. At the time, I was way too humiliated to deal, and so I made a huge show of our breakup. Over time, I've come to realize that it was the best thing that probably ever happened to me in my entire life. It cracked the facade that I was trying to construct around me; the facade of the hetero family man that wanted a wife and kids and a house in Dundee. While plausibility is entirely relative to your perspective, I could've continued on that path and been one of those creepy middle aged, church going, kid having, soccer dads who end up in a police raid on the public bathrooms at Elmwood Park. I could've continued ruining life after life with my own denial problems into perpetuity.
But I didn't, because she probably saw what I couldn't, and did something about it. She really did break my heart at the time, but in looking back, I am so eternally grateful she did.
So I wrote her back. And before I was done filling her in on the last 10 years of my life, I asked her to forgive me for being such a shitty gay boyfriend. Just the way I'd practiced over and over in my head all these years. I crossed my fingers and pressed SEND. I hope she doesn't freak and never talk to me again, because I really do dig the idea of reconnecting with that past. That history. That era, shortly after man left the swamp to walk upright, when man had yet to order his first Frappaccino, and cell phones were only found on jailhouse walls.

Fire Fire Everywhere

I know that it is not safe to snap camera phone pictures while driving 80 m.p.h., as I tend to do, but the fires just west of downtown Phoenix are so startling and surreal that I couldn't resist. Each day I drive the SR51, or Piestewa Peak Freeway, to and from work in North Scottsdale. As you come around the mountain pass heading south, heading home, it appears as though downtown Phoenix is under a churning mushroom cloud of cinder. It's really just west of downtown, in an uninhabited low forest area of desert on the Reservation, but the optical illusion from the freeway is disconcerting and leaves the imagination to it's work. The first day of the fires I literally dropped my phone in the middle of a call, in stunned silence, as many seemed to be doing as they set eyes on this wildfire for the first time. Traffic slowed, and you could see people scrambling to adjust their radio dials to a news channel. Since then, the fire has waged on, sometimes allowed to by the firefighters, who have had trouble accessing the fire due to it's remote setting. Friends of mine who live south of downtown have reported sore throats and coughs, along with the constant smell of burning wood in the past several days. I can only attest that my neighborhood has occassionally been dusted with falling ash, when the wind shifts to the east. My biggest inconvenience being that I drive a black car, which needs to be washed even moreso now that the ash and dust layer are thicker. Luckily, no houses or businesses are in the way of this fire - for now. I wonder how long it will burn untouched by humans, before nature takes it's course.

In other news....

Former skydiving champ plunges to his death

Jun. 23, 2008 06:50 AM
Associated Press

LAKE ELSINORE, Calif. - A former national champion skydiver has died after his parachute failed to open during a weekend accident at Lake Elsinore in Riverside County, Calif.

Richard Alvin Schindler, an off-duty Riverside County sheriff's deputy, died Saturday. The 39-year-old had a back-up parachute, but there was no indication it had been deployed.

A Marine Corps veteran, Schindler began skydiving 15 years ago and had been working part-time at SkyDive Elsinore as an instructor.

At the 2005 U.S. National Skydiving Championships, Schindler was part of the Elsinore Equinox team that finished in first place in the four-way intermediate freestyle competition.

When asked about the tragic events, Wanda Pilsner, friend of the victim responded,

"BIG FUCKING SURPRISE, huh?"

Sorry, I couldn't resist. This was on the front page of the Arizona Republic today, and stories like this make me crazy!
I know I'm going to hell, but at least I'll know how to dress when I get there.

Now he'll finally have his answer!

Today George Carlin will finally get his answer. He'll finally know if his theory on life in this great society of ours was closer to truth, or merely a brilliantly genius take.
I wonder which of the seven words you can say in Heaven?

Thank you, Mr. Russert. You will be missed.

I am normally not one to jump on the celebrity pumping band wagon or self congratulatory and aggrandizing capitalization off of others misery, but I would be remiss if I did not say a word about Tim Russert's passing today.
It was a shock. It just doesn't seem like in this day and age we think about middle aged men dropping dead of a heart attack at work. Maybe in 1976, but not today.
It is saddening. I am sad for his family and friends, but I know that the biggest loss that will be felt far into the future is the loss of his integrity and ethics in the profession of journalism. He is one of the last great journalists that graced us with their wisdom, insight, forthright honesty and candor in the face of great, powerful, and wealthy men and women. He was someone that we could trust to stand up for the rest of us when he interviewed presidents, world leaders, shamed senators and candidates for higher office. He was one we could count on to call 'bullshit' when someone was blowing air up our asses.
I had the luck to meet him once, at a work function. He spoke at our dinner and gave us all signed copies of his latest book. During his speech he began talking about the special connections that he's made over the years, with hundreds and probably thousands of people who have shared his passion for honoring their parents, as he did in his books. He got choked up when he started talking about his father, and the occassion when his father publicly began praising him for being such a wonderful son. He made everyone in that room wish that they could run to their fathers that night and hug them and tell them how much they meant to us. It is that intangible way of making you want to be a better person, despite all the heaping crap life throws your way, that made Tim Russert a great man.
We should all try, in his name, to be a little better to each other from now on, since we can no longer count on his earthly prodding.