Of Ears And Candy

My exquisite paramour, a delightful and comely young lass of robust character, is suffering from something called, Eustachian Tube Disorder. It's a malady of the inner ear that may require surgery. There is also tinnitus, which is a constant ringing of the ears. Aside from the distress that comes from the fear of going deaf, she is perpetually annoyed by the noise that nobody else can hear. It strikes me as a perfectly awful problem, but she is handling it well. I'd pray for her, but that's just silly. Instead, I'll try to make her laugh.

Halloween is a month away, and it is by far my favorite holiday. I'll write more about that later, which I'm sure you can't wait to read. What made me think of it is the bag of lollipops I just found in the pantry. They're from last year, and they represent an attempt to get through Halloween as cheaply as possible without turning out the lights and hiding from the kids. I'll pass them out, provided they are not all fused together into one huge lollipop. I'll throw in a mini Hershey bar to soften the disappointment that will naturally flow from getting a lollipop. And a nip of brandy for the parents.

Massachusetts is the second most densely-populated state, behind only New Jersey. So kids get a lot of candy for very little walking. My dear Amanda lives in Montana, which has a population roughly equal to Bermuda spread out over an area the size of, well, Montana. That means a LOT of walking for very little candy. One is about as likely to get shot as to get a tasty treat. A marathon is 26 miles and some change. For about that distance you would hit 4 or 5 houses, and possibly get eaten by a bear or mountain lion or back-woods survivalist. Candy is wonderful, but it's not worth hearing, "You've got a pretty mouth." Yes, I'm perpetuating a stereotype. Somebody has to.

When I was a kid there was always one douchebag who would give out toothpase and/or a toothbrush instead of candy. Later on, we would always sneak back and shit down their chimney. That's what they get for caring about my health enough to give me something for free. But I did later find out that toothpaste is delicious when slathered on a Zagnut.

Don't Read

This weekend I'm going to paint my bedroom white. Right now, it's sort of green, and that's not kosher with the housing authority, not that they know. I want it to be white, so white it will be. That gives me a task for the weekend, and I feel good about that. Generally speaking, I'm pretty useless these days. A single dutiful parent is incalculably more useful than I. I know that I'm a drain on society, and that borderline schizophrenia has rendered me useless, despite my very best efforts to recover. As the days and months pass by, I'm becoming more detached from life and thinking about my death. If it could only get here soon. My friends are tired of me and my need for reassurance. And there are several people who need to outlive me. Without them, I don't know if I could make it a single day.

I shouldn't write when I'm like this, for obvious reasons. I'm not suicidal, but I'm in this cage that I've fashioned for myself and I haven't the will to leave it. Occassionally, a wisp of life rises to my window and I catch a whiff; of love, passion, sex, empathy, curiosity, erudition, hatred, envy, and all that jazz. And I know as I sit here, terribly tired from having taken 2 lorazepam (nightly ritual), that deep down not a single one of you cares about me one little bit. Either you think I'm strange, or stupid, or perhaps even potentially dangerous. Maybe I annoy you or remind you of a past you'd prefer to forget. I don't know. I'm living the life of a phantom these days. A sycophant in both financial and emotional terms that most would prefer to give a wide berth.

And that's that, the story of me. I plopped out of my mother on July 26, 1972 and lived under a series of delusions for awhile; That Santa exists, that god exists, that I am intelligent, that I am a loving and compassionate partner, that I would teach and be a person of consequence, and finally I grappled with and savagely murdered the last delusion, that any of this matters. People are fond of telling me that I live with many false negative delusions about myself. I'm so tired of hearing that. So the tale of me, at this point, has evolved into a ghost story. A ghost is defined as, "A vague, shadowy or evanescent form, as wandering among or haunting living persons." I did exist once, but in this room right now at this moment that's hard to imagine.

Goodnight.

A Little Poe

A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM
by Edgar Allan Poe
(1827)

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

The Hair's The Thing

My exquisite paramour, Amanda, tells me that she likes my hair as pictured on the right. It's slicked back with some pomade that's been manufacted since the 19th century. But I'm avoiding the inevitable, I need my hairs cut. It's been way too long between visits to the barbershop. Occassionally I will go to a salon in Harvard Square, but usually I find myself in a small, cluttered storefront shop getting a haircut from the owner and operator of the establishment. Two women own such a place in Davis Square (mother and daughter), but they are only open half the time, and it's tough to predict when. Going to Supercuts is like going to Starbuck's; I get what I need but a tiny part of my soul dies. Another problem with Supercuts is the random quality of the haircut. One day you might get Tina, and look fine. A few weeks later and you draw Bernice from the deck, and as a result can't go out without a hat for awhile.

My favorite barbershop experience is going to the one my father visits. Nobody there is under 70, the there are always at least three men talking and waiting their turn. They are often talking to each other in Greek, so I'm inclined to think that they are saying something about me in that ancient language. The last time I was there, several months ago, I got a lecture from the barber about the Greek battle for freedom against the invading Nazi horde. It was an appreciated lesson in history, but because of my relative youth I'm seen as a kid who should know this stuff already. As I sat there listening about the freedom fighters, I surveyed the eclectic mix of newspaper articles (now brown with age), religious icons, fishing trophies and a collection of hair-cutting equipment and styling products that look like they were taken from some sort of barber museum. The Hair in Face Museum, perhaps? And by "styling products" I mean cheap aftershave and Vaseline...lots of it. And over everything, including the statue of a bald eagle on the wall that stands as a maudlin testament to the owner's love and devotion to his new country, is dust. There is a lot of dust in that place, which makes it clear that the long-established routine is to unlock the door, cut hair, sweep it up, and go home. After my cut, I try to wave off the gob of Vaseline that, despite my best efforts, is bound for my noggin. Then they give me a lollipop.

The time has come for me to get a haircut. I'll try the place in Davis Square, and if that doesn't work I'll humiliate myself at Supercuts. I hope I get Tina.

Lies The Vacuum Told Me

My brother expressed a modicum of incredulity regarding my claim that I suffer from agoraphobia. Clinically, he's correct. My diagnosis is Avoidant Personality Disorder, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Bipolar Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder. Social phobia and AvPD are pretty much the same thing. Regardless, I'm not afraid of being in public, so long as there is no social interaction.

Isn't that exciting? Nothing so interesting as refining the clinical labels of another person's mental illness. Today I managed to actually leave my flat, thus ending my isolation streak. Whilst strolling in the clement autumn air today in my newly unpacked sweater, my mind turned to the absurdity of social anxiety. To perpetually despair, with paranoid fervor, about how I am perceived and if I'm a decent person or not is impossible to justify given how inconsequential is life. My life will leave no footprint, nor will civilization or any organism. When such a thing is true, is there anything more ridiculous than agonizing about the way people think of you? That's a funny way of looking at it, though, as it indicates how crazy it is to work at living in any fashion. The intensity of pleasure and pain in life, emotional and physical, represents an intrinsic lie that is told by the universe in a loud, neverending series of harsh statements! One can't help but hear it, and feel it, and be compelled by how earnestly experience insists that this is all for something.

But it's a big, fat, hairy lie. Or not a lie, really, but a miscommunication within the void. Living isn't easy, and having the ability to reason is like falling nose first into fetid offal. Feeling is heinous enough, but awareness of our meaningless struggle is the harshest proof we have that there is no god watching our proverbial backs. The greatest comfort we have is the knowledge that it will end one day, and we will go deaf to the constant sermon of shock and horror and joy and love that is pounded into us through our nerves and minds. There will be the final, peaceful lack of awareness.

As I made my way past the Arlington Center for the Arts, where I stopped to look at a brochure about belly-dancing, I decided to get some lunch at Junior's Spa on Broadway. I got a couple of subs for my father and I. After that, I walked in the warm sun and cool air past the new bank they are building, and down North Union street. As I got to the school near my flat, I tripped on the uneven sidewalk and almost fell on my ass. My poor little toe cried out in pain, and I felt that the children playing nearby surely had seen what had happened and were laughing at me. A fat guy with a couple of subs tripping in a humorous fashion. The searing humiliation, and a faintly aching toe, insisted that this all mattered somehow. But I know better, even if it doesn't feel that way.