Mind Sounds

Wednesday, October 12th, 2016 – 7:19 pm

Waves come in waves, for days upon days and then nothing. The longest stretches of nothing because you can’t keep on feeling. 

Nobody could forever.

Slap a hand or a face or beat a beaten heartbeat just enough times and it bruises, but the defenseless feebly defends itself with stretches of nothingness and numbness. I used to control it. Hell, I could schedule it.

The pain and the void were both mine to command.

Now I just peer and peek, the bruised and numb spectator, locked in the wrong grungy movie house, strapped to the wrong filthy theater seat. The wrong waves sneak up unscheduled, unsolicited, uninvited. The waves of waves, filthy waves of wrong.

Stop! This is all wrong! I never ordered this!

“Everything happens for a reason. God is forcing your attention.”

Lovely. Just like clockwork. Orange you glad He did?

…

Thursday, October 13th, 2016 – 10:33 am

Every single one of us goes through forced changes. We pretend we have control, but it happens. Daily, weekly, monthly, seasonally, yearly. We must ride the waves of new personality nuances, if not entire paradigm shifts. We just hope we do it gracefully enough to appear to the world (that is not even paying close attention) that we are almost one whole, cohesive person.

And we’re not.

We never were.

It’s impossible.

I’m pretty sure I had the most pathetic plan possible of pretending to be normally perfect. If there’s an award for that. Almost fifty years of tipping my hand on that faltering facade.

Eventually, you just own up to who you are supposed to be. Or you don’t. Whatever.

Quit waiting for permission to tell your story.

Just imagine when I am no longer of sound mind, folks, friends and family. Foes.

You may see it here.

Live.

Clearly.

Soon.

I say all that, because I remember starting this blog with a purpose or purposes in mind. The ones I thought I had and my real ones that only God knows.

We all do that with our projects. We start them with a purpose. And then we drop them. Especially artists. They’re the worst. I mean we’re. We’re the worst.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. Like Dear Mr. Fantasy, we will keep painting and writing and singing and philosophizing and rhyming, but that is because we cannot help ourselves, whether we are brilliant, damaged or both or neither.

What if your purpose is lost when you become a different man once again and your newest version is ugly and sad?

What was my original plan or purpose? Well, at one point, I claimed that I wanted to be brutally honest. Do I still want that? Do I still care? Does anyone?

…

Universe: “Well, you could always still be an example to others to educate or inspir…”

Me: (kicking over tables and chairs) “@#$%!!! #$%^&!!!”

Universe: “Let’s… whoa… ok, he’ll be…”

Me/Not Me: (smashes and destroys another closet door with walker)

Universe: “Um… he’ll be… he’ll be fine. Let’s just give him some time by himself…”

…

My lawyer has a brightly painted yellow strip across the threshold of the main door to his office. It is decades old, residential and the landscaping well tended. I tell Amy that if the doors were rounder, it would feel like the Shire.

I easily navigated my walker over the caution colored threshold to forge a new Will on Tuesday and I did it with the finesse of a skilled gymnast. Well, maybe a gymnast that is also a toddler that broke into the Nyquil. I may have cussed. I cussed. I have been doing that a lot more. It is funner as well as funnier, but that is not the root reason. I do not always know I am doing it.

(scrolls up to check)

I have struggled with increasing memory loss, confusion, paranoia and delusion on a couple occasions this week. With a wobbly walker and stutter, I am still declining physically and mentally.

But I quickly remembered on Tuesday that I am not a huge fucking fan of lawyers. That came back right away. And I always poorly pretend to tolerate the violent life events that require doctors and lawyers in the first place. I will always despise their unexpected, unrehearsed and unwelcomed swaggering onto my once beautiful page and stage.

Unacceptable.

He did not respond to my repeated reminders to slow down and lower his voice. At first.

Mid-sentence of his, I turned to Amy and loudly barked, “So far, I am not impressed. AT ALL.”

Oh look, I got his attention!

He slowed for a moment before finishing his practiced, Ivy fucking league blather. Then he shifted a little in his chair and sniffed like a powerful GOP debater. He’s earned it after all. He needs to cut back on the stimulants.

After the third clear cue of my being just seconds from getting up and stompwobbling out to buy/rent an alternate and probably equally awful attorney, he finally slowed down to human pace and started answering questions I was actually asking and not the fucking ones he had rehearsed. You know, my most important questions.

“This is important, like I made clear at the end of the last paragraph. What if we die in a car crash or volcano explosion at the same time? Wait, what do you mean by probate? What if I live, but I go full coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs and do not even know my own name or the name of ol’ whatsername here or the name of the new guy or new girl in the White House or where to go to buy more Cocoa Puffs? Those things taste amaz…”

“Wait, I…”

“…ing! And what is the expiration date or proof for someone already as weird as me no longer having a supposed sound mind? How could we even tell? Has it ever been sound? What did it sound like? And what is the cut off for my being cruel and capricious, like the universe herself, where I can still angrily or cheerfully cut people out of my Will with a capital W, so I can silently struggle for a smidge of self control in this chaotic cauldron of crying and confusion, cursing and coursing through this coarse version of reality, on a wet, dirty marble spinning a thousand miles an hour and chasing and fleeing and circling again around the sun almost seventy times that speed? Legally speaking, of course.”

“Um. I don’t think I am…”

“No? Fine. Just give me the forms to sign… while I still have a little bit left of all of my sound minds.”