Ulcers and madness

When she was admired for her beauty, Rose cut off her hair and smeared pepper on her face, upset that suitors were beginning to take notice of her. 

A typical teenager? When she was a small child she was injured, her finger was caught in a door. She did not cry out. Later when she lost the nail on the finger a doctor was called in.

The surgeon was obliged to use pincers to extract so much of it as still remained in her flesh. The torture of this operation she bore with such singular sweetness that the operator remarked that never once did she utter a scream, or even change countenance.

But it did not end there.

At the age of four years, she was troubled with a disorder in her head which rendered it necessary for her mother to dress it with powder so corrosive and burning, that it caused her to shudder from head to foot, and produced a number of ulcers on the skin, which gave her excessive pain. Yet she never complained, and when the surgeon who attended her every day for six weeks, cut off a small portion of flesh that new might grow in its place, even this she suffered… with incredible firmness and constancy.

A troubled girl. Certainly if she was my child I would be very concerned. She is Saint Rose of Lima. The patron saint of girls.

carrots and beets

My kids think I’m nuts. A fly gets in the house. I catch it. Put it outside. Still alive. I love all these little creatures. Except ants. And moths. And bed bugs. Those little bastards invade your space. But we’re only here for a short period. All creatures who are alive. Including carrots and beets. All of us only have so much time. We come out of nothingness. And like fireflys we burst open for a flash. And then we’re gone.

We should take care of each other.

 

The possibilities seem endless.

 

Every husband knows what its like. You go to the Mall with your wife. And you lose her. And then you find her. Well, I couldn’t find my wife. I went through the grocery store where she was supposed to be. Not there. I went through the mall, looking into every store. Not there.

Panic begins to set in. You know that this story has a happy ending. I did find her in the grocery store at last. She was wearing a new sweater I hadn’t seen her in before. But I wondered what would have happened if I hadn’t found her. I’m sure its happened to someone. The possibilities seem endless.

Fly Fishing

Turns out that my brain tumor has not grown. That’s good. About the size of a pea. Snow pea.  Now all I have to worry about is my eaves trough. And fly fishing. Just took it up. And its going to be difficult. Quite frankly I just don’t know how we’re going to catch them. The hooks are so big. And the flies are so small.

Rectum de dum tum

There is a hum in Windsor Ontario Canada. It is driving people crazy. Which brings me to Socrates. Who it is said was badgered by his wife. I suspect that Socrates and his wife were not having conjugal relations. Socrates himself stated that the loss of a sex drive came as a great relief. Now he was able to think rationally. His wife did not agree. Which brings me back to Windsor. I went to school there for seven years. Five of them I was a student. Every so often the the processing plants in Detroit would emit a foul sulphur smell. It smelled like a fart. And so came the title of Windsor being the ‘asshole of Canada’.

“You didn’t complain about the sulphur but now you’re complaining about the hum! The next thing you know they’ll be talking about Windsor on the Colbert Report.”

Mine was flawed

When I was in college there were perhaps a dozen African-Canadians. (Not counting foreign students.) One girl in particular was from a local small town. She was very involved in social issues. As was my roommate at the time. He started a group that volunteered to help out at the local half way house for men and women getting out of prison. This girl, I’ll call her Wendy, also joined this group. Which is how I got to meet her. I became quite fond of her. We talked. Sometimes ate dinner together. Nothing romantic. The next September when I returned to school I heard a rumor that Wendy had died, jumped off one of the buildings on campus that summer.

Decades later I was browsing through the university alumni magazine when I saw Wendy’s name. She was retiring from some post in a local hospital. She hadn’t died. Hadn’t jumped off any building. Hadn’t been depressed. Wendy had lived a life and I had lived mine. Except mine was flawed.

Forget all your troubles

God it was cold today. Went out to see my mother and the cold stung. Reminded me why I like winter. You’re so preoccupied with getting warm and once warm grateful, that you forget all your other troubles.

House sings “Forget Your Troubles. Come On, Get Happy” from Awesome Excerpts on Vimeo.

sweet suffering

I wrote this book in the format of Kierkegaard. That is I created the author and let him write it. The painter/poet is a personality that I engaged within myself and met many  times as I visited galleries, art openings, poetry readings. He has suffered much more than I have. I would say that outside of dentist offices, hemorrhoids, and existential dread, I haven’t suffered much at all. From love of course. But that is sweet suffering.

This poem comes from a book, Hard Brush Soft Paint. You can download it for a very efficient transactional fee of … nil.

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Guilt

 One part of the world suffers from hemorrhoids while the other half steps silently into death. One part is on a diet; the other part is losing weight. One part is blind; the other part can’t read. One part has calluses on its heart; the other part has calluses on its hands. My ideas aren’t fit for general consumption. Perhaps my work should be exported to some third world country where they will swallow anything. Turning on the television to a talk show. Someone mentions pornography; everyone laughs. I am seasick. God is the sea is the sky is my stomach rising and diving and screeching in my ear like a gull. Handel’s water music spews out of the tape machine, threads of plastic dripping through my fingers. Our genocide of happiness is destroying the planet. The other part applauds.

Like a shadow

Having a wonderful dinner with friends and I realized how alone we all are. Human beings are a contradiction. We are social animals who cannot rid ourselves of the feeling of being homeless. You can try and drown it out with alcohol or drugs. Or distract yourself with money, sex, or Sunday football. But there it is. Always. Like a shadow.

maybe in the future

I had a surprise from one of my daughters. All my children surprise me. And in a good way. But my oldest daughter who is a sound editor for television and movies. She also writes her own music. And she is a very good poet.  But recently she took up painting. I saw some of her work and thought it was fine. (She is into that Japanese comic strip work.) But recently I saw a piece she was working on. I was wiped out. Not as a father. But as an artist. And viewer.

This is not her work. I wouldn’t show her work without her permission. But maybe in the future.