talking about primates
While writing that last post I got a work call. A client was passed out drunk and there was some homeless guy with more beer locked my co-worker out of the house and wouldn’t let her check on the client. I told her she’d had a long day and to go home and i would get in and check on client and try to talk him into going to detox. Random Dude wouldn’t answer the door and a neighbor filled me in on the scene and got Random Dude to come to the door. I put my business card in the door and told him to let me in and check on client’s safety or i would call the po-pos to do it for me. He let me in my client was safe for the moment, not ready to evict the homeless and go to detox, so i scheduled an appt. for the morning. I could have strong armed him into detox and put smug little random dude on the street but i respect peoples right to choose, even badly. Frankly between you and me most people’s choices seem ill considered to me. Look at the planet and you’ll see what i mean. We broke the weather for god’s sake. I could have justified my ape dominance behavior. Drag the crippled monkey where i wanted him to go. Make the little chimp go sleep in the streets because i could and he defied me. But being aware that most human interaction is chimp politics. Dominance and submissive behavior. I sat on the floor when i talked to the drunk and apologized for intruding to both with my only castigation a fact based account of how they were destroying my client’s life. I called my co-worker to update her on the situation and i said we assertive community treatment not aggressive. I feel like it is easy for me to rationalize almost anything i do to give it at least the appearance of being reasonable. Who said The cost of freedom is eternal vigilance?
going crazy part 6
The driver of the van that had immediately pulled over, apparently at my command, was a dumpy looking woman in her early 50s perhaps. She looked remarkably like my mom, shorter lighter hair but largely the same feel, gestalt if you will. She pulled back into traffic and asked where i was headed. I told her i didn’t know and preceded to explain that i’d inadvertently fallen in with an apparent gang of international drug smugglers and that i’d fled coercion into smuggling because i didn’t know what to do. She drove as i explained this listening intently with no apparent disbelief. She pulled off at an exit and parked next to a small park. She said it was foolish and dangerous to get involved with drug smugglers and i should be very careful. She said the Schipbol was dangerous, a frequent pathway for smugglers and heavily surveilled. She suggested i leave by Denmark I think it was, and she drew me a map of the easiest way to cross the border. I told her i had already ditched the drugs but she looked like she didn’t believe me. She was excited and concerned and looked near tears but happily so. She dug in her purse and pulled out a 50 guilder bill. She pushed it into my hands with the map which i remember as being on a cocktail napkin and made me promise not to spend it on drugs. i promised her i wouldn’t and impulsively added that i would use some of it to call my mom. i pulled out my backpack and walked across the park to find the train station she had mentioned on the map.
I was overcome by a tremendous weariness. I again recalled it must have been over 10 days. It was definitely in the middle of the second week I’d slept last and if we were to leave today it was day 21. I saw children playing and such and looked for an out of the way place to rest. I wouldn’t sleep, that wouldn’t be safe but i could not go on. I walked around some bushes, benches, perhaps a calliope and came to a bench out of the way. I sat my bag down and stretched out, I closed my eyes, the weariness overcame me.
I looked up to yet another blocky blond guy with a big forehead and a strong chin. This one looked a bit more rural, bibs perhaps, or jeans and a flannel, he was older but in the prime of life, muscled in a workingman kind of way and he was holding an axe. Not menacingly but prominently across his chest. He asked me what i was doing there? He appeared nervous but trying to hide it. I couldn’t decide if he were making conversation and just happened to have an axe or if he using it as a badge of authority to question my possible vagrancy. I looked over and saw the train stop, i couldn’t find, across the street and said i was waiting for a train. “Well be about it then” as the train rolled into view. It was definitely the homeless guy push off and i took it.
I rode the train the way it was going. I looked at the map on the train and tried to determine where i changed lines. I pulled out my cocktail napkin map and realized it was like a 3rd grade geography assignment kind of map that marked like the borders of a few countries but didn’t have anything about train lines and such and i couldn’t remember what the mom-lady had said. I rode the train until things looked familiar and i was able to find the stop closest to the mind spa.
I walked to the door and rang the bell, unsure of what i was looking for, what i would do if no one answered the door or what i would do if someone did. Our host opened the door and looked mildly surprised to see me. I asked if he had heard from Debbie and he said he hadn’t. I told him we were separated and i had missed my plane and come there to see if she had called. he said she hadn’t but i could come in and work out what to do. I told him that was alright, I had friends i was going to stay with and thanks just the same. He seemed surprised but didn’t argue. Everything was pregnant with meaning. Every conversation, every thought had for seemingly forever but it did not lessen its impact.
I walked to a one of the restaurants that had a small necessities counter and bought a pack of cigarettes. Galouis blonds, I was smoking then. Happy to be using the exotic locally. I thought of my promise not to buy drugs and did it anyway. Oh i wanted one. That moment of elusive clarity, focus at least. I took the change to a payphone and flipped through the business cards i had collected over the last couple of weeks, there were about 10 but mostly Americans who wanted me to look them up in the states. I had gotten the number of a tarot card reader I had let come in and set up at the cannabis cup. We had talked pretty intensely and he had given me a reading fraught with meaning that i no longer recall. I do recall its eerie prescience as certain events unfolded over the coming weeks but the vast majority of what occurred is lost to me, was lost to me even then. Living in the moment at the cost of history, identity even. I not only embraced The Now, i was Lost In It. And I hadn’t even yet had the dream….
a good american
Since I haven’t posted for a couple of weeks i feel an update is in order. It has been a pretty hairy couple of weeks and my down time has shrunk to virtually nil. I’m barely reading, even, and thats usually the last thing to go no matter how busy things get. Mostly I’ve been reading comic books of late. I bought a whole box of them for a dollar and i’ve been working my way through them slowly but surely. I am also reading Summerland by Michael Chabon which is a little disapointing. His The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay is one of my favorite books. Its about the early days of comic books, coincidentally enough, and two Jewish cousins who are comics artists and how they deal with Nazis and stuff. Its really great and has some interesting metaphysics talking about Superman (Kane & Schuster’s not Neitchze’s) as a golem. I also really like his newest The Yiddish Policeman’s Union a sort of alternative history where Jewish refugees had been settled in Alaska rather than denied sanctuary and left to the holocaust and a hard boiled Jewish detective is trying to solve the mystery of the murdered messiah. Also metaphysically interesting. Summerland, not so much. There’s too much baseball and the fantasy is a bit cheezy. I’d recommend comic books. Besides not reading and not blogging I’ve been spending a lot of time at the house. I am starting to settle in though I am ashamed to say i haven’t finished even some of the basics of a move in cleaning. I’ve been doing a lot of lawn stuff. Bought a push reel mower which is fun but a lot of work. i also bought a weed whip for the annoying tall grasses the push reel leaves behind. Its not as pretty as the manicured golf green types that surround the place but its better than most hippy lawns and the carbon foot print is a sight better. I have also been steadily turning over ground, the less to mow. I planted lilac bushes (struggling but normal i hear), a persimmon tree, some lillies (looking real sharp), plus a vegetable plot with cucumbers (I opened the last jar of bread & butter pickles to celebrate, when i was a kid we would plant some corn in the center of the hill for shade but this year i am going to try Cosmos), tomatoes (beef steaks – a hybrid), basil, marigolds (repels bugs from the tomatoes) and two rows of carrots and radishes (the radishes come up quick to mark the rows). Tomorrow i hope to put in some okra and i also have summer squash (2 kinds) and something else. I have been real pleased with the soil, its a little clayey but there is some definite topsoil action going on. I also got my compost bin up & running. Its been mostly fun hanging out with dad. It has been a huge struggle with smoking being around it all the time. I had a bad spell and went back on the chantix and am back on track which makes me feel good. It was really work that pushed me over the edge, coming back from Michigan and my cousin’s wedding to driving out at 9:30 at night to see a suicidal client was just too much. I’m becoming a little frayed. Last night i got a call our homeless client getting out of jail, 9:30 at night no place to take him. i let him crash on the floor of the guest room. It was too much to pick up his gear i was storing in the garage and take him out and put him out to camp in the wet somewhere. So had a client here when i went to bed and when i woke. Saw two other’s today, taking them to Oxford House (self run recovery cooperative houses) interviews. One got accepted which will make my life easier as i won’t have to run out to the sticks (styx?) to pick him up every other day. I think i am going to take a comp day on Thursday to make up for it. Working on the house and hanging with dad has made me realize how much energy i put into work (way too much). Nonetheless i am a good american, working in my yard, spending money i don’t have, enjoying the luxuries of 3 bedrooms, 2 baths and a 2 car garage. Last weekend i couldn’t help but think the honored war dead would be proud, for if i can’t buy top of the line appliances just because i don’t have the money than the terrorists will have won.
I Kicked a Home Run (and i bought a house)
Wednesday I did the final walk through on the house and learned everything was a go for the Thursday closing. My realtor invited me to play kick ball with some of his friends which really turned into big fun. He said bring the leg of David Beckham and the spirit of a 7 year old, and it was a really fun group. I kicked a home run (something i never did as a 7 year old), which i got more excited about then the house, so homeownership hasn’t changed me yet. Yesterday I got the keys and signed my life away but the kickball is going to be a regular Wednesday thing so i think i’m going to be alright. This weekend I’m taking a long one and riding up with The Popster to MI/OH for my cousin’s wedding and to get a truck load of his and my stuff we abandoned with other family members when neither of us had a place. I’m still staying at Sarah’s till maybe the middle of next week but The Popster is probably drinking coffee at the new Trapp homestead right now.
Whole Grain White Bread
Greetings Constant Reader. Things in COMO continue to progress rapidly and unexpectedly. First of all for those confused by the Back Yard Not Included post everything is still on track for the house purchase. That was an older post that I inadvertently saved instead of posted and then posted later when I noticed my error. I do that sometimes. The house thing is going well. We had the inspection which went fine I identified some stuff for them to fix and they agreed to fix it. I also arranged my homeowners insurance and notified the bank who have scheduled the appraisal, which is the last thing that could potentially be a hitch as it has to appraise for the sale price or higher. I suspect it will, I added 10 grand to the sale price for the home insurance. Also talked to the bank about closing a week early, because my life is not filled with enough unexpected change. Actually I did it so my dad could unload his pick up truck before we drove up to Michigan for my cousin’s wedding. That way we can load it up with a bunch of our stuff that we have left with various kinfolk. I have kept my stuff scattered over multiple states for years so it will be nice to work for consolidating it all here in COMO. It is a little mind numbing trying to pull everything together, while still maintaining my life, such as it is. I am having to take things day by day, especially since my dad arrived. Hosting out of town company is a lot of work, especially while I try to keep a smallish footprint here at Sarah’s house, as taking in a 71 year old retired truck driver was not really one of her life goals. She has been out of town for the weekend which has been nice, just for space reasons. I should be packing but I’m not. I got my case notes caught up with, as at work we have a grant report due next week so I have this whole data collection thing on top of all the other things I have to do so some shit has been falling through the cracks. It seems like I get up make coffee and small talk with the popster roll into work jam all day roll home and rustle up dinner and more small talk and then its time to go to bed. Thank god for the weekend. Cooked a nice family style meal yesterday. Looks like I’m still stuck with most of the cooking unless I pick up a taste for hamburger helper. Dad did make a pretty good breakfast, and I learned the secret to cooking bacon as well as cube steaks on the grill is low heat. For the most part things are going well with Dad. We do come from 2 different worlds so we are having to work at meeting in the middle. I think it will be easier when we have the place so we can start doing our own things. If it wasn’t for the invention of whole grain white bread I don’t think we would have made it. Myrtle is a treat, although she’s pretty spoiled. She’s about 12 inches tall and about 20 lbs with longish black hair. She’s got a black tongue so she’s got some chow in her but she’s itty-bitty. The shelter she came from said she was chow and blue tick hound, but I don’t see the hound except for her floppy ears, but we call her a chow hound nonetheless. I took her jogging with me again today and I don’t think she had recovered from yesterdays because she slipped her collar and ran away on the back stretch today. She screamed like I was beating her when I was trying to get her collar back on. Thank god I tired her out so she couldn’t run away. Maybe my brothers right to call her Turtle. So this week I work all week including my batterers group and my data collection project. Close on the house (I hope I have enough money). Get utilities turned on if theres time and leave afterwork on Friday for Michigan. Wedding on Saturday (still have to pick Dad out a shirt), barbecue at Olson’s on Sunday, and drive back on Monday to start my new life in my new home. Of course we’ll be sitting on the floor because I’m out of money to furnish it. All in all things are going splendidly. I am looking forward to planting my persimmon tree and putting in a garden plot. If the wifi gods are kind perhaps I’ll be able to pick up a signal at the new house and I will be more on top of this whole blog thing.
talking about squirrels
Squirrely’s comment has got me thinking about squirrels. Back when i was crazy i had this fantasy of putting together an all girl teen rap-punk fusion band hiding messages of female empowerment behind teenage rebellion. I wrote a couple of the songs and thats about as far as that ever got. One of the pieces of a piece that i liked goes like this:
I was kicking it one night just me and the girls
We were watching TV and talking about squirrels
It seems the law of the jungle is the law of tooth and fang
And the fat male squirrels wanted to make themselves Kangs
But the little girl squirrels knew that wasn’t right
So they banded together and they tought themselves to fight
When the big male squirrels learned of their might
They ran out of town and never stopped for a bite
East Toledo Euro Trash
When I was visiting the homeland I had the great pleasure to see London’s own The Stash play at Frankies. It was an incredible nostalgia-fest because i hadn’t been to Frankies in probably a decade. It was probably the first club i had ever been too, my first girl friend Tais Jalal took me there and we saw some bands that looked and sounded very much like the bands i saw their last week opening for my pals The Stash. It would of course take a friend’s band to get me to go out to see a show these days. But I went to Frankies pretty regularly from my late teens to my mid-twenties. Most memorable were going as Fidel Castro on halloween with Chad Osborne (father time i think) and Bill Soleau (something morrissey inspired), seeing the Laughing Hyeneas with Mike Leonardi and losing my glasses slam dancing and later pulling Mike out of a brawl with some Vietnam Vets arguing about the first Gulf War. The show was great except way too late. Nick and Rebecca are great folks and Nick at least is a genius. They did a band Universe Crew with a heavy alien theme. Nick also did mixes and had a European record deal, Green Tea records I believe and ultimately they offered Nick a job doing mixes and Rebecca one designing record covers. This must have been 6 years ago or more and their still making it, still making music. Closest of my friends to be rock stars. Nick produced 3 songs for Milk Carton (if you weren’t blessed to get one of the 100 Milk Carton tapes you can get aa little taste if you go to the Memory Hole and go look at one of the older versions of myspot.org) that we never did anything with and I made some music with Nick solo after we broke up. They’re good people and their new band is pretty good. More rock -n- roll than Universe Crew, a three piece, Nick on guitar, some presumably British guy on drums and Rebecca playing the Moog (Nick’s got a thing for old synthesizers). The CD is even better since Nick’s had a chance to work his mixing magic on it. I didn’t get a chance to talk to either too much being the stars of the show but they both looked great. Nick took a little rubbing for wearing eye shadow but its hard to be a rock star. I’m proud of them and wish them the best. They’ve picked up an accent but since they live their i’ll let it slide. On the trip home i started a new piece (i haven’t written in ages) based upon Phillip K. Dick’s idea of the Black Iron Prison as an analogy for the rise of a totalitarian state. Here’s what i got so far:
Theres a Black Iron Prison casts a shadow across the land
From the strip mines of the North to The Wall at the Rio Grande
So show us your papers, your bio-metric ID
How about a mark on the hand or forehead so that all can see?
That privacy is over, the world is made of glass
So much for your delicate sensibilities our society is crass
backyard not included
I think I might do a blog that is just a collection of excuses and apologies for not blogging. This week’s is i was all excited about finding a house. It was the 2nd one i looked at, a 3 bedroom brick ranch home on a quiet street near a park with a huge backyard. I decided to make an offer, very exciting, took my handy friend Eric to check it out, and was half way through signing the papers, kicking myself for not bringing my checkbook for the earnest money (look at all this middle class crap i’ve learned), when the realtor wanted to show me this great mapping program to answer my question on the exact location of the property line and low and behold some previous owner had sold the backyard to the neighbors. Now i am back to square one. I need to find another likely prospect to get my realtor back in gear (i don’t want to tell him i am desperate) showing me more places. The Popster is camping out by Lake Mead, so I’d like to get a place soon (theres a fine line between camping and homelessness). I’m not super happy with my backup choice, one of the bedrooms is a little small (you need 3 bedrooms for resale) and its overpriced. On the plus side its been on the market for 7 months so i might make a low ball offer. It has to be terrifying to be trying to sell a house right now. If i were doing it i wouldn’t be watching the news. On other fronts its a perfect day out there. i strolled around Stephens Lake before coming here (i always blog at the coffee zone) and before that i went for a little hike at Pinacles one of the really nice nature areas around here. Its helped keep me from becoming bitter and clinging to guns or church or something. When I am done here I am going to be a guest speaker at a freedom from smoking group. Its been almost 2 months and except for gaining a million pounds it has gone really well. I have been off meds for a month and haven’t slipped once. I figure spreading the good word will help keep me honest.
toledo in vinyl siding
Hello Readers. When a week begins you often can’t predict where they will end. I have seen this proven again and again and yet I still persist in believing there is some kind of predictive regularity to life, though all evidence i have seen is in the contrary.
On Monday nigh I was hanging out with my friend Nancy and drank a couple of beers and shot the shit on her front porch. As I was walking home, I checked my voicemail and Chad Osborne, my best friend from highschool, had left a message that he had Pistons play off tickets for Wednesday if I wanted to go. Tuesday I cleared my schedule for the rest of the week, moved up my appointment for a 2nd viewing of the house on Leslie I want, worked, saw the house, signed a contract, packed, skipped my truck inspection (theres still 3 days in the month when i get back tomorrow night), and hit the road. So this week has largely left me with a surprise home visit to the home country. The trip up was uneventful except for an incredibly cheap hotel that was then a fairly reasonable place to stay. The pistons won which was nice as they dropped the game before and the next one last night. I’d never been to an NBA game, it was a lot of fun. I most enjoyed how they manipulated the crowd with alternating flashing messages to scream and yell and then buy stuff. It began from the parking lot where this was this huge disembodied deep and comfortable voice explaining the rules of the stadium. I thought i will be glad when that voice is broadcast everywhere and no one will have to think or remember, just wander and obey. I think the house hunting has permenantly scarred my brain. Its definitely changed how I look at the world. I went to my brother Bob’s whose had the same house for more than 25 years and I thought, “wow what a big living room and with a lot of light, its on a pretty quiet street, and the yard is huge, wish it had the hardwoood floors though”. I don’t think i used to think like this. The other thing i have noticed is how much more of the area is covered in vinyl siding. I’d barely heard of it a month ago and now i realize half the planet has become swathed in it. Really unfortunate, even giant old farmhouses i remember looking all boxy. Its disturbing, and Chad says it is cheap and of course its low maintenance, so i guess its just going to get worse. I have been telling everyone about my house. Three bedrooms, 2 baths, a split level with brick and aluminum siding, a 2 car attached garage, with the bedrooms above. Leslie is a little busier than a street i want to live on and it doesn’t seem to have much of a “neighborhood feel” although my boss lives across the street and she’s pretty neighborly but in the words of my realtor “Its a lot of house for the money”. I ok’d the price in Indianapolis Wednesday morning and faxed back the contract Thursday from Monroe. Everyone hear seems happy and healthy, I helped Harry move into his new apartment he is getting with his new girlfriend (both very nice, one painted in some wild colors). I got to help a little with the painting and got roped into moving some stuff on friday, the curse of pick up ownership. Friday night had a nice dinner with my brother Bob and his wife Pam. Bob grilled out venison steaks, which were excellent and some asparagus, which he gave me props on teaching him how back in my vegetarian days. Pam made among other things this asian shredded brocoli salad that was really yummy, didn’t even know there was shredded brocoli. Chad and Melissa have been delightful hosts, laid back and considerate, but I spent one night over at Harry’s as Bill, a co-op manager out of Marquette was visiting. We all played some Settlers of Katann which was fun. (I jumped out to the early lead and they all ganged up on me and Chad Osborne squeeked out a victory a roll or two before i was ready to go out). I also drove around Ida/Temperance with my niece Heather. We went to the graves and planned on getting my mom a bench some day. Also noticed the Grushchaw’s old house was in vinyl siding as well as the Cardell’s. What are you gonna do? Me, I’m going to Frankie’s of all places (the hipster club i went too when i was 19-23) to see Nick and Rebecca’s band, and then back to COMO tomorrow. Gotta get that car inspected.
a week in review
greetings constant readers. Its been a decent week. I think i am finally over the hump on not being horribly stressed and busy at work all the time. I actually got to leave an hour early on Thursday. Yesterday was strange, two of my clients had relapsed together and one had lost his berth at the homeless shelter because of it so it ate up my whole day finding him a detox bed and talking him into taking it. I had to pretty much drive him a hundred miles but we got ‘er done. Coincidentally it was his one year anniversary in our program. Our first client to make it a year. He’d been clean 4 months prior to this drinking episode his best run ever when he wasn’t in a facility. I have learned to stay positive. When they do well i think, i did this, i’m making a difference. When they fuck up i think, they did this, you can’t succeed for them. It keeps me sane. Later this morning i go out with the realtor and look at some houses. Wish me luck.
Multiconstruct 
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