I know. I know. We’re getting awfully antsy up here in the cyber peanut gallery. I just love that old expression, “the peanut gallery”
Symptoms
The most severe allergic reaction to peanuts is anaphylaxis — a life-threatening whole-body response to an allergen. Symptoms include impaired breathing, swelling in the throat, a sudden drop in blood pressure, pale skin or blue lips, fainting and dizziness. Unless treated immediately with epinephrine (adrenaline), typically administered in an auto-injector, anaphylaxis can be fatal.
Less severe symptoms include:
Itchy skin or hives, which can appear as small spots or large welts
An itching or tingling sensation in or around the mouth or throat
Nausea
A runny or congested nose
Less severe symptoms include:
Itchy skin or hives, which can appear as small spots or large welts
An itching or tingling sensation in or around the mouth or throat
Nausea
A runny or congested nose
God help us/them up there/here in “the peanut gallery”… I sure hope everyone remembered to bring their over-priced epipens with them! Syrah! Do you have your humiliating, life-saving epipen with you?!! And, your essential asthma inhaler?! And your anti-TNF blocker… your adalimumab medication… your (Humira) injector? Mucho bueno!
I know. I know. We all want to get down to that swanky John Wayne Cancer Institute I mentioned earlier. And attend that soiree… black-tie-tied-extra-tight-around-the-neck… swinging-single-noose… going-away-party for Senor Cancer… alias, Genghis… alias, El Muerte… alias, Tom Waits… alias, Small Change? The celebrity event of the season, no doubt
But. First. Now that I’ve mentioned it… I’d really like to resurrect that “truly depressing year 2007” for a just moment.
The mere thought… the slightest mention of… the dreadful year, 2014… is quite honestly… scaring the shit out of me. And. Besides
There’s something on my chest. (No, not a tattoo of a sinking Spanish galleon with a scantily clad crew of sweaty, stinky… soap-on-a-rope disco
pirates… corn-fed all-American midwestern farmer’s daughters… Playboy bunnies circa. 1973!) Hello, ladies of the night light! That I want to get off my—
That didn’t come out quite right?
What was it I was drinking and smoking last night? Oh right. The margaritas at the Sea Grill in Old Town were divine!! With the grilled artichokes and the fried squid!! Amazing.
Something, someone… you know the expression… “get something off my/your chest”… Another one of those “tried and true” expressions… like the bloody “peanut gallery”… They/we must be “dying like flies” from anaphylaxis up there/here in the peanut gallery… “these days”…. and… “what with”… the current culture of tattooing every square inch of “living, breathing” flesh… “getting something off your chest”… Suicide Girls!!… well, you can see how confusing the world is/was becoming
Uh. A cup of dragonwell… anyone? A second pot… perhaps?
Yes, please.
This next Confession… which I have been… stumbling, bumbling and… “slouching toward”… trying to avoid for at least a decade… is going to be… a doozy.
doo·zy
ˈdo͞ozē/
nounNORTH AMERICANinformal
noun: doozy; plural noun: doozies; noun: doozie
something outstanding or unique of its kind."it's gonna be a doozy of a black eye"
Origin
early 20th century: of unknown origin.
ˈdo͞ozē/
nounNORTH AMERICANinformal
noun: doozy; plural noun: doozies; noun: doozie
something outstanding or unique of its kind."it's gonna be a doozy of a black eye"
Origin
early 20th century: of unknown origin.
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So. I mentioned at some point. Early on… in these Confessions. Near the beginning. (See Confessions: Waving Hello, perhaps). Something. About a “relationship” I had. With a young lady I met at Heartwood Institute.
It’s very important. The relationship itself is/was… perhaps not so important as… the unintended results… the reverberating repercussions…. the woozy… “series of unfortunate events”… that rode upon… the flounces of a floozie
Honestly. If I hadn’t “gotten involved with” a woman twenty-one years younger than I. If the world wasn’t rife with sinful cliches… littered with unlawfully attractive alliterative minefields… besieged by busty verbal boobytraps!?!
“Inter faeces et urinam nascimur”!!
You said it yourself, Monsignor Hippo!
What was a poor forty-nine year old lad with eight-godzillion megavolts of testosterone running around naked in his sky blue veins suppose to do!?!
“Ama Deum et”… (fuck the rest)!?… “quod fac vis”…
Saint Augustine of Hippo (/ɔːˈɡʌstɪn/; 13 November 354 – 28 August 430)[1] was a Roman African, early Christian theologian and philosopher from Numidia whose writings influenced the development of Western Christianity and Western philosophy. He was the bishop of Hippo Regius in north Africa and is viewed as one of the most important Church Fathers in Western Christianity for his writings in the Patristic Era. Among his most important works are The City of God, On Christian Doctrine and Confessions.
According to his contemporary Jerome, Augustine "established anew the ancient Faith".[note 1] In his youth he was drawn to Manichaeism, later to neo-Platonism. After his baptism and conversion to Christianity in 386, Augustine developed his own approach to philosophy and theology, accommodating a variety of methods and perspectives.[2] Believing that the grace of Christ was indispensable to human freedom, he helped formulate the doctrine of original sin and made seminal contributions to the development of just war theory. When the Western Roman Empire began to disintegrate, Augustine imagined the Church as a spiritual City of God, distinct from the material Earthly City.[3] His thoughts profoundly influenced the medieval worldview.
It’s a cruel, cruel… mad, dangerous, demented… Ellen Degeneres’ “new world”… order of insubordinate chaos… a new world multi-cultural insurrection… we’re living in now, padre!!
And you thought medieval times in the “old world” were a touch risky!?
Well, Master Hortensius Hippopotamus. Spank my bottom with that wooden paddle we both made in shop class in kindergarten!! Bubonic
plague, scrofulous witches, endless wars of empires rising and falling, funeral pyres for… Albigensians, Waldensians, Lollards, Hussites, Protestants, Muslims, Jews… and a plethora of tax evading pagans aside…
There you are!!
NOT HERE, AND,— NOT NOW!!
“Bene curris, sed extra viam”…
Safely ensconced within incarnadine velour… protected by fiery dominions up above on eternal patrol… hanging out gratuitously on high… “high as a kite”… on agape grape kush… risen unto the right hand… nestled in the bosom of… far beyond the once dual certainties of taxes and death… in Gloria in Excessum Holiday Inn!… sublime, immortal city… Citadel of Heavenly Virtue… with all those “forgiven”… “footloose and fancy-free” fathers… cardinals, bishops, popes… illustrious choir boys… whooping it up like whooping cranes… with “an endless supply of virgins”… I know it could be a little difficult for you to comprehend our… current mortal manly predicament… down here on the forgotten, if not abandoned… god forsaken planet Earth… what with the temperature heating up and breaking all historical records by the hour!!
Down here with Mr. Tweet, El DiabloTrump, and his party of white devils!!
But. Without this key relationship to… woman. To a woman. Not an angel, mind you. To this particular woman. Dare, I mention her name… To—
Mademoiselle Jezebel… my midwestern belle….. Jessica.
There. I did it
Oh shit. I mentioned the unmentionable… The dad-blasted “J” word!
Damn it all. Ten years of silence in the cave of sweet dreams.
And now the temple of Solomon and Gomorrah quietly explodes into a trillion-trillion tiny motes of light…
Or. Father, the Grand Patriarch… old thunder-pants Zeus himself… now just another typical e(X)tra-e(X)tra-e(X)tra (L)arge… midwestern farm boy dad… in a fit of jubilant, defiant rage… rolls the obligatory upright piano out onto the front porch… pushes it lustily down the pressure-treated bullnose doug-fir steps… leaps down onto the preposterously green neatly trimmed twenty-acre suburban Iowan lawn… takes an Ace Hardware fireman’s axe… from the well organized masonite peg board storage wall unit in the spotless three-four-five-car garage… applying it with heated relish… to the polyurethaned blond oak case of ivory keys… pounding with resounding glory upon the sitka spruce sounding board… and clamoring cast iron harp… while sloshing number two diesel or regular unleaded gasoline from a local Exxon station near a super mall… from a red plastic five-gallon gas can… onto the splintered, resonating heap… setting it all alight… with a blue plastic throwaway Bic lighter… as screams of terror
Not. Not quite yet.
Patience, my children. Patience, please. Endure this darkest hour… for
“The end is always near”… as the man says in the song. But. It never actually comes
“The end is always near”… as the man says in the song. But. It never actually comes
THE END.
“The future’s uncertain and… the end is always”…?
“This is the end, my only friend— the end”… ?
“Come on baby, light my…?
Ah. Never mind. Where is this winding tributary leading us?
If it weren’t for you… Jelly Ray mon ami… and, your Apple polishing dad. I may never have been introduced to an Apple iMac desktop computer. I wouldn’t be… chained here… twelve long years later typing this… million-dollar missive. With an eagle, an unending nightmare and a scar go with. So
Hello, Jessica!! Come on down and get yur… REALLY BIG HUG!!
from St. Augustine, the Mighty Hippo… FROM ME… and all yur boneheaded, balls-on-fire… lucky boys
from St. Augustine, the Mighty Hippo… FROM ME… and all yur boneheaded, balls-on-fire… lucky boys
Jesus, folks. This is getting hairy. We really are blundstoning deeply into the tunnel of love… watching life’s lightning flashes before our eyes… on death row by the looks of it
Confess. Forgive and forget. Move on. Next next next….
Oh, if only it were so easy.
Resurrecting, reliving, relieving… redeeming the rays of rage and glory.
“Once upon a time”…
And, for perhaps five-hundred fruitful years thereafter?… since 14-1500 anno domini, or so?… since Masaccio, the messy lad, painted in linear perspective?… since the official Saint James version of the Bible was assembled from a hodgepodge of garbled recordings, sloppy biased opinions, snippets of sound bites, elitist theocratic propaganda, and flaming bushes on mountaintops of “fake news”!?… ripped off and plagiarized from papyrus scrolls and printed on vellum paper?… surely, since the Age of Enlightenment? the Age of Reason? the Renaissance?… since phd programs in Stuttgart, more or less
And, for perhaps five-hundred fruitful years thereafter?… since 14-1500 anno domini, or so?… since Masaccio, the messy lad, painted in linear perspective?… since the official Saint James version of the Bible was assembled from a hodgepodge of garbled recordings, sloppy biased opinions, snippets of sound bites, elitist theocratic propaganda, and flaming bushes on mountaintops of “fake news”!?… ripped off and plagiarized from papyrus scrolls and printed on vellum paper?… surely, since the Age of Enlightenment? the Age of Reason? the Renaissance?… since phd programs in Stuttgart, more or less
Our entire western civilization?… northern European… Greco-Roman-Egyptian-Assyrian-Sumerian… Iranian oil inspired?… the numerous, bellicose, competing, warring tribes of… the fiendish descendants of… Adam cascading from Eden?… from the Nile, Tigres and Euphrates river valleys, mostly Mediterranean bound?… from riverine branches of the main three… desert-inspired, poverty-stricken, war-for-survival, mad-driven… semitic religions?… the christians, the jews and the muslims?
Dang, what about the whole rest of the world east of the Caucasus?!
Zatknis’! Mr. Putin. I’m trying to make a civilized talking point.
“Since time immemorial”… we fuckers—
We, the only ones who matter. Us, the ones who write the damn biased history books we force youth to read and repeat ad nauseam!
We, the record keepers. The ibis-headed baboons, with or without a lunar disc above our heads, we. The Descendants of Thoth! The students of Hermes Trismegistus!! The scholars, writers, recorders and organizers of the remainders of days!!
The Important We. The Only Us… oh we know who we mean!!
We, the People Who… count the poker chips in Las Vegas and heap up the flaming bodies of the blasphemers!!
We, the non-Buddhists?
We… THE WE! Don’t you dare interrupt me with any of your oriental claptrap!!
We… have been… are… most sincerely and most determinedly… focused upon the overwhelming task of mutual redemption. Through philosophy, writing, religion, law… and, most sacred art.
You mean, mutual extinction… through computer science, modern medicine… corrupt politics and weapons of mass destruction?
Hush.
People… common ordinary folks like you and I… and all of my dearest imaginary readers
Hungry peasant farmers, unemployed guild craftsman, starving mad artists, deceitful senators, unlawful bankers, drunken sailors, mercenary soldiers… angry kings and jealous queens… unprincipled princes, petulant patriots, derisive prostitutes and… plagiaristic paupers
Us… the woeful tribe of humankind… the hopeless, hapless descendants of fools. One and all. We all sought absolution, atonement, deliverance, rescue—
Liberation from suffering? Enlightenment from ignorance?
Not now, Nagarjuna.
We were all remorseful seekers seeking… wanting, craving, desiring… more than anything else… to be saved… from mortal sin… from the errors of our wicked ways… from guilty pleasures… from perilous propinquity… from ourselves… from our frightful, conflicting urges
We were all members of a grand church, a great mission, a righteous organized religion, a noble “causa sui project”…
We were the spokes of one wheel. We lifted up our multitudinous voices to heaven with a unified please. We prayed en masse for all, for each and everyone of us, to be saved! To be delivered from the fires of a primordial pyromaniac!
From the philosophical writings of our forefathers… from the theological teachings of our patristic forebears… from the manmade abysm of epistemology… from the endless ontological arguments of antiquity?
Alright. That’s enough!!
The solemn yoke, the gnarly cross, the fiery yew branches of history are weighing heavy upon me, my son.
You’ve completely lost me. Where in god’s name were we?!
Nit one, cliche two… you were spinning a yarn.
Right. Right. A dragon’s tale
Something to do with the unspeakable “J” word.
What would “J” do?
Right. Run…
Of course!! Eureka!! The fine “J” lass is married and lives in Eureka, CA now. Has two pit bulls and goes to Burning Man every year!!
So. Back then. Jessica got me going with Apple.
Like Adam, I’m afraid. Eve, in the modern form of a Jessica, handed me the keyboard and mouse to an Apple iMac computer in 2006. And I bit the megabytes hard—
Onto the international internet runway… with the purportedly whizzing speed and unrivaled power of an Apple Pro in 2013… soaring “on a wing and a prayer” with a 2013 Promise Peqasus first generation 24-terabyte 6-hard-drive RAID… of recurrent terrifying meltdowns, hard drive replacements… days on the phone with heavily-accented Promise technicians… and untold hours of rebuild exacerbation
And now. To this very day. As—
WESTERN—DIGITAL
4TB RED PRO NAS INTERNAL HD
4TB RED PRO NAS INTERNAL HD
CAT # WD4002FFWX
In bay one… REBUILDS FOR THE SECOND TIME IN TWO WEEKS!!
Biting my nails again. Just like Adam, I have fallen. I am falling. We are falling. Hard. Spiraling headlong… down the rabbit hole of digital madness. Sweating and toiling for what we don’t know!?
The daily Brio’s baguette, the Meyenberg grass fed goat butter with the dragonwell, right?
Oh, right. Thanks for the reminder
But. Let’s back up to—
You guessed it. The truly depressing year 2007! When I was still smitten with the then thirty-one year old goddess… trying to “get over my relationship” with mademoiselle… the “ethical slut”… as she liked to refer to herself
Yes, you mentioned above.
That’s right.
So. Jessica, my modern day Eve… with that pesky “biological clock ticking”… like Tick-Tock, the crocodile in Peter Pan. The bane of Captain Hook! She, a blessed child of Apple. Was a feng shui believer, experimenter, practitioner… Black hat, red hat… I don’t remember. But. In the house we shared for a time on south G Street in Arcata, CA… She collected and installed a series of mysterious rocks—
Not just any old rocks, mind you. But. Rocks that spoke worlds to her for sure. Magic rocks. Rocks of prayer and intention. A carefully chosen collection of large, smooth, heavy… twenty-pound river stones… about the size of a French pan au levain boule from Brio’s Bread bakery on the square… just up on G Street…
“A stone’s throw”… from our tidy little craftsman rental house… next to the diminutive barber shop… in far south… Arcata. Near the junkyard. Where the two of us “love birds” lived happily… if not… “ever after”… at least the whole year of 2005—
Long before that fateful, dreadful year
We broke up in, 2007.
Ok. The purpose of these curious, heavy boulders. Which were placed ceremoniously. One in each corner of her room. North, south, east and west. Their esoteric, occult… feng shui… ritual function was “to hold down the space”. To ground the energy of the room. Her room. Her private sanctuary. Her bedroom with her tiny single bed. Her reason for grounding the energy of her room was to keep her from running away. From moving on immediately to the next… next… next… next. Noun. Person, place, or thing. She was determined (to try) to stay (with me) for (possibly) (more than) three years. Which, her experience of life told her. Was the outside limit of time. Which she was capable of spending. With anyone (so far).
OK. So. These ponderous philosopher’s stones… which weren’t meant to be rolling… “Jessica’s rocks”… then. Were meant as anchors.
ANCHORS TO THE EVER ELUSIVE HERE AND NOW!!
Anchors for her ship of life. Anchors in the unpredictable seas of her stormy emotions. Anchors for her water-driven “ADHD” soul, her fly-by-night-pinioned heart-and-mind. Anchors meant to keep her from… running away screaming when
When the massively “super-sized” Humpty Dumpty. The powerful black GMC Yukon XL driving midwestern farm boy patriarch. When. Dad came. When her dad came pounding. Down the front steps like an enraged bull. Brandishing a woodsman’s axe from Home Depot. In a tizzy bordering upon jubilant mayhem. With full murderous intent. To dismember, disembowel and set alight. The goddamned no longer upright piano. The actually upturned. Once upright upstanding piano. Now shamefully lounging supine out on the front lawn. The upturned upright piano that young Jessica refused to practice her piano lessons on. Both of which. The standard-issue once prone piano. And, the standard-issue suburban white-bread American piano lessons. Were costing him. Her one and only. Grievously unappreciated. Infinitely hardworking father. A pretty American dollar. And. A neck, a thigh and a rump of good old American cow butter!!
So. You see, missy.
“The first step is a _____”?
In… Swahili, class?
You guessed it.
Still… a doozy.
A doozy is a doozy is a
