Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa...

13 January - Later in the evening.

I suspected that this blog would get me into trouble. The problem is that I am leaving key details out of the conversation for the purpose of "intentional ambiguity." If I am using only first names, only alluding to dates it is out of respect for those persons that are part of my life, whose intimate details need not be broadcast. No falsification is implied nor is there any attempt to prevaricate in any way. I am telling the truth and respecting the privacy of those with whom I have shared this life.

A friend called today. She was concerned about something that I wrote in a posting earlier, asking if she was one of the "psycho-chicks" that I have dated of late. I was at great length to assure that she is not by any measure a psycho-chick. Let me say this here and now: I do not think that there are more psycho-chicks than psycho-dudes. I think that it has to do with our age. I am 46. The number of women to date has shifted to women that have either not been involved in a marriage or similar relationship, widows, or those whose relationship has failed. The cause of this - widowhood notwithstanding - may have to do with the baggage that we all carry. Some baggage is more onerous. The pool of "normal" people has shrunk and the ratio of healthy partners has changed (for all both men and women, gay and straight). As a result of this - and being a recovering psycho-dude - I have become somewhat cautious.

I really think that it is not an issue of finding a person that does not have baggage so much as it is finding a woman whose baggage matches mine.

Regardless of that... I will say this here and now. If anything I write is hurtful to anybody please know that it is not my intent. Recall my core value: If I cannot help you, I will do my damnedest not to hurt you. I offer an apology to anybody that has been, will be, or is hurt my anything I write.

In looking at myself I realized that I need a space to process the missteps I've taken in this dance we call life... this is part of that process. I can only tell the truth as I am able. Being a man of merely average intellect and education I sometimes stumble.

But I get up again...

Ah, but I am just a fool...

Glad to be awake...

I generally appreciate the hours spent dreaming. They are helpful, insightful, and often just plain entertaining. Last night was one of those evenings, however, that I awoke glad to be free from the demons that vexed my sleep. All of the dreams had one theme: futility of my labors. I remembered Kurt Vonnegut’s character Rabo Karavekian, the Armenian abstract-impressionist whose works all dissolved, leaving him with a legacy of futility.

Today shall be a day with school, applications for subbing positions, and following through on other things that need attention.

The whole image of seeing work that needed to be done being destroyed, often as soon as it was produced and then by the treason of the pens that I used to write, failure to find paper that would hold its ink… it was almost as if the very tools of my trade were rebelling against me with a disdain that they reserved for those beneath contempt. They would rather have been destroyed than be the means by which my words could be read.

Here is something amuzing that I found on two of the blogs posted today… might be making the blog rounds, who knows? "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" in Latin! Everybody sing:


Aufer me ad arenam.
Aufer me cum turba.
Da mihi glires sparsos melle.
Reditum domum non curo velle.
Pro leonibus exhortemur.
Nil refert hominum.
Duo, tria membra edent
gladiatorum.

Which, being interpreted, means:

Take me to the arena,
Take me out with the crowd.
Buy me some dormice in honeycomb
I don't care if I never go home.
So let's root, root, root for the lions
Not the humans they maim
Munching two, three more body parts
at our Caesar's game.

Gotta love it... jeeze, I wish I'd have written it! Enjoy it anyway!