Wow, Life Is Beautiful. Ow, Life Hurts.

Recovery Escapades:
A Newsletter Of 2nd Chance Life Across Cardiac County Line Road

Episode Seventeen: Wow, Life Is Beautiful. Ow, Life Hurts.

THANK GOD FOR IBUPROFEN

A few weeks back I had my first martial arts class since karate in my sophomore college year, oh over 33 years ago. So for several nights I was at a dojo named Texas MMA (Mixed Martial Arts). I must not have pushed it too far the first class because I could still type the beginning of this blog entry on my crackberry. Enough to start, and finish it later. I mean my neck was not in a brace from learning grappling holds and being laughably taken down to the mat over and over.

I slept like a log of oak and awoke several times in the night feeing just as stiff. And I had not two cents of sense to start this until 48 hours before a 5K race the following Saturday. If I had rolled over and died that 5K race weekend I'd have no one to blame but myself. Lucky for me rain delayed then cancelled the race.

DODGED A BULLET BUT NOT A FIST

I dodged a bullet then just to catch one the following Tuesday night at Mixed Martial Arts class. The Tuesday following the 5K nonrace I was mixing it up at MMA but not holding up my guard during the 2nd round of sparring with (thank god) 16 ounce gloves. So I catch a jab to the left rib cage. Wow.

The head shots I took before the rib shot faded after just a few seconds, and the body/mind corrected itself but not that shot to the ribs. Some kind of intracostal muscle (what the doc called it) took a bruise or worse. So I am out of MMA class for a while, week or three, until I can afford to spar again with less than perfect guard.

TOO MUCH FUN?

I heard of a late seventy something guy who took up cheap racing - small Mazda Miata type cars, shifter cart style racing. No big muscle car drag strip stuff just a challenge to the driver's skill. When asked how his first race went he said "I got my ass kicked and had a ton of fun". That is what my first Martial Arts classes in 33 years was like. Even the 3rd class with the rib cage dent. More fun than I expected. A butt kicking ton of fun. Fun. Ouch. Fun again. Ouch again.

I must remind myself of all this, the fun AND the soreness, once my ribs heal up enough to not chicken out and to resume the MMA classes. So that I go back and continue what I started, despite the ouch that goes with the fun.

SO GOOD IT HURTS

This is just another example of how a life lived is beautiful and how a life lived hurts. Ask any woman who's raised children if life hurts and if despite that if life is still beautiful. So true is this is fact the woman you asked might look at you as if you as nuts to even bother asking. Kinda like my Cursedly Candid sister looked at me once. Not how she looked when I asked her "If a tree falls in the forest when no one is around to hear it does it make a sound?"

AND YOUR QUESTION IS....?

Nah it was how she raised her eyebrows when I followed up by asking "If a husband is out in the forest alone and no wife is around to watch what he does, is he still wrong?"

"Why bother asking" is what she said.
Um, not what she said but what she asked me not to ask.
To be very technically precise about it.

Fun. Ouch. Fun again. Ouch again.
That's life in my cardiac recovery lane for now.

Yours Truly and Ridiculous,
From Across Cardiac County Line Road

James Sullivan

Friendly FauxPlay On The Moon Sands Of Time

pitched sleep tents with deepest pegs clasped hands could drive
into shifting sand dunes where the bravest trade caravans ride
friend laid beside foe nightly in that much travelled band
whose tent did we share last time when we slept on dune sands?

on morning's moonset we fetched down all the sleep tents
at dawn packed up camels not knowing from where we went
we rendezvous'd nightly, travelled footsteps untraced
reading map legends sketched lightly on the fading nightscape

morning moon trimmed down the lamps that burned off the dark so brightly
we nibble gazed crescent to a sliver as it waned each dawn so slightly
then into a shadow shard it broke sharp hard over hour changing dunes
same and never same, everlasting flame, leading all into their bloom

Teabags Dipped In Wax Last A Long, Long Time

Lips locked are preserved from accidents of unattended slip
Pursed lips don't curse, don't receive an unwanted parting kiss
Can't sip too much wine, won't waste time in idle conversation
Locked lips are reputedly safe from decay of hard won reputation

Dessication for sure unless you drink a chance unlabeled potion
Do you think you'd float downriver forever so minimally motioned?

Perhaps but a firm stance ensures protection from wild chance
Don't by a fool's careless rush bleed to dry up the bank balance
Or stumble by a reach so far it trips at the tipover brink
On every dare a wannabe lover dished into your kitchen sink

Smoke rises resentful from campfires banked into a safe ashen cold
After breakfast before the trip home on getaway weekends I am told
When nothing left to chance dared nothing that was left unplanned
By expectations poured cold syrup slow from a precisely measured can

A good thing, yes, to play cautious with your cards, face down maybe
Yeah whistle that heads up next time you walk past a graveyard baby

Archimedes cried, Where's a fulcrum to leverage purpose in all this
Cried I - Playgrounds are for gambling when we stumble for a kiss

On Dappled Things In The Cardiac Recovery 'Hood

Captain Snark is at it again, complaining about a contrast he found this morning during the daily dog walk.

CAN'T HANG LIKE I USED TO

I stayed out too late last night with friends, stayed up too late, slept in too late today (7am). I still am in need of a de-stiffening, sweaty morning workout. I'm going to work on prepping my 5 acre ranchito for sale today around noonish before puppy class at 6pm. Lots to do, only 10 weeks out from heart surgery last June 1st. More rubble to clear away. But despite the Saturday chore list facing me I felt compelled to journal something that came to me today about treasures seen being treasures taken.

TREASURE ISLAND UNDER OUR FEET, BEFORE OUR EYES

A treasure hunt journey began by deciding to go forward with heart surgery and led back from a passive follow through on the decision. A letting it happen kind of thing can flow from a decision. But along the drifting way I get reminded what my cousing Larry taught me long ago - me that for the living, a free show is around us every day. The price of admission is easy to pay. You just pay attention.

Treasures were seen during the usual morning walk with Hiccup thru my 'hood around TWU, an old 'hood that goes decades WAY back, and still clearly shows clear signs of the 1920s, and 1930s in it surrounds of tree canopied streets populated with the quirkiest mix of old and new housing.

DAPPLED THINGS

All around within sight during this morning's walk was what Jesuit poet Gerard Manly Hopkins would call "dappled things". Dappled things made me go back to get my little digital camera. I so wanted to try and capture the morning's textures. Try that while walking a six month old puppy who wants again to repeat his 'shroom eating ecstacy escapade; quite the juggling act.

THESE ARE A FEW OF MY FAVORITE THINGS

So what dappled thing textures caught the eye?
So many things darlin, so many.

Textures In The Hood

Old saggy gargages built before WWII or before still standing with peeling paint.

Round rusty red water main manhole covers inserted into little strips of lawn between street and sidewalk.

Old pier and beam mounted houses in remodel mode, their clapboards scraped and stripped, waiting to be painted with their next attention wooing facelift of color.

Quirky college student cars painted with Veggie Tale characters or Flying Tiger teeth, parked pell mell on the street or snuggled into their 3-flat driveways.

Red cedar telephone poles the color of Irish Setter dogs, pierced like martyr St Sebastian was with arrows for promoting the Gospel, but here with thumbtacks and staple piercings for promoting bands on concert notices torn down long ago.

A McDonald's drink cup beside a knot hole at the base of a tree - where perhaps some squirrel dropped his munchies trash before coming home to pass out after a night of partying too hard?

Chamfered green fiberglass covers over Verizon fiber optic boxes set into the ground, with strict WARNINGS about digging; dogs and squirrels, obey the law!.

Names of contractors stamped into the concrete of sidewalks.

An anonymous cat that (for a while) was curious about Hiccup the Recovery Wonder Dog.

Tall horizontally laid stacks of dead bamboo, dried to a creamy dead beige and drained of greening chlorphyl.

Tangerine tinted sky mixed with lavender as sunrise faded into full morning sky, washed above the green tree canopy lining the horizon.

A driveway sized mini universe created by a "Big Bang" explosion - the first mini minutes of pre garage sale preparations spilled out towards the sidewalk with a rush of placements: bargain priced lamps-toys-DVDs-puzzles, instead of your usual universe matter stuffings of nebula-nova-galaxy-dwarfstar.

A chair left by the sidewalk from last night's impromtu drink-driven conversation.

Piles of leaves raked into mounds, waiting for garbage bags or a shredder - who knows?

Rough bark of old oak trees, many with lost limbs and scars healed over as best can be done by thickened lips trying to seal some exposed gash

Fist in the air/fist in your face bumper stickers on very used cars, ranging in sentiment from the Reasonable Right ("God Bless America") to the Extreme Left ("Sorry I Missed Church; I've Been Busy Practicing Witchcraft and Becoming A Lesbian"), and an in between more Centrist "There's No Excuse For Domestic Violence"

Running shoes left to dry out on the porch leaning on a galvanized pail of red sandstone rocks

A rubiks cube like multicolored birdhouse.

Redbud blossoms in riot bloom.

A plastic blow-up love doll dressed in a man's white dress shirt and red sweat pants, posed as if passed out drunk against the porch corner railing while doing container gardening.

MOST OF ALL - The last item begs me to add: Porches, porches, porches personalized by a myriad of gadgets and art objects put on display, along with benches and chairs for sitting and chatting and watching.

THE SOUNDS OF SILENCE

And so little sound about so early in the morning; just some grackles and a stiff, fast food plastic cup curtly whipped along the street by gusts of wind, making for some distraction.

LITTLE BOXES MADE NOT OF TICK TACKY

The textures seen all around were so many, and so quirky, and so individual - so unlike what I usually see in newer suburban master planned neighborhoods punched out in "ka-chooka ka-chooka ka-chooka SPLAT!" machine fashion.

Thrift stores with unmatchable tops and bottoms have more fascinating character than 'hoods where your pre move-in personalization choices for you history making home were a slim book of trim styles and wallpaper choices.

Oh, don't forget your choices of appliances and kitchen counter tops.
Those counted for a real difference, really they did, uh huh.

HISTORY YOU CAN AFFORD, BY THE SQUARE FOOT

"History Maker" neighborhoods is what some of the billboards on Interstate Highway 35 declare are available, around the corner at an exit off ramp a few miles up. Come by our development sales office and see, come and buy some "History Maker" real estate.

Right - so you can buy more than just the come-on of a promise, you can buy what time and design and accident and generations come and gone have laid down layer upon layer to be the foundation for the present moment.

HOW DO WE STAND ON THIS?

Right. We don't stand of the shoulders of all them that's gone before us, nor do we stand on the firm foundation of Scripture or Tradition or Faith In The Promises of God or Dedication To Beauty. No sirree bob a roonie, instead we stand and build hearth and family life upon a firm foundation called The Promises Of Marketing.

STANDING ON THE PROMISES OF GOD MY SAVIOUR

As a kid I enjoyed singing gospel hymns most Sunday mornings. After seeing the "History Maker" billboard, I think a contemporary mashup of a Fundamentalist Favorite is in order. I want to sample and remix the old 'little brown church in the vale' oft sung hymn "Standing On The Promises of God".

But I want to make the hymn into a something proper, an homage to the gory Glory of Marketing - recast song title "Standing On The Promises of God" into "Stranded By The Promises Of Blah", with lyrics sick twisted to wear on you like a cheap suit, all well marketed and marked down for quick sale, no warranty no refunds no nothing.

If overproduced with a wall of cow bell sound (never enough cow bell), it just might be a hit and sell.

I COULD BE, PROBABLY AM WRONG ON THIS SNARK

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe out in the ka-chooka ka-chooka BURRRRP 'burbs out there, there really is a vital life beyond discussions about the latest thing to buy from the Home Shopping Network to put some verve into the streetscape or joy of living into the tepid scene behind the closed front door. If so (it's likely) then I'm not your guy to see for insight into that treasure, for I do not see such yet.

Mea culpa, the problemo must be mine.

Likely, why I get an asthmatic reaction to the idea of living in a freshly extruded development is because I am not paying attention to what is there. That usually is the case, where ever we find ourselves. We lack what we ignore, and I must be ignoring something.

FOR THOSE WHO DON'T READ BUT LIKE THE COLORS

A photographer, I am not, but I will try to master this blog format to post texture pictures from the morning's walk as a slideshow below.

There really is craft and art to making the camera see what the eye sees. I didn't capture the sights to any one's satisfaction, but a start had to be made. As soon as I figure out the mechanics, they will come.



HATS OFF TO HOPKINS

I will let this piece from Hopkins sing for its own supper. It deserves a six course white tablecloth night out, for the joy and wisdom it feeds.


            Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
                Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things—
    For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
        For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
    Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
        And áll trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spáre, strange;
    Whatever is fickle, frecklèd (who knows how?)
        With swíft, slów; sweet, sóur; adázzle, dím;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is pást change:
                    Práise hím.

Someone To Watch Over Me

Haiku is not my strong spot. But at times I cannot - will not - keep my own law to do no harm. The pain won't last long on this one, trust me. Per haiku tradition, no rhyme and no title. Like a lot of in the moment living.

summer heat, light sleep
fans stand night watch, whispering
sheets stir, leg seeks mate

Thefts Hard To Forgive

Thefts Hard To Forgive

I know the worries you carry.
The worst ones.
The dark ones about drowning in riptides of time.

Ebbing flows of time pulled a heist on your treasure houses.
Stole from your stautuary garden the best pieces.
Took from you the most finely sculpted features.

Time hid it's theft with cunning.
Time bought itself time for a getaway by deceit and deflection.

One by one, slow and subtle, firm chisel cut figures get cleverly replaced.
Marble replaced with soft, unfired clay substitutes.
Clay that with time, dried stiff with cracks.
Revelations of lost days, summer nights, spring mornings.
Disappointments after our flesh had time to change the wrong way.

A clever heist, yes. By time, a cat burglar without equal.

Flesh fell away from what we saw of it at its finest hour.
What we once saw in silver backed mirrors and once saw in the enchanting gaze of lovers.

Lovers by the way who came before me. Do you know they needed less of you then than I have need of you now? Consider that as you follow me down into the dusk. Hold that warming thought close to you, like soft wool as the night's chill settles in. You'll know that grasp to be a wise move, come the colder hours.

The models for our first attempts at self portraiture - who were they?
Remember - remember how we posed ourselves as beautiful and implausibly immortal illusions. Now lit under a common bright daylight, these young models report on our decline.

Like gossip columnists, our past selves sneer at what we have become.

Remember the promises we made ourselves as children?
In secret and silence to just ourselves.
Promises that we would never become like those funny old people.

And how they moved also - too slow, too slow.

Never to become like them. Ever.
Now we are just plain, mean old liars.
We are promise breakers to disappointed children.

Don't expect children to understand why unspoken impossible promises cannot and will not be kept.

We fade, we weaken.
We fight, we accept.
We unaccept and thrash.

When we sink into serenity do we cease to speak as a child, think as a child, and put away the last of childish things?

Giving up that fight I think is the the last road sign in the rear view mirror on the way out of childhood; a last dollop of hot wax to seal spell scrolls of Childhood Enchantment. Things change once you know by experience if not science why those most important promises made to ourselves cannot be kept.

All this might be the why behind the need for grandchildren. We need a splint to carry on. And grandchildren are a locomotive power that keeps up going on when we'd rather not. Time with them becomes healing time, when we know certain truths too well.

We come to know what the weight of time does to Unkeepable Promises. Like the promise to never change; to always be there when needed no matter what the world does; to never go away; to never die - or die only when everyone is ready for it so it won't hurt so much when it happens.

I know these heavy, sigh making worries that are yours. Don't I too know such loss, similar - perhaps even the same? Half filled bags of sand reside in my arse where in my twenties was scant difference between the hardness of the chair I sat on and the hardness of derrierre I put in said chair. No more Lenore, quoth the macabre poet crow who sings. Cackles, actually.

Elasticity snapped, change sagged and leached into place slowly, so slow as to fool the daily mirrored inventory of once-hard assets.

You and me both, we wuz robbed of what gave us ragged confidence, and now our oldest and most expeditious defenses against cruel self doubt are gone. In the cold light of late winter season days, your accounting often comes up short. And tallys up to being robbed, embezzled.

Or spent.
Maybe just wasted.
Certainly without a doubt faded.

So what now darlins, do we just lay still and hurry on up with our dying?
Do we wave down upon us flocks of hungry crows to come finish us off early?

Don't think so, my dear darlins.
I don't care to be pecked to death by little flights of dark fancy.
Not by crows or any other form of melancholia.
I won't lay down quiet and I think have my good reasons to think I ought not to go easy.

See, I heard about this Irish storyteller. He's a professional teller of supernatural fairy tales to modern skeptical audiences. He sets his performing stage thus:

"Things are the way they are, because we agree upon them".

That is how he deals sekpticism to the "objective truth" that faeire things - faerie folk, faerie bushes, so on - do not exist.

And me, I don't agree with anyone who says that no low hanging fruit remains. Or says it all is too withered to be worthy of a reach or a stretch. A reach to pick a squeezable peach is never an unworthy gamble, even on long odds. In my book it's so, and mine's the bookie with odds for the least long term regrets.

Perception of what's real - what is it really?
So much more about what we ignore than about what really is.

In truth we see fewer good things before us because we can't hold them in mind.
We hold but a small cupped handful of all that is there to see.
So we end up remembering what we can.
And of that, just what is most familiar.

We forget all but what we prefer for its handy fit to what we've accustomed ourselves to believe.

We think we know what is not out there anymore because we've ignored it.
We toss away fleeting perceptions of what can be once again.
We ditch clues under our noses about what we think can only can't be again.

Like what you ask?

no differences between pairs and twos

Call this one a 1950's "I Found My Thrill On Blueberry Hill" type homage to Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress"; which might be every such song and poem ever since Master Marvell's masterpiece.

====================================================

The store display shoes that for dancing cash bought
The scene of the crime where last night's fun got caught
The stage where spun mayhem til the music got stopped
Close stepping, slip sliding until the chaperones spied

When spaghetti straps started to fall by the waysides
Almost all the way gone was when the cops they came by
The stop whistle blown on the park's submarine rides
Convertible tops knocked down popped back up on surprise

Who was it with penny loafers off against all the rules
Juke box quarters spilled, two tones and Nancy Drew clues
No geometry class taught us young fools how to choose
To dodge morning doubts about knees knocked twain in twos

Dance yourself silly in those fresh store bought shoes
No caution in moonlight slowed down hopes that might bruise
Pull fast down from heaven all the joy that you can
Before chaperones and cops bring the night's dance to end

Patron Saints of Slow Learners

Just a passing thought that washed ashore to the beach of my mind this morning, from an alter ego inside me that I choose to address as Captain Snark - body surfer of chaos extraordinaire and the first nominee for COTY/"Cynic Of The Year" - who, knowing the COTY election process to be flawed if not ouright rigged or up for sale to highest bidder, refused the nomination and swore to have nothing to do with the contest. The podium is yours, Captain Snark

=============

Back at my beginnings I felt lost and sought to be found. Now I find myself caught in loops and wish to be flung free. My taste in spiritual matters I suspect changed over time, as my attention wanders to alight on different topics. I no longer sweat with concern for immortality at any low Wal Mart level of brand product quality - not if I see living eternally as running around in the same uninteresting circles; not if immortality means seeing myself coming up to a fixed choice before I get to it. Not if means an eternal life that I would rather bring back to Heaven's Customer Service desk for a refund or credit for replacement.

When I was young and my odometer was barely budged I encouraged myself to admire lives of Early Church heroes - apostles, martyrs and saints. Feeling back then quite damned I was, and strongly in need of redemption. I suspect I am still not done with the need for redemption. Not nearly, by a long shot. But a touch older now with a few more turns on my wheels of being, I find myself curious about Bhuddist Bhodisattvas. I regard these as patron saints of slow learners. You know, champions for folks who ain't got a snowball in hell's chance of learning a new thing or making a needed good change in this life if they applied the rest of their whole dang life to it.

That includes the likes of me and my prospects for learning how to play slide guitar and blues harmonica - not likely in this lifetime. And not even if my life depended on it.

Well maybe somewhat likely to learn some little thing more if my life really did depend on it. I mean could learn enough to fake some Texas Juke Joint blues on an open mic night at a college town coffeehouse. Easy to do for broke audiences with low standards. And too much empathy because everybody there is either up next or just was up.

All of us coffehouse followers are devotees of the Cult of Mediocrity, there at open mic night hoping for Redemption via Art, with each attendee a member of the Supreme College of Electing Cardinals. At least for that one night we are electors. And if there is a merciful God in Heaven, you could do worse than to look there, at coffehouse open mic night, for proof of Heaven's Mercy - given how wretched are some performances, truly worthy of damnation, but no lightning bolts of Judgement coming down to smoke the would be rockers, folk singers, poets, bluesmen and blueswomen. 'Scuse me, wanna bees not wood bees; a different kind of winged insect here.

But I digress. Again. Back to Bhodisattvas.

See, if some burly Bhodhisattvas were on your team, that game time clock of one life to go won't matter (or won't matter so much). You will never run out of time with Bhoddies like you do hanging with the skinny saints of Christendom. Saints and Bhoddisatvas.

Why all the extra rounds with Bhoddies? Easy that one - reincarnation. Another dealt hand of poker, another spin of the roulette wheel. Only trouble is all the forgetting you do between rounds. You are supposed to be wiped clean of everything you've learned except for some vauge kind of karmic score that promotes or demotes you. Sorta like moving up from AA football league to AAA league. Eventually you go overthe top, pro and all that - and you get to retire in Nirvanna, if you wanna (your option though, or you can choose come back as a Bhodhisattva - a spiritual sportscasting commentator for the unwashed masses).

Two very different kinds of spiritual heroes here. One kind of these spiritual heroes if he retires and to stay busy opens a Texas watering hole (beer joint) he calls it "The Next Chance Saloon". The other champion of a competing brand of spirit goods decides to run something he calls "The Last Chance Saloon". Can you guess which of these joints is St Peter's; and on which side of the street is Siddhartha Gautama's watering hole?

Old hell fire is getting little mind share nowadays except in niche markets long committed to the product brand. Comes across a little musty to public tastes, what us all having growed up in an America soaked in splendors of post Depression material comfort. Spoiled people like product brands planned with more adaptation to the constant drift of their tastes, more novelty; fickle is what they are, the spoilt demographic.

The smell of brimstone frightens few nowadays. Me it frightens less than before even though by time's passage I s/b closer to its source - or it portal of entry, if not its sulfur delivery dock - to catch a wary down wind whiff. If I were to engage a Transworld Lucid Dreaming Show (a Consciousness Cable Channel spirit service not soon to be offered by HBO) I would expect to soon see some of Hell's red workmen bursting open palletized yellow stacks of sulfur, sacks who too must suffer an entropic fate - be burst asunder and fed into the fiery furnaces of Hell, where they can see to it by golly that Human Souls too can know just what that feels like, to be neatly and impersonally palletized just to be undone and burst and burned up as fuel in the engine of some obscure machine of Hellish bureaucratic purposes.

Again all this is to say that by now, perhaps I s/b catching a wary down wind whiff of Hell's docks. I would expect folks really coming near to the shores of brimstone lakes to experience something like the smell you get when you are nearing a prosperous Jack in the Box franchise. Think of those always busily filled baskets of french fries nestling down into the brown foaming froth, strips of potato starch efficiently processed within Cartesian squared corner stainless steel pots of crackling oil. So might be the roiling scent of souls boiled in the brimstone pits of Judgment, were you close enough to tell by the smell.

My stomach gets to turning once I got within sniff range of those fast food fry joints whose grease traps don't quite conceal the true nature of how their processed fare ends up at the store's glittery front. And seeing my life's midlife crisis point recede over the horizon (in my rearview mirror) you'd think I'd be closer in for a sniff of the brimstone lakes by now; screams from sulfurous torture have a way of echoing across dimensions, I'd think.

If you don't think that is so my friend, try an East Texas oldtime hellfire and brimstone revival meeting. You have to find one run by a really gifted evangelist, one really seasoned by a turnaround from authentic hard living. On the right suggestive summer's eve, he can have you thinking you really are downwind of Hell's Gates. And - if in the End he is right, well then.... you were given the overlook tour via his preaching brochure, and that well ahead of Your Time; so "Man Up" on it, walk through the Gates of Hell upright to your fate, and don't act so surprised come That Later Time.

But no such gut revulsions do I sense. Not lately at least.

This begs a question: am I being awakened in a new stage of life, wiping sleep from my eyes to see something from a better prespective? Or am I just drifted towards the in fashion flavor of spirituality, a noncomitting perspective on pseudo-suffering?

Maybe I am just caught between being up wind of a real Hell and down wind of an imagined Jack Kerouac's Burger Joint and Sports Bar. Or vice versa inside out. That too. A lot may or may not be riding on the answer to this question.

I want and choose to have fun with such questions as I turn up the heat on a whole basket of them. Onion Rings of Ontology, Curly Twists of Jesuitical Casuistry, Time Temporal Tempura, Corn Dog Causality Bites - all served up with the condiments of Curiosity and Metaphysical Mirth. For dessert, I'll veer away from the somber and serious sauces, indulge myself in chocolate dipped jokes and riddles.

I'll be checking in at the Next Chance Saloon after sundown, and then later at the Last Chance Saloon. That I think is the most logically sequenced itinerary for this soul's weekend getaway.

See you there, maybe - if so I'll buy us a round of drinks to lubricate the discussion and how about some fried appetizers, too?

Episode Fifteen: No Blast Shield To Save The Ice Cream; Work Reentry

Recovery Escapades:
A Newsletter Of 2nd Chance Life Across Cardiac County Line Road

Episode Fifteen: No Blast Shield To Save The Ice Cream From Work Reentry

THE RIGHT STUFF

I vividly remember the space reentry scene in the movie version of Tom Wolfe's book "The Right Stuff". The book was about our early astronauts' ability to face incredible danger unaware or at least unaffected by the prospect of fiery death. Ed Harris played astronaut John Glen, strapped down in his one-man capsule Friendship 7.

That little lifeboat capsule orbiting the planet came close to turning John Glen into one crispy critter because of a flaw in the sacrificial burn shield covering the arse of his little ark. Talk about a rough reentry ride back home to mother earth. And that was after the high of some ride - a mind boggling amount of altitude from which Glen viewed the world, from in space.

ALL HAT AND NO CATTLE

It's all old hat now. Nobody notices much about the next space shuttle launch. The real is all so cliche and banal compared to unreal SFX - sci fi special effects. But I was a first grader watching it on TV and nothing about it was boring then. I think it was venerable TV news anchor Walter Cronkite (Uncle Walter who just passed away at age 92) on the CBS network who helped us plot Glen's progress around the world. It was done with the aid of a little blinking light. Mounted on a board map of the world with a a cutout slot in which the blinking light slowly was shoved across the plywood backed world map to simulate Glen's flight.

CHEEZ WHIZ, BATMAN

Cheesy Velveeta drenched Cheetohs in the extreme this was, SFX wise. But back in that day, it was something. It even got us out of class. And kinda, that getout mattered as big as the space race thing, as big as beating the commie pinko atheist Soviet totalitarian godless bastards. In militarily precise rows we kids sat uniformly and quietly, watching dutifully on the school's TV Our Astronaut - kicking Cold War ass.

JOHN GLENN AND HOT MISS HAVERSHAM

John Glen's all out ride was the catchup hit that moved us from behind in the space race, got the score evened up by halftime. Later astronauts would take the ball all the way past the goalpost of the moon's dusty surface. And watching the news got us much time off from writing drills in Ms Haversham's first grade class.

Or whoever it was who was our teacher back then. Haversham sounds like a nice spinsterly name for a hot first grade teacher when you cannot remember, so it Ms Haversham it will be (er, was; gotta get those tenses right or Ms Haversham would be upset - don't want her ghosts or zombie grade teachers visiting me at night to motivate me towards correct grammer, no siree bob a roony).

16 TONS, 800 EMAILS AND WHADDAYA GET

My reentry into the work world was not so dramatic. There was no threat of being vaporized as was portrayed in "The Right Stuff". Fatigue and time off for doctor appointments were the worst strains. Well, the the worst next to the 800+ emails awaiting my return after being gone for five weeks. Much of that was junkish mail that cleared away easily on day 1, leaving a solid set that had to be read and dealt with carefully the remainder of the week.

PUT ON A HAPPY FACE

And oh, the other risk was the side effects of putting on a happy face. Which truthfully was my internal state of gratitude, not just a mask. I answered the inevitable "So how are you feeling" with "Not as good as before the surgery obviously but all things considered, quite well". Sometimes I'd be shockingly candid and say "I look better than I feel, which is old and feeble. I want my old self back, and can't wait to start working out again".

I WAS A TALKING MR POTATO HEAD

For those who've jumped into this without reading prior posts, I prepared two years for this surgery. I changed from being a ventriloquist's Mr Potato Head (I was a talking couch potato, perhaps not truly sentient, so I had to be ventriloquism in a skinned over bag of fibrous starch). I changed my diet, and added in vigorous exercise to drop 114 pounds or thereabouts, and was running 4 miles or biking 35 miles the week before my heart surgery.

HAS BEEN ACTORS FROM OLD SLASHER FLICKS

I am now struggling to retain the active lifestyle changes I gained while motivated fearfully, while running not from Jason with an axe and a hockey mask (or Mike Meyers, whichever) but a masked surgeon with a chest saw. And now I only run/walk 3 miles and cannot do so yet without stopping to catch my breath, kinda like old times back two years ago. But I am getting there, back to my old meaty hearty self. I smoke all the other dudes in my cardio rehab class, leave them behind in my dust. Easy to do if you are the youngest guy there and had a two year head start before a non-surprise surgical procedure. Still there is much to remodel - I lost another 5+ pounds net after surgery and muscule turning to soggy mush from 5 weeks of torporous inactivity, waiting for my split sternum to heal back up.

HEAD OF THE SLOW CLASS

That said, head of the class I am again, at cardio rehab "class" I rock and I rule and like America did when kicking commie ass across the planet seen below by astronaut John Glenn. And to be frank, I rule arrogantly so at times (in my mind). But this time around I am not the class teacher's pet. The rehab center supervisor, she's kinda hot like a first grade Ms Haversham-ish teacher, but too young - young enough to be my daughter, rather than her being hot AND old enough to be my Mom. That was the constellation of wonderous things unfathomable to a single-digits years old kid back in his first grade class. Back when John Glen jockeyed himself around the world and showed everybody that America Rocked, America Ruled, America Couldn't Lose. Hey, me being part of America - then by proxy or democratic trickle down, I couldn't lose either.

HOURGLASS INSIDE OUT OR UPSIDE DOWN?

We were all much younger then. (Or maybe you weren't around then, not even up to being younger; prior to age zero on the time charts, I dunno what you'd be - feel welcome to look it up in some book about preincarnation, but it's opaque to me at that stage of statelessness). Now I see the hourglasses of time are reversed; and I think that Einstein was right, it's all relative to the observer's point of view.

KING OF THE TIME HILL - NOW WHAT?

I perceive I am looking down from a higher mound of time passed behind, not looking upwards towards a potential and undefined, unlimited future. And this cardio rehab class? That is one of those classes in which you really don't want to belong. Unless you really do belong, and then it is better to be there huffing nad puffing rather than sleeping six feet under the dirt nap storm weather up top, unable to nab that perfect school attendance record despite having to walk to school against the beating winds of stormy living.

POST STAR TREK POSTURING

"Not as good as before the surgery obviously but all things considered, quite well" - banal and cliched my answer, like how we now regard the space shuttle launches (notice I did not properly capitalize the shuttle as a proper noun, in consistency with America's spoiled post Star Trek attitude about imagined future space travel; how much America lives in fantasy as it disregards the real but plain and routine toe dips into space, hey - it's all red white and blue and all that, but we cast that aside once it's no longer novel).

INSTA-GRAVY

But I do have breath to speak that banal answer to "How are you", as clumsy as it does come out. Say it proud and say it loud, with the brown on the down low below - instead of the brown being six feet up over my head. The brown, man, it is all gravy - gravy, gravy, gravy. Ah, gravy - explaining that triplet is another story, a story from my brother after he returned from Vietnam. I'd rather not say what he did when he was In Country, just to say he came back - kinda sorta.

See my brother after 'Nam became a system engineer with Compaq Computer Corporation in Houston. One day he got so frustrated about the over heated conflict at a design meeting to choose what type screw to seat cards inside a desktop PC (the only kind of PC back then, laptops were not yet invented). He was overheard muttering "Gravy, gravy, gravy. Gravy, gravy, gravy". He did not misspeak the word "Groovy" which was much over used back then.

GRAVY ON BUTTERED MASHED TATERS

When asked to explain if he had some kind of eating problem, he replied "Eating disorder? No, not that. When I was out In County back in 'Nam, I promised myself something. I promised myself that if I ever got back home, the worst day back home would be gravy compared to my best day in 'Nam. Ao this stupid meeting is gravy man - fine brown gravy, on 'taters, mashed with butter".

Well said my brother, so very well said. And my 800 emails and my stack of bills and calls to make all awaiting me is the hot chocolate fudge on top of my ice cream dish of troubles for the living. And questions like "So how are you feeling" are the whipped cream and my tartly sighed answer is the red pitiful little cherry on top.

FROM POTATO HEAD TO SAGGY SHAR PEI

It's all ice cream for me, despite feeling like a cross between a plate of half stuffed steamed Asian dumplings and a shrunken Shar-Pei puppy. How so that? When arising in the morning I look at my sags in the mirror. Sags around the once-six packed gut, sags from the muscle loss due to inactivity and suppressed appetite after surgery. Still, it's all ice cream sundaes from here on out. With sprinkles on top, to boot. Homer Simpson approves and agrees, but mainly because of the sprinkles. In his own way he is wise, and so am I; for despite all this, this I know: S'All Good Darllins, S'All Good.

I BEST REMEMBER ALL THIS GOOD CHEAP ADVICE

I'll have to remind myself of all this feel good exhoration come time to resume my workout regimen (soon if not by time of publication). Bear crawls up and then down a flight of stairs, mixed with wind sprints and push ups and then add on free weight work, all to put human meat back onto my skinnied down frame. I will yet get back to feeling 12 years younger than and remain not much longer feeling 12 years older than my clocked age. Time enough to make that happen (6 months, a year?) will pass no matter what I do/don't do, so why not start with finishing a 5K race this coming August 1st? I won't beat my best 5K time but I can finish the race, and put myself back on the road to a new and better normal. Get to feeling better by anticipating better outcomes from the effort.

FEELING A RISING WIND, EH?

Wind in my sails and lungs, it's rising, coming. I just gotta breath in all the way - in and out, each breath a gift. Breath that aids the firing of neurons - sentience, that improbable burst of a self aware fireworks show. The thoughts and emotions in our heads can be explosions in multicolor splendor against a slipstream sky of layered conciousness, as we move against the backdrop of other acting, living souls. Quite the trip fanstastic this thing called living, despite the times that it feels like trying to swim upstream in a river of pudding otherwise known as the workworld flow of emails and calls and memos and meetings.

WHAT A LONG STRANGE TRIP IT'S YET TO BE

I wanna ride this trip to the very end of the line and back again. I want to make happy talk with the other passengers along for the ride to where ever we are going. Even to workplace and my cubicle and the LCD cyclops that crouches in front of my office chair. Because that too passes, and then it's time off for first Tuesday and Gypsy Jazz Cabaraet night at my favorite coffee house. You hang on, and you win by showing up after work.

LIKE SGT PEPPER'S BAND SAID - ALL TOGETHER, NOW

Together, we the living where ever we stand right now (in the work cubicle, at a workday lunch line for the $1 Wendy's value menu specials, or roaming halls at yet another tech conference at a fancy hotel - anywhere we are) we are all quite an impressive cast. Together we all are a travelling dinner theater troupe - serving up dinner and a show - and that is very good entertainment; educational, too. All of us are the actors and audience, though sometimes it is hard to figure out which part we play at any moment. But give it a bit of sand in the hourglass to sort itself out, and both turns will come about - actor and guest/watcher.

PASS THE PLATE, PLEAXE

Come time for my turn to leave the stage and sit a bit for dinner, please pass the gravy my way and do not pass me by come time for ice cream dessert. Forgive me if the cherry on my dessert adorned by a slip or melancholic conversation is occasionally the tart pity (not pit/pitted - pity)cherry, versus a sweet cherry. I'm working on changing that and making good progress.

WE'RE ON A MISSION FROM GOD

For I am on a mission from God now to patrol the bachelor fridge of my mind. That mental appliance from which conditioned responses are drawn for serving at home's table. I am sworn to update the stash of condiments found therein, and henceforth be sure that any jar of cherries found are proper maraschino cherries packed in sweeter syrup. And fresh, unexpired - like I am and want even more to become. I shall decorate the desserts that life serves up with better perspective and thus sweeter fruits, saving those most tart and sour thoughts for chunking at occasional 2am wakeup-in-the-night blues. That is my commitment, and my ever more frequent follow through.

Life is good, getting better - and if it is not yet a bowl of organic cherries, it is at least a Kroger Card discount priced jar of maraschinos. Fresh and unexpired. Like me.

Gratefully yours, and back now
Contributing into the common economy

James Sullivan