Horizontal Collection

These are a collection of blog posts I drafted during my recent bout of back pain. Yes, I am rather depressed because at times I feel I can’t trust my own body, but whether through debilitation or medication I have come to be more sensitive to things within and without. All things come to pass, one way or another. Listening to Cecilia Bartoli, link below, also helps.

They overlap some, but whatever.

Bug out.

I used to plan to leave America. That’s not something I admit to many because I do love America. I’m romantic to a fault, unfortunately, and the promise of what we can be is like a wonderful whispering breeze at dusk. I love that we have those like Jefferson, Thoreau, and King Jr. who leave so much room for us to work with.

But a deep dwelling desire to just hop on a train to a new city with different tongues, smells, music, and versions of dumplings is within my soul. Where it’s not niche to understand a contrary idea above and beyond what a Bro can muster. A Roman back alley, Doric columns, tapa, loukum, the sounds of Havana, opera, and mahjong while simmering in a mineral pool, these are things worth a breath. Humans may be born to fight, but the distance between a simple argument and systematized punishment is far too close these days. They should be light years apart.

So I think that path is no longer viable for the foreseeable future, perhaps in lengths of years. Like my favorite poet, Robinson Jeffers, Jenny and I seemed to be locked in place as the world rolls the dice, once again as it will always do time to time. Therefore some American life must be cut through, a beautiful one I pray. For all the love of individualism in the West, we do very little to defend the millions of suffering individuals. Universality fades like a water balloon hitting a nerd’s face.

Oddity.

The oddest thing about this current bout of pinched nerve and back spasms is that for the first time my mood directly affects the severity. If I am negative or around negative things the more pain. And of course when things have calmed down for a considerable time my mind naturally feels at ease and then I turn on the news. An impulse I immediately regret.

I’ve taken to more consistent meditation but while I am seasoned in this practice I’ve had to develop a specific manner. Maybe a sort of compassionate whack a mole is the best description. As a result of this new terrible experience I’ve been forced to become a more compassionate person towards others and myself. Plenty still annoys me, but out of sheer survival I let them glide over me like rain off a leaf.

That is all I can write for now as it is difficult to sit. I pray that you can find softness in an opportune moment.

Be well.

Roid Rage

Despite fun pictures of food and some coastal scenes of Maine posted on our Instagram account my back has been at some of its worst. We were only able to do that trip with Jenny’s generous driving and perhaps too many martinis. Currently I’m at the steroids and PT phase and I hope to be more mobile within the next couple of weeks. I haven’t written a word for three weeks now, and spend most of my day horizontal. The only benefit is that I can refine my ideas for the book and think about scenes down the line. I’m still unsure as to what type of writer I am since I’ve always been more tactician than strategist. I relish the moments to live in each moment curious as to what a character within my mind will choose.

I’m not sure what causes my back to go bad because it just appeared to bubble to the surface randomly. Perhaps it was that week of extreme humidity that did me in or the constant barrage of misery on the news. And this misery didn’t really directly confront me until I got on these steroids to help stop the inflammation.

Boy do these roids make me have some fucked up dreams. I’ve had 3 nuclear bomb dreams and the latest was me being in New York City while one went off. Surviving the blast I had to flee the city and instead of boats getting everyone off the island they wanted to charge people. As if the original Vanderbilt reincarnated himself into my dream to screw others over once again. Another dream was trying to secure food for my family while a sniper picked people off for fun. I woke up when I got shot. Another was trying to save a faceless daughter from a group of female religious zealots who wanted to harvest her eggs. I was stabbed in the neck when they discovered she was fertile.

When I wake from these dreams it is obvious where these ideas are coming from and for my own personal sanity there is relief that they are actually just dreams. My back will heal, I hope and assume, but people I don’t know and have nothing to do with somehow haunt my dreams. When the roids are finished the dreams will stop, but there are countless who live my dream as reality.

Trial by pain

My back has gone out again. We booked a trip up to Maine and luckily the ride wasn’t so long that Jenny could drive. I could only be in the car if I was horizontal. At one restaurant it was easier for me to stand than sit. And the only thing that kept me standing were the martinis, quite delicious ones topped off with the precious juices from freshly shucked oysters. Half a dozen? Sure, afterwards I’ll browse the aisles of LL Bean.

We visited an oyster farm and it brought back memories of when we had our first business in West Marin/Sonoma County. That venture was a whole ordeal not just with the business but personally. The only apartment we could afford was way out on the coast 25 minutes from our dairy facility. And we didn’t know shit about living in a rural town of 200 near the Pacific Ocean. Our apartment was prone to black mold which both of us inhaled plenty of. I think my cough only subsided 6 months after we moved out. And I reminisced about the daily grind we lived. With the way my back is now I cannot imagine lifting 5 gallon buckets of prime organic Jersey cow milk into a pasteurizer. Every day ending with the scrubbing, spraying, and sanitizing of every inch.

We learned things through trail and error. And as we no longer work in the food industry and as I work on my culinary novel I appreciate hard work more. But perhaps in a different way than I expected. Rather than appreciating it I guess I should say I’m sympathetic to it. I think our lives are unnecessarily mean spirited to outright resentful, and we don’t take care of each other enough. Suffering on some level is a fact of life; but living everyday with our backs to the wall unknowing what we can trust isn’t a God given reality. Suffering should only exist to make you a better person, a good friend. Not a spectre of a man.