Tag Archives: exercise

Farewell, my feline friend!

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We said goodbye to our big buddy, our Cornish Rex cat named Merlin, who died in my arms a little while ago.  Watching death is never easy (I have a deep appreciation for people working in hospitals and other places where death is frequently observed) — the convulsions, the crying out, looking into your eyes for comfort, help, something…anything…the struggle to restart the heart and keep breathing…the last breath…the last twitches of the ear.

He almost died earlier this afternoon and I comforted him, telling it was all right to go to sleep but he didn’t want to.  He perked up when he heard the garage door opener, knowing Janeil was coming into the house.  She held him while I ran out to get dinner.  She then handed to me after I returned, because he was begging for me one last time, and he was gone within minutes.

He turned 16 Earth years old on the 20th of May.  The last three days I had been washing fleece blankets because Merlin could no longer control his bladder.  I put him in a warm fleece blanket one more time late this afternoon when I picked up his body, knowing he was dying because his back legs no longer worked.  His cooling body is curled up in a box beside me, waiting to be buried after I write this Facebook entry.

Dear boy, you were a great friend to my wife, me, and your [half]brother Erin, who already walks around the house searching for you.

Who would have thought two months ago, when Erin was coughing up blood and you seemed to be fine, that you would be the first to go?

To you, my sofa and bed companion, my lap heater, who a few days ago was pushing me out of the way, even in a weakened condition, for his own corner of the couch, I raise a toast in your name! Beannacht leat go bhfeicfidh mé aris thú!

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Never stop falling in love!

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Lying in bed (that’s a good phrase to start a sentence; grammatically, it’s not ‘laying in bed’ (or is it?)), I couldn’t sleep.

Reclined as I was, our 15-1/2 year old Cornish Rex cat tucked into my left underarm, my wife to my right, our 15 year old Cornish Rex cat on her stomach, I felt my face was flush.

Has been flush for many days now.

Lack of exercise, combined with the anxiety of flight-or-fight, boxed-in, can’t-escape feelings, has raised my blood pressure, filled my circulatory system with potent chemical combos that are not meant for a sedentary lifestyle.

Being in love is like that.

Kinda like marriage.

An attraction so strong you morph into a moth and move toward a mood lamp with breakneck/wing/pride speed.

I want a hug right now.

Not just any hug.

The hug that accompanies a swingout or whip of a dance move.

My left hand holding her right hand, my right hand around her waist, both of us turning in unison.

Eyes locked on each other.

Smiling.

Laughing.

Losing the formality of a routine because we’re having too much fun.

Falling in love again, all over again, again and again and again…

Be it romantic.

Or seductive.

A partnership of unspoken understanding.

Cerebral.

Celebratory.

Meaningful.

Shallow.

Eternal.

Temporal.

Opposites.

Equals.

Do I fall in love too easily?  Am I too trusting?  Do I think my dance partners have my best interest in their thoughts?

No answers are necessary.

I am in love with the universe — we have each other, subsets within sets of subsets of sets.

I have danced with Earthlings, most who still think in increments of days.

Time to flip the telescope around that was turned the wrong way and focused on the heart, get my eyes out of the emotion-filled microscope and take the long view again.

Love in the moment is most beautiful but Martian colonies need more than love to keep growing!

Shivering with happiness in the subfreezing weather

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Who am I today?  In the growth that may or may not accompany understanding, learning and wisdom, the growth that is the concept we call aging, I ask myself who I am.

Am I a person or persons?

Am I the fictional character Lee who lives in my thoughts as my memory keeper, saving scenes in my life for later use as a written story?

I fall in love with everyone because I am in love with the universe, whatever falling in love may mean, a concept that has been diagnosed and diced by every living thing with a need for nourishment.

What is technological advancement, or expansion of Earth lifeforms into the outer solar system compared to dancing uncontrollably with Michele?

What is my life worth if I don’t get a daily dose of Abi’s eyes looking at mine?

And without holding Jenn in my arms, why do I exist?

I used to panic when I could not logically explain my actions to Lee, my fictional alter ego, so he could protect me as a character whose storyline has already been written and protected from dying.

I had placed my trust in my lifelong partner, who has served in the role of wife for over 27 years, by sending her letters of my private thoughts when a teenager as an investment in a secret relationship untouchable by time.

The letters sit here next to me, filling shoeboxes, protected from the light of day.

She is the second layer of protection atop the character of Lee.

But I leave backdoors to the chaotic, insane me, so that I can still feel vulnerable, open to love all over again for the very first time.

I’m just not used to having so many open relationships at once!

Why did I have to fall in love with two women at the same time?

Why am I not willing to let go of the two inner layers of protection to see where I can go next?

Why am I shivering happily, after sleeping under a blanket in subfreezing weather last night?

Why is planet Earth so inadequate to provide the future I want with Jenn and Abi?

Time to put my feet to work and make a new life with my inventions rather than give them away to others.

I am tired of sacrificing my happiness for the “good of mankind.”  Let mankind find its own happiness with or without me!

Domesticity, plasticity

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In the understanding that parallels deciphering my grip on reality, I could not sleep, wrapped in a blanket in the sunroom, the ambient temperature in the teens, the stars brightly twinkling, the Big Dipper teasing me through the leafless branches of a hickory tree.

Two thoughts tickled my curiosity:

  1. Why I fell in love with Abi and desire so much to please her with my increased dancing skills, and
  2. Wrapping my thoughts around Stephen Hawking’s new revelation about his old theory of black holes.

A short story waits to be written, weaving the continuing storylines of Guin, Bai and the Frenchman, as well as Cajessi, elaborating on the chapter excerpt below (written on 12th Oct 2013):

Unfortunately, Bai was allergic to a few of the chemicals and, while training a farmer who’d just returned from the fields, gotten something in her eye, probably when she rubbed her face on his sleeve during a double underarm turn.

Her next stop was a courtesy call and not a dance lesson.

Another dance instructor, Cajessi, landed on the planet two days ago and needed to acclimate a few days more before she hosted a two-day workshop.

Cajessi, too, had avoided body upgrades until she had reached her 80s.  Although she still looked elderly, her body was limber and her eyes sparkled.  She was famous for her favourite socks, a bright, neon green, and sold a signature line of them wherever she taught workshops.

Bai’s planet hopper landed next to Cajessi’s habitation module, sending up six puffs of dirt from the hopper’s footpads.

Time to read some of Hawking’s recorded thoughts…and wonder about jelly doughnuts on Mars…

Going crazy again

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In my life, I have lost my sanity a few times:

  • at age five, when I realised I was alone in the universe and had to create my own version of something to make sense of the cluelessness around me
  • at age ten, when my best friend/girlfriend died, leaving me more alone than ever
  • twice in high school, when my girlfriend broke up with me and, more significantly, after I suffered a head concussion in a car wreck
  • at age 23, when I, against all the teachings of my youth (especially the one about coveting a married woman), made love to a married woman
  • at age 27, when I cracked under the pressure of having to appear on television to promote a community project I created, sensing a number of contradictions within my personality that was perceptible on live TV and out of my control once it was broadcast to whomever was watching
  • at age 44, when my brother in-law died

I return to a familiar place on this path through life — a crossroads that branches off to unknown destinations.

I feel like I am being ripped apart, with tendrils/roots from my past pulling on me to give people I’ve known the affirmation that the lives we shared contained and shall continue to create happy times.

I’m always looking for an easy escape route from every moment I spend with other people, knowing that eventually the internal insanity that has defined me since I can remember will show itself — the disjointed, at-odds-with-itself set of thoughts that have kept me alive and in touch with people who, God help them (I’ll get back to that last phrase in a moment), are probably just as fucked up as I am but I sure as hell don’t want to know, allowing myself the illusion that other people have it together.

One girlfriend said knowing me was like peeling back layers of an onion and she was never sure what she’d find next, as protective I was in controlling people’s access to the “real” Rick.

Do I always know what I’m doing?  Rarely.  But I know where I want to be and have plans to get there.

Otherwise, the “real” me is an illusion, changing moment by moment to passively accommodate people’s perceptions of me so I can reach my goal while giving them whatever makes them happy.

What if giving them whatever makes them happy contradicts certain parts of me that are partially set in stone?

I know I am insane to think I am alone in this universe which, God help me (okay, time to address that last phrase — if I alone in the universe, then, by extension, there is no deity other than myself for myself, leaving others to find the deity belief sets in them that satisfy their needs for self affirmation?), leaves me with zero friends because if friends are merely sets of states of energy to bounce against like pinballs to get us moving again, well…

I am caught between seeing that I am a nice-enough looking guy who makes many people feel comfortable in my presence and thus able to believe I will help them affirm their beliefs, and seeing that what I want may not make many people happy.

One girlfriend, when I finally was able to share with her the dystopian visions that haunt me and chase me constantly, wondered why I was such a joyful guy on the outside but such a hard-nosed, scared-to-death conservative type on the inside.  We discussed the whole fight-vs-flight concept and, despite my best (worst?) efforts to want to control the conversation, I let the girlfriend dissect my view against my deepest desires not to hear what she saw in me.  She finally agreed that I was more fucked up than she was, taking strange theories, mixing them up in a cosmic comic worldview and applying them to my own fears and aspirations without concern that they made no sense in the real world.

It didn’t stop her from wondering what having a child with me would be like, able to compare the two kids she already had against one we could have.  A couple of days after we agreed to stop seeing each other (after all, I was banging her best friend, too (the aforesaid married woman), which made the both of us feel a little guilty (okay, maybe not too much; more like we should do the decent thing and call it off before her best friend found out)), she had sex with a guy she’d just met and ended up pregnant.  Because the guy professed his love for her without question and he was one of the heirs to a bread company fortune, she told me that even if the baby was mine, she was going to call it his; I happily agreed because it was sure going to be an affirmation of my worldview that nature-vs-nurture is a false dichotomous construct about childrearing and I didn’t have to worry about paying child support (I was a broke college student at the time).

As an opportunist looking for escape routes living in my thoughts, I recently plotted out a course of action whereby the possibilities of hitting the eject button on my current marriage might be facilitated by solidifying relationships with a dance partner; thus, I saw the person I liked laughing and dancing with the most, heard her say that her beau was looking for someone to join a fraternal organisation with and told myself, well, if it makes him happy that I join the organisation with him then I might get more time to dance with her and from there, who knows.

Damn it if the fraternal organisation’s requirements, including a main one about hosting a belief in a deity hasn’t put a burr in my side and, in the process, turned me into my father and his more conservative/religious views.

I know that portions of my personality were formed from contact with my father and I have fought tooth-and-nail internally to reject those portions because of the compromises I had to make to protect myself from his passive-aggressive treatment of my mother, sister and me, hearing from his colleagues, friends and family, however much I don’t want to, how kind and considerate but opinionated my father was and how so many people from my past want to welcome me into the fold now that I, as a legacy, have joined my father’s fraternal organisation and cemented my place in that subculture.

I am a mixed-up dude and I know it.

I’ve never been forced by a child of mine in my household to construct a consistent view of the universe in an effort to give that child the best opportunities for success with an easily-repeatable narrative about how/why life is.

I have been able, instead, to successfully slide through life, hopping from one better-paying job to another, accumulating wealth along the way without giving the shirt off my back, to arrive here in this comfortable middle-class hovel in the woods, always having an escape plan at the ready should something I had imagined happen (for the unexpected, I am probably completely unprepared).

I don’t know what my very next step will be, except to take the bathmat out of the clothes washer that the cat had pooped on and hang it up to dry (the bathmat, not the cat (or the poop)).

I still want to get to the Moon and then on to Mars and dance in low-gravity conditions with my literary characters Guin and Bai.

Whether I join reality or whether reality gets in the way, I cannot say.

If I don’t even know if sanity is an illusion, how can I know if reality is real?

The luxury of recounting one’s dreams

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In these past few days (weeks?) where I have asked myself if self, family, community, subculture, planet, galaxy are or are not more than symbols, I make no quick, foolish or foolishly quick decisions.

In a dream last night, my dream personality chased myself up into consciousness sprawled across the sleeping sofa, on which I turned and scribbled these notes in the moonlight:

16 Jan 14

I’m finished with touching another body on the dance floor or having to look into a person’s eyes because so much sexual tension builds up in me without a way to relieve the tension…. not fun anymore.  I’ve become used to the separation of reality from wishes, it just loses interest.  Reducing desire to pursue partners. Need to thank my instructor for wanting to dance competitively with me but it’s not going to happen unless there are serious changes in my life.

As of tomorrow, it will have been a year since I started attending dance workshops with my wife.

In dance workshops, my wife and I initially start out holding hands and dance together before dance leaders or followers are asked to rotate, meaning that I get a new dance partner for 10, 15, 20, 30 or 60 seconds to attempt a new dance formation; with that dance partner, I meet a new person, a new set of life’s experiences to ask about, a new wider/narrower/taller/shorter body shape to adjust to, a new hair colour to physically look down on (although, occasionally I’ve danced with women my height or taller), a hand to grip gently or firmly, new eyes to hold my attention.

For the majority of the dance partners, the new dance formation occupy my thoughts, learning how to move my body to make my dance partner’s moves look amazing and lovely.

For a few of the dance partners, a certain fluidity of energy passes through our fingers, as if unspoken desires are literally at our fingertips.

I enjoy the flirtatious nature of dancing, no doubt about it.

But for those few dance partners, the flirtatiousness feels more electric, bordering on lust, knowing that my partner and I are setting up a situation with foreplay that doesn’t necessarily include us.

The understanding between myself and a dance partner has ranged from the almost regimented rigid cold upper body sentiment of an Irish “River Dance” jig to the glued-together warm sensuous flow of a blues dance.

If it were only Irish jig dancers I encountered during workshops, my manly arousal wouldn’t be a problem.

Instead, the one or two out of a hundred workshop participants who turn up the heat drive me insane and, as even my dream self has chased out of me, I have no satisfactory outlet to make those future encounters enjoyable.

Thus, to keep my marriage intact and my sanity in check, I’m trying to figure out how to get across to my wife that our current arrangements are unsatisfactory.

All while my niece and nephew’s grandmother is dying…

All in the luxury of a middle-class lifestyle, snug and warm in a heated home.

After a year of “blue balls,” so to speak, I can’t take it anymore!  I refuse to attend another dance workshop or group dance lesson or I SHALL GO MAD!!!

Stemless glass

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I once thought being a millionaire, even a very miserly one, would bring me contentedness, if not pure bliss or eternal happiness. What I’ve slowly realised…well…I am not that man with those thoughts anymore.

Being a millionaire is indeed a comfortably contented place to be but not a final destination.

Sure, my wife and I bought into the whole “reward yourself financially first” philosophy in order to achieve this goal, using the power of delayed gratification to get here 10, almost 15, years ahead of schedule, by, for example, buying a new car every 10 years or so.

Now that we’ve been here a while, enjoying the fruits of our labour, what’s next?

Unfortunately, I get bored easily and lose interest in subjects/topics after I’ve dissected them and determined their root cause.

Over the course of the past few months I mentally walked through the prospects of life outside the WASP monogamous lifestyle I was trained to support.

I asked myself if going out of my comfort zone was worth giving up my financial status, releasing the golden handcuffs and starting over, once again competing in the marketplace for your attention and money to feed my new habits of happiness fulfillment.

I thought I found the answer in new friendships.  I wanted the answer to be with my new friends because of their enthusiasm and strong belief in doing what they love — dancing.

This morning, in the sunlight reflecting off concrete, glass and steel structures of urbanism, I see that my friends’ infectious enthusiasm moves me to encourage their pursuit of momentary happiness and longterm financial security but my journey takes me in a new direction.

I’ve enjoyed meeting so many people in the social dancing subculture, gladly knowing that those who learned to dance as kids have been able to monetise their love for the body art/exercise of dance and become successful adults as instructors of social dance.

However, the source of their enthusiasm is not mine.

I tried to adopt their thoughtset as my own but I was only able to hold it for so long before I switched to building robots.

Finding a new hobby and realising it’s time to go on to another one is like breaking up with a girlfriend, which was never easy for me.

It’s time for me to say goodbye to competitive dancing and move on, figuring out how this miser can focus his wealth on something that will rejuvenate him while in his comfort zone (cliche is my forte).

Financial success before I die is one thing, still being alive and figuring out what to do to maintain my meditative state of bliss is another.

Regardless, I live in my thoughts, as my thoughts, with my thoughts.

Tomorrow is a new day, a new opportunity to find a new distraction from the ennui between now and whenever I die.

Is there another planet or species I can play with?