the Ebenezer season

winter tiredness has hit me hard. it is dragging my eyelids through slushy pot holes--liquid ice and mud and street salt pools that burn real bad.

my heart is heavier than the gravestone in my back yard and the frozen dead chicken still resting soundly in the garage. it is heavy cause blood family can be so complicated. and when 39 year old relationships can no longer withstand the daily test of love and being together, it can roughen the heart of even the most optimistic of people. not that i am an optimist--far from it.

and so let me start over. let me tell you that i can be sentimental. i like to hold onto objects that have passed over the hands, mouths, faces, teeth, breasts, butts, and other fleshy parts of long dead humans. i like old agricultural and woodworking tools--the kinds with worn handles--smooth and slippery from sweaty, oily palms of men who have died due to various diseases and accidents. a slip on an icy patch of concrete and a divot to the temple--dead like that. a long agonizing death treated only with drips of liquid morphine as the jaw bone fell apart from the ravages of mouth cancer in the year 1940. a quick unexpected death from a heart attack--a grasp of the chest a turning up of the blue lips in a quick flash of pain only to last as long as it takes to stop the beating of the human heart.

i think about these things. these made up deaths in my head. haunting me. keeping me company. a story to go along with the handle of a 100 year old ax.

but, i am having difficulty appreciating the many words left by humans about what all this living is supposed to mean or about how we are supposed to do this living or about how we are supposed to love while living or about how we are supposed to die well or about simply being.

some of these words come in the form of inspirational, contemplative bullshit that circulates in a whirling deluge through the interwebs and books and "news" sources and audio recordings and dvds and etc; all that inspirational gunk floating throughout space; all that shit is driving me mad. up a wall.

who cares? really? do the words make it easier here on this planet? maybe for a brief moment. but really? and i am reflecting on all of this after giving my uncle who is battling the unbeatable pan.creatic cancer a bo.ok of blessings to try to help him get through a few minutes of the day.

yes, maybe a few minutes.

in the end though, we will succumb and no longer draw air into our bodies and we will do it either lightly or heavily or quickly or lingeringly or maybe all of those together. we will end up burned into dust or placed in the ground wrapped in gauze or bomb proof caskets with silky linings for our dead skin to feel not or a pine box or some other simple contraption or maybe we will be left out for carnivorous birds to tear at the sinewy strings of our muscles or maybe we will be thrown--flesh and bones and blood and hair--into the midst of a hot compost and break down into a perfect kind of soil additive. we will come to death and hopefully some of us will have myths and meanings wrapped up around this event that is bound to happen to all of us. and hopefully these myths and meanings will be deeper than the wordiness of this post or of the hundreds of thousands of rants of words that fill the human airwaves.

all in all, i sometimes think that all the inspirational bullshit hovering around is some kind of balm to keep us in denial about the impending end and the crusty parts of living that are like a big, snotty nose that has been sick with a sinus infection for days on end. you know the kind when your skin is rubbed raw down to the layer right before bloody. touch that raw place. touch it and press it and plant a seat upon it for a few hours. maybe the meaningful words written by too smart for their own good people or too spiritual to be drawn back down to the rocky soil we are treading on esoteric type of folks would get lost among the pus and pain. maybe every once in a while we just have to stare the suffering in the face and say you suck suffering--you suck real bad. and you suck hate--you suck worse than suffering today. irreconcilable differences you suck.

not eloquent or soft and fluffy, but at least this thinking keeps me rooted; at least it keeps me grounded. the sentiment above is what keeps me from ever becoming an addict (drugs, alcohol, etc); i like to feel what is happening before my eyes or what is unfolding somewhere beyond me, but has been conveyed to me by letters or phone calls. i do not want to be numb. i do not want to smile or think that was oh so very deep and profound and now it all makes sense because of something i read. i want the real to unfold around me and to grab hold of it, even if it is a razor blade and squeeze it until my hand is gutted and my heart aches. okay maybe not that dramatic...

oh and maybe the inspirational fodder adds some drama to the day. to this day. and writing is a god thing after all. it makes for fun times.

and now this crotchety soul will move on to another glass of beer and try with all of her might to ignore the trembling, shaky leg syndrome person in the booth behind her. but that might be the festering raw sore i was talking about sitting in...it is for me tonight.