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last---past---next---now
�2006 Candor Communications


2006-03-27 - 9:42 a.m.

pondering this blogging life (and shedding a river of tears)...


floating through a foggy night of music in my head
been awake so long I lost the memory of bed
holding on the hope that someone hears the words I've said
so someone will care if I'm alive or if I'm dead

reports of my return were obviously premature, but at least I'm not dead yet... not that any of you long time readers were knocking down my door to find out where I was or beg me to continue because your morning coffee just doesn't quite taste the same without my incessant babbling to read... you've got my number, you know, you could have at least acted worried or something...

I know, I'm horrible... you love me and I give you nothing but guilt and grief... I'm the original bad seed, the reason Alice wrote the song only women bleed... or else I am just taking the sarcastic tease in the first paragraph one step farther and dragging myself into my crosshairs... but wait, this is supposed to be about you...

there will be entries for each day that passed, eventually... you know that is how I do things... dates are meaningless and everything... time is relative and all we've got... blah blah blah blah blah, yes, five of them... a five blah entry is about to appear right before your eyes... remember, you've been warned...

I supposed I've trained you well, what with disappearing for a week at a time on a semi-regular basis and being such a piss poor correspondent myself... I reap what I sow...
eh, ok, I'm tired of laying this weak poor-me guilt trip out here... I'm not feeling silly enough to actually make it amusing, so just skip it and let's get on with the entry... it was just a way to start the words rolling, anyway, and if the truth be told (and it always is here), it is my way of emphasizing that I do appreciate knowing you are out there, really (I mean, for just a second, pulling my tongue back from it's relatively permanent position against my cheek, all teasing aside, thank you... thank you more... sometimes I wish I was more insecure so I might not be such a comfortable hermit cuz it does get quite lonely at times... but thank you for understanding me enough to continue returning and, if you do, for keeping in touch as you do)...

recent visitors through blogmad! (you just know I couldn't go without mentioning it before you had to scroll too far {or at all, perhaps}, right?), welcome and thank you so very much for pausing a moment to leave a comment... I know the compulsion to click to the next site and accumulate credits and rise on the blogmad! ladder of madness (just look at me after all) is not easy to resist...

but I see the force is strong in you to tear yourself away and stay here a moment to read my long-winded diatribes, my massive missives, my redundant ramblings, my boisterous babblings, my... (oh ok, I'll continue being serious a bit longer just for you)... I so seriously commend, nay, applaud, verily cheer you loudly for finding the power within to resist clicking before reading a bit or at least finding the comments link at the bottom of the entry and letting me know you were here...

bless you, kind traveler...

I intend to get back to you commenters just as soon as I get back to actually writing in this blog journal diary thing... how ironic, huh?... I used to write a million words a month, at least... if I didn't, my head might have exploded long ago... or at the very least, I'd get all sorts of confused and be found wandering the streets not knowing who I was or where I was going...

it's happened to better babblers than I, believe me...

I know I should be writing more, not just because you miss me so much, but for myself... that is the first reason I started writing after all, to explain everything to myself from my own perspective... I figured nobody else could do that... and yes, for those of you looking for another kind of entry (and there are all kinds in the archives if you care to look), just face it or go, this is turning out to be a self-indulgent self-therapy personal story of the life in black and white entry for the few people in this world who actually care to know the details of my day to day existence behind the candoor...

you know who you are, you get the jokes...

and I know now I spend most of my time at the blogmad exploring new writers and photographers and other creative people and sharing words with new friends and I forget that I am supposed to be at blogmad to encourage people to come visit me here so I can apologize for not being here because I am over at blogmad trying to encourage you to be here... booha!...

the internet, like life, gets weird sometimes...

and that's why I love it J

you want to know where I've been?... I mean besides blogmad, there are reasons I have not returned here this week... reasons I left some placeholder entries... reasons I am avoiding telling you... death is no fun...

Berry lost the baby...

Berry, for those new to my world, is the person I've spent thirty to fifty hours a week with at work for the past three or four years... it's usually just me and her, sitting in a quiet hallway sharing the workload (lots of paper and supplies to be sorted, organized, filed, while monitoring kids in a hospital) and watching each others back... lots of time to talk and get to know each other and feel like family... until we were told we couldn't, we'd get the work done quickly and play cards half the night and we took the game to her house where other co-workers joined us, one of whom being Bert, became her husband...

I was already home (took three days off this past week, which doesn't happen too often), spinning a bit from other events of the week (which we'll get to in due time) when he called to tell me the news... she was due around May first, but they could not save the little girl who misses out on a life full of love with two wonderful people... Baby A, as she was already given a uniquely beautiful name that began with that letter, is already missed by more people than a lot of people in this world meet in a lifetime... and there's nothing to be done but shed the tears, feel the ache of loss, and drag ourselves forward to better days...

I wonder if you ever knew how much you were loved
how much consciousness is there inside the womb?
you'll never feel the human touch, are you somewhere above?
or are you nowhere else but in your tomb?

at times like these the answers seem to matter
while usually I�m just fine with knowing what I do not know
you may never know that today is much sadder
because before you came... you had to go

I hope you're blessed with love from head to toe

and the tears of many years begin to flow... we all need a good cry now and then and if you don't know that, if you grew up thinking you simply could not cry and you bought into that lie, I think that's why you might die sooner than those who have a good cry...

I've spent the last five days in a melancholy daze doing whatever I can to avoid the master plan that says we've all gotta die and we may never know why we were here to say hello or goodbye... and maybe that's the saddest thing of all... and why we cry...

if you've been with me long enough, then you know I've already written my final rhyme, that is, my message to be read for anyone attending any after-my-death gathering for me... the point of my message is - don't bury me in sadness when I die... celebrate the life I lived... that is the respect I hope to earn and the gift I hope to pass on, that I feel blessed every moment I am alive and life is a celebration and I hope you continue to celebrate my life (as well as yours and everyone else's) after I'm gone...

but today, for Baby A, we have only potential, only a parent's dreams to celebrate... and so much what could have been... what should have been... to stare blankly at wondering why a life is created to never see the light of day... what possible master plan contains such experiences?... evolution, perhaps... but no philosophy is perfect, not in this case, anyway... so we do our best to celebrate the potential, to celebrate a parent's dream...

it's one of my personal favorites, after all...

adieu, Baby A...

. . .

peace...

and you thought this was to be just another slap happy jaunt through my incorrigibly happy madness, huh?... well, there's a lot more trying to drag me down this week that requires some time and energy and tender loving care... but we can take a laugh break if we want...

a baby seal walks into a club...

and so it goes... I'll tell you a little story about my younger years now... back in the day when I was bit a little candoor pondering the complexities of life through pretend games, dolls, and erector sets... it relates a lot to his thoughts (and I thank him for them)...

while I was floating around in amniotic fluid, there were decisions being made that would dramatically effect my entire life... one woman was deciding to give birth and give the baby away... another woman was deciding the try to adopt a baby... I imagine families were torn and stressed and excited all at once by my arrival in this world... no wonder I have such an ornery ego, aye?...

well the person who carried me for eight or nine months did decide to walk away and as far as I know, never look back (at least not so I might notice) and someone I never had any contact with at all in any way, took me home as her very own... unfortunately, she was ill equipped for so many things in her life and when her husband, who was kind enough to give me his name but nothing else, left her she moved back in with her parents... that could not have been the ideal situation for a woman near forty with a newly adopted baby, but that's what happened... and I was definitely in the way as she tried to meet another man... and I definitely understood that in those first five or six years of this life...

the men came and went until another man came along and decided to move in and marry her... unfortunately he already had three mostly grown kids, two out and on their own, and from all reports and observations, never really did have any parenting skills... not exactly what an already neglected six year old might have ordered, but we did have the appearance of a normal family again... and that might be why it took him another eight years to get around to actually adopting me and giving me his name (yes, eight years of explaining to teachers and school friends why I had a different last name than my supposed parents), for legal purposes, but then, he does not communicate with his biological children more than once or twice a decade, if that often, and they all tend to avoid each other in that very small and odd family... I remained, at best, excess baggage and most definitely an expense neither of them particularly enjoyed...

to their credit, they kept me around so I always had a roof over my head (though I remember that it was quite cold in the winter, probably one reason I choose to live in a semi-tropical climate now) and there was usually food in the house... we never actually did anything as a family and it wasn't until my mid-teens that they started actually going out to dinner or movies or anywhere... by then I was pretty much finding my way independently as I'd learned, even before nursery school, that it was more fun and friendly over at the houses of friends... I did little more than eat and sleep at what I loosely called home...

perhaps the worst aspect of those years was seeing that most people had close knit families and I didn't even have the pretense of one too often... I learned how to get along alone and still do not have the instinct to pick up the phone and keep in touch... it didn't help that every time I'd call I'd hear the same negativity and guilt trips that always ended in my either getting defensive or simply diminishing the power of their words a little further each time... over the years, the gaps between communication between us widened and the last time we talked was before the turn of the millennium...

absence, in this case, did not make the heart grow much fonder, but it does (because I am stupid this way) make the wish for them to learn to actually open up and share who they are honestly with me as their child, not as just a burden they had to deal with for too long because she made a mistake in adopting me (probably as a last ditch attempt to save an already failed marriage)... but nobody neither of them ever even discussed themselves, their lives, or anything to do with their or my history...

so the day before Bert called me to tell me the tragic news about Baby A, I received another call from the wife of that man's youngest son (who is about to retired, according to her and who has a daughter who has a child older than I was when I met their family... am I supposed to feel old now?... stop smirking, this is supposed to be a serious entry)...

she was always one of the few level headed and kind people who became part of this very distance adopted family... she said she found me on the internet and even read this thing, whatever we're calling it these days (hi Betty, that's your name here {cuz I change names to respect privacy}... I appreciate you reaching out more than you know... probably more than I'll show)...

and the news that Betty had for me was a bit sketchy, but basically lead me to finding out that the woman who adopted me was in the hospital, apparently not doing well, possibly on a respirator... betty had the hospital telephone number and after a bit of catching up that felt a lot more sincere than any most conversations I ever had with the so-called parents, I dialed the hospital number...

it was disconnected...

my mission then was to get on the internet and find the old man's number and deal with what was never before a pleasant task, talking to him to find out if the old woman died... I actually felt sad that there might not be any chance for her to find a backbone or personality and actually be honest with me... but I didn't do that yet...

I distracted myself online for the rest of that day because my back was hurting profoundly because I had injured it the night before and I wanted to relax as much as possible... conversations with him were anything but relaxing... it was easy to use the fact that the computer was pushing it's limits already and I was otherwise occupied...

and then when I woke, there was the call from Bert about Baby A and suddenly death was profoundly more real and closer and heavier than the possibility of the old woman's death... the irony is I probably knew Baby A, who died before taking a first breath, better than I ever knew the old woman... se was just that closed and insecure and plastic... the model of her generation...

there are theories in the supposed science call psychology that lean toward the old clich� that the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree... I don't really know who my tree was... there are theories that nurture had more influence than nature... I've known neither, really... there are theories that suggest a child, like it or not, follows in the footsteps of those who raise him or her... I pretty much raised myself... and there are theories that claim a child can decide to grow closer to the personality of those closest to him or her (no matter how distance the closest people are) or a child can choose to rebel and go a different way, sometimes the opposite direction...

I probably ended up proving the last of those theories much more than any of the others as I thrive on nurturing others, crave honesty and openness in my sharing, and stand naked before you and anyone you cares (and the rest who are indifferent) exposing myself in as much excruciating detail as I can find in my mind...

I think I saw the futility of living a life in stoic fear of being known and felt the hurtfulness of living with people who were too afraid or too indifferent to share their selves, so I decided I would not do that to myself or anyone else...

anyway, death came a calling in my world this week and even if I was not distracted by learning about blogmad and connecting with some of the community there (and some of you who knew me here before there) and even if I was not digesting a blast from my past and even if I was not detaching from this physical plane in order to reduce the back pain and allow the injury to heal, I might not have uploaded any entries because it may have taken me a few days to be ready to write about all of this...

now some, perhaps many, may have addressed each of the challenges I faced this week as a separate issue in a separate entry... that's not me... I didn't have any plan before this entry started except the plan I always come to write with, to enjoy the process... now writing all this at work definitely limited the potential catharsis it could have been, but work hours are the only time I can not distract myself with the internet or roommates or anything else, so I figured I better not pretend I can become someone who can sit still doing nothing and still avoid what is on my mind (how do people do that, anyway?)...

so deep in my subconscious as I've listened to Precious tell me about her social hopes and school life and I've been browsing more new sites this week than in any previous week online and I've been chatting with some of you and loving getting to know you and I've been detaching my mind from this body in order to heal, I have been pondering this blogging life rather intensely from many perspectives...

I have no intention of stopping the babbling that is my first love in this writing life... but I do feel the hunger to rhyme returning more and more and with it, the heart and singer awakes... and I do feel the hunger to share growing again which leads me to consider how writing as I do here definitely precludes much of the sharing I could be enjoying because most people will not read this many words in order to get to know me, at least not at first...

so I ponder the funda again and remember their wisdom about brevity being the best first step and I am seriously contemplating starting a new writing place (yes, even as so many others accumulate much dust) to move out into the modern (yes, this is a thought of conforming to the blogging standards of the day... not completely, of course, but trying it out in another place)...

and as I rise from the depths and the thoughts disperse in many directions, the entry spreads it's wings and asks to be uploaded... we can call this one of those introspective personal biographical entries that give you, dear few caring readers who've trodden through all these words, insight into the person tapping the keys...

maybe there's some meaning for you too somewhere in the words I've said... I know I should come back and re-read this one and that is sometimes what writing is about... when the weight of feeling gets so heavy it threatens to suffocate the mind and crush the body, I bring it into words and release it... maybe to return and try to understand the experience someday... or maybe just to release it...

I feel much better now...





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