i a odd ball

I received three emails today asking me why I changed the name of this blog.

i a odd ball? one person asked. What is that?

That does not make any sense, I like Absurdistry better,  another person wrote.

The grammar “i a odd ball” is all wrong (like so much else of what you write), is all another email said.

I don’t know. The name change of this blog is so unimportant that I do not even know why I am writing about it. I suppose I have nothing else to write about. I mean, I have things that I could write about, but I do not want to. I tried. I wrote several potential posts and then deleted them. I wrote a post called Why My German Shepherd Is Just Like A Black Man and then I deleted it. I wrote something else called The End Of Unhappiness and then deleted that because, well, I felt like it was too darn depressive. I’m trying to not be so depressive, even though I realize this may mean that what I have left to say might be rather dull. For some reason the depressive often makes for good literature and I am trying to find a decent balance between the two. I also know that people I know read this blog and I dont want to worry them too much.

Anyways, I changed the name of this blog to i a odd ball. A month or so ago I was on a walk. I walked through a park that was right besides an elementary school. I came across a piece of white paper on the ground with i a odd ball written on it. I assumed that the piece of paper slipped out of some kids backpack since it looked like a kids handwriting. I picked up the piece of paper and stuck it in my pocket. The other day I took it out and put it on my desk. And that is how it came to be.

The Incomplete Writer

 I struggle to complete things. I am the kind of writer who often gives up just before an ending. I have written numerous incomplete short stories, essays and novels, leaving them for dead right before the end. It is a strange affliction that causes me a great deal of envy towards writers who are able to complete their works. It’s a muscle I lack. In order not to retire certain writings to the dump yard of all my other unfinished works, I have decided to collect below several of my most recent unfinished writings before I forever let them go.

 

So This Is What Grief Feels Like

How does a person’s childhood home live inside of them as an adult? I have just returned home after spending several days visiting my childhood home, where my parents still live. I’m sitting on my couch looking out a window into the backyard. The clock, which hangs on the wall, is making a sound that mimics my heartbeat. Or my heartbeat is mimicking the sound of the clock. My eyes feel slightly swollen from a few short-lived bouts of crying. I miss my childhood home in the same way that a person could miss a pet or a recently lost lifelong friend. I am aware that in my absence my childhood home feels emptier. Quieter. I know that it too is sad that I am gone.

The Beard

One morning he awoke and his beard was gone. There was a note on the pillow beside him, which read:

The Tunnel

A man, who cares about his age, needs to move out of the city, who cares about why. He moves to the suburbs, for reasons that I don’t want to understand. The only real problem here is the tunnel, which divides the suburbs from the city. After several weeks of living in the suburbs, the man, like most men, wants to go visit friends in the city. The suburbs are long, flat and lonely and for more reasons than I am wanting to go into here, the man desperately needs to spend more time in the city. Lets just say his mental health depends on it. Ok? But the problem that I previously mentioned is that he has a terrible fear of going through the tunnel. Maybe he is claustrophobic; I am not a medical professional so it is not for me to make that judgment. All I know is that the man’s inability to go through the tunnel is causing him to become trapped in the suburbs. It’s not a good situation for anyone.

The Insomniac

Five o’clock, Sunday morning, is the quietest time on earth. Everything is still. No one is up- except for the insomniacs.

JTimothy’s mind was a web of noise. Solitude was not bliss. Instead it was an uncomfortable collar that felt too tight around his neck. His feet were like ship anchors dragged along his apartment floor. What use was flossing his teeth when all he did was grind them? The only way that JTimothy could get some semblance of sleep was by putting clean, white tube socks on over his bare feet. And even that was not sleep enough.

Rewind. Three years before. JTimothy slept as much as you and I. A dream filled sleep in the nude. Back in those days the mountains outside his window were still skyrockets filled with opportunity and mystery. They had yet become the claustrophobic walls that trapped him. The washing machine and kitchen table were still inanimate objects. Three years later they would become his best friends and chess partners. The insomnia set in before he consciously realized that his adult life had become intolerable. A constant steady flow of deteriorations, disappointments and humiliating defeats. As is often the case with most diseases, JTimothy’s insomnia knew more about JTimothy than JTimothy knew about himself. His tube socks could attest to this .

JTimothy’s apartment was once an alarmingly beautiful space. It was clean and looked like the kind of space that you could tell the tenant enjoyed taking care of it. From the outside you would never know that inside was a well-curated showroom for mid-century modern furniture. Most of his money from his often-suffocating job went into these objects of good taste. The black Eames chairs in the corner were his favorites. What use are the most stylish and aesthetically pleasing objects when you can’t sleep? The insomniac gradually loses the ability to see beauty.

Fast forward to where this story began. JTimothy in tube socks and yesterday’s clothes. It’s 5 o’clock on a Sunday morning and JTimothy is the only person awake in a sleeping world. Macaroni noodles are boiling on the stove. The kitchen table is already hungry. The washing machine is not yet ready to eat. Just the other day JTimothy had to take the washing machine’s drivers license away from it. The washing machine is currently engaging in a hunger strike against what it feels was an unfair decision to strip it of its autonomy. JTimothy became feed up with the washing machine not being around every time he needed to do his laundry. Ever since the washing machine received its drivers license it had been going out constantly with other washing machines. JTimothy knew that the washing machine had been going to parties and he was concerned that the washing machine would drink and drive. Or even worse- what if it fell in love with a dryer and ran away? He could not admit it but JTimothy was jealous. Deep down he was annoyed that his washing machine was having more fun than he was.

The insomniac can become very possessive. There were times that JTimothy believed that even the mountains belonged to him.

JTimothy paced around his apartment. What had happened to him? He listened to the hot water boiling on the electric stove. JTimothy’s insomnia knew that the reason he could not sleep was

The Driver

The only place that the Driver feels safe and in control is in his car. This is why the Driver drives around and around and around. Day after day.

The Novelist

I know what your thinking. “Forty three years old and he has just written his first novel?” Before you jump to any unfair conclusions with regards to my ambition or will power please allow me to explain. But before I explain allow me to give you this brief list of novelists who made no money from writing before the age of 45: Henry Miller, William Burroughs, Tomas Espedal and I know there are many others but I can not come up with the names now.

If by the end of this short autobiographicalish story you do not think that I deserved to be called a novelist, fair enough. If you still think it is too late for me, that I have reached the expiration date as far as being a legitimate writer is concerned, fair enough again.

You see I have been determined to write a novel since the age of seventeen. No, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start where I am at now. The past is the past even though I understand that the past is as important to a writer as the present is to a Zen Buddhist. So let me begin from right now.

The Bathroom

Waiting in a bathroom stall, after having had an impressively large bowel movement, for a man to finish washing his hands and doing his hair because I am too embarrassed to walk out because of the odor I have created. The man is taking forever.

Walls

I built a small space in my backyard where I can be alone. It’s just one small room- no hallways, no bathrooms, no furniture, no windows. Just six walls made of pinewood and a pillow for sitting. I enter the space through a hatch in the roof.

Bad Bosses

I wish I could invent a device that would make all bad bosses disappear.

The Collector

My wife thinks I have a shopping addiction (even though I do not have enough money to have a shopping addiction). She thinks buying things helps me to feel empowered and in control. It’s a momentary substitute for the general sense of helplessness and lack of control that I feel most of the time, she tells me. I’m not sure I agree with her, even though in the end she is almost always right. However, for the purposes of this autobiographical essay, I will pretend as if she is always, completely wrong.

I don’t see myself as a shopping addict. I think the diagnosis is completely missing the point. Through years of study and exploration, I have developed a sensibility for the finer, more alternative things in life. In the same way that the archeologist has spent years studying so that she or he can identify and collect important objects, I have been refining my ability to

One more:

Chronic Pain (a memoir about a son’s life long struggle with a difficult father)

I was having a difficult time breathing. It felt like something heavy was resting on top of my lungs all night. As I sit up from a restless nights sleep, I struggle to breathe air into my lungs. It feels like trying to pump air into a bicycle tire that is almost full. My wife is still sleeping. She is wrapped up in heavy blankets, like a sausage inside a sourdough bun. I don’t feel rested but it’s 6:20am and I am ready to go.

My wife and I drove for six hours to visit the house were I spent my childhood and grew up into an angry young man. After thirty-five years my parents still live in this aging mansion, which sits on two acres of beautiful Northern California land. The house sits on top of a hill overlooking the affluent country club, which it is apart of. Twenty years ago I remember how upset my father was when the country club association started building larger houses in the oak tree filled hills behind his house. No longer would he be on top of the world- now more successful and wealthier people would be looking down on him.

It’s a cold November morning. Wet leaves cover the damp concrete ground as my wife and I load our suitcases into the back of our financed Prius. I’m too tired and sad to talk. I just want to get this over with as quietly as possible. Once we have loaded up the car with all our stuff we return inside to make sure we have not forgotten anything. As I look around I’m feeling a deep sense of grief. It’s been a difficult weekend visit with my parents and a part of me feels like this may be the last time I will ever return home again. I try to be as quiet as possible so as not to wake my parents. We have already said our goodbyes the night before.

Before retiring to bed last night my father came up to me and in his strange way tried to make amends for the fight he had started the day before. “We should talk on the phone once a week so we can improve our relationship son. I am who I am and I’m not going to change but I want to be your friend,” he said while standing a bit too much in my personal space. I admit, I felt threatened and annoyed. We were standing in a hallway that was filled with a history of my childhood battles with my father. “I don’t need you to be my friend, I need you to be a father,” I replied. “Son I’ve already done the best I could as your father. You’re a grown man now and it’s time to be friends.” I felt slightly confused and uncomfortable, like my father was once again trying to make me agree to something that was good for him but inherently bad for me. He gave me a hug goodnight. I told him to sleep well and with his signature negativity he said, “yeah I’m going to go die.” I knew that indirectly he was trying to imply that our dynamic had worn him out.

I stood at my old bedroom window and looked out into the expansive backyard, where I had spent so much of my lonely and unhappy youth. The same backyard furniture that I sat on as a child was still there and so were all the dangling bushes that I used to sing to while pretending that they were the hands of adoring fans reaching out to touch me. How can one be so sad, angry and unhappy in the midst of such beauty? I thought to myself. Did I even see the beauty when I was growing up? I turn around, turn out the bedroom lights and say to my wife, “Ready to go?” We have a six-hour drive back to LA ahead of us. Before I close the front door behind me, I take one final listen to the sounds inside the house that I love so much. I can hear the subtle sounds of the house settling. I can also hear the hallow sounds that a large house makes when everything inside is still. Upstairs, I can hear my father snoring and I imagine that my mother is laying in bed with her eyes half-open, tears on her cheeks while she listens to me leave.

Self Growth

I am six feet five inches tall. Almost six feet six inches tall. Wherever I go I am met with the same four letter statement, “you are so tall.” I often shake my head, smile and say, “yes, I have effectively committed myself to self growth.” It is at this point that people laugh a little, smile and then assume a look of puzzlement. I know that they are trying to make sense of my awkward reply- but can not. I see them thinking, “what the hell did he mean by that?” Maybe this is why I say it- to seek revenge on all those people who greet me by stating the obvious. Yes, I am tall- no shit, but honestly being so tall has nothing to do with diet or genetics. It has everything to do with my belief that the point of living is to learn and growth.

When I first became interested in self growth I was twenty-two years of age. I was also five feet seven inches tall. Up until that point in my life I had been heavily depressed, at odds with my mother and father and on a steady diet of marijuana and Budweiser beer. Every man and woman reaches a point in his or her own life where they can no longer tolerate what the sixties generation refered to as “negative vibes.” Torpor, melancholy and self-deprecation become so unpleasant that one begins to search for ways to stop the pain. At the age of twenty two I read a book called “The Autobiography Of A Yogi,” and it was this book that began my long sessions spent sitting under an oak tree in my parents backyard….. in quiet meditation.

As I grew older and taller I continued to read self-help books of all kinds. I read “Men Are From Venus And Women Are From Mars” (which is true by the way) before I had ever had a serious relationship. I spent my twenties drinking beer and seeking out ways to enhance my self growth. I attended meditation classes, did yoga, ate raw foods, engaged in all kinds of shamanic orgies and sweats and even did nothing for a year but focus on my breath. By the age of thirty I was still depressed and melancholic, but I had grown to over six feet two inches tall, which was all the proof I needed to believe that I was growing as a human being.

To make a long and mostly uninteresting story short, I am now thirty-nine years of age and still growing. At this moment as I type I can feel my ligaments and joints stretching. Sometimes in my meditations, if I listen closely enough, if I become quiet enough I can hear the sounds of self growth. For the past year I have been seeing a therapist on a weekly basis and even she has observed that I have grown taller since we first began our sessions together.

Even though my marriage is permanently flawed, my financial life in a state of dis-repair, my work is as a bartender and my relationship with my parents in a chronic state of tension- my self growth has not been stunted. Life is a complex experience and individuals are always going to be met with adversity and obstacles. Such is the human condition. But self growth allows for individuals to grow tall enough that they are able to get a good view of the shit that surrounds them. I myself am able to see all of the dysfunction and negative energies that imbue my life. I stand taller than anyone else around me and this allows for me to make more effective choices than those who do not have a clear view. I wade my way through all the dysfunction- if I fall, I have more time to respond effectively before I hit the ground.

I have no intention to discontinue my journey on the path of self growth. Even though I am aware of the fact that I could grow to tall for my own good, I will carry on. I live in a world filled with small people. I feel like it is my responsibility to grow, to take my self to heights that very few men and women have been to before. This way I can help those who are confined to the five foot and four foot realms make their way up into higher levels of self growth. Once I can convince others to grow, that there is no limits to the heights they can soar- then maybe there will be less people in the world who say to me (while arching their necks to the sky), “you are so tall.”

The Man With A Moving Nipple

I know this may seem strange but I am suffering from a moving nipple. It is my left nipple and it gesticulates and twitches like a firecracker. At the moment, the uncomfortable movements of my nipple have become chronic with little intermission in-between. This discomfort has become a part of my life, another bewildering ailment that I must learn to live with.

My nipple began to move after I was in a very upsetting argument with my father. He was in a hospital bed recovering from a surgery and we managed to fight with one another about what, I cannot remember. Consumed with guilt for upsetting my father during his darkest of hours- I left the hospital in a terrible state of mind. The stress was causing my chest to constrict and I remember having difficulty breathing. It was when I turned on my car engine that I noticed my left nipple beginning to twitch. I placed my right palm upon it, as if I was trying to comfort my broken heart. I drove off into the night trying not to think about my moving nipple. Little did I know then that this was the beginning of what would become a full-blown dis- ease.

As the days passed my nipple picked up speed. The twitches would come in unpredictable spurts and I was often forced to have to sit down and try and relax when the episodes would begin. The twitches turned into strange gesticulations that would wake me up at night and force me to place an ice pack on my chest. The moments that my nipple would not be moving became like tropical vacations for my weary mind, which was being over worked by the torment of my moving nipple. The sensations were like aggravating tickles combined with what felt like pinpricks that seemed to leave me feeling like I was a man being slowly crucified from the inside out.

As the weeks passed my moving nipple became more chronic. It rested little and began to control my every waking hour. I had read some where in Greek mythology of a character that had suffered from a very similar ailment as I was. His moving nipple became so violent that it slowly began to make its way onto his forehead and announce all of his private thoughts to whomever was around. Not only did this character suffer the humiliation of having a talking nipple on the center of his forehead but also he was unable to think without the nipple revealing his every thought! Of course it is not difficult to understand why this character took his life by forcing his lover to cut off his head. Once he was decapitated the nipple did not stop talking for over an hour- it told his lover of all his previous affairs!! Ever since I have read this tale I have been terribly worried that my chronic gesticulating nipple is going to break free from its root and make its way onto my forehead!! If the world were able to hear my every thought I would certainly loose everything that I love!!!

Last week I visited a Doctor who knew not what to make of my condition. He told me that he had never seen anything like this before. He recalled reading in a medical journal many month back about someone who had suffered from a similar ailment for most of his life- but he could not remember which medical journal it was in. The Doctor wanted to put me on some medication to see if he could relax the tissue but the side effects for the medication seemed to great to take the risk. My Doctors conclusion was that I was suffering from a stress-induced ailment that was causing calcium build up around the nerves of my nipple tissue-, which is putting pressure upon my nipple. The ensuing twitching and gesticulation is the result of this pressure. If it did not go away in a month he recommends surgery.

In the mean time I still have to live in this world. I have to make a living so that I can continue to have a roof over my head. As much as I want to hide away in my closet and write poetic lamentations all day- I cannot. I have a mouth to feed.

It is not difficult for you to see my ailment, or what I have come to call my crucifixion. There is what appears to be a constant vibration and rotation under my left shirt pocket. When people notice this they immediately ask me if I am okay. I tell them that I am fine, that what they are witnessing is an annoying muscle spasm. My high school students make fun of me and refer to me as a freak. They all want to touch my nipple and when I let them there are loud uproars of “EEEEEEWWWW,” or “That’s so disgusting!!!!” Whenever I go out into public people stare at my nipple as if they had never seen anything like this before. I feel like an aberration, like all eyes are condemning me to constant judgment. Now I know what it must feel like to be a big-breasted woman.

The only thing that I can do is learn to live with my ailment. Every night before bed I put a chamomile cream upon my nipple, which seems to relax it a bit. I also wrap my chest in a towel before bed, which seems to reduce the annoying vibrations of my moving nipple, allowing me to get some sleep. There is nothing that I can really do (besides having my nipple surgically removed) other than accept my current situation. I see this condition as an opportunity for me to deal with the various causes in my life rather than the effects. If I can learn to change the stressors that have caused my moving nipple than maybe over time my nipple will stop moving. I believe it was Pascal, Socrates or Emerson or maybe Nietzsche- who said that an unexamined life is a life not worth living, so I am examining my self- trying to understand the various ways that I have caused my own dis-ease. Maybe, through this process of self-examination, I will eventually become the only man who can set myself free.

The Impatient Taoist

 I have decided to sleep away the rest of the day. All morning I was searching for the way, the path, the Tao. I was told to look for it in sound, smell and touch. In all these things I came up empty.I grew frustrated. I wondered around thinking about non-being and effortlessness, but found myself having to make great effort to become nothing. All I wanted was to be done with time, to relinquish the jaws of time from the hold it has upon me. I wanted to surrender myself into the greater unifying principle of space and nothingness but I had chest pain and was worried about my bank account. If I could only be fully present in the moment, which at times I am, than maybe I would see the way, the path, the Tao more clearly. Maybe I would unlearn everything that I know and become the absence that Taoists refer to as enlightenment. Over and over I repeat passages:

Do not talk about right and wrong.

Everyone should sweep the snow from  his own door

And not be concerned about the frost on another’s roof.

Over and over I tell myself, “refine the self,” but then I find myself looking up the skirts of stray women and suffering the terrible fear of death. My mind drifts as vagrantly as a piece of tissue blown by the wind. I want to uncover or unravel deeper mysteries but I also can not stop thinking about my next meal or the desire to be rich and naked and stuck in blow job orgies sipping wine. The Tao does not come easily into my mind. “Be done with mind,” certain Taoists tell me but my mind keeps me in a state of anxiety and longing and without this discomfort how would I know I was me? So I am an impatient Taoist and all my wanting and waiting has made me tired to the point that I have decided to spend the rest of the day asleep in bed. We will talk more about this later.

The Sex Life Of A Man Without One #17

 I had not thought about sex all day. The act never crossed my mind nor did I feel much interest in members of the opposite sex. Last evening was a haunting night- the thought of which I would like now to forget (read Sex Life Of a Man Without One #16 to understand what it is that I am talking about). I spent the day offline far away from the temptations of the computer and Craig’s List. I dedicated myself to more virtuous pursuits like yoga, meditation, taking out the garbage and cleaning the bathroom. I wrote in my journal for a bit and listened to a Brahms symphony over and over again until my mind was relieved of past memories. My wife was working for the majority of the day but would call me ever so often to check in with how I was feeling. “I’m having some anxiety,” I told her several times and her response was always caring and concerned. Sometimes I wonder if my wife is a saint dressed in women’s clothing.

After spending the day fertilizing the seeds of virtue I moved into night with little hesitation. The sun set as planed and the darkness fell upon my bedroom windows like it consistently does night after night. I say bedroom only because I usually am napping at this time and wake in time to watch the dusk turn dark. For dinner I met my family (father, mother, sister) at a small restaurant in a quiet town not far from where I live. The food was filling and the company cordial enough to leave me feeling happy about the few hours we spent together. My father is recovering from major surgery but he was well enough to try and convince me for a futile thirty minutes that Barack Obama was a Muslim and to drink wine and eat pork. By the end of our feast I had consumed a ceasar salad, a bottle of Italian red wine, salmon with bacon sprinkled on top and what the waiter called a chocolate bomb (chocolate ice cream on top of a chocolate fudge brownie). The bill was more than my share of the monthly rent “but the money was well spent, since I have worked my whole life to be able to afford such pleasures,” my father said. I kissed my father goodbye on the lips for the first time in my life and I found it a bit strange that he squeezed my but.

She was standing directly upon a street corner not far from my house. I would not have stopped if I was not driving drunk. My intention was to continue on with the virtuous lifestyle for one more week. This meant abstaining from all activities that left me feeling as if I had compromised my integrity. However, the wine was talking in place of my rational mind. It was Italian wine so it had a tendency to be a bit crazy over the girls. The wine said, “pull over and just see how much it would cost to touch her boobs.” My rational mind said “no just continue on home and stay on the path of virtue.” The wine said, “virtue, who are you kidding. You are a good man. There is nothing wrong with using sexy prostitutes to get off since you have not had sex with your wife in over a year. It is a matter of your health!!” My rational mind retorted, “don’t listen to the wine. It is intoxicating your better sense. If you must return home and jack off to online porn, so be it- but do not pick up the whore!!” “Alright, allright…enough!!” I yelled out loud as I drove my car around the block again to get one more glance at the prostitute.

She had blond hair and was white!! This was enough to make me give in to the wine’s will. Finding a white prostitute with blond hair in Oakland is like stumbling upon a pot of gold. My heart beat with fervent anticipation. I said to myself, “what the hell, the wine was right, this is a matter of my health.” I pulled my car over to the side of the road and waited. I have a technique that I often use. It is hard to tell what the prostitute really looks like when you are at a distance and it is dark out. When I pull over I leave my passenger side door locked and the window slightly cracked. When the prostitute approaches my car and makes an attempt to get in, they have to bend down and look in through the window- at me. “This is how I can see what they look like up close, without commiting,” my mentor taught me many years ago.

Write as I was about to unlock the door and open myself up to the wonderful world of prostitution my rational mind managed to sneak back in and say, “drive, drive away- tonight is not the night.” I felt the voice as if it had come directly from my soul. I looked into her glazed eyes and said “sorry but I can’t,” and then drove away into the night. In my rear view mirror I noticed that she was watching my car pull away like someone who had just lost an important opportunity. Even the I had and erection and a head filled with wine, I was able to return home from a pleasant evening free from the pangs of guilt and shame. Such is the life of a man without a sex life.

Beam Me UP!!

I am not of this world, nor do I belong in it. I am a stranger in paradise, an outcast marginalized by the rules and norms that I seem to have trouble accepting. The standardized modes of operation make me feel standardized so I always find myself running away. Humans do things in particular ways. I suppose the desired result is order and control. Through my many meetings with Heidegger, Kant, Nietzsche, Hegel and Schopenhauer I know that order and control are mere fictions of the mind which deny the individual the full experience of life. So I run. I detest. I quit. I lament and for thirty six years of my human life on earth I have stood alone in doubt of all systems which seem to deny me my soul. I am not of this world, nor do I belong in it.

For the past few weeks I have been teaching at an inner city high school. They recently asked me if I would not mind sending them my profile (degrees, experience, interests) and then they would link this to a personal web page for Teachers that they are in the process of creating. I told them that I was uncomfortable with this idea. I told them that I was not interested in the arrogant art of listing my credential after my name (which seems to me to be a modern phenomena. Example Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D. or Betsy Small, M.A). I prefer to remain one with the people, incognito, not displaying my credentials or experience upon my sleeve. Now my job is in jeopardy, I have offended several Educators who take pride in their graduate degrees and I have separated myself further from the crowd. All the things that one most do to fit into this modern world make me feel as if their is not some sort of ploy at hand to kill our dreams and marginalize each human into a submission in which we can never climb out from. So I run. I lament. I quit and I am always saying in the back of my mind “beam me up.”

If there was life on other planets do you think they would be sensitive to my situation? I consider myself to be a rather unique humanoid who would be a prime subject for some kind of abduction (they could study my brain and all the multifarious form of rebellious and unsatisfied neural transmission that cause anxiety, fear and aberrant thoughts). I am not offering myself up to this sort of experimentation- but sometimes I wonder if it would not be a better option than the fate of a human living on earth. Maybe alien abduction would offer me away out from the rules and norms that keep me stapled to way of life that feels tormented by Sartre’s concept of “No Exit.” So I run. I lament. I quit. And I write. I am not of this world nor do I belong in it.

A month ago I was working a few days a week in a very busy restaurant. My duty was that of a Waiter and I did my best to please the upper class families who dined in the establishment. One of the duties that all Waiters had to perform was making milkshakes (chocolate and vanilla) for the numerous children of the rich (and occasionally a few adults). When the restaurant was busy, which it frequently was, making milkshakes was a task equivalent to a trip the dentists office. It was painful and extremely messy. Here I was- stuck in a job where I was running around like a chicken with his head cut off making milkshakes while I had screaming customers waiting for water or food and the kitchen yelling out my name because the food which was waiting for me to take was getting cold. It was a no win situation which gave me chest pains and palpitations. But I did not care about this. The only thought that seemed to pass through my aggravated mind other than this sucks, was I can not believe that I am 36 years old making milkshakes. After two weeks on the job I quit and told the owner that I found the milkshake making duty an insult to my pride and well being. He just looked at me with a frown that seemed to say “you ain’t gonna have an easy time in this life.” Beam me up!!!

Sometimes I wonder if my dedication to being a writer and painter is not self sabotaging me into a life of poverty and making milkshakes. Of-course, I am aware that contentment and happiness all come from within. Of-course I know that if one is content with their life within, then making milkshakes or representing myself as a high school Teacher with a Master’s degree should not matter. Whatever I do should be a reflection of my inner-well being, despite the job. This seems to be the equation that is accepted by most spiritual practitioners- and I do not disagree. But I have a sensitive soul that feels easily compromised if put in certain situations. My soul shouts out at me that I am not representing it well enough and my body reacts to this revolt. I live in a particular era that seems to be based on the concept of compromising one’s soul in order to have inner and outer peace. Maybe what this life is all about is compromise….and this seems to be a lesson I am having difficulty learning. So I keep running, writing, lamenting and dreaming of a day that I will be either abducted by aliens or I will write the great American novel and move to Spain.

No More Awards….please!

This blog has been nominated for and given numerous awards. Every other day seems to bring a new nomination or award. I am the only Blogger that has been nominated for so many awards but yet maintains the least amount of interested readers and an all-time low number of comments. Some of the nominations have been for terrible writing style or offensive content but most of the awards I have received have been for worst blog. I am constantly asked by other Bloggers why I write the things I write, what purpose does it serve? I am inept of answers other than the simple response “because it is fun.” But all this fun is bringing me down as the awards keep pouring in. Just this morning I found out that I was nominated for two more awards, all of which have done nothing for my self-esteem. Please, no more awards.

Who would of ever thought that expressing the deep penetralias of my imagination would provoke an onrush of so many awards. I began this blog in the same way that someone would begin therapy. I recognized that I was in need of help and thought that I could either attempt to put my life down in words spoken through the vernacular of stories, or I could continue to suffer in my own private cerebral membrane. I new that I needed to come out of my shell and had remembered the therapeutic effects of writing that a short story teacher I once took a class from- often talked about (even though he had fallen into the rut of alcoholism and animal fetish). I took to blogging like a infant takes to a mothers breast. Stories of perversion and psychosomatic breakdown came poring out of me like lava from the mouth of a crater. Now I am hardly able to control the flow. Bloging has become for me like any other excretory process- I have to do it and if not my health will fail.

So here I am again clearing my body and brain of various thoughts and condemnations I have been feeling this morning. Receiving all the awards that I have has been surprising since I set out not for accolades. The other day I received an award for Least Commented Upon Blog. I never knew that such awards existed but once I received the award for Most Degenerate Content (the award was given because the judges felt that my blog lacked any moral integrity), I realized that any kind of award is possible. There are people in the blogging world with nothing to do but give out ridiculous awards to Bloggers like my self who have nothing to gain from these awards but a lowered sense of confidence to continue writing (and a feeling of isolation because I can not share these awards with my mother, father, sister or wife because it is to embarrassing). To all such award creators who seem to lack a life of meaning- please, NO MORE AWARDS!!

My last entry, The Great Leg Trap, just received two awards, this morning!! I awoke and found in my email the awards which come in the form of a brief letter explaining why I have been chosen and a widget that is offered to me so I can post my victory upon my blog. I have no desire to show off my accolades (like a general does upon his sleeve or a business man does with the quality of his tie). I rather write humbly without any disturbing widgets mentioning that I have won awards for things like “Offensive and Godless Content,” “False Tagger,” “Blogger Most In Need Of Psychological Treatment,” “Defiantly, Worst Blog,” and this morning “Most Ridiculous Entry,” and “Most Failed Attempt To Be Funny Entry.” There is no economic compensation for these awards other than the recognition that comes from humiliation.

So please, I would like to ask all of you who create these absurd award contests for Bloggers like myself to be victimized by…NO MORE AWARDS. It is really starting to affect my self esteem and I am questioning the things I write more and more. I am wondering if there is any point to continue on writing since the majority of my efforts are derided by your ridiculous awards. I have noticed that each time I receive an award I become more depressed and unwilling to write. The corner stone of good writing is in the authors ability to be absolutely honest in whatever he or she writes, and my ability to do so is being compromised by an insecurity that is beginning to form. Each entry that I write I have trepidation about publishing because I am afraid to see what kind of award it will receive. I have even started to delete certain blog entries because I feel they are certain to receive an award that will only increase my despair. Life is hard enough. This blog is only an exercise in cultivating mental health for myself, nothing else!! I do not want your recognition and I certainly do not need these ridiculous widgets!!. So please, I beg you from the bottom of my heart….NO MORE AWARDS!!!!

Full Catastrophe Living.

All my concern over sex, hookers, guilt, shame, money, health, spirituality, the environment and my car has taken its toll on my mental health. I was once a motivated young man with grand aspirations of fame and fortune. Now I sit at home, day after day with an empty bank account and an obsession for transgressive bliss. I stare at pictures of naked lusty women on my computer as if they could offer me a chance at salvation, but I know full well that I am escaping from the reality of “the job.”

I am not a big fan of “the job.” The only work that I really like to do is paint, write, read, meditate, sleep and look at the Craig’s List Erotic adds. Working to me is a labor which strips me of the time that I could spend doing the things I love and puts me into contact with people that I would normally never want to talk with. Work as a violation of the life I am trying to live. But rent is due in a few days, I have skipped many meals due to lack of funds and my wife is getting fed up with my habitual claim “that I have no money.” “Well you need to get a job,” she always replies. “I really do not want to get a job,” I retort. “What, are you just going to stay at home all day writing your ridiculous blog and expect that checks are going to show up in the mail?” she replies straightening her back bone like she is preparing for battle. I am wounded by her assault on my blog which I spend many hours preparing for distant readers I will never know. “The blog is valuable work, don’t pick on the blog. Pick on me and the fact that I do not want to Teach High school anymore, nor do I want to wait tables. There is nothing else that I am qualified to do and I have no ambition to do much at all,” I sob at her. “Well, this full catastrophe living has got to end. We have rent due in a few days and we need money for the bills. I can’t afford it all and we are going to be out in the streets if you do not get a job!!”

I could not disagree. I needed to find work. I had been applying to various jobs every day online but no one was biting the lines that I sent out. Each day I look at my email hoping that there will be a response but there never is. Just empty space. Sometimes I spend hours writing back to employers who have not taken a moment to respond to me. I write that it is bad karma not to respond to an email but that I understood because it was probably only a reflection of the way in which they treated themselves- with no respect. Sometimes I will get a screw you back or a what would you know about karma, you are out of a job? But every day I put one foot in front of the other and try to maintain faith that every thing will turn out well. It is important to be centered when you are engaged in full catastrophe living.

“You need to get up, take your resume and go around to various restaurants and hand it out. You can not spend the majority of your day writing away on your blog. I will not allow it.” This is how I awoke this morning, my wife standing over me with a stack of unpaid bills in her hand. I felt a stabbing pain in my chest as I made my way out of bed and asked her to heat me up some water for tea. In my office there was a stack of freshly printed up resumes on my desk, with a note “I have complete faith in your ability to find a job.” I thought that after I published my first book of short stories, that the writing life had belonged to me. No longer would there be worries about work and economy. I would be able to write for a living and not have to clear another table or teach a freshman how to read. I was free and I was also wrong. The moment I thought the writing life had begun was the moment that full catastrophe living kicked into first gear.

I dressed in a nice black suit, put gel into my hair and headed out into the rain with a stack of resumes wrapped in plastic under my arm. I went around to three or four restaurants all of which took my resume with a quick glance and sometimes a few questions. One lady asked me what I like about working in a restaurant and all I could do was smile and wish her a good day, as I made my way out the exit. I handed resumes off to a woman at a real estate office, a manager at a record store, the post office and a doctor’s office. Any place where money could be made. When I returned home that day my wife had opened my unemployment check which had come in the mail and said to me, “you are lucky again.” There was enough to cover the rent and bills and a few hundred bucks left over to feed my personal fancies. The rain was coming down, it was dark outside and I retired to my office to start writing this post. As I turned on the computer my wife came up behind me, put her hand on my shoulder and said, “what do you want for dinner, it’s my treat.” I looked up at her and said “whatever you would like.” I had not eaten all day and any food sounded nurturing. I gave her a kiss and as I looked at her I said, “see, full catastrophe living isn’t so bad after all.” She made no reply.

Sitting On Buddhas Head.

The palest ink is better than the best memory. This quote was written upon a small paper tab that was attached to my tea bag. I had awoken in a fog unable to remember where I had eaten dinner the night before. I remembered my wife waking in the middle of the night in a slight panic but other than this my past was as illusive to me as notions of god. While lying in bed I tried to recall a few things from my past. I was able to remember the faces of a few women I had slept with many years ago. I remembered the first car that I received upon turning the driving age (but I was unable to recall the color) and I also was able to remember a small park in Berkeley that I enjoy sitting in. Other than these few superficial details of my life I was having difficulty recalling the events of the previous day. I arose from bed, made some tea and found that relevant quote dangling from the tip of my tea cup. I am always startled by the way forces collude to create coincidences.

After eating an egg I was somehow able to recall a very large steel Buddha that a local artist constructed in a park around the corner from my home. I dressed quickly, feeling a strong inclination to go visit the Buddha. I had no understandable motive- other than seeking out a wisdom that may shed some light upon my lethargic situation. I put on mittens, a heavy jacket, and a cotton cap and walked the block or two to where the steel Buddha sat still upon the grass. A few dog owners were out throwing disturbing objects to salivating fur balls to chase after. I admired the contentment from which these dog owners watched their dogs run. I could not remember how long it had been since I felt that kind of contentment.

I stood beside the Buddha and looked up at it’s over-sized features. It’s height was no more than twenty feet. The artist created the Buddha sitting in the lotus posture, with hands coming together in the center- I assume to portray a state of nirvana. The Buddha’s eyes were shut and there was an expression of quiet rectitude upon his face. I stood in front of him and observed a very slight inhalation and exhalation coming from the statues belly. This did not surprise me since I was well aware of the scientific finding that within all inert matter there is moving energy. While breathing in the damp morning air I felt a strange desire to climb to the top of the Buddha. Like all my desires which I am seldomly able to control, I began my ascent.

After stepping on the hands, pulling at the nipple, hanging onto the nose and dragging my way up onto the crown of the Buddha’s head I had reached the summit with a rapidly beating heart and a feeling of being short of breath. I sat so that my long legs fell over the Buddha’s face and I looked straight out into a pasture of green grass. The sun had fully risen to its place in the sky and my mind was slowly becoming more relaxed. I breathed deeply and tried to find a place in me that spiritual aspirants refer to as a center. I slowed the erratic quality of my thoughts by listening to the squirrels chew walnuts in the trees. I could feel an intense vibrating energy coming from the Buddha’s face. It was such a strong energy that my legs and butt were quickly warmed up. The dog owners noticed this strange apparition sitting on the Buddha’s head and glanced at me with suspicious eyes. All I could do was smile and enjoy the morning sun.

Gradually I remembered various images that I had taken in the day before. I remembered the salad, orange and chicken that I had eaten for dinner with a few glasses of red wine. I remembered the bike ride that I had taken all around Berkeley and Oakland the day before. Fragments of my life started to come back to me the more I relaxed and quited my mind. Slowly I was re-introduced to a self I had forgotten. I was inspired to stand up tall on the Buddhas head and reach out towards the heavens. I was filled with an exhilarating feeling that wanted to touch the sun, the stars, all things divine. As soon as I stood up, I noticed my left foot loosing connection with the Buddha’s head. Soon after that my right foot lost its connection and before I knew it any sense of mindfulness that I had achieved was gone. I was falling twenty feet towards the dewy grass and all I could think on my descent down was this is going to hurt.

I was awoken by a feeling of wet sandpaper sliding its way along my face. When I opened my eyes I noticed two dogs gathering above me. They were licking the remnants of enlightenment from my face as their owners asked me if I needed them to call an ambulance. One owner told me not to move because I may have broken my neck. I felt bruised and battered but not in enough pain to feel as if I had been badly damaged. I landed in soft grass upon my back. I took the liberty to ask one of the dog owners to help me up, and then I dusted my self off. I was sore and my back felt like shards of broken glass. I will be okay, I told them as they watched me with carefully eyes. I am just going to slowly walk home and makes some tea. I slowly limped back towards my home- which I was having some difficulty finding. After a few moments it occurred to me that I was lost. I decided to sit down on the side of the road. My back refused to sit straight so I lied down on the ground. Looking up at the morning sun I decided- I would wait for as long as it took for the past to return to me so that I could slowly find my way back home.

Sex Life Of A Man Without One #12.

Lately, I have a tendency to write and watch pornography in my sleep. I sleep walk as well, but writing and watching pornography, all while I am sleeping is new to me. Last night I composed my latest blog entry,Dream Time- while asleep. Reading it today I was a bit confused as to how it got on my site- but then I recalled that when I awoke this morning I found my computer on, and my WordPress blog on my computer screen. This allowed me to conclude that I must have been writing in my sleep. Dream Time is not the kind of entry that I would normally write and it does indeed reflect the dreaming mind of a man who is asleep.

I am no stranger to doing things in my sleep. Those of you who have read my earlier blog entries are aware that while sleeping I have rang my neighbors doorbell early in the morning while in the nude, driven my car in the nude, taken showers and tried to have sex with my wife. The other evening she found me asleep and naked with an unmistakable erection- watching pornography on my computer. I was unaware of the fact that I was aroused but remember dreaming about the sexual interactions that were taking place on my computer screen. It was like a wet dream but I did not have the opportunity to cum. My wife woke me up with a pronounced “hey!!!” and a forceful nudge to my left shoulder. I was stupefied to find myself in the nude stretched out on my desk chair watching a women with a pony tail, wearing pantyhose- spitting recently swallowed semen out of her mouth on my computer screen. “What is this?” my wife asked mortified by the grotesque sight before her. “I was sleeping,” was all I could say in my state of utter confusion. “This is absurd!!” she said twice while turning off my computer. I felt shame, despair and humiliation all rolled up into a small package and stuffed into my mouth.

And now the blog entry written in my sleep. This is a strange occurrence. I am not normally concerned by the things that I do while sleeping, but I would like to keep writing to my waking hours. When I am sleeping I do not consider myself to be as good of a writer as I have the potential of being while awake. I may write things that should not be mentioned or incriminate myself in ways that only come out while unconscious. This is all very concerning. I have read Dream Time a dozen times today and am startled by the clarity of images and the strength of the narrators voice, who is a man asleep!! So starting this evening, I will take my computer and put it someplace that would be difficult for a sleep walker to find. I am also going to install a combination lock on my bedroom door because it is impossible for a sleep walker to remember numbers. My wife will not approve, she will say that it is a fire hazard- but how much longer can this madness continue?

Absurdistry Reconsidered.

LET THE IMMORALITY PLAY ROAR ONWARDS!! BASED UPON THE QUALITY OF A FEW OF THE COMMENTS THAT I HAVE RECEIVED, MY ARM HAS BEEN TWISTED AND I HAVE DECIDED TO REMAIN ON THE AIR PERPETUATING DEGENERATE AND PERVERTED TALES OF SEXUAL DYSFUNCTION/ADVENTURE AND ANIMATED PERSPECTIVES ON TIME AND SPACE WHICH SEEKS TO SLOW DOWN THE RAMBLING VOICE IN MY HEAD. I KNOW MANY MAY HAVE BEEN HAPPY TO SEE THE IMMORALIST GO AWAY BUT ONWARDS I GO, ONE FOOTSTEP AT A TIME….WITHOUT A CONCERN ABOUT WHERE I AM HEADING. THANK YOU TO THOSE FEW, WHO RE-KINDLED THE LIGHT IN AN ALMOST DARK ROOM.

Growing Pains

      The string that holds my soul to my body aches. The joints in my feet are constantly perturbing my mood. My spirit is inside out and there is an ominous worry that makes its way into my mind. My Doctor, who is also my mother and financial guardian- tells me that these are only growing pains. She is a Jungian Psychoanalyst, and she tells me that she sees many cases such as this from men and women in their mid-thirties. They are people who have a tendency to long for more than they have and feel much more accomplished than their reality might demonstrate, my mother tells me. They are individuals who are dreamers, and so far their dreams have not come to fruition so they must start to think of other ways to support themselves, she also told me. So far this sounded like me.

My growing pains began when I realized I may have to go back to school. I have always considered myself an artist but this imagination has not turned a profit. I have earned less than a $1,000 from my art and am now faced with a mid-life crisis. What am I going to do now? I am signed up and ready to attend a graduate program which will miraculously turn me into a psychotherapist. But it hurts. My eyes are heavy and my arms feel longer than normal. I have been stricken with constant headaches and a chronic cough will not leave me alone. I have never imagined myself a professional, let alone a Therapist- but there needs to be money in the bank and I am weary of my art being able to provide for my future family.

Madness is a disease that will keep your families stomach full and a warm roof over your head, the admissions counselor to the Psychology program told me. There is no shortage of psychological ailments to treat, you will be a rich man in no time. I can see it in your eyes, he said as we shook hands and I left his office. I returned home with palpitations and a pain in my side. What could he see in my eyes, I kept thinking. I was angry and decided to sit down and write this entry with the hopes that it might make some sense to a stranger out there who can relate to my pain. I am overcome by the world and the way I had imagined myself in it (writer, artist) seems to be changing into something else. It hurts.

I took a shower this morning and felt a painful knot in my stomach. I have been burping a lot lately which makes me think that I may be suffering from an ulcer. My worst fear other than death, is being ordinary. I have done every thing that I can to avoid the trappings of the ordinary. Now that I may be becoming a Therapist and a family man the trappings of ordinarinesses are seeming closer. I feel anxious and have to remind myself to stay present. I am currently enrolled in a stress reduction mindfulness course that is helping me to just this. Stay with the breath, when the mind starts chattering away, just bring your attention back to the inhalation and exhalation.

This morning I went for psychoanalysis with my mom. She has a nice leather couch that I lay down upon and the smell of redwood trees fills her small office in the Berkeley hills. I talked about my deepest fears- one being my inability to make money doing something that I love. I talked about how unhappy the prospect that I may never be successful at my chosen craft makes me. I shivered and felt my heart beating from my stomach. My mother told me that Apocalypse means to reveal what is hidden. It is a kind of renewal. She made me aware of the personal Apocalypse that I was going through and how the growing pains that I was feeling were symptoms of this Apocalypse. Be patient, allow the renewal to take place and stop judging, she said. Humans are supposed to be joyful.

I returned home this afternoon with a perpetual burp. The string that holds my soul to my body still aches. Today I will sit in meditation for a few hours and try not to worry about rent, what I am going to do for money, or my health. I will just sit still and inhale and exhale. This is it. All of my attention will go into being present in the moment. This usually relieves the headaches, palpitations, chest pain, back ache, ulcer, and feet aches. I have no idea how long these growing pains are going to last but I am getting close to forty and it is my hope that they are resolved by then.

How A Man Takes A Shower.

Once naked, I imagine myself to be some place else in time. Far away from the cold confines of my home and the dysfunctional harangues of my marriage. The warm steam fills the cold air with a sweaty mist and I am ready to leave my problems on the floor. When the temperature reaches a degree that would probably be to hot for most, I step into the claw foot tub without any thought for what I am leaving behind. In the nude, I am a threat to no one, innocent again. I am vulnerable to the whims of the world but alone in the privacy of a hot shower.

The first thing I do is warm my body and head (because I do believe the two are separate) with the hot water that is pouring against my fragile body. I think for a moment about death, but then comfort myself with humid deep breaths that open my lungs. I turn from back to front and front to back allowing the hot water to open all of my clogged up pores. I then lather my lanky body with a cinnamon soap that is carved in the shape of the Buddha. I suck in deeply the aromatic sweet and sour smell of the soap as I cover myself with its salve. The soap sizzles on my sensitive skin creating red spots that I sometimes confuse for boils. There are no sounds other than that of running water and the voices in my head. I clean my feet, thighs, buttocks, penis, chest, underarms and face- with a consistency that leaves me feeling untarnished by dirt or dust. Once this ritual cleansing has ended I then proceed to wash my hair with shampoo.

I use a natural shampoo that is made in Oregon and leaves my hair without dandruff or soot. It prevents my head from aching and it also limits the amount of negative thoughts that I think up. A lot has been going on in my mind as of late, and this shampoo lathers my thoughts with a preventative measure. My brain ceases to think about my impending separation from my wife or my fear of small, closed in spaces (like the shower). I am no longer feeling accents of anxiety or over heating pulsations of my heart. I am tranquil for as long as the herbal shampoo sits on my head and I can breath with a calm that evades me the rest of the day.

While the shampoo is still in my hair I take that time to clean out my ears and brush my degenerating gums and teeth. The toothbrush I use is long and cotton bristled and it has a particular knack for getting food out from small spaces. The toothpaste I use is a salt solution that claims to kill the bacteria which swim around in our mouths without any regard for human life. They spend their days eating away our gums so that in the end we are left with painful abrasions and aching molars. I brush my teeth, without the sensitivity that I have been told to use- but rather I brush with the determination of a man who has declared war upon an invading army. Once I am done with my frontal attack, I wash out my mouth with shower water and then proceed to empty the shampoo from my mind, head and hair.

The heat at this point begins to agitate my heart. I can feel its irregular gyrations that are usually the result of too much heat. I reduce the temperature of the water slightly and continue with my daily ablutions. I clean my face with a seaweed solution that my wife brought back from Spain. She yells at me whenever I use it, but I have learned to only abduct trace amounts of the solution so that she can not detect anything missing. I let this coral solution sit upon my face for five minutes and during this time I will normally apply a conditioner to my hair. At this point in my shower I normally used to masturbate. My reasoning is that it not only relaxes me, but after I orgasm in the shower I am able to wash down all of the remaining sperm with the conditioner in my hair and the coral solution on my face. This will guarantee that not a trace of my sperm will be left for my wife to detect on the tub floor. I like to leave the shower as I found it.

I have been abstaining from masturbation as much as possible lately. My hopes is to break free from any kind of sexual addiction I may have developed over the past 36 years of my life. I do believe that it is unhealthy to repress our sexual inclinations (this leads toward the individual becoming aggressive and irrational) but I have masturbated so much in my life that I can afford to abstain for a few months. Without masturbation, my showering ritual does feel incomplete, but I am learning to adjust to where I am at. I wash the remaining seaweed solution from my face and conditioner from my hair with a sadness that seems to come forth towards any ending. I turn off the hot water that has turned my entire body a velvety red color and I step onto the bah mat cleansed and a little less corrupted than I was when I first stepped into the shower. I dry my fragile body off with a 100% cotton towel and take a few deep breaths of the remaining warm steam. Because of my masturbatory habits the past few weeks when I get out from the shower I am left with an erection. I assume this is a result of my physiology which has been conditioned to associate showers with orgasm. Now that I am “attempting” to abstain from masturbation I have to wait a full five minutes for my erection to dissipate. I use q-tips  to clean out my ears, apply deodorant to my underarms and between my butt and then open the bathroom door where I walk into the world that for ten minutes or so, I was glad to leave behind.

The Disappearing Tennis Ball.

Why she wore a g-string, I will never know. I did not ask. She did not tell. Rachael is a good friend of my wife and she had a longing to play tennis. The weather was cold enough to freeze the cat’s water, but she did not care. A shot of whiskey and I’d be roaring to go. We played on the only grass court in town. I could feel the frozen grass beneath my feet. The day was ominous and Rachael seemed to be wearing the shortest tennis skirt made in America. I do not even think the skirt was for tennis. Her legs were long and brown in mid-winter. I found myself longing for the platitudes that Rachael’s bare legs and g-string aroused in me. I wanted her in the same way that I wanted food after a ten day fast. Her nipples were hardened by the cold and my eye had a hardened time staying away from them. The yellow tennis ball was the least of my interest- and her soft, silky voice gave birth to a lust in me that not even lying down in frozen grass could quell.

Rachael hit me a backhand and ran to the net. Her white skirt pirouetted in the slight breeze as I watched her brown long legs rumble toward the net. I mustered enough attention to follow the yellow tennis ball and return to her a lob so high that it would take years for it to return to the ground. My eyes immediately returned to her nipples as she stood prepared to return the lob with the full force of her nature. Her head was cocked back toward the starry heavens, as she waited with a racket slung back over her left shoulder. She waited and waited, and after a minute our so she looked directly at me and said “hey where did the tennis ball go?” I had been distracted away from time and space until that moment when I realized something very strange was taking place. I looked up into the heavens, searched around for a little yellow tennis ball and then looked back at Rachael who was standing beside the net, dumbfounded. “I have no idea,” I said with a shrug of the shoulders. We looked around the perimeter of the tennis court to see if the tennis ball may have landed some place else, but saw no sign of a yellow ball. “That is the strangest thing I have ever seen,” Rachael said as we sat down on a bench on the side of the tennis court. “That tennis ball vanished in mid-air,” she said with a bewildered and slightly scared look upon her face. I could think of nothing more clever to say than, “I guess God needed a tennis ball.” She looked at me and giggled and it was then that we decided it would be a good time to return home. My wife was making sandwiches for dinner.