playing for change

playing for change

still. here.

i. am. still. here.
still. stilted. stilton. stifled.
feeling very spacey
and not quite of this world,
like the real world is just barely out of reach
but we could reach it
if we tried
but we're too scared, too frightened,
to do anything about it --
i'm here to say, it's all right, it's okay.
watch the video

harry potter and a sundae

last night
jack, peggy, haleigh and i saw harry potter and the half bood prince
while sarah worked at the marble slab creamery, where we went
afterwards, and i had a hot chocolate fudge sundae.
we met phil, one of the owners.
he spoke of his hometown, winnepeg,
and his search for a franchise

my madness is waxing...

...like the moon,
lots ef exposure to strangers
and no answers from friends

blogging

invariably, by the time i get here,
i forget what i was going to blog about.
which begs the question,
what was so impotant anyways?

i am deluged by facebook.
how do people have time
for computer-based social networking?
since their time is finite,
what are they giving up instead?
what cyber-age choices are they making?

my mri

my mri on monday
was ordered by the abi program in hamilton
which is probably why nothing was sent
to the avm clinic.

i have yet to hear the results
of the mri.

catching up

just catching up on the 'net!

visits with the sues

lunch with sue hannah and julie and day and yes, soph.
mid-afternoon brunch in notl
catching up with sue hirst
followed by a banana split at the
avondale on stewart road
--messy but healing fun food!

digital calendar

the useful things about this digital calendar are:

• posterity
• ease-of-date
• always online

the labourious things about it are:

• if you mess up, you mess up big
• it's easy to get the date wrong
• i'm not always online

round and round

primer
the shape of a circular path moving through a dimension is a helix.
two helicies side by side is also known as a double helix.
dna, or dioxyribonucleic acid, is a double helix joined by pairs.
the pairs contain information about how to build this particular body.

allegory
although we may seem to be standing still,
we are actually moving as a pair of double helices,
constantly emitting information,
constantly seeking to join others in a
seemingly simpler state.

prince charles asks...

"i wonder is it the case that the problem lies first and foremost not in what we do but in a fracture within us that leads to a limited view of what and where we are in the natural order. and that therefore we need urgently to look deeply into ourselves, and at the way we perceive the world and our relationship with it." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8141490.stm

the slab and brock

my brother-in-law, jack, took me to the marble slab creamery for a double-chocolate-and-peanuts-in-a-waffle-bowl around 3. then a tour round developments at brock.

t-o

dr. wallace,
co-director of the avm clinic,
confirmed dr. o'kelly's diagnosias that
not a lot is known about how the brain functions and
why i have cognitive impairment in the mid-brain
and he said the official word from dr. sharpe,
world-renowned ophthamologist--
the official word about my case is
'weird'
they wanna check my shunt
they wanna lookit my mri
they're grasping at straws
and i'm feeing kinda lost in all this...

look

look.
i wanna tell you what gnaws at the bottom of my heart.
i'm not good enough.
especially now, that i'm afflicted,
changed,
not the same as i was before.
it's not simply a matter that i can't *be* what i did before,
i can't *do* and that bothers me.
i guess what i did was a large part of who i was--
i know the enightened among us stress that being trumps everything
so this is another lesson i've learned--
i'm not as enlightened as i thought i was--
far from it.
at this stage in life i am pretty lazy.
i'm pretty venal, too.
there's stuff i know i should do for myself
but i could hardly care less,
but i'll do it for you.
is that love or is it vanity?
i'm too close to it right now
to give you an honest answer.

lots done

and its only the middle of the week.

passing the time

i've been here most of the day.
i got outside for a bit before the rains came,
but mostly i've been online looking
for the new torchwood episodes--
without much success.
every once in a while i think of others
and fantasize for a moment how they might be
struggling through the day
and i don't feel so alone...

my blogs

http://redsaucer.blogspot.com/
http://peterladage.blogspot.com/
http://manfromplaid.livejournal.com/
http://ca.geocities.com/anabananapants/

the day

started off with a morning trip
to the st. catharines general for an mri.
i just tried to relax the during the trip
and let the pros do their thing--
i knew my job which nobody else could do.
i wore headphones and listened
with some interest
to easy rock during the procedure.
near the end they filled me with a traceable chemical.
afterwards the nurse brought me a coffee
and we chatted back to the shaver.
after lunch i explored social networking
with uncle malcolm,
and after supper a round, old white man
toured me around a gaming site.

crazy

i'm definitely crazy living here...
gotta get outta this place
if it's the last thing i ever do...

shaving some more

i shaved before my shower,
it's not a close shave but it'll do.
and i took care not to cut myself.

what day is it?

wasn't sure if it was sunday or monday.
knew i was sleeping in for reason.

trip to the td

peggy and jack picked me up
so that i could neet justine and open a td account.

pat and sue

i'd been outside for a while,
was warming up between the payphone and the bench
when pat and sue came along.
sue and i talked mostly of her eventual retirement.

noodles and chat

yesterday,
went to the noodle house on geneva near church.
had noodles and a long chat.
resolved to go it alone, for a change.
but i still need to
see the kids while they are growing.
wes may forever be growing.
is that a fault? is that *his* fault?

dear god

dear god,
i believe
you exist for your own purpose
i exist for your purpose
that's about the limit of my belief in your
ineffability

shaving again

i scraped myself
and cut me too
but it's done, and i did it myself
[hopefully i won't need a nurse for the cut]

fort erie racetrack

the rec group
--melissa, kelly, harold and ruth, pam, judy, susan, and me--
went to the racetrack, today.
i went principally to pass the time.
i'm still uncertain about reality,
but i think the longer i'm here,
the less likely i am to discern what is real.
the question remains,
where to go and
what to do next?
this feels like a solo project
but the kids are aging by the day...
maybe it's too late for me and i just don't know it
maybe it does matter and the answer is staring me in the face
but i choose to ignore it...
i have to find out which,
and find myself,
and find the ultimate reality,
hopefully all in one!
...or, maybe there is no answer
what a conundrum!
can i do it alone, solely? or,
do i need help?
and, if the latter,
and what is she telling me?

wheelchair repair

sherri looked at my chair at 9 am

all morning in bed

i was up all night because of my roommates' restlessness,
so after going to the bathroom in the eary morning
i spent all morning in bed.

my life is like a poem

my life is like a poem.
the first time, you approach it
like a serial event,
but after that you revisit certain parts
in their entirity

shaving finale

man, i look horrible,
and isn't the whole behind point shaving
to look good?
so i asked nancy if she'd trim me up,
which she did,
and now i feel good.

shaving redux

i tried shaving again.
what a miserable failure!
i cut myself,
i left a couple of patches behind,
and i lost interest part way through.

lazy day

today was a right lazy day.
so lazy in fact there doesn't seem much to recall.
i didn't do anything or
go anywhere
with anyody.
there's some laundry happening--
oh boy!

shaving... again

it's been about a week since knifedge has touched my face,
and my beard is growing in.
when i look in the mirror
i'm reminded of my hairiness
and i feel i should do something about it.
but what can i do
but lay low?

red roof inn riding stable

i and the rec group went to the red roof inn riding stable in notl. it was very good to be outdoors.

t.o. trip to see the ophthamologist

i went to toronto with my sister. we avoided church and politics and she played ladysmith black mombazo most of the way and back. the orthoptical assistant didn't crack a smile until the end, the ophthamology intern missed a crucial piece about my nystagmus, and dr. sharpe informed me that eye surgery would happen a year from now and would only have about a ten percent effect on my ataxia. i'm bummed.

everything's up in the air

i have a new room,
new roommates who have new and serious problems
--one doesn't know who he is,
one spits up in his sleep,
and one not only needs the commode, he needs the lift!--
am i so far gone that i'm in with this lot?
no! i'm trying to elevate my doings
to a new level!
for example,
i folded my clothes
after doing the laundry--
but even that is problematic in that
i don't have the drawerspace i once had.
why is it that
as i get closer to reality
things get harder?

pastor kitson

what, with jim kitson leaving and all, do you think? (i read an old post from april '06)

moved again

i got moved again,
to room 102
with ernie, doug, and carlo as my roommates.
all septagenarians, or older.

tickles my fancy

i'm goin' where the sun keeps shinin'
through the pourin' rain;
skippin' over the ocean
like a stone
--harry nilsson
http://design-milk.com/

shaving 3

i took last night's band-aid off this morning and haven't bothered with my ear since. i hope it stays that way.

pay no attention to the posted time...

...it's really 1:05 p.m.

laundry

just doing the laundy, as constant and mundane as brushing one's teeth. speaking of which....

sunday visits

• i try to sleep in but i'm up really early. i can't take it and go back to bed after breakfast
• sue - i'm up too late for church, so we go to tim's and commune under the gazebo. afterwards, i feel guilty for her driving all this way, and for secular events. but we have a commitment for next time.

shaving 2

but it does matter, after all.
i cut myself badly enough
that i needed the attention of a nurse
and now i'm wondering if,
like a premature fall,
i'm ready for prime-time

mariposa

this is mariposa weekend.
it feels weird not to be involved.

shaving

i like the look of me clean-shaven,
but i'm no longer good at shaving. today,
i've cut myself on the right earlobe.
i've learned with shaving
and with handwashing
that it does't really matter.
i hope.

goals

i've been thinking of
re-setting my goals for some time,
making them more achievable.
who knows what tomorrow may bring?
joanna came by today
and we talked about more immediate goals.
to prove my point,
i fell this evening
doing bar exercises--
i didn't hit my head and
i got up right away.
i have a tentative release date....
i guess i'll shoot for that and
lay low for a while

antivivisectionism

the brain that changes itself is a good read, except it treads on my antivivisectionist ethics.

while the portrayal of the two peta activists as loners and lovers may have some merit, doidge gives no balance to it.

he calmly writes of sewing up monkeys' fingers and kittens' eyelids, then 'sacrificing' them and doing autopsies to see what changes have been wrought in the brain.

i'm perplexed what to do with the knowledge gained in this reading.

in the larger scale, i'm perplexed what to do with compromised knowledge in general. is all human knowledge compromised?

maybe i should fergetaboutit.
maybe i should keep it close and personal.
maybe i should be firm and stand for what i believe in.
maybe i should join the 21st century and disavow peta.
as i said, i'll sleep on it.