wandering the sheltering sky

Ideas and desires curl and nest inside of me. Some days and some better nights, i get to let them uncoil and rampage through the landscape of my life. There are so many things i want to say, want to write, want to paint, want to feel under my hands and taste in my mouth.

But tonight nothing is coming to me. I know there are these things i’ve wanted to express for a while, letters i want to write but when i try to make them coherent, they disappear. I desire curves and softness and conversation but my room is empty, my bed unmade.

And now the clock is looking at me in that way that says my day is over whether i like it or not and so i go to put myself and these ideas and desires to bed and try to write something coherent tomorrow.

As i write this, Borders [BGP, currently delisted], is closing about 33% of their stores. During the last holiday season, their sales were dismal whereas Barnes and Noble posted healthy profits. This is so depressingly wrong.

Let’s play that game that i like to play so much: compare and contrast.

I don’t make much money. I work for a high school and clear less than $2000 a month. That’s a fiscal reality that i have to plan my life around. I also like books. Lots and lots of books… and dvd’s and cd’s. Ask anyone that’s helped me move. I like books.
Continue reading “Borders rocks, Barnes and Noble is a joke and why your e-reader is teh weaksauce”

It’s coming up on that time of year where i get to reflect on the changes my life has undergone since i began being treated for sleep apnea. In a few days, it will have been three years since i began sleeping with a bi-pap assisting my breathing at night.

When a stroke patient [that survives], receives an MRI, the damaged and necrotic tissue in the brain can be seen and quantified. The reason i bring this up is because of a conversation i had with my otolaryngologist. For years i felt stupid. I was unable to grasp basic concepts, follow instruction and was prone to being moody [not to mention my insatiable hunger and continual drive to sleep]. The first morning i had after using the bi-pap was a turning point in my life. I’ve written extensively about this. What i couldn’t understand then that i have since realized is that i believe that after 15-18 years of being oxygen deprived at night [to recap: my hypoxia index was at 53% and continuing to fall during my initial sleep study], it’s entirely within the realm of possibility to consider that a prolonged lack of oxygen would have an impact on my brain. Brain tissue wouldn’t be necrotized, as is with the case of stroke victims.
Continue reading “3 years of being awake and awaker and awaking”

A few weeks ago i’m at work and need to use the toilet. It happens to the best of us. There’s one in a wing of the school that isn’t as trafficked as the others- so that’s where i go. Besides, it’s in the middle of class so what are the chances that anyone else is going to need it?

I’m in there minding my business and a knock comes on the door. “Busy!” i reply. I guess i could have shouted something else like, “No thanks! I’m doing fine by myself” or “POOPIES ARE HERE!”, but i don’t. “Busy” seems to be relatively well contained and self explanatory.
Continue reading “bathroom rant”

I came across my Moleskine today. I bought it years ago but never got as much use from it as i thought i would. It cost me $17 then- which was a lot of money to me at the time. Anyway, i found this passage in the first pages.

It’s the 1st Saturday in May, 2005.

I’ve just bought the book you have in your hands now. I don’t expect greatness to come out of it nor for it to do for me what countless notebooks before this one have failed to do.

Continue reading “from my moleskine”

Tonight’s Listening: Plastikman : Closer – This is my 1st go with it, so no opinion yet. I’ve enjoyed Richie Hawtin’s Closer to the Edit, so that bodes well. Of course, i’m suspecting that only Amanda and Joanna (two of my most musically literate friends) know what the hell i’m talking about.

Apparently, it’s that time of year where guys reinforce their masculinity by watching guys in tight pants hold each other in a circle, jump and pile on each other, slap each others ass and jump in the air and thrust their nipples on each other in celebration when someone scores. Hello Sailor! It’s football season! Woo hoo! So manly!

In a few minutes, i’ll be leaving to have my first post surgery sleep study. This should be interesting to say the least. Technically there’s no reason for me to still have obstructive apnea but apparently i have begun to convulse while sleeping. Not sure what that’s about. I really, REALLY hope i don’t have central sleep apnea too.

There are a lot of ideas in my noodle and to my shame, i haven’t had the discipline to let them out. But they’re there. They coil and thrash and scream at me to be set free. I will work on putting pen to paper [as it were] in the very near future. Preferably this coming week.

I have a friend in Austin that’s going through a divorce. We don’t get to talk often; i’m on the west coast and busy. She’s in Texas and probably busier.

Her marriage wasn’t a terrible marriage in the way that those sorts of things go but it was fundamentally flawed. Ten years later and she’s single again.

And in one of our far too infrequent conversations, she made an interesting comment- one of the things she’s been pondering is what commonality, what common thread have the men in her life had?

Her question began the same question within me. But whereas her direction was probably more towards finding a common fatal flaw that she was initially either attracted to or overlooked, i took it a different direction. I started to wonder what the common thread was in the women i’ve loved; many of which i love to this day to one degree or another.

Continue reading “the common thread”