Do androids dream of electric sleep

Rhys, the little guy, doesn't sleep as well as we'd like.  It is, of course, the very thing that you always hear about from parents, the loss of sleep.  But until it is happening to you it somehow isn't real, as with most things.  You convince yourself that you'll be fine, it's just part of having a baby, you'll deal with it.  

Sure.

For infants all things must seem in the immediate present. We wonder what he could be dreaming about: sounds, lights, basic shapes, memories from within the womb, our voices, our faces, breast milk, breasts.  Who knows.  He hasn't established the ability to convert the random firing of neurons during sleep into story lines; the way that adults dream in the absurd sequences of pleasure or fear. It is impossible not to wonder as you watch the expressions shoot across his little face and hear the infant noises of inner activity, the miniature strains of mental movement.  He falls from wakefulness into a dream state almost immediately.  Sometimes as soon as he closes his eyes he is already in REM sleep, gurgling and cooing in his doze.     

I was once gifted a book, by Z, about children's mental development and how the brain emerges from one state towards another.  It is, along with all of my other books, boxed up. I am becoming increasingly eager to unbox my life. There are things that I feel I must know now.  It's as if I've spent my entire life preparing for a moment in which I am woefully unprepared.

I was also given a book that is ostensibly to help with creating sleep patterns in children. The friend who gave it spoke of it very highly.  Unfortunately the system does not seem to be recommended until after 6 weeks or so, and does not really roll out its program effectively until around 6 months of age.  You are basically on your own during this initial time period.  No advice can help you, no system save you...  

... though we are prepared to reach out to The Mormons and learn from their vast historic wisdom.  If nothing else they will very likely be able to tell us who Rhys' mother and father are.... they are experts in genealogy, they've got it all figured out... like with Jesus' trip to America, the spirit prison, and how mere believers become gods themselves, presiding over their own universe.  

Prophet Romney should do quite well here, brethren.

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Chief Troubleshooter

Ok, no more talk of Glenn Beck. It ruined my reader count in a single day.  Do you see how dangerous and damaging even the mere mention of his name is?  Everyone is entitled to be a fool from time to time but comrade Beck abuses the privilege...

I watched "The Return of the Pink Panther" last night. The 4th in the original series, from 1975.  I've probably said this before on this site, but why didn't they get Sacha Baron Cohen to do the remake instead of Steve Martin?  It is precisely his style of humor and NOT Steve Martin's style, arguably.  The major difference between Peter Sellers and Sacha Baron Cohen is that Peter Sellers was primarily self-deprecating, a form that SBC is certainly capable of pulling off.  Though he often opts for satire he has proven himself to be adept at that almost slapstick style of comedy as well. Inspector Jacques Clouseau.... He could even re-use his outfit from "Hugo."

Why am I not getting paid millions to make these decisions?

So, no baby picture today... We will see what effect it has on my readership.  CafeSheen has suggested that the posting of Rhys is yet another shrewd business move on my part, as I've just been sitting back and watching the money roll in from this site.  No, I kid, of course.  Several people have tried to convince me that I should do banner advertising, that it is "free money."  But anybody that knows me knows that I would much rather work for my income.  I eschew all such easy-way-out ideas, and much like Jimmy Buffet I also insist on paying double or even triple my fair share in taxes. Parrot-Pead Party Revolution, right? 

One thing about the baby though.  I've gotten so used to people, strangers that is, approaching us in public to look at the baby that now I find myself a little bit insulted if they don't want to see him, then goo-goo and coo at him.  I think they're being assholes if they don't, I've almost had to tell a few of them so.  

My friend, Z, responded to a post from the other day, agreeing that having a child is supposed to create a variety of positive changes in your life. You're supposed to magically be more patient, knowing, loving, etc., etc.  She posits that those type changes are hard to generate in oneself.  These things take time, I guess. 

I treat all experiences like drug experiences in that there should be a discernible transformation in thought or feeling, otherwise I feel like I got ripped off and I'm looking for "the guy" to get my money back... I will have a chat with the delivery doctor and see what's up.

No.  

I have been thinking of new job titles for myself...

- Chief Troubleshooter

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Two dueling idealists

The picture above was only a trick to get you to read the post below.... It was taken for a friend to establish Rhys' size in relation to a familiar object. As all liberals own iPhones I thought that particular object was both appropriate and telling.  Rhys has no current political affiliations, dear reader.

I have a friend, whom I've written about here in the past a handful of times, Bobby.  He leans heavily to the right, by my estimation. So far right in fact that he has lately disavowed the Republican party and admits to a conservative-libertarian view (I couldn't bring myself to capitalize that phrase).  He is a fan of Glenn Beck and has told me that he only wishes that he had listened to Beck more carefully, that he might have been better prepared for the housing bubble to collapse had he done so.  Imagine hearing that from a friend: that not having had a closer adherence to the ideas of Glenn Beck is an admitted regret.

He mentioned a publication that I should read. It is a re-publishing of The Federalist Papers but in a modern, updated version of English, so as to be more easily understood.   At the time of his telling me this I did not realize that he was referencing a work by Glenn Beck*. I found an alternate modern publishing of The Federalist Papers and ordered it from Amazon.  Upon telling him this he said that he's sure that the one that I ordered is fine also, surmising that I will make the same conclusions with this one as with the other. Then he said something that surprised me.  He said, "... maybe you will be a beacon to your left leaning friends. U never know" (It was "said" in a text message, hence the use of "U", etc.).

This sentiment strikes at the heart of what bothers me with both the left and the right. There is a basic model that the right uses to address the left.  It is with a condescending sympathy, as if the left is mostly in need of education, particularly historical education, and that this would perhaps solve the nation's many woes. Once they became educated in the proper historical sense then the whole nation of 300 million would happily defeat immigrants together.  This overlooks little details like the passing of time and the changing needs of a society, as well as slavery once being legal, and The Constitution applying to only white land owners.  But hey... slavery is implicitly approved of in the Ten Commandments also.  So, why fret over mere trifles... It is written.

The left similarly reduces the right down to gun-carrying racists who are much more in need of socialization rather than education.  They are personified as all in desperate need of an empathy injection, but alas there is little hope for these suburban troglodytes of middle-America.  They are hateful and styleless.  None of them are funny, ever. The males wear white "tube-socks" with pants and the women wear white after labor day... Most of them are poor and are too stupid to realize that their elected leaders hate them, that they have been tricked by the political system, but that's probably only because they don't watch 30 Rock and Sex In The City.  Can you even imagine?

Some of this is true, of course.  I mean, Republicans are often nasty and snide. I can hardly stand to listen to many of them talk for more than a minute or two without offering debate or silently farting with enthusiasm while locking a generous smile on them.  Liberals are so woefully misguided on tactics to aid society that one need only ask them simple questions on affirmative action to see how they've never bothered considering their beliefs beyond that they fall in line with the left's various program for social justice and the absolution of guilt. I guess that's it, both groups see a different past: the right sees a glory, the left sees shame.  Neither side seems very good at acknowledging there was a fair share of both, and that wholly embracing either will likely be a solution for neither.

But my friend Bobby keeps talking to me as if I simply need to grow up, and that one day hopefully, I will.  He has said things like "All of your pie in the sky schemes don't work." Though I have never, to my knowledge, presented any political or economic "scheme" of mine to improve society. He can not say the same. He is a non-stop fountain of society improving ideas, all seemingly based on ideas from the 18th century as if The Constitution was actually written to perfection, like with the phrasing of the 2nd amendment. Once I get his permission to re-print some correspondence that he has sent me privately here then I will dismantle them with great joy and relish.  Fox, indeed.

He has suggested that having a child will finally draw me back to the herd and my views will naturally shuffle to the right, one day falling in line enough that I might even be welcome at one of his North Carolina barbecues, or even some deep sea fishing off the coast of Florida.  All of that sounds great, but let's leave politics aside for any adventure like that...  Having a child will only deepen my commitment to liberal ideals, I am certain of it.  I have not spent my entire life defending the world as I hope it to be to suddenly turn my back on my own convictions and go running to the right for protection, as if I've finally returned from a 30 year Rumspringa.  The prodigal neo-con comes home. 

If you watch Glenn Beck uncritically, and pretend that you have no knowledge or sense of American history whatsoever, then he can be convincing as he perpetually works towards his own paranoid conclusions, never doubting his own doubts, offering all contrary evidence as proof of certainty.  He is a living, breathing conspiracy theory, ever citing the past as proof, even pre-determination, of said doom. It is written.

In the same way Jon Stewart's condescending laugh convinces many on the left that they are not only correct, but quite charmingly so.  But Glenn Beck is a paranoid imbecile and Jon Stewart is really only good at interviewing people, exceedingly good at times.  As a comedian Stewart is quite off-putting and smug, to me anyway.  His contrived laugh is worse than nails on a chalk board, it's like chalk on a chalk board.  It is forced and affected.  His laugh was planned.  I'd have to go back and watch some very early episodes of his show to verify this, if I get some time then I will.  Don't hate me dear liberal readership.  I can do no other.

Everything Glenn Beck says is funny too, but nobody ever laughs.  The right must see laughter as a sign of weakness.  Dick Cheney's chuckling grimace was one of the most telling giveaways in the history of modern politics.  I'm certain that it is only a matter of time before this issue is raised as a means of telling the true patriots from the "others."  Soon humor will be added to the signs to watch for.  

They say that it is as unique as a fingerprint, laughter. 

Please, don't tell Beck....

* - Apparently the "scholarship" was not Glenn Beck's but that of a student.  I was told this by my friend and have not researched it myself, nor am I likely to. I only thought the detail significant to the conversation.

Ooops

Nothing to report. Days pass with increasing speed.  I've been given some time off for having a baby, several weeks.  I had big plans for that time, things that I would accomplish that would help shape our future.  Nope.  Instead I take more naps, stare vacantly at the computer screen, watch Rachel feed the baby and change his diapers, go for walks, etc.  I should really stop complaining and accept that I was destined to be right where I am now... no further, just father.

Don't get me wrong, I love the free time to be around Rachel and the boy, it's a truly adorable time.  I'm helping in small ways, almost imperceptible minor acts that accumulate over the course of the day, I hope.  But it is very easy to feel useless, a bumbling nuisance, a non-essential in a world of essentials.  Other than holding the baby I haven't really been able to learn how to do much to help yet.  Rachel has leapt quite naturally into the process with a zeal that is inspiring.  There is no way to match her energy for it.


My socialist friend from Holland has written me a funny email with some good advice.  He recently became a father also so he has just over a 1 year head-start on the process.  He is often filled with both wild and grounded advice, some of it is good and funny, some of it useful, some of it the other kind.  He is sensibly questionable of other fathers and the claims they too often make.  We agree that it is that sort of thing that has so skewed many people's perceptions of the process and perhaps even kept some men from committing to the act themselves.  People speak in hyperbole about it all, which tends to frighten and intimidate. The act seems too large to perform, the risk of failure too great. Because they often lack imagination they speak in terms that merely suggest completeness, beyond the reality of it all.

They wouldn't actually do "anything" for their child.  It's an absurd fantasy scenario where they get to claim they are heroes without ever having to prove it. It's a way of claiming that they magically became a super-hero-god just by having and loving their offspring.  If I ever utter those words on this site then please remind me.  Please... people that make absurdly untestable claims about the love they have for their children should be ostracized.

Even Meatloaf had the good sense to qualify his commitment to love. If I ever hear somebody claim that they would "do anything for their child" again then know in your hearts, dear readers, that I will be chanting this song in my mind for them when they say it, and I will forever equate their emotional world with the Mediaeval world of Meatloaf.

No stranger to hyperbole myself, I often find the impulse to overstate little events.  I prefer to think of it as poetic license, but when I go back and read some of it while I am sober I console myself with the idea that perhaps my readers will just think of me as romantic, rather than just dull and maudlin.  Who knows.  There's always another day to write in other ways.  Two out of three 'aint bad, says Meatloaf, the bologna bard.

Ok... dear god, please help me out of this casserole.

Let me try again:

Many of the fathers that I know became a parent through a drunken lack of planning.  It all began as a fun naked accident.  Some of them accepted the fate of it, some of them resisted, some of them decided they liked it so much that they had a few more kids, with or without the original mother.  For Rachel and I it was quite different. We decided we wanted to have children so we structured our lives so that we could do so.  A fact that has given me much less room to complain.  I mean... I do complain sometimes, but it carries less weight, much less.  I don't get to laugh about the "Ooops" and the "Oh well" moment, though I don't imagine that I'm missing all that much.

I get to compensate by saying "Oops" about very different things now, like a diaper with a dollop of mustard-pooh in it.

Or, getting caught listening to Meatloaf.

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A hard lesson to learn

For the past several mornings, out of convenience, I've been getting breakfast at this drive-through health food place. I often get the #2... a Sausage Egg McMuffin with hash browns and a Coca-Cola instead of a coffee.  It's very close to our apartment and the morning drive is the only exercise I get all day. It's usually freezing and the car begins to warm up just as I arrive back home.  The world is sometimes perfectly arranged in this way.

You can determine how healthy a morning meal is by how many letters in its description are capitalized. Sausage Egg McMuffin with hash browns and a Coca-Cola.  In polite circles it's known as "The widow maker."

As I sat at the drive-thru window, berating myself once more, just after eagerly paying, waiting for my bag of health to arrive, I was fiddling with my morning soda, when something occurred to me.  I took the wrapper off of the straw and balled it up and then tossed it into the flower bed.  Somebody will have to clean that up, I thought.   I am a job creator.

I stayed up late last night and watched the parade of republican presidential hopefuls. Newt Gingrich seems a little bit "off," wouldn't you say?  But it sure is fascinating, educational and fun to watch this gimp shame himself in front of the nation once again.  It's a form of ethical ecstasy.  He is a veritable fountain of folly.  Lately he's been suggesting that people should get behind him because he's not really a Washington insider.  Read that last sentence again.  It's an almost Hitler level lie.  The big lie.  A lie so "colossal" that it goes by almost unnoticed, nobody bothers even questioning it.  A lie that gets to exist out of its sheer enormity alone.

Gingrich is like some demented pterodactyl of the pre-historic Reagan past. He's attached himself to the right wing of the nation's political flight and he's out there flapping and squawking away wildly, disrupting all on board, hoping to bring the whole thing down.  It's an exciting time for everybody but the air marshals seem unwilling or incapable of finally just shooting him off the wing. He's dehydrated, exhausted and has a leathery outer surface made of mostly detached foreskin meat, but with the eyes of a young Manson, still holding on for the hopes of one more round of fresh public humiliation and penis blood. 

As the plane enters its initial descent into the Washington area his primeval roar is causing a scramble at Andrews Air Force base. No wonder, he once claimed that a terrorist attack is just what this country needs...   "And it's almost like they should every once in a while allow an attack through just to remind us of..." - Newt Gingrich

As the flight begins to approach the runway lights he's flap-shrieking his poisoned heart out trying to truly become our "definer of civilization."  

That's presidential material if there ever has been. The nation needs to be reminded of the dangers out there, and what better way than to let the terrorists rub our noses in it with an all-out attack. That 'ought to shut us all up for a bit, especially the left.  Some hard lessons need to be taught and he's just the guy to do it.  

Gingrich also thinks the best way to deal with the Supreme Court is to ignore them. I'm almost at the the point where I want to see him win.  What a wonderful way to watch an entire empire collapse.  The Grich that stole Christmas....  Nero Gingrich.  The Newtron Bomb.

Please nation, give us one last laughingstock to ride us into the coming apocalypse.  

We've earned it, we deserve it, and now we should just let it happen, says Newt.  

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Absorption

People who have children will probably laugh at what I am about to write: nothing really changes all that much after having a child, it's all a myth.

It has been a week since Rachel went into labor, almost a week since we had our boy, Rhys, last Saturday.  But nothing has really changed yet.  What we spend our days doing has changed, and the introduction of a child into our lives has changed the landscape of our hearts, and there are new colorful devices everywhere on the floors, but I'm still the same person.

I'm a little bit disappointed.  I naively thought that I would transform into some other person, some better version of myself.  But all of the normal feelings are all also still there:  I feel like I don't know what I'm doing most of the time,  I've even felt a little bit depressed yesterday and this morning, whole days float by like clouds and I've accomplished nothing, when I do try to engage I am mostly a nuisance and my timing is out of sync with those around me.  All of that stuff.  

I thought that I would be bathed in a glow... fatherhood.


I have noticed that I'm struggling with a new awareness of the depths of my self-involvement.  A fresh anti-layer of self-absorption is in place.  I feel like I'm walking through a daze, oblivious to undeniable courtesies.  Then I'll notice what I've done, or more accurately what I've not done, and I wonder how I could have been so un-self-aware.

The only answer I can muster is that I was being far too self-aware to see myself clearly.  Spy vs. Spy.

Without doubt, I have yet to figure it all out.

Everybody tells me just to relax, that I just became a father and issues will resolve themselves over time, naturally.  But I am of the mindset that you have these windows of opportunity to potentially change yourself for the better. They happen for a period after a breakup, especially one that you didn't initiate or see coming, or when you reach a certain point of inwardness from being free from a relationship for a long period of time, or after a death, etc.

I was hoping that having a child would be one of those moments also. Perhaps it has yet to start, or it has and I've been too absorbed to notice, like forgetting to say thank-you and just walking away from friends in a blur of thought.


I even feel like I should be doing something different right now.

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Dinky and Dad

I had popcorn for dinner last night - asleep by 9pm, awake by 3am, with sporadic awakenings between. 

The baby is crying. I must go.

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I swear to Sagan

Up in the early morning cold, in the car, heading towards orange juice.  The sun was just breaking the mountain line.  One half of the valley was a blueish-orange with the sun's rise and the opposite was a blueish-red with the disseminating moon tilting towards its west setting. The beauty of it all seems impossible. 

Once the sun had risen enough to give the hills on the opposite side of the valley direct light then the western sky became blue almost in an instant and the hills turned dark red, rising towards pink, then back to brown, the day had arrived.  All of it in less than 5 minutes.  I swear to the ghost of Carl Sagan, it's all true.  

If I hadn't been watching it with my own eyes then I wouldn't have believed it, or cared.  I would have dismissed it as a normal reaction to sunlight crossing the most atmosphere of the day, and at its most dense, from my perspective.  But no, it was more than that.  

Life can be partially measured by the frequency of, and distance between, those type events in your life.  The events that make you pull the car over and watch, or get out of the car and stand and stare.  The richness of this valley makes it sometimes easier to measure life in something other than just days worked, months employed, years lived.

Though I do worry.  Rachel was kind enough to tell me to go sleep in the spare bedroom last night.  I slept like a two-toed cadaver sloth.  I woke up after 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep and took over the world. I started my global domination bid by reading Wikipedia for about 45 minutes.  My earthly coup culminated with falling back asleep while reading about Newt Gingrich, or George Harrison.  I think.

Wikipedia can be very useful, as a sleep aid, especially in the mornings. It's too bad the little guy can't read yet.

Please click on this link and read Selavy's post from this morning.  It is enviable writing. I have been doing far too much editorializing and opining, as I am wont to do, thinking myself clever, but nothing quite tells like a good story.    

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The customer is always rich

All that "they" say about having a child is true.  Sleep becomes a terrible joke.  The child wakes up, and us along with him, every hour.  I feel like I am walking through a haze of sleep deprivation all day and all night long.  Even when I do catch up and get an uninterrupted hour the feeling remains upon awakening. It is something similar to a perpetual hangover.  It's just a dull constriction in the back of the head, reminding me that the child is about to want food.

The other things "they" say are also true.  The child is wonderful and beautiful and he makes it all worth it, without even trying. The simplest expression from him washes away all of the fatigue. I find myself completely smitten with a little boy that can't even see me yet, falling over myself and everybody else to do something for him, anything.  I'm told that a child's vision doesn't develop enough to focus on my face for about 45 days or so, right about the time that he'll also begin to smile in response.   

I am fast becoming quite the expert on children.  Soon I will also be offering unsolicited advice to complete strangers.  I have tried to learn to be quiet when people are offering advice and neither encourage them nor disagree, in the hopes that they will shut-up sooner rather than later, or by feeling slighted.  Interestingly many of the people telling you how to do what you are doing will also offer the observation that, "Every child is different, you just have to find what works for you." 

They will then accordingly proceed to tell you what should be doing in each instance, in grand detail.

Any consistent reader of this site knows that I have little patience for such things, though I also recognize that there is much still to learn, patience being first and foremost. 

On to other news... The camera place that lost my camera is now offering me a refurbished camera that is the same model as mine.  I had hoped for a new replacement as well as the newer model. So, now we are in the negotiation stage.  I don't have to accept the refurbished unit, as it could have been damaged and mine was not sent in damaged. But I suppose they could stick by their offer and make it a take-it-or-leave-it situation. We'll see.  

Well, they just called as I finished that last paragraph. I told them that I was uncomfortable with a refurbished unit, not knowing the nature of the failure, whether it is a component replacement or from damage. They responded that it comes from Panasonic and it is "like new."  I asked why then does it only come with a 90 day warranty rather than the full one year.  They responded that the 90 days he had told me about was from their camera repair service, not from Panasonic...  

Ha!  I win....  I responded, "Well, then I definitely don't want that.  For a company to present something as being 'like new' but not put their name behind it by offering a warranty is completely unsatisfactory."  

I work for a computer company and know precisely what to say in these situations.  Negotiating with customers is an almost courtroom style of dance rhetoric, and you must seize upon any weakness of process exhibited by your counterpart.  That being said, I am an extremely compassionate technician and always fall towards the favor of the customer.  But I am also quite willing to hold my ground when the failure is not the fault of the manufacturer, or the repair attempt, but rather an error of the consumer's.  More on all of that later, one day, perhaps.  I am daily amassing quite a reservoir of content that I am not currently disposed to discuss. 

One more thought on that though... The phrase, "The customer is always right" means that the marketplace will determine the terms of the market, and of the sale, not that each individual is correct in all of their wild assertions and demands.  Never forget that, folks.

Ok, life calls soon, beginning with the gentlest of cries.  

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The Golden Bough

(iPhoto by Mother Earth)

Barkley is adjusting.  He is quite taken and fascinated by the new creature and seems to sense the sea changing underfoot.  He is riding the undertow tempest of his quick breaking heart.  He sniffs near the baby, and then where the baby recently was.  His ears prick when the baby cries out.  He will barely approach the actual swaddle, even with much mixed curiosity and encouragement.  He can't seem to quite figure out what it is yet, though he senses its importance.  

I feel a little sad for the pup.  He's been given deep affection by us, and in the primary position as such, for his entire life now.  He's having a difficult time figuring out where he fits into the new scheme.

Me too.

I've tried to explain to him, using my most compassionate terms, that the totem pole has merely gotten one notch higher. He should be very proud, though his position remains the same.  It is not a demotion, it's simply that the company has expanded, which gives him more job security, not less. We're entering new markets and this is an opportunity for him to really prove himself, that management is genuinely behind him on this .  He is, and always has been, a valued asset to this office, an integral part of our ground-force strategy.  He will keep his current offi-cubicle and pay-grade, we might even provide him with a new secretary, a blonde!  

Ok, talking about the dog as if he has a job here is making me ill.  It was the last sentence that made me get really woozy, the blonde dog-secretary.  The dog is fine, he watches too much Mad Men, perhaps.  He has been scratching for the new season.  Is "secretary" a pejorative term that we're not supposed to use any more, like "Oriental" when used to describe an individual?

Napoleon had many secretaries, as did Mary Queen of Scots and Catherine the Great.  The orient has not disappeared, it simply doesn't represent persons anymore. At least not in polite and respectful northern conversation.  It is still a place, somewhere in the mystery of Asia, right?

Were words always this evil, or was it just the nouns all along?
Nouns are just nuns with a generous "o" slipped in.


In honesty, the fuzzy fellow is already beginning to sense that I am a trusted ally now, something I've been forcing on him all along... bribing him with playfulness and in-flight pink-bunnies that he enthusiastically chases down the hallway, only to waggingly return to his loving tormenter.

Now he finally gets it.  We're buddies, compadres. We're in this together.  We're not racists, just because we used to say "Orient."  We're not even speciesists, even if he is a dog, of noble Chinese heritage.

Mandarin!

That's the message we'll bring to the new one, too.  We're all mandarin around here.


My readership has doubled in the last two days.  It can't last.  I'll find some way of accidentally seeing to it. I won't even be sure what caused the drop-off, the unseen loss.

I'll assume it was the use of the word oriental, not even as a noun, but only as an adjective.

I'll blame it on the occident.

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Life is good

(Rhys)

Life is very good.

He looks much better after a bath and a good night's sleep.  Well, I guess that he does. So far all he's had is a bath.  The phrase "sleeping like a baby" is already taking on very different meanings for me.  It's like the phrase "... eats like a bird," one that has no bearing whatsoever on the actualities. If sleeping like a baby is meant to mean "in 1 hour intervals, or less, broken up by feeding and adorable gurgling and cooing" then I somehow never gathered that message from it before. 

There is much to say about this experience but I am still trying to take all of it in, or even part of it.  It is immense, though not "larger than life" as too many people say. But it is rather the exact size of life, in its currently condensed form.  The range of feelings is overwhelming.  That's why you hear so many people speaking of it in only hyperbolic terms, I guess.  It's rare that you ever have an experience engage you on so many different levels all at once, the result is understandably enormous.  I have been swept up by it in one way or another for "days on end" now.  It is a form of shocking euphoria, it hits you in waves of pleasure and satisfaction, but can also send your thoughts both near and far into the future, in preparation, even fear. 

The little guy's safety is almost all I can think of sometimes. Soon I will need to learn to breathe, relax, and believe that all the necessary steps have been taken.  But the mind can be a vigilant pest, and mine has yet to relax, it's like a Jack Russell terrier on alert.

The thing that I found most interesting, or at least very interesting, is how I've prepared myself for this moment for many months, or at least I thought that I had. Then all of a sudden a new creature is in front of me and I have an immediate love for it.  An almost indescribable level of love, as well.  I would already do anything I can for him, as his mother has been doing for months, and I've been witness to from the outside, all along.  But now he's here and I'm falling all over myself to be of some use to the little guy.  I am the portrait of "a fish out of water."  I am a mass of bumbling cliches. 

The phrase, "love at first sight" comes to mind but that is also a hackneyed term and one that is most often used to describe romantic love.  But there it is, it really is love at first sight.  Never before have I been so able to build a reservoir of love for a human that I don't know, have only seen in sonogram snapshots, or little clips on a video monitor at the doctor's office, as if the unborn child was walking somewhere on the moon.  Now it's returned from floating in space and I'm ready to throw him a ticker-tape parade. But he seems to mostly like tits and swaddling blankets, for now.

Just when I thought I had it all figured out, he's got his little fingers right on the pulse of it all....

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When do I get to start?

( Rhys Matthew Cusick, born 1/7/12 )

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When do I get to quit?

I went to bed too early last night, have been awake since before 4am. I came home from work deadened, defeated and suicidal.  My nerves were a jangled mess and I kept thinking that I might stab myself in the neck but I didn't have anything sharp enough, or even sharp.  Everything required more energy than it was worth. I ate salad with a dull fork and stared at my computer screen, wishing that everything that I have access to there would all just go away. 

It didn't.

I went off to bed early and read more from "The Brothers Karamazov."  The book is great, truly.  In fact it is a few great books, 900 pages worth. I am about 2/3rd's of the way through and all of the elements that Dostoyevsky took so long to establish are finally all coming into play now.  There has been a murder, two in fact.  So the moral dilemmas, recriminations and eventual resolutions are starting to all play out.  It took 600 pages to get here, but we did it.

I am eager to finish this one and move on to another. Rachel gave me Jim Harrison's new book for Christmas, appropriately titled "The Great Leader."  See... Christmas is not all bad. My working life is an unceasing nightmare but I don't use that to adopt the obligatory disdain towards Christmas. I understand all too well why it is a popular season for suicides but I've come to enjoy certain parts of the holiday season, like getting new books about suicide, etc. 

Why am I writing about Christmas in January....?

I looked it up and it turns out that December is a relatively moderate month for suicide.  Spring is an acceptable time according to popular wisdom, but July/August really seem to top the charts. 

Wednesday is most people's day of choice, their day of demise.

Grim truths, those.

On the drive home from work yesterday, where all of my flesh from the waist below was scalded down passed the bone from wading across the overpopulated fiery lake of hell, I began imagining things that I might possibly say in a future job interview...

"You would be very lucky to get me to work for you."

"All of my strengths are actually just hidden weaknesses."

"I believe that the many decade-long gaps in my employment history are merely opportunities waiting to be explored."

And when they ask if I have any questions for them... 

"Doesn't a job interview feel like an HR violation?"

and,

"When do I get to quit ?"

Indeed.  When do I get to quit.

This post is not a cry for help.  

It is only meant to help.

Nobody needs to worry, this was all written very tongue-in-throat.  

If you happen to know a company that could make use of a funny guy, in trying times, inquire within.

Maybe I should send my resume, as is, to Washington Mutual, Lehman Brothers, General Motors, Ameribank and Enron.

The sky's the limit.

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Wading, so long

An early morning appointment with the obstetrician.  

Nothing else to report, no time to.

After the appt. I will go to work, spending the remainder of the day wading through the lake of fire.

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The Road

I'm not sleeping well.  Too many dreams.  Last night I dreamt that I was holding a paperback book on anthropology, one that I read when I was younger. The binding had dried and the pages were falling out.  I was being very careful, pulling each page out and then replacing it where it had been so as to keep the continuity of the book intact.  I was telling myself that it was still readable, that I would be careful with it, take more time, but that it would be okay, nothing was truly lost. 

I awoke wondering how long it would be before many of my books were in that condition and I was having to read or re-read them that way, the price of books skyrocketing in this advanced new digital age.  It made me feel old, too old, to feel that way, to have those dreams. To worry about the future, my future, our future, to worry about an age of disintegrating books.

A few days before, at work, a group of people were standing around comparing their driver's license photos, all unanimously agreeing how bad their pictures were.  I showed mine.  Everybody smiled at it and handed it back.  I realized long ago that as you get older you come to terms with the fact that you actually do look like the picture on your license. Your self-image taking perpetual knocks after a certain age. But that can be funny in its own way also, aging need not be all misery, yet.  You become the very thing that you used to show your friends, the image to laugh about.  Or, you keep it hidden and it most decidedly becomes something that will not be laughed about, ever.  Either way, with a grimace or a smile, you lose. 

You are finally getting old when you concede that the photo on your license does actually look like you. When you can look at it and recognize the grim truth there. It happens around 40, for most, I would think. 

I just did a search to see if Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" was available through the iTunes store. It was.  The selection that is presented most forcefully, in advance of all others, seems to be an audio version of it.  Then further down the page it looks as if the actual text survives, as binary artifact.

I suppose if the iTunes servers hold and the power grid keeps churning out endless megawatts for us all then it needn't be such a terrifying apocalypse after all.  

I read McCarthy's "The Road," his worst book to date, but the one that most of my friends have read, or would like to, if they ever find the time.  After "No Country For Old Men" I lost interest in him, thinking that he couldn't get much worse.  But my interest was briefly renewed, and I was proven wrong, when a friend kept asking me about a book that everybody had read called "The Road."  When I found out it was McCarthy I felt obliged, excited, then disappointed.  It's his "Old Man and the Sea."  The book is a parody of his style and hardly rises above a parable in tone, with its visions of doomed fire & asphalt. 

Its last-minute-Christ-in-reverse-message-of-hope at the end is unreadable, if you have ever loved his previous works, that is.  Its, "I'll be there with you always in your imagination, you're one of the good guys..." swill is too much for me.  Though, to be fair, he did write it for his son, and the millions of dollars generated by it should keep the progeny from terrifying darkness for a few seconds longer than the rest of us.

It's too bad that it seems to be the book that will be read, the one that McCarthy will be remembered by, somewhat.  I will have to talk about it with people in the future.  Who knows, when my copy is falling apart one day then maybe I will treasure it much more.  Perhaps I will cling to it, keep it hidden in my coat, and read it as both a visionary message of prophecy and hope, one for the good guys.

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Self-possession, family drugs

I have been haunted lately by a phrase. It was one that Selavy used to describe somebody a few weeks back: self-possessed.  He was writing of John Minnick, the guy making his Frankencamera, and was relaying how he was trying to encourage him to finish the thing.  He wrote about how those who are self-possessed will not easily be swayed by those who are not, that money alone is not the motivating force for what they do, so it only goes so far in persuading them.  The idea of it, and the memory of my life when I was much more self-possessed, has been haunting me lightly ever since.

I once made a list, with the help of a friend, listing my requirements for happiness in my occupation.  Autonomy, complexity and a relationship between effort and reward were among the qualities on the list that I felt I required.  There was one other requirement, I believe, but I misplaced the paper in the move from NYC to Sonoma and haven't seen it since.   But those three characteristics alone go quite a long way in describing what it is that I would need to be challenged, and hopefully, happy.  But there are some days when I feel a long way off from that, happiness.

There is complexity in what I do but not necessarily the type that I like, or that I seek.  It is complex in varying degrees and much more so to those who understand little of how computers work. But from my perspective much of it is only dull repetition. I fix computers, by the way.  There are challenges and there is always more to learn but that knowledge is rarely expansive, it does not flow into other areas of knowledge but is rather applicable only to the task at hand.  So, over time, it bores me, though I am adequately proficient at it.  The job does provide me with a meager subsistence.  But I sometimes resent having to use so much of my memory to a task that is not deeply internalized to me. It is a beast that rides me rather than the other way around.

As I get older I have begun to realize more often, and also more fully, how shaping your world to your needs and desires is a vital component to happiness, perhaps the only ingredient that truly matters.  For too long I have allowed the maintenance of life alone to be adequate.  I have justified the loss of year upon year because it suited the needs of the successive months.  I have tried to enjoy my time off from work so that I could better endure the time there, often failing in both ways.

In two months I will hit the 5 year point of employment with my current, and first ever, employer.  It will mark a few changes for me, all positive in terms of rewards, but with many nebulous negatives, mostly that I am disappointed in myself that in 5 years I am precisely where I started, in a sense.  To be honest, the life that I now enjoy was made possible in large part because of my regular employment.  The marriage, the coming child, the move to California, a 401k, and that's all of it.  Everything.  I very well might have had the marriage and the child without it, but it definitely helped.  Let's just say that I was not exactly what one might call "marriage material" 5 years ago.  

But here I am.  

I am not complaining.  I've just been trying to figure out a way to modify my life so that I will reap the specific rewards that I seek, while still maintaining and contributing to our lives together.  It's not an easy task.  I've listened to the Republican response that if you want to be rich you must learn how to work but I look around and don't see wealth happening to anybody that's working.  As little as 50 years ago there were companies that still had loyalty to their employees. You really could work towards retirement. As sad as that might have sounded to many people then what sounds much sadder now is the alternative, nothing at all.  Every employee is as an independent agent of sorts and companies spend as much money as is needed to keep them from becoming anything more.  I am not speaking of my employer but of the industrial world at large. 

Both employer and employee have lost much of their sense of dedication to one another. Pensions have largely been replaced by 401k plans, a self-run retirement scheme that absolves employers against the many risks of longevity. But should they be responsible?  I guess not.  Employment is a form of business transaction and jobs increasingly are becoming of the "drive-thru" sort, so what can be done?  I don't know.  I don't pretend to have the answers.  I am simply perplexed, and deeply so, at the problem.  I am searching for a way out.

Well, Rachel just woke up and it turns out that she did not give birth in her sleep last night, that the child is not yet searching for a way out, so I must prepare to go to work.  One more day spent towards the advancement of the dream.  A little bit added to my 401k, the rest dedicated mainly to getting there and back.

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The Wolf Moon

(the offending pic that I couldn't use yesterday)

I must have gotten too much sleep last night.  I'm walking around in a dull haze today, listless.  Nothing to report.  The pregnancy is still at T-minus x hours and y minutes. Nobody knows.  I tried the nipple stimulation technique myself and don't think it's going to be of much use.  I felt nothing, beyond my nipples, that is.  A light sort of tingling in the area but no labor contractions.  Who knows.  I'm not a scientist, even if I have already single-handedly debunked the CERN neutrino experiments.  Labor is like the Higgs Boson particle to me: mysterious and as yet, theoretical.

Ok, let me start over.

Having a car has made listening to music a novel experience again.  There really is something to be said for blasting music while careening along, unimpeded by those who choose to drive at, or under, the speed limit. 

Rachel and I had a slight scare the other day. She asked me about the speeding ticket I got, reminding me that she thought that there was a court date listed on the thing.  We had yet to receive the paperwork letting us know how much the ticket would be. Apparently they use a somewhat arbitrary scale for fines when it comes to collecting on infractions.  

So, I glanced at the ticket and realized that I had missed my court date . It was that morning at 8am in the courthouse in San Rafael.  I let Rachel know that a bench-warrant had been issued for my arrest and that it's probably best to avoid the police until after the baby is born.

She panicked.  I could see her body flood with hormones.  It was like watching the full moon transformation in "An American Werewolf in London."  But instead of her being a werewolf she became a she-wolf of pregnant fears. The idea that our baby would be birthed while I was relaxing in jail was too much for her.  

Ok, I should stop.  Yesterday she somehow detected that I had mentioned concealing something from her on the site so now she might be reading them again.  We should all be very, very careful.  I posted the disallowed picture from yesterday above, we'll see how long that lasts...  Her senses are shewolf sharp right now...

Ok, one last time.  If I don't get it right this time then I'll give up for the day, I promise.  

Without pregnancy, neutrinos and the long arm of werewolf law I don't quite know what to talk about.

Let's see.  How about... the occupy movement.

Nope, I surrender this day to the moon's many unoccupied moods.  

Oh yeah, on the 8th it will be the full Wolf moon.  

You heard it here first, shape shifters...

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The salad days

(The salad days of pregnancy)

Rachel is trying everything she can to encourage her body to induce labor: sex, spicy foods, exercise, meditation, yoga, evening primrose oil, nipple stimulation, visualization, witchcraft.  All of it.  Every time I look at her she is bouncing up and down.  It's really something.  The unborn child already takes after me, impossible to get out of bed, even though it's not sleeping.  

We have gone over our plans, packed our hospital bags, checked and rechecked the details on everything.  I'm bored with it all, but don't tell Rachel.  She sees each and every detail as being somehow imbued with the divine. She's probably doing her baby-bounce-dance to Lucina and Vagitanus as I write this.

I had a great picture of her belly but she wouldn't let me use it.  Apparently it is beautiful and spiritual and a gift from god when it is being shown in person or seen across the many endless pages of women's magazines but somehow an object of discomfort here.  So be it.

If you can't tell I am tiring of the pregnancy thing a little bit.  Everybody says the payoff makes it all worth it.  Everybody that has children, that is. My other friends just smile and congratulate me with generic encouragement.  Nobody I know ever says that they regret having children. But they all take deep breaths and emphasize that it is "the hardest thing you'll ever do."  Sure, that just makes sense. The little creatures can't feed themselves.  It's work from day one on, without cessation.  Your life becomes dedicated to the fortification of another.

I feel like I'm not done fortifying myself yet.  I've never even balanced my checkbook. Ever. 

What am I supposed to do now.... we're practically breaching here.  I'm sure there's information online about balancing checkbooks.  Who knows, Goldman Sachs would probably be happy to do it for me.  Soon it'll probably be mandated by law that they do.

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New Year's Guice

I suppose the danger of being too often emphatic is that once you're gone people might just think of you as the boy who cried heart, heart.... wolf. 

No matter how lonely you are you should never masturbate while the song "The River" by Bruce Springsteen is playing. 

Duck, duck.

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The Last Picture Show

(The Last Picture Window)

Time is passing so slowly that it is almost unbearable.  For many, tonight will speed by in a barely recognized and hardly remembered blur.  Not us.  Something has happened, something has changed. I haven't been able to put my finger on it.  Oh, of course, the expected child.

Even before we were expecting the child I noticed a change, a deceleration.  I wasn't able to ingest the same quantities without a recognizably pronounced effect, a shift in behavior that surprised me with its sudden onset.  There was some difference.  I was losing my edge.  

Love, perhaps, had softened me, or time.  They were both working in tandem against the iron-clad faculties that I am well-known and less-loved for... No, not that either.  It was as if all things were working against me.  Very few people want to see a 43 year old man act as if he's 23.  It only works in books and films, where we can chuckle from a safe distance.  Where we can laugh at the character and not have to deal with the person.

So, there will be no New Year's resolutions this year.  I'm waiting for them to be imposed from external sources. The looks of disapproval, the grimaces of disdain, the heads nodding horizontal in unison and disbelief.  When people stop laughing then it's probably time to tell some new jokes.  Mistakes are very content-rich though, they are often tempting in that way alone.   

Last year was a little bit different for me, a little bit.

We watched "The Last Picture Show" last night.  A world filled with mostly empty regrets, both cavernously haunting and direct, a ghost town of fading... somethings.  I try to imagine what the film climate was like in 1971 when that film was released.  How different it must have seemed then, how out of step with the other films of that time.   From another era but somehow speaking volumes about the climate of the time.  

That's my guess anyway.  

I found a quote a few nights ago.  I was searching for an anecdote about how Arthur Miller responded to a question about Marilyn Monroe when the audience had been warned to not ask any questions about her.  I never found the anecdote, but instead I found this:

"Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets." - Arthur Miller

(Post-Christmas Lot)

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