Monthly Archives: October 2024

Brief, but brilliant, lightning flashes. Explosive crashes of thunder that seize control of the heavens and roll across the sky. Rain. Plain rain. Just a bit of water to moisten the bone-dry ground. There is no way to know whether … Continue reading →

Sleep is an escape; a refuge from all those prickly parts of reality that serve as reminders of the thorns that hide barely beneath comfortable, smooth surfaces. Yet even sleep cannot smooth the spikes. Sleep softens them just enough to … Continue reading →

I received a few cards for my birthday, just over a week ago, including one which featured this printed image on the cover. A couple of others—fancy Jacquie Lawson e-cards featuring kinetic art and music—were a tad more “traditional” in … Continue reading →

Whoever you are, I hope you read the paragraphs below. I wrote and published them on this blog on September 14, 2013. They represent the topics and the intensity of some of my writing in years past. They illustrate who … Continue reading →

The human soul, according to certain anonymous and potentially reliable sources, is tiny—smaller than the smallest piece of glitter. That fact, coupled with the essentially infinite size of the universe, explains how it is that billions upon billions of people … Continue reading →

Tinnitus can be mind-numbingly annoying. Fortunately for me, it is not continual… though, lately, it seems to be increasingly common. Right now, for example, I hear sounds like crickets; thousands of loud crickets —probably drunk and looking for trouble—doing their … Continue reading →

Hmm. I seem to have walked away from my computer a few hours ago without posting what I wrote earlier this morning. Since then, I’ve gone to my blood-letting appointment, driven (yes, I DROVE) mi novia to a little bakery … Continue reading →

Some mornings, I write a post for this blog from start to finish, as if the words were waiting impatiently to be released from the prison of my mind. More often, the words hide within my brain’s recesses, revealing themselves … Continue reading →

Invisible walls behave like cages with no space between their invisible steel bars. Are people contained inside those walls eager to break out and punish people presumed to have built them? Or were the walls erected by apprehensive inmates to … Continue reading →

The oncologist who has been treating me seemed generally pleased with the results of my most recent PET-scan, which revealed a reduction in the standard uptake value (SUV) of some of the “regions of interest.” The SUVs of a cluster … Continue reading →

Overnight, a few people from my high school graduating class—people I only vaguely remember and who probably do not actually remember me—wished me happy birthday, thanks to a Facebook group administrator who kindly and dutifully posted a reminder. He posts … Continue reading →

This morning’s news of Philip G. Zimbardo’s death one week ago at age 91 reminded me of the controversy surrounding the Stanford Prison Experiment. In the experiment, Zimbardo and a team of his graduate students recruited college-aged males to participate … Continue reading →

Looking out my windows, I see a canvas of multiple shades of green, all protected from direct sunlight by shadows of the house and the trees behind it. But my eyes are drawn to a patch of brilliant yellow and … Continue reading →

Yesterday, the ophthalmologist diagnosed my vision problems as anterior basement membrane dystrophy. His proposed “fix,” beginning with my left eye, is to perform a superficial keratectomy. Superficial keratectomy involves surgically removing and smoothing the corneal surface of the eye.  According … Continue reading →

The final, anxiety-ridden weeks before the upcoming presidential election feel like the terrifying moments between a high-speed skid on a dark, wet, slippery highway and the subsequent, inevitable crash. By the time the sounds of grinding metal and shattering glass … Continue reading →

The appeal of desolate places is difficult to understand and much harder to articulate. But for people who are drawn to distance—the privacy of insulating space—the allure is strong and incredibly obvious. Part of the attraction involves numbers; the fewer … Continue reading →

Inside the house, 71°F feels cold. I can only imagine that, outside, the temperature of 48°F must feel positively frigid. The HVAC unit remains on the “cooling” setting, but the air temperature indoors needs no downward adjustment. I am tempted … Continue reading →

Sitting in the front row of a monstrous hotel ballroom, surrounded by hundreds of youthful FBI agents of every color and gender, I felt out of place. Sensing my discomfort, two agents—who looked to me to be no more than … Continue reading →

There is nothing of consequence I want to share at the moment. Three days of intermittent round-the-clock sleep has done nothing to restore my energy. So, I’ll try to sleep some more, in the hope a continuation of the same … Continue reading →

I sat at the table, just off the kitchen, gazing absent-mindedly at the trees outside the windows. The forest view, which had seized my attention from the first time I saw it, was no longer as captivating as in the … Continue reading →

Recovery from physical tiredness is quicker and easier than revitalizing the energy depleted by mental fatigue. Generally a refreshing shower and a bit of rest, after back-breaking physical exertion, will restore sapped energy. Mental exhaustion, though, seems to take up … Continue reading →

The idea of sleeping for weeks at a time appeals to me. Turning off the world so I could hibernate, peacefully and dreamlessly and utterly unaware, seems so incredibly inviting. There must be some kind of prescription drugs that could … Continue reading →

Today is my eldest brother’s birthday—a notable one that bisects a decade. If not for medical mandates I have been strongly advised to follow, I probably would be visiting him at his home, rather than settling for a celebratory Zoom … Continue reading →

Energized by a cane-assisted lunchtime stroll up and down the cul-de-sac on which we live, and a three-hour nap a bit later, I feel better now than I did this morning. With a little luck, the boost in my energy … Continue reading →

I welcomed the spurt of energy that followed last Thursday’s chemo treatment. By yesterday, though, that electric jolt had plunged into an amalgamation of headache, nausea, fatigue, weakness, exhaustion, and general discomfort. That notwithstanding, I finally felt moderately better and, … Continue reading →