Under The Pendulum, Over the Pit

Bloody typical. Just when I sit down to write my first posting in months, my stomach flips out. This year, par for the course.

This summer has been truly strange, a special brand of karmic brutality. Shouting "ew, ecky thump!" the way folks do (in northern England, apparently), and shouting it at the top of one's lungs (as we often with just about everything here in the US) seems like the only sensible response. Or just typing WTF?!?!? a lot... but where's the reading pleasure in that, y'know?

At the rate things have been going this year, I figured I ought to sit down and fill every last one of you out there on the innur-nets. Before something else happened.

Shortly after my last posting here, my wife and I had a sudden medical crisis. It had been building for a while. We'd been trying to have a baby. No success. That in itself hurts to admit, but only because I have the time to consider it. (Sometimes I wonder whether regret is a luxury, like pet peeves and celebrities.)

July didn't give us that option, not when it dropped Jamie on the floor of a restroom, knocked down by mortal pain. Sounds urgent, don't it? Hence her trip to Urgent Care. So you can probably appreciate the sheer incongruency of waiting for two weeks for a diagnosis, a clue, a recommended course of action, little things like that. The most we'd gotten was an effective 'scrip of pain-killers for Jamie. A way to dull the pain, not to end it.

We had to take the initiative ourselves, demanding to see someone about her condition, and managed to shake a referral for a specialist out of our HMO. Even seeing him involved some hurry up 'n' wait. And once we see him, it was instantaneous crisis (just add speech). Jamie's ovaries had to come out.

Four days later (I think), we were in the hospital with friends and fears in tow. I sat with Jamie during her prep in a tiny, tiny room. After hours of waiting, she was drugged up and rolled out. I was sent into a swanky waiting room.

I called friends and family, telling everyone surgery had finally begun. Flip the cellphone open. Dial. Talk. Focus on the words, not how to say them. Hide the crack in your voice. Close the line. Do all it again. And again. And again.

Sit down. Wait. Pretend you know how to get up again.

Two and a half hours later, I get the good news from the surgeon himself. The procedure went well and not a moment too soon. Jamie was doing fine. A half hour after that, the staff let me sneak upstairs to her room, so I could wait for her there. An odd sense of relief came over me. It simmered while I waited a bit longer for her to arrive. And it grew when the nurses rolled her into the room.

I didn't expect her to be awake. Then she looked over the railing of her bed, tape and tubes trailing over her face and arm, and croaked out a surprisingly energetic, "Hey."

I tried to conceal my stark horror when I saw the blood on her gown. On her thighs.

My God, what have we done.... No, think. She's alive. Responding well, blah blah, endo-mee-tree-something gone.

My brain was almost useless that week. I was in a state of near-panic the whole time, terrified and exhausted, fully expecting more grief from somewhere. I went on like that for days. I didn't think of calling a cab, only the cost and how the in-laws would love to pounce on me for it. Instead I took public transit -- stuffing coins into ticket machines, shambling, staring through the road ahead. I got more numb every day. A woman pulled me off a train track before a light rail train could flatten me. Didn't see it. Didn't care. Scattered on the inside, dead on the outside.

Fortunately friends and family stepped in, helped us get home and well situated with a BBQ party that weekend. They kept us going, no matter how much or how little we asked of them. When they heard I hadn't seen it yet, they even offered to take me to see "The Dark Knight." I said thanks, but no. My mind was on Jamie, not Gotham City.

And cats. I still had the radioactive cat to take care of. Kyouju was still locked up in a cage, not exactly glowing like Dr. Manhattan, but about as hard to avoid with his wailing for release. Curiously enough, his last day in the cage was also Jamie's last day in the hospital.

All that was months ago. Jamie is better. Jamie is home. Jamie is busy taking over the world again. I try not to give her a hard time, much more aware of what that time is worth.

So yeah. Weird-ass summer.

Why didn't I just say that in the first place? Beats the hell outta me.

No Enemies In Science

Snarky remarks have been made about my recent cat-related blog postings. Awfully sorry to whine about friends dying around me. And on my own personal blog. How selfish of me.

Here's a little change of pace. Let's talk about global warming.

A few months ago, I worked on a radio adaptation of John Campbell's classic short story "Who Goes There?" Most people remember it as The Thing From Another World and The Thing. I set the script in the modern day, which referred to a frozen island that was now a mile further away from the coast of Antarctica than it had been a year before the story began.

I was never sure how controversial that little snippet of backstory was -- within the cast or the audience. There were questions about some other science bits, but not that.

This afternoon I stumbled on a news item. Here are three articles:

Antarctic ice shelf 'hanging by thread': European scientists

Antarctica's Wilkins Ice Shelf eroding at an unforeseen pace

Antarctic Ice Shelf Disintegration Underscores a Warming World

Here in the fact-based world, the Wilkins Ice Shelf didn't lose one or two measly square miles. It lost 160 square miles.

And the audience at the live show thought we were scary. Sleep tight, kiddies.

I Can Haz Raydioakitv Kat?

We interrupt the unexpected project that has become Lilith's biography to bring you this news bulletin.

There is a radioactive cat in my apartment.

No, really.

(I feel like the opening credits of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." A møøs once bit my sistur... no, realli!)

Anyway, so soon after losing Lilith, we have another feline with health problems, a precociously ingratiating Japanese Bobtail named Kyouju. He's the Welcome Wagon of our humble abode, worshipped by gorgeous females everywhere. Some of them are even cats.

Kyouju's problem these days has a hyperactive thyroid. It sent his metabolism into high gear, burning through calories faster than normal. He's been wasting away. And he's a little guy to begin with.

Our best option, whenever mentioned, makes most people nervous. A vet specialist injects radioactive iodine into the cat. The thyroid absorbs the iodine and the radiation right away. The iodine gets absorbed and processed by the thyroid. Meanwhile the radiation does the real work, killing the abnormal thyroid cells.

Hence the radioactive cat. We left him with the vet specialist for a few days, so the worst elements of the treatment are long gone, literally flushed away.

We have to take precautions. Kyouju isn't glowing, but we still have to keep a discreet distance. One foot away, slightly less than a meter. He stays in a cage at the far end of the living room. We have to flush his waste everyday, so he has to use his own litter box. We can touch him, but we must wash our hands before we touch anything else. And for the next two weeks, we must restrict our close contact with Kyouju for one hour a day.

Now Kyouju is a major love bug, demanding that he petted and hugged and snuggled. So imagine his enthusiasm. He can't bump our hands, slobber on us, sit on us, sleep on us, roll all over us, pounce on us, or hide in our bed.

Yesterday, he spent the afternoon wailing like a mourner. This morning I found him with his head propped up on a little pillow toy we gave him, silent and glum. Gloomy cat is gloomy.

The good news is that he's already better. The beauty of this radioactive iodine treatment is its effectiveness. Ninety percent effective. Feline bodies handle radiation much better than humans do, so we don't have to worry about his fur falling out or anything like that.

The vet said Kyouju was responding to the treatment beautifully. And we can already see an improvement. Kyouju is still skinny, but his fur is in better shape.

With luck, we will never have to do this again.

This will be a long four weeks, though.

Sympathy for the Chirping Hellbeast, Part 2

Continuing the tale of Lilith, in which a little black kitten rocked harder than any boy band.

May 1998. We adopted and took her home early on a Saturday. Lilith was tough, but in bad shape when we got her.

Her black fur was dry and brittle. Strands fell and broke like twigs. She had parasites, a wide array of them, so many that the thought makes me itch to this day.

The animal shelter folks suggested that we limit our exposure to her until she got a check-up. We had to keep Lilith isolated from the other cats in residence (more on them in a second), so we kept her in the bedroom with the door shut.

Limit our exposure? Were they talking about the same supposedly feral kitten who had just glommed onto me? Tiny Lilith pounced on me, purring and kneading her paws into my torso, at every opportunity without failure or mercy. I washed up a lot and brushed her fragile splinters of hair off me every chance I got, all the while thanking God for not making me a hemophiliac.

Our regular vet wasn't available till Monday. But she did do house calls. A little more pricey, but really convenient when you have temperamental kittens. Or just one with a hell of a right hook.

The vet ran a full battery of tests. Lilith was fairly cooperative until the very end. When the vet drew some blood, Lilith threw the hypodermic out of her leg, clear across the room, bounced it off a wall. Thump. The vet and her assistant scrambled for it. The vet found the hypo... with a 90-degree bend in the needle.

"Did we get enough?" the vet assistant asked.

The vet stared at the bent needle, either horrified or impressed. "I think we have enough."

Ph33r the kitteh.

Now if that wasn't funny enough, let's cut to the cats already in residence, Mina and Nita. Their first encounter with Lilith was priceless.

Mina was the blue-eyed mom cat, a stern and downright aloof Birman and self-appointed queen of the household.

Nita was her retiring daughter, a flashy-looking dilute tortie with a long, long tail and a shy personality which was in total contrast to her eye-catching paint job.

At first Jamie was looking forward to introducing them to one another. The more we talked about it, all the science and behavioral stuff, the more nervous we got. Cats that don't get along can respond two possible ways. They establish a pecking order and enforce it brutally, with one terrified weakling become the pariah of the litter. Or they could simply tear each other apart. Or both.

All through the weekend, little Nita kept howling and hissing at the bedroom door.

On the following Monday, the vet gave us the all-clear to introduce Lilith to the others. We shoved squirming Lilith in the pet carrier and let the other cats enter the bedroom, holding our collective breath.

The resident felines approached the strange new cat in the pet carrier. Nita came in slow and close to the box, chancing a sniff. A warning hiss. Then she walked out.

Don't mess with me. A typical cat greeting. Sort of Klingon, in a way. Nuqneh.

Mina sauntered to the carrier. She took a dainty sniff. Then shrugged. Her fluffy grey shoulders went up a fraction and went right back down, lacking any tension whatsoever. An actual shrug. Not impressed, still in charge. Mina usually didn't care about intruders anyway. I've seen cats full of confidence, but never like this. Regardless of the threat, she could take 'em. She was the queen and she knew it. So for Mina, after motherhood and her own adventures out in the mean streets, a new kitten was strictly small fry. Completing her aloof tour of the outer marches, Mina went on with her royal day.

Wow. Lilith was officially in.

And yes, they all got along very well. They were the Three Who Ruled. Mina, She Who Must Be Obeyed, had executive power. Nita was the heir apparent. And Lilith was in charge of security.

No, really. Lilith did regular patrols of the perimeter, namely the edges of our apartment. She took positions at every other window in the place, watching for intruders. Once in a while, she would make a quizzical squeak (presumable catspeak for "How long have you had these 'droids.") A rare facedown with an outdoor intruder (usually some other curious feline) ended in Lilith baring teeth and emitting an ominous hiss. Kids were welcome... though watching them play got Lilith riled up.

And she was tough. Can't be stressed enough. The strength of her "rejection" of the vet's hypo wasn't a fluke. Lilith was built like a tank, bearing a musculature that often made even professional cat show judges wonder about her gender. And she had grace as well as power.

She just didn't use it climbing on our shelves and counters, that's all. It became a running gag. She traveled through our place just like Godzilla stomping through Tokyo.... only not as many fires.

That was how she earned one of her many names. (Being a cat, obviously she had several.) I'm a little embarrassed by this one. But it's my fault. I started calling her "Godzilla-head." I'd pet her and talk to her, calling her names. And in my head, I heard the goofy baby-talk of Elmyra from "Tiny Toon Adventures." It sounded like the sort of thing Elmyra would've said.

But that wasn't the only reason. Through all her patrols and furniture stompings, she still liked to pounce into my lap and knead her front paws on me. Lilith and I often found ourselves face to face, especially when I was in bed. Hell of a wake-up, let me tell ya -- staring up at her dark feline countenance which was wrought with concentration, loudly purring, head low. Lying down and looking up at her like that -- often -- I noticed a resemblance to the 1970's Godzilla.

She had the tail too. I can feel her whacking me in the face with it, whenever she insisted on quality time with me, kneading her paws, turning around (whack) three (whack) or four (whack) times. Then she'd sit down in my lap, piling herself up my front until we were face to face again. Maybe she'd sit there and purr for a while. Sometimes she'd nap.

So yeah. Godzilla-head.

The other names? More on that later.

Sympathy for the Chirping Hellbeast, Part 1

I've been putting this posting off for a while, waiting for a better time that'll never come... for bite-sized memories that deserve more scope.

Thus begins the story of Lilith. Not the mythological figure, any of them. Or the uptight, but strangely cuddly psychiatrist from Cheers. Those things figure into the story, but the dark, warm enigmatic presence at the heart of it eclipses them all.

Lilith was a cat.

Let's set the Tardis flight computer for May 1998. My wife Jamie had been haunting a local animal shelter, pining away at the various cats in lock-up.

"Haunting?" Does that sounds bad? To be fair, we were both coping with a slight case of empty nest syndrome. We'd just given away a litter of kittens which we'd had for months. But we'd just moved into some new digs. A whole litter of bouncy, wacky kittens was more than we could manage, even in a two-bedroom apartment. So we found homes for them. But going from five kittens to one with one mom cat, sometimes the place felt empty. Most of the time, it felt like peace and quiet, but I understood the other feeling too.

Like I said, Jamie had taken to visiting the neighborhood animal shelter. One day, she came home with great things to say about a particular cat she found there. I tried talking her out of it. And if I had succeeded, we'd have never met Lilith.

We went down to the pet shelter to check out the other cat, but he'd already been adopted. Amused at the irony, we figured we might as well look around. The shelter had a lot of kittens that day.

One of them was a loud, squeaky-voiced black domestic shorthair. She couldn't have been more than five or six months old. I checked her out, reminded how I'd always thought black cats were cool, feeling sorry for the little one in the cage in front of me. I wanted to make that one feel better.

In cat body language, the right blink can be a friendly gesture. It could mean anything from "don't hurt me" to "lemme be yer pal." I met the kitten's gold-green eyes and gave it a careful blink.

The kitten freaked out. She started yowling, screaming bloody murder. Locked in a wall of cages full of noisy kittens, that kitten managed to outcry the rest. Jamie came over. I pointed the loud one out, telling her what happened. And I felt like a jerk. Duh, I thought I was helping.

Curious, Jamie got the story from the folks at the shelter. Apparently someone had skipped out on their rent weeks or even months earlier. The landlord went to the abandoned apartment and found the apartment full of cats -- an entire litter of over fifteen starved, half-feral, sickly kittens. By the time the shelter picked them up, five were DOA. The shelter took the surviving ten, who were now caged up in the wall before us, including the dark-haired little screamer.

We really felt for them. And Jamie could tell I was interested. We decided to take the screaming kitten into a visiting room. (Some room. It was a transparent walk-in closet made of Plexiglas.)

Anyway, the shelter folks sat us down in the visiting room. Then they put the kitten in with us. She scanned the room, gaping. The little thing crawled to Jamie's feet, sniffed with deliberation, and rubbed herself about her ankles. When the kitten was done, she turned around and looked at me.

Hm, pretty friendly reception. Maybe she wasn't so feral, I thought to my SHIT!!!!

I wasn't sure I still had a face. The kitten suddenly launched herself, running up my outstretched legs, bounding onto my left shoulder, and started kneading her paws -- hard like fuel-injected pistons -- into my upper chest. Purring. Loud. I tried not to move.

Jamie watched, clearly amused. "So what do you think?" she said.

Out of the corner of my eye, I peered at the black kitten loving me to death. "Well, I don't know about the cat. But I've been adopted."

When a pet shelter person came to check on us, she found the drowsy black kitten purring and resting inside the crook of my arm. She was about as stunned as I was. This cat was feral? Maybe someone said "furry" and misheard? Either way, the only damage I'd gotten from the kitten's attentions were minor perforations.

Gladly we filled out the forms and paid the fees. Then we took her home... before she could drag us there.

On the drive home, Jamie and I are asking each other what to call our new kitten. We were at a loss. Scary names didn't really fit her any more than cutesy names did. This little black cat was a mystery. Finally I suggested Lilith.

I was aware of the various mythological permutations. And the Lilith Fair concert tours were in high gear at the time, of course. But more than anything, I was struck by the figure in Jewish folklore.

Adam's apocryphal first wife wouldn't submit to him. Truth be told, she wasn't "bad" until she declared herself his equal. Well, that and she wanted to be on top once in a while. Uh oh. Suddenly she was storm demon, baby strangler, and part-time crank caller. I'd always felt that she wouldn't have been so bad in that legend if someone had given her a chance.

Now that fit our new cat. Fiercely independent. Loving, but clearly on her terms. Down on her luck, in need of a friend.

I addressed the silent black cat behind us, in a pet carrier nestled in the backseat of our car. "What do you think, Lilith?"

Instantly she let out a telltale squeak.

So her name was Lilith.

Ten years ago. And so help me, she's got a big piece of my heart even now. Even though she's gone.

More on that later.

Somebody Holds The Key

This weekend is a hard one. I don't want to dwell on it or drag anyone else through it, but.... Well, here goes.

One of our cats has passed away. We called her Nita. I knew we'd lose her one day, but this isn't at all the way I wanted it to happen.

Nita was a dilute tortie, basically a calico where all the colors in her coat came out in smears instead of patches. It was as if God had painted her in a fit of passion-- slapping handfuls of red, black, and white on her--and let the colors run. She was with us, demure and loving, for over 5 years.

She was born practically in my lap, on the floor of what was then my home office. Seeing it happen right in front of me changed my world. Dragged down in the drudgery of moving to a new place, I watched a kind of magic. Mina, her mother, chose to give birth close to me and Jamie when she could've run for cover. She shared that moment and her newborn children with us. I had never been invited to share a miracle before.

After several days, Jamie and I picked out names for Mina's kittens. Nita was named after Nita Van Sloan, the tough girlfriend of a pulp hero called the Spider. Like her namesake she was loyal and cautious, guarding her secrets very closely.

She didn't talk much, but when she did, oh man. What a wail. It sounded like she'd taken some lessons from Jimi Hendrix and got herself a twang bar. Her voice had range.

Unlike the Spider's main squeeze, she wasn't a social butterfly. At the first sight of strangers, she'd run for cover. Her siblings liked to scrap and play around, but not her. She'd have sooner slipped off to a far corner, sought out a warm lap, or snuggled close to someone she knew (often her mom, sometimes me or Jamie).

So you can imagine how thrilled she was to go to cat shows. We tried it for a while, but she was downright terrified. The slightest change in her lifestyle made her nervous. And when that happened, she got sick. She just couldn't handle stress.

It became a real problem when we brought Kyouju and the other Japanese bobtails into the mix. Before she knew it, she was a token introvert in a house of feline extroverts. They loved her. She hated getting picked on.

A year ago, Jamie and I decided to put her in my home office. As long as we kept the door shut, she could eat or sleep without getting pounced on. It did help her mood, but it triggered a new batch of problems. She couldn't get as much exercise in the office, so we got fat really quick. We switched her to diet kibble, and that worked a little. And if the smell of her litter box wasn't enough to put me off my work, Nita would sit on my hands. She wanted affection and lots of it. Maybe she got lonely in there.

Nita became more talkative, more demonstrative. If I leaned back too far in my chair, she'd jump onto my lap or my chest and sleep. (Bloody catnaps....) And when she wanted attention, she learned quickly that if she turned up the kcat talk, she'd get plenty.

That all changed Friday morning. I walked into the office and found her spitting up and drooling, tense and miserable, but not moving much. Jamie and I discussed it on the phone. We didn't have a lot of cash, but we had to take her to the vet. That was how we got the bad news. Fatty liver disease. She hadn't been eating, so her liver was going into overtime. Our vets kept her overnight to work on the problem, but they were upfront. Nita's condition was severe. They weren't sure if she'd even survive the night. Jamie and I sweated bullets. It took us a while to sleep.

Saturday morning, Jamie got the call from the vets. Nita had died in her sleep. There was another infection, possibly the reason why her liver failed. She was responding to preliminary treatment, but she just didn't have the strength to keep fighting. The vets reassured us we had done everything we could've done. Nita hid her ailment very well, as most cats do, so there were no warning signs for us to catch.

But I keep going over it in my head, even now. Did I do enough? Why didn't I see this coming? Maybe the warning signs were right in front of me the whole time. Or I could've found more time to spend with her--played with her, held her for just a minute--instead jumping right into work.

You can see how easy it is to button up the little things and tuck 'em away.

Jamie and I have decided to cremate her. I don't know if we'll keep her in a funeral urn (the thought of which feels a little weird for me) or bury her ashes in our garden.

Nita's death was completely the opposite of what I wanted. I had set my hopes on her dying fat, happy, and with us at her side. She had lost at least 5 pounds. In unspeakable pain. And alone.

Every time I walk into a room, part of me wants to tear it all down. Another part makes me weep when I don't want to. I want to move on. I don't want to carry this. But it's like a halo of sadness right above my head. Just when I think I've got a handle on my emotions, I shed some tears and feel some despair.

Jamie and I are coping with the loss. Or trying to. Every once in a while, we start to talking about it, comparing notes on what happened. Then we're back where we started.

On our way out to get some breakfast somewhere, a song came on the radio. I couldn't bear it. Jamie couldn't either. One day I'll hear again and it won't hurt as much.

One day, losing Nita won't hurt as much.

Come down on your own and leave your body alone.
Somebody must change.
You are the reason I've been waiting all these years.
Somebody holds the key.

But I'm near the end and I just ain't got the time
And I'm wasted and I can't find my way home.

Steve Winwood
"Can't Find My Way Home"

Honey, I'm Home

Now that I laid a whole dire and cryptic attitude on all and sundry, I think I have good news to report. I'm back at the homestead, and so help me, I actually think Jamie and I are better for the gloom and doom.

I had to see her again either way, so we could get our taxes filed together. And much as I wanted to go home, reviewing the finances on my own gave me a brutal reminder why I had to walk out in the first place. Jamie called and we talked things over in the morning. I'd read her the riot act the day before, many times begging her to give me a reason to stay. That morning, on the phone, I got the reasons I wanted. And when we came home, she lived up to them.

I haven't felt this good about our future together, not in years. We put our hearts on the table for a while, clearing the air between us, and then crunched the numbers at the same table. I expected them to get grim. That was no surprise. After discussing options and the incoming cash flow, there was the slightest hint of a light at the end of the tunnel. I gave her my interpretation of the numbers, and also my reluctance to accept them so readily. Adding numbers up tells you how much you've got, but it doesn't tell you when and for how long. But to my relief, Jamie practically thanked me for pointing that out. None of those things had occurred to her before, and she wanted my input on how to nail those questions down. My God, we're actually a team.

When I came home, I begged--crying openly without shame or a shred of peace--that she wouldn't make me regret my decisions. I didn't want to go back to the old ways. No more power trips, secrets, or games.

And she didn't offer to change. She made the change.

I'd actually forgotten what hope felt like. I knew struggle. I know heartbreak. After yesterday, I know a hundred more nuances lie inside that one horrible sensation. And hope seems alien, almost an anticlimax, at the end of 24 hours. But I'll take it.

I knew there was a reason I love this woman....

Expect Me When You See Me

Just a quick note to let everyone know what's going on. I'm afraid you won't be seeing much of me for a while. I'll try to keep in touch.

I feel as if I've already fallen in shadow, and I don't intend to fall any farther.

This is the hardest thing I've ever done. I don't know if I'll ever forgive myself for daring to live on. I'm leaving the woman I love.

Keep Your Hands Off My Stack

The last three days have been spent in soul-draining, brain-sucking tedium. It's given me new insights into the economy.

I'll back up a bit. Jamie and I were at a local Christmas bazaar, basically a huge convention hall full of the intrepid soldiers on the front lines of the free enterprise system. Trinkets, tools, food, hats, books, toys, T-shirts. Just oodles of stuff. Jamie and her parents toughed it out last weekend, and Jamie and I took on the second weekend. She had lots of her handmade jewelry and some contributions from her folks (solid oak ruler racks and a small garden of quilted Christmas trees.)

And from Friday morning to Sunday night, we sold squat. I sat there watching people go by, wondering if I had a funny look on my mug or something, because hardly anybody bought anything. Tons of people passed our booth, glared at Jamie's work, doted over the quilted trees her mother made...and almost never bought anything.

"Oh, it's so cute!" Women of every shade and age said something along those lines. And they moved on empty-handed. For the hell of it, on Sunday Jamie and I decided to count how many of these "oh, how cute" dorks came by without slapping cash down. I bet on 50. We counted 48.

There were even folks who tried to buy things that weren't for sale. Everyone loved Jamie's maneki-neko, a ceramic lucky cat. A few idiots came offering to buy it. It was the only thing on that damn table without a price tag.

Jamie and I were practically banging our heads together. We didn't understand any of it. We sat there, greeting people, watching them walk by, reading, talking, kvetching as quietly as possible, freezing under the El Nino airflow of an industrial air vent, trying to keep each other from eviscerating middle-class forty-something gold-bricking bloated Twinkie molesters as our brains slowly turned to mush over the course of three days.

I got kinda punchy after a while.

No one got much business at the show, it turns out. Every booth took a bath. Small consolation.

And it was while I was sitting there--trying to keep busy with my little projects, reading, and notetaking stuck in the tiny space between our tables--I started looking at economics and the American right-wing.

This time last year, Darth Cheney and the Shrub tried to coax the country into spending money in the middle of a recession. Many corporate giants in this country, Enron being the most notorious nowadays, went out of their way to bilk millions out of millions of people. They did more damage to the country's economy and morale than al-Qaida. (Think about it. We grieved, we rallied, and we got on with our lives. Thanks to all the corporate corruption, we practically fear the economy.)

I shook my head at all this lunacy and greed until this weekend, when it was all about my money. The economy sucks just as much for the shoppers as it does for me. And still, I wanted to take their fraggin' money away from them. I didn't care whether they had bills or a mortgage, or if they had kids to feed. I have major financial problems. I have a negative cash flow. Maybe they didn't need the junk I was selling, but once I took on the role of capitalist running dog, anyone's wallet seemed like fair game. And I was competing with hundreds of other people for it.

Once I could step back and look at it all, I think I understood better the corporate fixation on money. It's like trench warfare. You're either digging a foxhole or charging into no-man's-land, desperate for a better position. More money means less vulnerable. More money feels safe.

Hunger and fear give you greed, so reactionism is an easy fit. I think now that right-wingers are out there glomming onto all money and power they can find, and try to help everyone else do the same under the assumption that they're helping everyone makes themselves more safe. But economics isn't about making everyone safe. It's about the distribution of limited resources. And there's never enough safety to go around. To give one person safety, it must be taken from someone else. The rich don't hate the poor, but they do fear poverty.

Pink Floyd weren't kidding. "Money...it's a gas."

Use it, sure. We all gotta breathe. Just don't sniff the fumes.

Jive Turkey

This has been one of the stranger Thanksgiving Days I've ever seen. Not the worst, but sheesh.

Jamie's parents, after 20+ years of divorce, have become an item again. My initial response to the news is too scandalous for family viewing. Major shock. It's not like the Berlin Wall, but their relationship alternated between cordial and bitter and back again. And when they decided to come here for Thanksgiving--as a couple--that kinda blew our feeble li'l minds.

Jamie got me really keyed up about it a few weeks earlier, hinting--more like threatening--that they might get upset and blame me when we tell them about the bankruptcy thing. The first time she brought it up, it made sense. No one would be thrilled at the news. And then she kept going on about it, repeatedly pointing out that I should expect trouble, that they're bound to blame me for it, on and on. Three or four iterations later, she wondered why I was so tense. (Sometimes I wonder if she thinks tactical nukes are bombs with payloads of tactful plutonium.)

And when the Talk actually came, the worst they did was shrug and sigh. If anything they minimize the hell out of it: "Lots of people file for bankruptcy." They were very sympathetic, even to me.

Damn...I wish my parents were that supportive. They would've beaten the bejeezus out of me, crucified me, and told me to repaint the planks I was nailed onto while I was up there anyway. And then my mother would try to badger me into being an air conditioner technician again.

Still, not the worst Thanksgiving I ever had. That award goes to my father, circa 1986. He did everything short of throwing the turkey into the street and screaming that my family didn't deserve it. He did do the latter, though.

I remember when holidays used to be fun. Then again, I still remember what it was like to be six months old.

People have this attitude that, after a certain age, you're not entitled to enjoy yourself anymore. Work, work, work. Push, push, push. You give. Everyone else takes. Nobody says thanks and everyone says, "What have you done for me lately?" People laugh when you complain of weariness, fatigue, or feeling unfulfilled. "What did you expect?" they say.

"To be totally honest, I expected to be dead by the time I was 30." That's my usual response. Of course I'm the tasteless SOB who dares say what I really feel.

If I wasn't so tired, I'd try to feel something else. That's the funny thing.

Veteran of the Psychic Wars

If things get any weirder, I'll have to check the water supply. Just when I thought things were going to calm down, this weekend delivered a better curveball than any I've ever seen in Major League Baseball. And I want it all to go away, just for a day.

I had a different attitude about change once. Change isn't necessarily bad. It's the way of the universe. There would be no life without it. Every belief and creed is based on that: God calls forth Light; Vishnu dreams a new dream; a void explodes; the end of a cosmic status quo. Change can be exciting. I can't be the only one to think so.

Still, some people panic. They run and hide, assuming the worst, lashing out. They hold true to the ancient Chinese curse and make it prophecy. May you live in interesting times. So you can imagine what a downer it is when somebody freaks out and you have to spend the next several days picking up the pieces.

I'll bet you've noticed a total lack of hard info in my kvetching here. I won't go into the specifics, not here. I'm tired of that. It's the trend, not the event, that's getting to me. The schtick, not the dialogue.

I've spent the last few days kicking ass and naming names. I never wanted to do it in the first place. I keep getting volunteered to be the pointman in someone else's war, knocking down their personal demons just to defend myself. I want to speak in a soft tone, civil, mature and sensible. I'm tired of shouting. I feel like I ought to carry around a water cannon just to have it on hand in case someone flips out again.

Again. It always happens again. No rest, no peace. The pace and the tension goes up a notch every day. It takes so many energy--sheer willpower--to keep someone under control when they don't want to be. Each day for the last three years, my will gets spent faster than I can recover it. It gets harder to get out of bed. To eat. To write. To care. And I have to keep doing it because no one says it should stop. No one except me, anyway.

Hence the references to Blue Oyster Cult at the top. (No, no fraggin' omlaut. Deal.) The song of that title was based on Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion, the cosmic hero reincarnated again and again to yet another conflict he must resolve. In college I lost my interest in the mordant weariness of the character in all his guises. When my life began to take on the tone of those stories, I finally understood the character. He wasn't morbid or world-weary. He was burned out. The battle between Order and Chaos never ends. In it, ethics become a luxury.

I'm the only one playing by a set of rules. A few entries back, I raised the question of whether preying on other people was the right way to go. It's times like this when the idea seems the most appealing. I feel beaten down, and yet the only time anyone gives any quarter is when I beat them down in return. It happens so much that I wonder whether this is supposed to be Life's Great Lesson or something. I was raised to believe in the Golden Rule. Left to my own devices, that's how I'd do things. But that doesn't protect me...more like the opposite. It leaves me vulnerable to those who won't play by the same rules. I'm forced to fight just as dirty just to make them back off. And the arguments get more brutal, more draining, each time.

Ironically I started the weekend on a very different note...courtesy of your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. Jamie got a copy of the DVD in a steal of a deal, so I filled my brain with webbing for almost 24 hours. It brought up a lot of memories.

Strange as it sounds, I learned more about ethics and morals from comic books and the Bible more than I ever did from my parents. Even now, I see ol' Spidey as a spiritual mentor. A totem, maybe? And while lots of people have written off Sam Raimi's flick as just another soul-sucking, money-hungry Hollywood blockbuster, he captures the heart of that character. For all the garish color and adolescent wish fulfillment, there is a strong philosophical message in Spider-Man. "With great power comes great responsibility." That's the whole point of the character and thus the movie. The script places protagonist and antagonist on opposite ends of the issue of power. The Green Goblin represents a reckless, selfish use of power, the darker and older instinct in humanity. Spidey has realizes that someone else suffers when power is used selfishly. He made that mistake once and, as Spider-Man, struggles and sacrifices to atone. Instead of being a martyr, paralyzed and impotent, he grows into maturity and becomes something greater than he was at the start.

And it's that message that informs my actions, even now, after three decades. I just hope I have the strength to stay in there and...well, keep swinging.

The Rush Hour of Our Discontent

I'm not quite as liberal as Jesus, but I'm not too thrilled with the election results. Locally it's pretty good for my li'l hobbit hole, but throughout the rest of the United States...well, I think the next six years are going to be a long, hard ride. I can only hope the music scene picks up during this Bush's administration as it did for Bush Senior. At least we'd have a cool soundtrack for the disaster movie to come.

Of course we had Kurt Cobain to kick everyone's butts into gear back then. Marilyn Manson (the goth answer to Sideshow Bob) and N*Stinc ain't gonna cut it.

And man, I need something to go my way here. Our cats--all fourteen of 'em--are rapidly turning into the Typhoid Mary brigade. Nita, a dilute tortie introvert/assault vehicle, has some kind of urinary infection. Jamie and I took her to the vet a day or so ago, and we're still puzzled as to why. She keeps bleeding all over the office, so I'm surrounded by puddles of watery blood even as I write. Visitors are going to think I'm a devil worshipper or something. ("See? I knew it! He wears black all the time, he's got heavy metal records! He even does blood sacrifices fergodsakes!!!") Meanwhile a couple of Jamie's Japanese Bobtail kittens, henceforth referred to as "JBTs," keep chunking charlies all over the rest of the house.

We're living in mortal dread that more than one cat might need professional medical attention at the same time. That'd take us instantly into three figures. Even if we weren't in the throes of bankruptcy, it would've hurt plenty.

Anyone who's kept up with Jamie (or her blog ) knows a lot of this BS already. For me, it's a different kind of pain. I never thought I'd ever have to file for bankruptcy, let alone spend enough money to go there. Technically it's not being filed in my name, but I'm about as screwed. All our efforts are being channeled to fix it. We're bleeding money. And frankly it's humiliating. A bunch of strangers show up at my door, demanding that I account for money I never saw. Yet I see all around me things bought with that money. And I didn't want even half of it. The whole situation is ridiculous, at least to me.

I've seen some strange things in my life, courtesy of very strange people, folks who were eager to believe anything, no matter how absurd or outrageous, as long as their consciences or perceptions got an easy out. For a long time I was surrounded by such humanoid creatures, subjected to more personal demons than Max von Sydow, forced to tangle with them just to free myself of them. And I learned, like any victim of brainwashing, that reality is liquid. It changes with the wind. People see what they want to see. Dysfunctional people, even more so. It's taken many years--after the efforts of so many to convince me 2+2=5; that there were five lights when I saw only four; that meddling with my life was their way of loving me; that I was a monster for not letting them get away with it; all because it suited their pathetic ends--for me to trust my perceptions again. So it takes a lot of thought and willpower to override the fear of retribution invading my flesh like an electrical shock when I speak my mind. Part of me wants to hide every time I feel anything. It might not be what someone else wants me to feel.

They say he who dares, wins. I look at all the horrors that happened in my life, at the ones plaguing the world at large, and the kinds of people who profit the most from them. I forget who was it who claimed that a barbarian has the upper hand in any battle because he's willing to do anything to win. Of late, I begin to wonder if that person was right.

And a horrible thought strikes me: Is this what it feels like when someone is about to go postal?