Non torno vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero, Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--
[They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!"]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin--
[They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!"]...

Two years. That's how long it lasted.

For two years I was able to beat back the throws of depression and behave in a semi normal manner. For two years my daily little white pill helped me see through the fog that had clouded my brain. For two years I was able to live something of a normal life.

Now it no longer works.

I got the first inklings that something was wrong last spring. Nothing overt, nothing that caused alarm bells to go off. It just became harder and harder to get moving.

Then Mom's cancer came back.

Then she died.

The grief overwhelmed me, washing over my body like a tidal wave. For weeks I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep, I couldn't function. I waited for the storm to pass, confident that although the emotional pain was intense, it would fade and I could pick up with life again.

After four months, I came to the realization the the grief was not fading. The world had narrowed to the width of my shoulders and life had lost its savor. A gray haze hid the world from me, hiding beauty and showing only ugliness.

Monday I go to see a shrink to try to start leaving this dark and scary place I find myself in, but the fear is intensifying. What if I can't be helped? What if the best I can hope for is to spend the rest of my days in a nice safe padded room where I can't hurt myself? And the worst, what if something starts to work again and then stops?

The most terrifying part of this entire experience is that I have fresh memories in my head of a time when life was worth living. The first real depression I fell into was so gradual that I didn't notice anything happening. Life became a trudge, just putting one foot in front of the other, but the change had been so subtle that I couldn't see what was wrong. Now I know better and the pain is all the more intense for having a recent time of happiness to compare it to.

Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

Pray for me, I'm terrified.

Back

Pleuz remember to put flowurs on Algernon's grave

Nothing compares to you

I've recently been trying to contact some of my old school classmates, mostly without success. I'm not really sure what drove me to do it: It’s not as if I had a particularly pleasant experience while I was there. In the end, I think that maybe I’m attempting to recapture some of the wonder of innocence that I felt when I was younger.

Mostly I remember my teens and early twenties as years where the future had promise, and there was so much waiting to be explored. Now that I'm older, I’m finding that I have indeed experienced many of the things I was waiting for, and while they were wonderful, they weren’t nearly as terrific as I’d imagined them to be.

Is it possible that wanting a thing too much for too long can spoil the experience when it arrives? A vivid imagination can convince one that an experience will be earth shattering. Then, when it finally arrives, no matter how wonderful it is, it cannot live up to expectations.

Even worse is the loss of firsts. I love Mags dearly, but kissing her today can’t measure up to the first time I kissed her. It’s like a fire that has died down from a roaring blaze to embers. It still gives warmth and comfort, but a part of me can’t help but yearn for those leaping flames.

It’s been quite a while since I found a book that I just couldn’t put down. I get some pleasure from revisiting old stories, yet nothing can compare to that feeling of just one more page until suddenly it’s dawn outside and you realize that you haven’t yet been to sleep.

Maybe the trick is in the title of a song that was popular when I was young: “I do not want what I cannot have.”

Long time Gone

Life has a habit of coming up and biting you in the ass when you least expect it. Since the last time I posted, I got laid off and got a new job working with my good friend Donal. It doesn't pay as well, and definitely is more physical work. On the bright side, I look forward to going to work in the morning again.

Besides being good friends with my only immediate co-worker, I get to go to a job that is just one long chemistry lab. Just the same, I've never added reagents a ton at a time.

Anyway, Now that things have calmed down a bit, I've decided to try to keep a semi-regular update schedule. Not that I'm promising anything, but I'll try.

And down we go

Today's project was to finish cleaning out Mag's sewing room. It's been almost two years since we moved in, and still having boxes stacked in the room was getting on both of our nerves. Everything was proceeding well, despite finally breaking the belt on the vacuum cleaner (after five years, it owes us nothing more, and it was quickly repaired.) Got the last of the boxes unpacked, and was busy ferrying things up into the attic when it happened.

I slipped.

In all, it was only a fall of about ten feet, and my descent was broken every foot or so by the stairs impacting my butt. (And my back. And my head.)

Fortunately nothing seems to be broken, I'm just sore. Still, it was not a good day.

Old friends

As part of my revisiting with old friends (some would call it rereading the classics,) I have recently started back into Christopher Stasheff’s Warlock series. Something stuck with me from early in the series. The main character meets a beautiful, capable, intelligent woman whom he falls in love with and who loves him back. (I’m paraphrasing because I don’t want to be bothered to dig the quote out.) He then realizes that this woman, whom he thought was so far beyond him, has fallen in love with him because he is able to see past her physical beauty and recognize the person underneath.
I have a friend whom is going through this at the moment. I want to tell this friend that they are being stupid, but I can’t quite bring myself to do that. I could say a lot on that statement, but I think I’ll let it lie for now.

Poetry Corner

Working my way through some old documents I had stored on the computer, I came across several poems that I had saved that I would like to share now.

The Second Coming
by William Butler Yeats:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all around it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

And

The Last Hero
by G.K.Chesterton

The wind blew out from Bergen from the dawning to the day,
There was a wreck of trees and fall of towers a score of miles away,
And drifted like a livid leaf I go before its tide,
Spewed out of house and stable, beggared of flag and bride.
The heavens are bowed about my head, shouting like seraph wars,
With rains that might put out the sun and clean the sky of stars,
Rains like the fall of ruined seas from secret worlds above,
The roaring of the rains of God none but the lonely love.
Feast in my hall, O foemen, and eat and drink and drain,
You never loved the sun in heaven as I have loved the rain.

The chance of battle changes -- so may all battle be;
I stole my lady bride from them, they stole her back from me.
I rent her from her red-roofed hall, I rode and saw arise,
More lovely than the living flowers the hatred in her eyes.
She never loved me, never bent, never was less divine;
The sunset never loved me, the wind was never mine.
Was it all nothing that she stood imperial in duresse?
Silence itself made softer with the sweeping of her dress.
O you who drain the cup of life, O you who wear the crown,
You never loved a woman's smile as I have loved her frown.

The wind blew out from Bergen to the dawning of the day,
They ride and run with fifty spears to break and bar my way,
I shall not die alone, alone, but kin to all the powers,
As merry as the ancient sun and fighting like the flowers.
How white their steel, how bright their eyes! I love each laughing knave,
Cry high and bid him welcome to the banquet of the brave.
Yea, I will bless them as they bend and love them where they lie,
When on their skulls the sword I swing falls shattering from the sky.
The hour when death is like a light and blood is like a rose, --
You never loved your friends, my friends, as I shall love my foes.

Know you what earth shall lose to-night, what rich uncounted loans,
What heavy gold of tales untold you bury with my bones?
My loves in deep dim meadows, my ships that rode at ease,
Ruffling the purple plumage of strange and secret seas.
To see this fair earth as it is to me alone was given,
The blow that breaks my brow to-night shall break the dome of heaven.
The skies I saw, the trees I saw after no eyes shall see,
To-night I die the death of God; the stars shall die with me;
One sound shall sunder all the spears and break the trumpet's breath:
You never laughed in all your life as I shall laugh in death.

(Written in 1901)

Rain, Rain, Go Away

Well, the long awaited rain has finally arrived. I'm sitting at the computer, listening to it fall. The job hunt work for today has finished, and I'm desperately trying to come up with some excuse to not do anything else. (Rain affects me that way.) So, let me share one of the Pennsic stories.

We set off at 8:30 Friday Evening, with the intention of driving all night to get to Pennsic. Everybody was too wound up to sleep, so we talked almost the entire way. Along about 2 in the morning, we got a little silly, and decided to finish the camp song from the Capital One commercial ("Burned a villiage to the ground, doh-dah".) Here's what we came up with:

Pickled Herring
(to the tune of Camptown Races)

Sailed my longship ‘cross the sea, doo-dah, doo-dah.
Gonna raid the monastery. Oh de-doo-dah-day.
Gonna sail all day, gonna sail all night.
Give me all your money and goods, or there’ll be a fight.

Burned a village to the ground, doo-dah, doo-dah.
Burned the church and robbed the town. Oh de-doo-dah-day.
Gonna raid all night, gonna raid all day.
Better find some more money, or I won’t go away.

Drank some mead from a great big horn, doo-dah, doo-dah.
Next morning wished I’d never been born. Oh de-doo-dah-day.
Gonna drink all day, gonna drink all night.
Wake me up too ear-e-ly, and there’ll be a fight.

Saw this wench in an English Fife, doo-dah, doo-dah.
Took her home to meet the wife. Oh de-doo-dah-day.
Gonna wench all night, gonna wench all day.
Instead of bliss when I got home, Helga made me pay.

Sailed my longship ‘cross the sea, doo-dah, doo-dah.
(spoken) I hear France is nice this time of year.