Posts in the “personal” category

Johnny Cash reads the Gettysburg Address.

This speech on SNL last night by Dave Chappelle was very good, very inspiring.

One on one to talk to you
Like film stars they get close to you

You’ve mirrored his appeal

He wants you so
He wants to be beside you

Then you pass by
Giving him the other side of you
Like the mystics do
So that every time he moves
He moves for you

Soul light can always see
The meeting of true love and she
This silent night and I
I guess a lonely mind might see
I’ve seen love on the screen
I’ve seen a screen goddess and me
Oh ...

How often this
How often this power of you

And so
I must confess
Whatever I see
I’m meant to be there with you
With you

I heard portions of this song while watching a Fringe episode last night, and thought it sounded really beautiful. From The Friends of Mr. Cairo, by Jon & Vangelis.

“And all becomes clear. Wish I could make you see this brightness. Don’t worry, all is well. All is so perfectly, damnably well. I understand now, that boundaries between noise and sound are conventions. All boundaries are conventions, waiting to be transcended. One may transcend any convention, if only one can first conceive of doing so. Moments like this, I can feel your heart beating as clearly as I feel my own, and I know that separation is an illusion. My life extends far beyond the limitations of me.”

~ Cloud Atlas

Here’s a photo of the building I grew up in, in Chicago, Illinois. (Thanks, Google Maps.)

Here’s a side view of the building I grew up in, in Chicago, Illinois. (Thanks, Google Maps.) I used to throw rubber baseballs and tennis balls against that garage for hours, which is probably one reason my shoulder was screwed up before I left high school.

Something in your eyes, makes me want to lose myself,
Makes me want to lose myself, in your arms.

There’s something in your voice, makes my heart beat fast.
Hope this feeling lasts, the rest of my life.

If you knew how lonely my life has been,
And how low I’ve felt so long.

If you knew how I wanted someone to come along,
And change my life the way you’ve done.

Feels like home to me,
Feels like home to me,
Feels like I’m all the way back where I come from.

Feels like home to me,
Feels like home to me,
Feels like I’m all the way back where I belong.

A song named, Feels Like Home, sung by Bonnie Raitt. A good Valentine’s Day song. :)

A crazy thing about mast cell disease is that you can be doing perfectly fine, all systems normal, and then you eat something wrong and two hours later you wish you were dead, or at least not conscious.

Every day I take a little blue pill.

Two of them, actually.

And they’re extremely helpful.

Later this week I’ll be giving birth to septuplets. Kidney stones, that is. Seven of them.

They’re going to be surgically removed, and whatever chemicals are in these little blue pills they gave me helps to reduce the spasms caused by the stones being stuck in places where they shouldn’t be.

Rafael Nadal, October 9, 2020: “It’s important to go through all the process. You have to suffer. You can’t pretend to be in a final of Roland Garros without suffering. That’s what happened there. But I found a way, no?”

Very soon I’ll be under anesthesia for the 19th time in my life. Hopefully when you get to 20 you get a prize. :)

Ninety-nine dreams I have had
In every one a red balloon
It’s all over and I’m standing pretty
In this dust that was a city
If I could find a souvenir
Just to prove the world was here
And here is a red balloon
I think of you, and let it go

~ from the song, 99 Red Balloons

“Humans without romance become curmudgeons and predictable with misery.”

~ Carlos Santana

Listened to a Buddhist teaching on impermanence while watching a brand new crack in my windshield grow to 20" today. Now in Fort Collins, Colorado.

~ a Facebook post from September 29, 2011

Apparently my lasting memory of moving out of my apartment in Broomfield, Colorado in September, 2020, is going to be getting stung by a bee when I walked into the local Walmart for the last time. Both a guy pushing carts and I saw something fly directly into my chest, but neither of us could figure out what it was. About thirty seconds later the bee stung me at this point in my arm.

Getting stung by a bee can be kind of a big deal to someone with mast cell disease (MCAS), so I walked over to the pharmacy and got a bottle of liquid Benadryl and some Zyrtec, and swallowed the pills with the Benadryl. A helpful pharmacist also had an EpiPen on standby for me if I needed it.

I don’t know how “normal” people react to bee stings, but this photo was taken almost five days after the sting.

While I’m sharing photos of Siberian Huskies I’ve known and loved, here’s one of Rocky working on a bone. My wife originally found him stuck in a cinder block in Virginia when he was 12-18” long, and he became the first husky we’d know. He became famous for destroying furniture, howling, and running around saying words like “Oprah” and “Geraldo.”

Remember when we was on ice skates,
And I thought you was supposed to be great,
So I kept giving you lip,
And you kept trying to slip,
So I could catch you.

That was our first date,
And after that,
Every day was great.

So now I want you to know,
That wherever you go,
Atlantic City or in the snow,
Don’t worry about a thing,
’cause as long as I got this ring,
I’ll always be there to catch you.

~ Rocky’s poem to Adrian in Rocky II

September 18, 2020: Apparently my lasting memory of the Walmart near Apartment #1 is going to be getting stung by a bee.

I’ve had these computer Christmas lights going for a while now, and tonight I’ll put up the others. I don’t know what it is about them, but when it starts to get dark I like a little color in the evening.

FWIW, if you’re interested in Christmas lights like these you can buy a similar strand here on Amazon, or look at a list of them here.

Had a talk with a doctor this morning about autoimmune diets, statins, apples, water tables in Mexico, almonds, bees, Zen, quality of life, and death. Good stuff.

~ September 7, 2016