A wheel of roses

Granadilla

I cut myself upon the thought of you
And yet I come back to it again and again,
A kind of fury makes me want to draw you out
From the dimness of the present
And set you sharply above me in a wheel of roses.
Then, going obviously to inhale their fragrance,
I touch the blade of you and cling upon it,
And only when the blood runs out across my fingers
Am I at all satisfied.

--Amy Lowell

to my soul

Van Morrison, 73 today.

Paul Winter, 79 today. 

There is no end to this story

Untitled

WedMEMEsday the first

One of the basic ways the loml and I would communicate when words weren't an option was via memes. I have always loved meme culture, but she definitely took it to another level for me altogether. I began to realize the bizarre ways that memes use the subtle concept of the inside joke to make nearly infinite variation possible. How memes rely on a concept of genre that is entirely new, and layered. For example, there's a whole slew of Porn Not-Porn memes where stills from pornography are captioned in various ways related to everyday life. There's even the subgenre of Hentai, not Hentai memes also. Or the "slaps roof of and says this bad boy can hold x number of whatevers," a really interesting set of variations on what was originally a used car salesman joke. Some of the genres are simply the same photo set background, like the guys from American Chopper arguing. Most memes are politically and socially subversive. A great many memes rely on the cringey, laughing against your will, incredibly poor taste response. 

I've noticed that older friends of mine are often offended by memes and younger friends never are. Something in very poor taste is just part of meme culture and if it is unacceptable, one just keeps scrolling and that's that. 

There's an excellent site for people not versed in the meme scene, where one can go and get a lot of background on a particular type of meme or image, called "Know Your Meme." 

There's even entire genres of memes that exist only to satirize meme culture itself. It can get very meta. 

In the spirit of this cultural comedic and political gold mine, and in light of not being able to share in the revelry with the loml anymore, I think I'll post the week's best every Wednesday, since I have to teach for six hours and it might be a lighter way to start the day. 

pretty much in the genre of memes mocking woo, as well as memes mocking WikiHow images

The "revered sage saying something absurd" genre

 Cartoons aren't memes, strictly speaking, but they often have a "meme"-y feel

The mocking white people genre, one of my favorites

 another WikiHow image meme, combined with the whole genre of "Karen" memes. It's hard to even explain the entire Karen phenomenon.

A few genres combined here-- political satire, the "when you" kind of caption, and the mocking white people genre. And the re-purposing of a stock photo genre. 

another meme-y cartoon

Meme culture also intersects with geek culture, so a lot of memes use images or themes from geek classics, such as The Princess Bride. This one also is in the "satirizing American professional work culture and language" genre, which is huge

Of course, politically subversive, but mostly just the genre of re-purposing a photo that's corny as hell and making especially the nice old man say something outrageous and awful. Memes absolutely don't pull punches when it comes to cornball visual culture. 

I'm a big fan of feminist memes in general, but especially the ones that skewer dumb men

This may or may not be a Porn Not-Porn meme, but 

Not really a meme, but almost

This one is a brilliant combination of a niche theme (mommy meme sort of , combined with SJW lingo/communist satire) with a classic meme template of the increasing "mind blown" or "enlightened" person

The book cover genre is a big one, and memes mocking Burning Man are popular

The fake bottom screen scroll, a fertile area

The bad pun meme, some of the highest types

The retweet genre which is a borderline meme

In extremely poor taste. Perfect. 

The goofy and absurd

Satire

 Originally everything except the center square, changed for sun haters. Maybe a specialized Arizona meme. 

 Children's cartoon characters re-purposed is very popular

It me

Memes making fun of telemarketing and employment scams

the absurd created by riffing on known cultural themes

 Millennial reflections on Gen X and Boomer foibles, extremely common. 

Expressive in a monk's cell

Dismembered and gutted, but working. How can this be? No idea. It's the way things tend to go for me. Like the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It's only a flesh wound. I've been shocked into a lot of silence and the past couple of days have felt like a weird, foggy blur. But my tendency to express myself remains. Missives from Hades. 

The expressive type is an interesting thing to contemplate. Jung popularized introvert and extrovert, but I think expressive types occur within both of those categories. Maybe it's better to talk about styles than types.

The expressive style then. It me. I wonder if it would benefit me to practice the opposite. Stop documenting and sharing my experience, stop posting music I love, stop expressing my opinion on things, stop telling people how I feel. Try on a radically different style.

A Monk at Prayer, Edouard Manet, 1864

I do know that one of the hardest experiences of losing this relationship for me is that I'm not able to express anything to them anymore. My usual pattern in romance especially is to share books, movies, music, memes, humor in general, opinions, etc. After a break up, for the longest time, sometimes forever, I continue to see things I want to share with the ex. But often can't, for practical reasons, out of respect for a hard boundary, or simply because the lines of communication are down.

The shadow side of the expressive style is a toxic, attention-grabbing, codependent reliance on constant external validation and always having an audience. Facebook sometimes greatly aggravates this side. Another shadow element is the crushing emptiness and loneliness that results from constantly performing, or from not having an audience. You hear a lot of artists and performers talk about this. The abyss after a show. All that applause and recognition evaporates and you're alone. This stark contrast might contribute to the tendency of performers to be addicts and alcoholics. Have to take the edge off that moment of complete solitude.

But the upside is enjoyable, for me. I like being a messenger, a conduit of cool cultural things, an enthusiast and promoter, a writer and communicator. A documentarian. Shared appreciation definitely enhances my own appreciation for things. If I see an incredible scene, for example, my impulse is to photograph it and share it. Look at this! And thereby I feel like the experience gets rooted somehow in something larger than myself.

It would be very challenging for me to go on a trip and not tell anyone, not post any photos and not share the experience with anyone at all. I think a lot of people probably do some version of this all the time. Maybe I'll experiment with it. 

But then I'm quite certain, afterward, I would want to tell everyone all about what it was like to not share it. 

Compounded grief combined with fierce eyeroll amusement is a weird experience

Alice Coltrane's Birthday, 8/27/37

A loving tribute

Big Boi loves on Kate Bush

Loosening up the grief

Some of the basics of life on this planet, I often forget. Or, I know in my head, but they still hit hard when they land squarely in the heart and gut. 

I can't prevent loss by hanging on more tightly. I also can't prevent loss by pushing it away out of fear. Attachment has no effect on what other people decide. Aversion has no effect on what other people decide. 

I don't want to lose this particular person, above all, and when the reality of that loss sinks in there's a wild, fierce cry of "please no!" that spontaneously jumps out of me. But the wresting away is more fierce, and more real, and it is what it is. 

There's also something gentle and kind in the universe, that knows we don't want to, but we are going to have to. We can't do anything about it. The very person we found who was so dear. That story has to end. 

And the best answer we can give in the face of that sorrow is "It is what it is. I don't know why. It was a gift. I'm grateful. I'll miss her more than I will ever be able to articulate. But the gift has to go."

It would be the best way to die, I imagine. Open and soft and smiling, but also crying. Grateful for all of it, accepting all of it no matter the endless grief, but opening one's hands, palms down, not up to meet another's palms but open to the end, deep breaths, letting all of it go, but not forgetting a single moment of it. 

Getting it, even when you don't want to

There's lots of great advice about "following your intuition" or "listening to your gut," but along with that, sometimes we listen as hard as we can and ignore all of it anyway, because we want to be hearing something different. Our capacity for denial and "yes but" and holding out hope seems nearly infinite. 

It feels especially endless with regard to news that is simply unacceptable. Maybe we're not good at what we wanted to do for a living. Or we have to give up some beloved habit that we feel is the only thing that helps us make it. The love of our life is not available and probably never will be, or at least probably won't be for many years. The love of our life is moving on already, better at dealing with reality than we are, has already forgotten, is much better at moving on than we are. Who wants to hear that?

So, along with the advice about intuition, there ought to be some tools for hearing, digesting and accepting news one doesn't want.

I am pondering exactly what those tools are. I often seem constructed to  listen to what I don't want to hear only when the pain of not listening gets great enough. It's a weird law of growth, it seems, that pain is one of the only things that cuts through denial. But even then, the cry of "I can't do this anymore!" doesn't necessarily lead to lasting change, or deeper acceptance. It's a bare starting place of despair and defeat, but a lot of things can happen after that. 

I think of these bottoms as "step 1 moments." "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol- that our lives had become unmanageable." I sometimes think unbearable, excruciating and utterly miserable would substitute well for "unmanageable." "I admitted I am powerless over others- that my life has become unmanageable." That's the CoDA first person version, and more directly applicable now. 

All I can do is stop. Let go. The fear is that if I let go, there will be nothing but loss. Loss and more loss. I try to recall that you can never lose what is truly yours, but lately it has not been helping. Sometimes I have been hearing my guardian angel saying "Well, you know, when it comes to love, even a love for the ages, sometimes things just don't work out. That's just the way things are, friend." 



I find this oddly comforting but terribly sad. Even when something feels so powerful and weirdly fated, maybe it's also fated to not materialize. Just as much fated to fade, be a set of unforgettable blessings, remembered fondly. It is, after all, one of the archetypal love story endings. Powerful love, yet somehow not possible, and the agreement it is best to part, gratitude for what was, and the long arc of the rest of one's life. 

I resist this so fiercely in this case. I am having a terribly hard time accepting that this is the fate. Is it my intuition telling me that it doesn't have to end that way, or is it my denial? I have been unable to parse it. I suspect it's my denial.  

I know my mind keeps saying "don't make yourself available for an unavailable person." But my mind loves those pat, black and white and totally reasonable propositions. I wish I were capable of living a rational life sometimes. I am not. I am no stoic. My heart always drives decisions much more. 

All I am able to do lately is let go and hold a neutral space for pain. Sadness is a big part of every day. I'm a little ashamed of that, but I'm working on just accepting it. Anger and resentment come up when I push the sadness away, and I don't want anger and resentment. 

I don't want any of this. It's been a long stretch of not wanting a lot of what is happening. Or of having the moments of what I want be countered with long unwanted interludes. Narrow, painful passages, without much air to breathe, and with no apparent way out until a lot farther off in time. 

As I've noted before in posts here, the hardest thing for me to do is nothing. But nothing can be done. 

Conversations on levels, pain all the way down

I had a horrible experience yesterday where I commented on a FB post that was about the marked tendency for older men to be with younger women by focusing on the data collection and analysis parts of the study cited in the original post. It was a horrible experience because it all completely fell apart and devolved into me being called out for my own preference for younger women, and became not about data or analysis at all, but about my own ageism, misogyny, sexism and my preferences being part of the problem. 

I think the bigger the blind spot, the more painful it can be to have bright light cast on it. My inventory, as repeated a couple of times by the person calling me out, is obvious. After my first marriage, I have never been with a woman my own age. All of my romances have been with women who are younger. A couple women were not all that much younger, but as I got older, the age gap grew. 

Look at this stock photo of a happy looking couple?

I guess if a person with whom I am not involved had pushed me to acknowledge that I am the exact stereotype and my relationships have been pretty much archetypal old guy/significantly younger woman for the past several years, it might have been less painful. But it was the loml who called me out on it, with whom there is a significant age gap. Deep down in a lot of places for myself, I have been acutely aware of getting older, and I've been imagining, without even realizing it, being rejected due to my age. So the encounter stirred up all of that anxiety and lack of confidence, and then stirred up my indignation as a supposed ally of women. 

It didn't help that I had had terrible nightmares the night before of the loml never wanting to speak to me again and I had neglected to eat and was teaching for 6 hours as the interaction unfolded. And that the major reminder of possible prostate cancer has been working me over for weeks, and that that particular cancer is yet another blow to not only one's sense of being "young-ish," but also directly to one's masculinity. And that the biopsy itself was invasive and humiliating. And that I have a goddamned cold sore on my upper lip. And every time I look in the mirror I'm shocked by my rapidly emerging grey hair, the lines on my face, and how haunted I look lately. 

So the setup was perfect for me to melt down. I still feel gutted today. I'm at least able to drop the defensiveness and face facts. I reflecting more carefully why I haven't been with women my own age, interrogating my preferences. I think the pat answers aren't very helpful. One of the things the loml reminded me of was some disparaging comments I have made about my age group and the women in it. I want to look at that attitude and dismantle whatever my resentments are. I want to understand my preference and where it comes from. 

Preferences are what they are, to start with anyway. And the hope of falling in love or even simply being attracted to someone "ethically" is hilarious. The heart has its reasons that reason knows not. But I know also that preferences can be interrogated and new awareness can lead to expanded preferences. I think the inventory around this will be quite liberating, way down here in Hades, which is the perfect place to do such work. 

And I think from a more wide perspective, it's important for me to remember that there are often two or even more conversations going on. There is the superficially apparent conversation and then there is the real conversation that is running along under there. For me to respond in a clueless way to the loml's post about the discriminatory age gap of older men with younger women, by focusing on intellectual aspects of the research, is fundamentally just another way of saying #NotAllMen, which is so fucking tiresome. 

Needle, needle on the wall

I had a long awaited date with the above item today. For reference, that sucker is about 14 inches long. 

No trip through Hades would be complete without the specter of some kind of life-threatening situation, or at least life-altering. In this case, elevated prostate specific antigen, chronic prostate-related symptoms and no amelioration from a 30 day course of Cipro. 

It's not the greatest moment in one's life, sitting across from a doctor, and having them say "You need a biopsy."

So I delayed 3 months, hoping the PSA levels would go down to normal. The reading did go down, from 4.5 to 4, but that is still *half a nanogram per milliliter* too high for a guy my age. 

But the biopsy couldn't be set up until today, even though the appointment where we all agreed it would be a good idea was back at the end of June. I was on the road for July and my pee doc, Shapiro, was on vacation in Alaska. 

"I'm going to use my finger first," Shapiro said, although I had read in the latest recommendations that digital examination isn't recommended anymore. I decided not to argue though, since he had that long needle next to him on the table. "Then I'm going to use this transrectal ultrasound gadget to see what the hell I'm doing." Okay, that sounds great, it's good you'll be able to see what you're doing. "Then I'm going to give you two numbing shots on either side of the prostate." Ouch but yes. "Then I take 12 pieces of the prostate out with this biopsy needle, going in through your rectum, and then we're done." Well that all sounds just swell. 

The numbing shots hurt like hell. The 12 snags of prostate hardly hurt at all. "You know some guys come back to get this done for recreational purposes," Shapiro joked, probably sensing that I was getting a little queasy around snag number 9 or so. "I bet you charge extra for that," I joked back and he said "Listen anybody crazy enough to want to do this, it's on the house."

When it was over, the nurse told me to clean up using the tissues, put them in the biohazard bin, and take it easy. Shapiro said "You did great, you hardly bled at all, and now we'll get to the bottom of what the hell is going on with your prostate. Haha, get it? Get to the bottom?" I had developed a dizzy, cold sweat, nauseated pallor by this time but chuckled weakly, that's a good one doc, a good one. 

The excruciating pain set in later, after the lidocaine wore off. No ibuprofen or aspirin, due to the risk of increased bleeding, so I had to take Tylenol, which never works all that well for me. I ate a big lunch and tried to sleep, but the pain wasn't having it. 

After a few hours, it all settled down and I did manage to fall asleep. The prospect of the biopsy had been weighing on me a lot more than the possibility I have cancer. I have a thing about needles (which probably saved me from being a junkie) and I have fairly low trust in doctors. If I do have prostate cancer, there's a huge range of possible options, depending on the Gleason score. Outcomes range from watchful waiting, to radical prostatectomy, which usually renders someone either partially or completely sexually dysfunctional. So I have that going for me, which is nice. 

I don't feel like I have cancer, which I know is a weird thing to say, but my intuition is telling me something else is going on. Prostate stuff is very common for men in their 50s and beyond, and there's a couple other conditions that can lead to elevated PSA, Especially a chronically low level elevated PSA-- I had it measured three times over a year and it was 4.8, 4.5 and 4, in descending order. These levels are often more representative of benign prostate hyperplasia or chronic non-bacterial prostatitis, or even the somewhat more mysterious chronic pelvic pain syndrome. 

But now I have to wait two weeks to find out what's up. 

Not Managing Well, Managing Well

Returning from my travels was a weird experience. 

My internet had been mistakenly turned off, there was a flat tire on my car, my car wouldn't start, my washing machine broke when I tried to do the trip laundry. 

The flat tire saga was wild. I put the donut spare on there and headed to the Discount Tire, only about 3 miles from my place. On the way, the donut went flat-- so, in pathetic style, I drove on the flat donut the last mile, pulled as far over to the right as I could, flashers on. I got to the tire store and waited for them to get the work done, but a tech came in and said he couldn't get the car started. The check engine light had been on for a while with the code being the coolant temperature sensor, and that does mess up the computerized ignition. I tried, the tech tried again. No luck.

I called a tow guy who took 2.5 hours to show up. He got in the car and turned the key and the car started instantly. I had it towed anyway, with a full size spare thrown in the back to put on at home. A mechanic was called to replace the coolant switch. There's this new (?) thing where a mechanic will come to your driveway and do the repair there. He was scheduled for 10:30 am last Saturday but called at 2:30 pm to tell me he wouldn't be able to be there until the next morning. 

Okay. 

He did show up and replace the part, and the car is doing better. I took it in and got all the tires replaced. It still needs a new muffler and a new windshield but I doubt I'll do that. I'm headed toward buying another car in the next couple of weeks, if possible. It'll be sad to say goodbye to Isabel, the 1998 Honda Civic, but it's at the point now where it's inevitable. 

I had a guy come and fix the washing machine. It was a very simple fix that I could have easily done myself, and cost $179. The internet issue was hilarious, as it involved two separate 2 hour phone conversations with tech support at Cox, a trip to the Cox Solutions store for a replacement modem, with the end result being no one could figure out what the issue was, so they had to send a guy anyway. He figured it out and got me up and running. 

The interesting thing about this weird chain of breakdowns is that I maintained relative equanimity through all of it. Huh, the donut is flat. Huh, the car won't start. Huh, the tow truck is late. Wow, he started it. Weird, the washer is broken. How strange, the internet is down. 

I didn't take any of it personally, which is a big advance for me. My habitual reaction to a lot of this in the past was to become very angry. Infuriated, in fact. Of course, that response never had any constructive impact on outcomes, and sometimes was destructive. I like the idea that I have grown to a level of just rolling with the unexpected and responding, rather than reacting. 

I wish I could cultivate the same equanimity in the love relationship. Lately, or truthfully, to varying degrees, for the past year, I have not been consistently skillful. It's some of the most challenging work I have ever faced.