Wind and Withering

I miss the weather reports. The 24-hour coverage from the Gulf Coast, anticipating, documenting and reliving the landfall of the spinning storm. We were watching our second disaster in a row from a hotel room bed, this time, unlike before, in the storm's very path. Despite this threat, despite this danger, despite this risk of being coincidentally stranded (read: busted) in the same hotel room 2,000 miles from home, she and I were as comfortable as either of us had ever been in our lives.

The first storm, Katrina, was the worst. It killed New Orleans while we hallucinated sex over one night in Freehold, NJ. Our bodies rained upon one another in fits of sweat throughout the night, twisting and turning in unpredictable patterns much like the hurricane that destroyed the delta. In a decidedly emetic or sensual twist, depending upon your potential for passion, we flooded our bed in a storm surge of divine relief.

Less than a month later we were undeterred in planting ourselves in the very path of another churning apocalyptic pulpit, Rita. This time we were escaping hurricane Lanmark for time alone 2,000 miles from home, risking catastrophe and transport in an effort to embrace undercover. We traded the eyes of employers for the potential deathly eye of a storm to us tamer, more forgiving and less judgmental.
We found comfort under the coverage of the storm and the pillows of the bed, channels and anchormen rivaling the down covering and positions we took across the expanse of the mattress lit by the cathode ray of the hurricane eye. Ft.Worth, while we were churning and moaning, slapping, snowballing, rimming, writhing, spasmodic, cumming, spotting, squirting, oozing, sweating, swearing, collapsing with skin upon skin, muscle upon muscle, bone upon bone love, became the site of one of history's greatest unheralded sex sessions. To this day, any whisper of wind reminds me of the sweet salty taste from her ears to the back of her knees.

I think she knew it, too. That's when I stopped saving her from herself, and it was no coincidence how quick her down fall came. And then mine. We were overpowered by our own charisma. To tell you the truth, I think couples in love were jealous at how in love we were.

Last Days Dwindling

Started like fire with a thunder crack
One long kiss and we never looked back

 

The kiss sparked smiles and the smiles lit a fuse 

when everything is lost you got nothing left to lose.

Except she did, and kept doing it, and did it again

Real late

Thinking of an island. White sand. Blue water. Fish for food. Campfire all night. Clothes needless after a week or two. Cuddling warmth a necessity every night. Hammock essential. Baby-making passion essential. Comfort with each other unquestionable. I'm a man, you're a woman. We are in love. All else falls overboard, except for McKenna, Katie and Kendal.

It’s 12:30 in the morming and I’ve gone so hog wild with my paper shredder that I’m looking for documents I need. Like my car registration renewal. Can’t fucking find it. That means I gotta spend 2 hours at the DMV this week. I’ve found 3 month old checks, $20 bills and full packs of smokes. But No DMV shit. Damn. Best case scenario? Get there at 7 AM and look like a bum. Be back by 9 and sleep the rest of the day. After I put on the new plates, .mac stickers and Custom X decal. Not much else to do to disguise the only candy apple red Eclipse in Monmouth County from the cops. But I also found a Red Bank PBA donation form. I guess $100 wouldn’t hurt. Wonder how the sticker will work. It’s definitely worth it, as a social experiment. They do good work with the kids. The one thing I know is that if Christine and I get together, the second we have a disagrement, she runs to the cops. And I’m at a loss. That’s why it will never work. Because as soon as she gets mad, she runs to ex-hubby-cop. And I get to sleep on the beach for a weekend. And I gotta buy a gun. Because she’s gonna use him against me.

Choice

What would it take for me to drown myself in pills and booze now? Nuthin. I have all I need of both to do the job soundlessly. I have the balls to do it. The question is, do I have the balls NOT to do it. Yes. I have the balls to do a few dishes, feed, Lefty, tidy up the living room and call it a night. I have a thread of hope for the new year and I'll be damned if I let that thread go. The easy thing is to not wake up tomorrow. The hard thing is to wake up for the next 40 years. I'll take the hard way. I like a good fight.

Lost

I’ve lost my job. I’ve lost my home. I’ve lost the girl I love. I’ve lost the skin on my left hand. I’ve lost my center fielder. I’ve lost my ability to feel. I've lost the will to care. I went to the 24-hour, 365-day-a-year diner tonight. It was closed. My boots made a scruff-click echo sound on Monmouth Street. I bought a day-old NY Times just to have something to read. The Puerto Rican girls hanging at the 7-11 liked my fair hair. The way they touched it made me like their perfume. I’m happy to be alive for some reason. I don’t know why. If anyone knows, please give me a clue. Cause it wasn't out on the streets of Red Bank tonight. I looked hard and it wasn't there.

Fiji Xmass

Merry Christmas, everyone. I hope you’re here glowing near me with some kind of satiated feeling someday. I’m here by the sheer drag of time, like sled dogs going over concrete. I know that will change some day. Somewhere out there is a palm tree with my name on it. And an icy, slushy, smoothy, swampy, wake-widended path to get there. I will inhabit an island named by me in a tropical stream passed by many of you. You are are all welcome to stop by. Just bring some fish, some ice, some beer, some fresh flip flip flops and a little bit of mail and you will always be welcome.

Love you all,

Patrick

$$$$$

FexEx stock way up today! Made about 7,500. Stand? Sell? Go to Fiji? Advice?
PK

Edward Blisterhands

1: Good hand

2: Bad hand

This is what happens when you let grown men near 5-gallon buckets of boiling water without an EMS crew on stand by. You think this is bad, you should see my ankle. Lovely shade of black and purple.

Watching skin die

The skin is falling off my hand like sheets of scabby vellum. The pain, when the blood rushes down to the end of the limb, is a pulsation of fire. I’ve resorted to keeping the hand above my heart as a defensive gesture against the pain and as a prayer-like clarion to care for true burn victims. This is realization. This is rebirth. This is perspective. You can call me PK Onionhand. Yum. Sounds like a new side dish at Applebee's. "Would you like that regular, or extra scabby?"

In the box is today's black

Doug Rushkoff's final Thought Virus from his new book Douglas Rushkoff's new book, "Get Back In The Box: Innovation from the Inside Out," will hit bookstores tomorrow. On his blog, Doug has posted his final "Thought Virus" from the book. From the excerpt:

As my lectures bring me from industry to industry, I find myself amazed by just how little fun most people are having. Whether separated from one another by policy, competition, or cubicle, the last thing that seems to occur to people is to have fun together—when it should be the first priority. Instead, managers feel obligated to reign over employees; executives think they must hoodwink their shareholders; sales believe they must strong-arm their clients; and marketers assume they must manipulate the consumer. All for the life-or-death stakes of the next quarterly report...

Instead of relentlessly pursuing survival even after our survival needs are met, we must learn how to do things because they fulfill us— because they are, in a word, fun. Fun is not a distraction from work or a drain on our revenue; it is the very source of both our inspiration and our value. A genuine sense of play ignites our creativity, eases communication, promotes goodwill and engenders loyalty, yet we tend to shun it as detrimental to the seriousness with which we think we need to approach our businesses and careers.

If we can switch our orientation to fun, and see it not as an anarchic threat that needs to be quelled but rather as the core motivator and source of meaning for all human thought and behavior beyond basic survival, we will enable ourselves to reach levels of success that were previously unimaginable. Our very definition of success transcends survivalist notions such as cash reserves, time remaining, or personal safety, into the realms of self-worth, meaning, connection to others, and greater purpose. Plus, it’s better business.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 07:34:30 AM permalink

Next stop

Looks like Ft. Lauderdale might be my next stop. CG is there and she SAID she wants me to come down. I have to process the meaning of that before I go. I could literally go at the drop of a hat right now. What is stopping me from going today? Hmmmmmmmm? I think it's because she only likes to talk in TXT right now, which might as well be Mandarin to me because it carries no nuance or "read between the lines" mode of communication.  Oh well. Maybe later tonight. I need a TXT interpreter. Anyone out there willing?

PK

Mr. Hand

I would say that on the PK list of pain (broken bones, concussions, getting hit by a car, gambling losses, broken hearts,) the most painful is a burn.

The worst thing about having a burnt left hand (2nd/3rd degree burns)? Let’s make a list, shall we?


1. Can’t brush my teeth (I‘m a lefty at that)
2. Can’t smoke (I’m a lefty at that, too. Ironic blessing in disguise.)
3. Can’t write longhand. (Thank God I’m unemployed again and don’t have to take notes at meetings. The last time this happened, I broke my left wrist in the winter of 2002. Had to write with my right hand. Might as well have put a crayon in my ear and had a seizure.)
4. Can’t put my hand in my pocket
5. Can’t shampoo my hair with two hands
6. Have to work the mouse with my right hand (I’m kind of ambidextrous.)
7. Can’t shave without looking like Freddie Kruger had a whack at my face
8. Have to relearn all the remotes in my house with my right hand.
9. Can’t carry hot soup
10. Have to take a whiz with my right hand (aim is good--must be that ambidexterious thing)
11. Can’t wrap CG’s presents
12. Can’t get into fights
13. Can’t pour acid on my hand for fun
14. Can’t play golf or tennis (whimp sports, anyway)
15. Can’t swing a bat (offseason, thank God)
16. Can’t show chicks how cool my left hand is (wait--yes I can! Play up the sympathy, dude!)

17. But I can still do this:

Yeah for me! Always look on the bright side of life!

Burned out weekend

One of the many maintenance duties of a 100-year old house is taking care of the 60-year old boiler. That involves throwing a switch and emptying gallons upon gallons of steaming hot dirty water into buckets, walking them up from the basement and emptying them outside. This process usually repeats itself 10-12 times per cleaning.

This past Friday I was about halfway through the ritual when, as they say, disaster struck. I made it down the last step outside when the pendulous effect of the bucket kind of threw my equilibrium off. I lost my balance and hit the ground with nothing to break my fall but a bucket of 200 degree water.

Pain is not the word. First of all, it felt like I had broken every bone in my body. By the time I noticed my left hand, I was confused because there was smoke coming off of it. Pride kicked in and I got myself inside quickly. My right ankle felt as if it was connected to my body by fragile fibers of exploding of nerves. And my left hand was still smoldering. And now blistering and ballooning and turning black before my very eyes. It was then that I blacked out onto the kitchen floor.

I awoke in a pool of my own puke near my face and blood on my legs, and took what rudimentary first aid options I could. Finally the magic light bulb went off in my head and I called the two people closest to doctors/pharmacists I could think of: Chris and Jim. Jim was over within a half-an-hour with a few Vicodin. I should have gone to the emergency room, but readers of this blog know how I feel about hospitals.

I finally broke down and went to one of those doc-in-a-box places. After hearing the lecture about going to the hospital and the dangers of going into shock and choking to death on your own barf, the doc gave me an Rx for Silver Sulfadiazine. I went to the CVS to get it filled and was confronted with a line of about 10 people. I used my charm to cut right in front and had my silver stuff within 10 minutes. Now I have a Quasimodo hand, one Vicodin left and bragging rights on what is sure to be a wicked scar. Not bad for an otherwise boring weekend.

Ads suck

Whichever ad is running above this entry, do not do business with them. Subvert them with fake inquiries. Waste loads of their time. Then tell them they suck for being on AOL.

Redhead tights

I'm sober, shaking in pain, thirsty, horny, scared, hungry, eager and longing for the only one I can't have. I have but one love in my heart, I have 5 racing for it. I don’t want the jewlrey maker, for I can create better than her. I don’t want the teacher, for I can teach better than her. I don’t want the waitress, for I can host better than her. I don’t the lifeguardess, for I can swim faster than her. I don’t want the ad rep, for I can sell better than her. I want the one to know that she was the one I spent the day at Redheads with sitting next to me. Not the blond across the bar I dated last year. The one I love and spent an hour with in her van making out with to Madonna songs, touching her breasts, and feeling her pussy ooze carbination of wetness through her sexy tights. I want the one who thought that she had my smell on her today but I not hers. I bluffed. Her scent was on my hand all afternoon.

Happiness in the moment

FINDING MY RELIGION / Buddhist teacher and author Jack Kornfield on mindfulness, happiness and his own spiritual journey

SF Gate interviews Bay Area meditation teacher Jack Kornfield:

What is mindfulness and why is it important?

Mindfulness is an innate human capacity to deliberately pay full attention to where we are, to our actual experience, and to learn from it.

Much of our day we spend on automatic pilot. People know the experience of driving somewhere, pulling up to the curb and all of a sudden realizing, “Wow, I was hardly aware I was even driving. How did I get here?” When we pay attention, it is gracious, which means that there is space for our joys and sorrows, our pain and losses, all to be held in a peaceful way…

For many people, happiness is about chasing after something — a new car, a promotion, a trip to Bermuda. But when they get it they aren’t satisfied. They want more. Why do you think that happens?

I’ll tell you a story. A reporter was asking the Dalai Lama on his recent visit to Washington, “You have written this book, ‘The Art of Happiness,’ which was on the best-seller list for two years — could you please tell me and my readers about the happiest moment of your life?” And the Dalai Lama smiled and said, “I think now!”

Happiness isn’t about getting something in the future. Happiness is the capacity to open the heart and eyes and spirit and be where we are and find happiness in the midst of it. Even in the place of difficulty, there is a kind of happiness that comes if we’ve been compassionate, that can help us through it. So it’s different than pleasure, and it’s different than chasing after something.

Kornfield co-founded Spirit Rock and is the author of many books, including A Path with Heart — I haven’t read it yet, but it’s been recommended to me by several people as a sensible introduction to meditation and a spiritual path.

[ via Ms. Stiness ]

Posted in San Francisco, Mind and Spirit, Links