Don't worry be happy!

Today was a better day for me. I started it with a plan, deliberate focused distraction, most commonly referred to as work. It has actually been a while since I have planned my work; an unwelcomed side effect of my hallucinogen of choice. So I have rounded another corner of my emotional recession. How many damn corners does this shit have? It's like I'm going in circles. Suffice to say I'm not depressed; and I didn't need cymbalta. Which reminds me, what type of freaking anti-depression medication increases your thought of suicide (cymbalta); I mean I listen to the ad; where does depression hurt, who does depression hurt...ask your doctor about cymbalta...side-effects include increased thoughts of suicide. Dude save yourself the medical bills, the psychotherapy and all the shit and jump off a building already. I mean seriously.

So today was a good day (and it's not even done yet; I'm heading to one of my favorite places in a while; the gym), I can feel myself returning; there are some jagged stones on my path back and I am bare footed which makes the walk back slow and painful, but getting back to me is good, I enjoy that space, so I'll take the pain to get there. My happy space may not be anyone else's happy space, but I am a bit of a narcissists' so fuck em. Sorry did I say that. Yeah yeah yeah I said it. I'm good at making people happy (but I have made a few unhappy in the past), and making people happy sometimes makes me happy; but often times it stresses the hell out of me and is really not worth the time and energy.

Everyone is responsible for his/her happiness, the people in your life merely contribute to it; a search for happiness outside yourself is doomed to leave you unhappy, because it is cosmetic.

So have a coke and a smile and make the choice, the conscious decision to be HAPPY!

Lend me your ears

The most recent silently raging debate in sweet St. Lucia and in some other parts of the Caribbean is the banning of music with sexually explicit lyrics and glorification of violence. Where have I heard that before? Hmmm! One of our local pundits whom I enjoy listening to on occassion but don't always agree with spoke about this on the evening news commentary a couple weeks ago. To make his point he spoke about the popular music of his time; namely the musical masterpieces of the mighty sparrow. He pointed out the fact that while sparrow sang about anything and everything his most popular songs were about women and the exploration of their great beyonds. I snickered a bit when he made the point, because I too have made that point to some of my older colleagues.

While sparrow and the calypsonians of his time and even now were crafty in their lyrics and used not so obvious ways to speak about the act of sex and the private or not so private parts of a woman, the fact remains they sang about what how local talk show idiots, sorry host, refer to as smut. Albeit nicely packaged smut, but smut none the less. Not that I think it is smut either way.

For the most part the people hooting and hollering about the content of the songs on the airwaves are adults. Adults are particularly offended when you speak directly about the facts of life in raw unfiltered language; it reflects a lack of decorum (not that adults have really taken up the responsibility of guiding the youth in a more positive direction by their own actions, I too am guilty of such irresponsibilty). Ok, you have young listeners. Edit the damn music, or if it is too profane/violent don't play it or play it late night. You know most of the artist who sing these songs are in their late twenties, the record label owners are older than most of them likewise the radio station owners.

By chance has anyone ever heard of prohibition. That didn't stop the consumption of alcohol; it actually resulted in quite a lucrative illegal enterprise.

Our politicians, pundits, know-it-alls, and all round idiots keep looking for plasters to stop the hemorrhaging. It has not worked in the past and it won't work now. Banning music won't stop the rampant violence and the abundant exchange of bodily fluids, neither will it increase it, it may very well spawn something else.

Strangely, some of these songs have so much explicit content, that by the time it is edited and played on the air it has nothing more than the beat of the song left; and pieces of speech in between making the artist sound like he/she stutters. And seriously, with the internet and the ability to download pretty much anything, do these people really believe that the youth they are trying to protect from such lyrics won't gain access to the songs and the artist. Really!

Let's find some more meaningful solutions to our societal problems and stop making very lame attempts to address the symptoms.

Sun of mine

For some time now I have been thinking about whether or not I should post about my son. I thought what would I say about him; how would it be interpreted? The interpretation of what I may say being my overriding "concern"; but then in my usual fashion I toss the interpretation of others aside and figure I would say what ever I want. I really love being me sometimes.



I thought to myself a couple nights ago while I stood in the kitchen washing the dishes and my son being a nuisance not to far from me; it must have been a woman to come up with that phrase "a bundle of joy". I think that phrase was deliberately designed to mislead men, much like happily ever after, we can be such simpletons at times that we are giddied by the mere notion of happiness in abundance. The farce.



So yes, my son. A beautiful child; I may be bias but I think he is beautiful. I look at him every day and some of his temperament reminds me of myself. The part of me that I'm sure drive the people who really know me up the wall. He can be such a sweetheart, you just want to be around him all the time, just watch him discover the world; but then just like the weather he can change and be such a little asshole (yes I said it, strong word huh). Not that I think he is totally aware that he is being an asshole, but those are the times I want to shake him silly, or cover his mouth to muffle his cries. My god he can cry. Car alarm sounds should be replaced with the sound of a crying infant, OMG. It's deafening, it grates on your nerves, to the point sometimes you just want to run as far away as possible.



But you know what gets me, when he is done his wailing and moaning, he turns and gives me that smile and I just melt. Damn it! He's good. Some months ago his mother travelled and it was just my bundle of joy and me. Wow! I actually look forward to those times, it gives me that time to learn him a bit more and bond with him. But during that time, there was one Saturday morning he was just not in the best of moods, very clingy, crying, just altogether rotten. So I figured I would give him a bath, because he likes the water, and that would settle him down then I could feed him and put him to sleep so I can get along with cooking.



He seemed to have other plans. He hit the water crying and just would not seem to stop, at that point I knelt along side the tub, with my head bowed, on the verge of tears and I said, God just make him stop, give me a break. Then seemingly through divine intervention, he stopped crying, stretched out his little hands and touched me on the head. My good god, what a feeling. It was like daddy it will be ok. Everything at that moment seemed fine. We laughed and played in the water for a while, I took him out, dried him off, dress him and the rest of the day was a breeze.



You know what really fascinates me about him, his curiosity and the excitement of the new, the unknown. I actually envy that. Everything is new and exciting to him; when was the last time you got excited at the feel of wind, or tried to catch wind in your hands, can you even remember being fascinated by the sound of a barking dog.



I'm enjoying some of the simple things we forget in this life through my son, I share his pain too, like when through his curiosity he squeezes his fingers in the cupboard door which I placed those child safety thingys on.



He is not a bundle of joy, not at all. More like little pockets of joy. Like life he has his good days and his not so good days; but the good days out way the not so good. I can barely wait to see the man he will turn out to be. If you ever get to read this J, know that daddy loves you.

Lost in a space

For the third time in almost as many months I have questioned the madness. The madness that is my convoluted life. And as with the times before, the answer eludes me.

It's almost laughable (in a pathetic way) that one human being could misstep so many times, in so many ways on the path of life to find themselves standing in the middle of nowhere, without a map.

The way forward is cloaked in confusion (deliberate, enabling confusion I suspect); deep within myself I know the right path (it's not really a toss of the coin); I know the answer (do I?). But the left and right side of my brain are involved in an insane tug of war. It is as clear as mud. They won't call draw, one side must be the victor. Idiots!

Ah! Like a light bulb from that big blue space above an idea pops into my head. Just let the damn chips fall where they may; and stop making a simply beautiful life such a fucking emotional land mine.

Alcohol

It's the wee hours of sunday morning; I mean really wee. I just got back home after a night of liming with my brother from another mother and I am a bit inebriated, but clearly not excessively, I still have my fine motor skills. HA! For some reason I wanted to capture this moment as the alcohol was fresh in my veins.

I spent the evening at a bodybuilding show appreciating the time and effort which goes into the sculpting of the human physique; which makes mere mortals seem like gods. If there was the smallest thought in my mind that I was big, that thought was laid to rest. R.I.P.

The rest of the evening was spent communing with the spirit (namely Dewars white label) and observing my fellow sheep. The sheep in their colored wool and adornments were in full force, as is usual. Of course they were in cliques, the late teens early twenties set sitting on the bench, two of them were dancing (reminiscent of those childhood games girls played at recess with the slapping of palms and the sequenced movement) and singing the lyrics to some pop tune remixed in techno. The caucasians strewn all over the place; in the corner by the bar the congregation of gay men and women drinking a bottle of chilled white wine and behaving merrily. My pardner walk in with his big belly, his jabal and his cover story for the night. And the rest of the sheep are sitting at the bar and at the tables enjoying their poison of choice.

Sheep are interesting, even though under the wool we are basically the same, the color and texture of the wool and the adornment brings with it certain behaviour. The sheep with their nose in the air barely touching the ground when they walk; you would think they didn't even shit. Then there are those whose life's' ambition is to be like the stooch shitless sheep. Then there are those who don't give a fuck and come to join the rest of the herd; scratching their balls, pissing anywhere, dispensing profanities like Sir Allen Stanford handing out cash to west indies cricketers. The latter sheep make the rest uncomfortable by the way.

I always enjoy going out to the popular watering holes and observing my fellow sheep graze and drink; it's truly entertaining.

I managed to make it back home in one piece although I drove straight past my gap at first, I missed the turn; boy was I going fast. Clearly I had one to five many scotches.

But I'm alive to graze another day. HOORAY!

P.S. I posted this in a very sober frame of mind, I had trouble understanding some of the shit I wrote in my initial drunken stupor.

Crawling in my skin

Have you ever thought that you and the world/life could go through a not so amicable divorce. You know, reach the point where you have had enough, you fling your hands up in the air and you say, FUCK IT. It's time for a hasty exit from this world.

Have you ever reached that point where you think that the people in your life and the world may be a better place if you were not part of it. Well I have. And that time in my life albeit brief (then again brief is relative when you are in pain) was the darkest time in my life, thus far. I am not much of a praying man, but I pray to the north wind (aka GOD) that I never find myself there again.

One must be severely fucked to go through with the premature self termination of ones existence, perhaps it's the mere fact that it's an existence that pushes one to even contemplate such. I wouldn't wish that darkness, that space, on my enemies, if I had enemies.

It's a state of sheer hopelessness, where the things you normally found joy in fade to black and grey, the air is so stale and thick it's difficult to breath, if food tasted like paper that would be welcomed, because your taste buds are deceased (left to mourn the aftertaste of life).

The thought of waking to another day and going through the routine, the facade causes you physical pain and ailments that no physician can comprehend. You try not to let the people around you see your pain and despair, but such anguish is difficult to mask.

Your skins has been pulled off, you scream out from the excruciating pain of having your flesh forcibly removed, the sound of the skin tearing off your muscle beneath is loud, crackling, the blood covers your eyes, it's warm against what skin you do have left. You hate the taste, the smell and the feel of you. You want to escape.

The pain has numbed your senses, you feel nothing, not even the whip against your flesh cutting deeper still; the whip of the verbal assaults; the compounding and dizzying circumstances of life. Your mouth opens wide wretched with pain you scream louder still hoping for the end of the pain; the pain in your heart; the torment of your soul, but no sound escapes your lips.

Have you ever had a finger nail accidentally flipped back. Multiple that pain by one hundred, no, one thousand and you're still not even quarter way to the pain the hurt that such wickedness of life circumstances can bring you to, when it feels like it should all end. This wretched life, the rules of this forsaken life, the rules, written and unwritten meant to keep order, to keep us all on the same page, forcing conformity. God damn sheep.

Still you breath, another breath of this putrid air, you can taste its poison, feel it fill your lungs. Why are you still alive (barely)? Damn it! You are fully aware of what is going on around you, even though you are a spectator in your own life at this point. You wish you weren't aware, you pray for the end, any end.

Some how the end operates on its own time, much like everything else, and you or some good samaritan stitches your skin back on; you feel alien to your own skin. It's not you. You're scared. The pain lingers, some days it hurts more than others, but you have began to heal.

Every now and then, as if in a nightmare that manifest itself in reality, your skin gets yanked off again; the pain seems more intense than the last. When will it ever stop?

Depression is a not so gentle reminder of that pain, that place between begging for death and hanging onto the thinness of threads of hope.

Why won't life give me a break, be kind, what the hell did I do to deserve this torment. Questions you ask, and probably will never find the answer to.

But life is worth living, it takes an incredible strength to find the will to go on. And as you press on with this humdrum life, back safely with the rest of the herd, you are haunted by the pain of the past. You search out distractions to "kill the time" (you wish you could kill the source of your angst, only if you could clearly identify it), to delay the progress of your demons; they are subdued for now, lurking, waiting for you.

You begin to search out happiness (it's all you can do) find renewed color in those things you once loved dearly.

Life goes on, with or without you; but it is so much better with you.

To blog or not to blog

Today I have no idea what to post about, I actually did not intend to post today. There is never really a shortage of topics or inspiration ; unfortunately when these topics/inspiration arrive, either quietly like that mouse in your pantry or shouting obscenities like that drunken lout, there is never pen and paper around to jot it down.

I have not cleared the hurdle of the emotional recession; but I think I am rounding a corner. One of my fellow sheep commented that my recession can be attributed to my addiction to my hallucinogen of choice; it was liken to high grade weed. You know the thing with being high is that you must come down off of it, but life without those momentary highs would be drab and melancholic. So I guess it is a simple preference to be high and try as much as possible to stay high. Perhaps the unwanted side effects of the high would be the blackening of my soul like the gums of those chronic chronic smokers; and an inner emptiness that can be seen on the outside.

Or, perhaps I will be able to manage the addiction, curb it, and eventually all together have no need for it. Psychobabblers may call my affliction dependency; but I guess we have all earned the right to some neurosis, we are human after all.

If neurosis be the food of life, welcome to the asylum.