Same as it ever was......

I am once again at a loss for sleep.  After a while this takes its toll.  I'm short (er) tempered, physically I'm a mess.  So logically my mind travels to........the talking heads.

I woukd say....i digress.....but this entire post will likely be one huge....and i digress
Whst was up with David Byrne and the arm chops in that song?  You know the one, Once in a Lifetime....water flowing under ground.

When i cant sleep my mind is awash with songs, poems, ideas, blog posts to write.  Chiefly; however it is music that fills my mind.  I remember songs i thought i had lost forever.  The genre is unimportant, my mind is a free floating body collecting verses, songs, melodies as it will.
It also collected kyoto song tonight, it seemed apropos....nightmare of you of death in the pool wakes me up a quarter to three.  I used to get so excited when i woke up at that time when i was a teen.  Now i just think " oh....dirty words....i'm not getting sleep again tonight". 
I miss Blondie, Joan Jett, Pat Benetar....and yes....Julie Brown!!
Earth Girls are Easy, Homecoming Queen's Got a Gun, Cuz I'm a Blonde......she really was talented.
The Chiliwhacks (sp) My Girl
So my mind is having a merry rock/punk/country/christian/folk/reggae/metal/parody/pop....etc concert.  No one is on the guest list, just my mind.  My poor tired, aching, burning, uncooperative body is not invited it seems.
Time for my mind to play some Enya, Evanesence, something soft and soothing.....                                 

Half-life

When I hear half-life, I think radioactive decay, time period for a quantity to fall by half, or medication to be halfway out of your system.  When my son hears half-life, he thinks of a video game.

This post is about none of those things.  It's about a baby, a child, a little, boy, a young man, then a man, then hopefully a Father, Grandfather....and it flows on.  I write this with tears in my eyes.  I think about my son, now 13..this is nearing a half-life for me and for him.  I'm about half way through my life.  He his about half way to his role as husband and father.  This hit me last night as I was writing to an acquaintance of mine, expecting her first child.

He will be 14 in just a few short months.  Exactly half the age I was when I had him...the day after my own 28th birthday.  Those short almost 14 years ago I never knew how much he was going to fill me, love me, reform me, hurt me, worry me, amaze me.  I have no idea where my life would be without him.  I feel like screaming at him much of the time, I see myself in him making mistake after mistake. I hear the sassing and the cutting comments.  Then he does something to take my breath away, I then see he isn't making mistakes..just learning.  Learning to think, grow, do, see things in a new way.  He tries my patience to no end.  I swear he will end up living in our basement forever.  Then a new direction crops up.

He was playing xbox online, complaining to a "friend" that his "Mom was bothering him".  His "friend" is 18. (I would love to hug and thank this "friend" I send you love and good vibes)  The "friend" told him to appreciate his parents because when he hit 18 he was going to really miss his Mom and Dad and want to spend time with them.  My son came to me and  shared this, with his head hanging. He hung his head while hugging me.  He told me that he was going to miss me in a suddenly little boy voice; small and insecure.  I didn't cry, I held him and told him I would really miss him too and had no idea what I was going to do without him.  "Who will I yell at?" We both laughed.  I had to lighten the mood...because it's coming really soon!

He starts 8th grade just before his 14th birthday.  Only 4 more years!  I feel so many emotions I can't possibly list them all.  I won't be happy to see him leave if he decides to go away to school.  I want him to stay home and attend school the first year or two, because I'm just not ready to let go.  I want him to have the freedom to fly.  I don't want to see him fall.  Selfishly I want him to stay with me for so much longer.  This isn't about me at all though.  This is about him, his life, his choices, his success, his failure, his learning, his pain, his world.  I want to be part of his world forever.

I want to be needed, but not because I've emotionally crippled him and left him too insecure to move forward.  I have to figure out in the next 4 years how to make sure he knows that no matter what happens I will be here for him.  I have to watch him grow and become the man he is destined to become.  Soon that smooth little face will be shaving, I can't help there..that's Dad's land.  Soon that vibrant yapping little mouth will be behind the wheel of a car.  Soon this young man will make a series of important decisions that set his course for the future.

I'm scared for him, he's so much like me, I remember my feelings at 16, 17, 18.....He has so many more things going for him than I did.  I know he will be fine, he always has been.  When failure has seemed imminent he has pulled it out at the last minute.  His mouth has me the most worried.  His need to debate, argue, frustrate, the word play.

I've watched him lie there and wriggle, crawl, stagger, walk, shuffle, run...I guess fly is next.......

I love my baby boy and always will.

First concert in a chair....

I went to see Alice Cooper and Iron Maiden, with my guys of course!  The venue was the same as the last time we saw Alice Cooper, last summer.  The difference this time was me.  I've gotten over some of my stubbornness and begun to realize, how I attend a concert is not nearly as important as the fun had while there.  I can say I had a truly awesome time!! I felt free.  It was so much fun to just relax and enjoy the show.  Chair dancing without fear of falling; making noise and enjoying the show; just 'being' and knowing I was safe.  Not having to worry about someone crashing into me and toppling me was a real load off my mind.  One would think that being safe and enjoying the moment would trump stubborness, or the feeling I had to walk in order to prove something no one (not even myself) understands.  One would thing living would outweigh fear....
Pretty simple right???.....wrong
This is as much a mental game as it is a physical one.  It's hard to describe the many emotions that surface in any given day.  It's especially hard trying to map out how I'll feel or function in a 'safe' situation (grocery shopping) if I'm tired, stressed or distracted.  When a totally unpredictable crowd enters the equation, all bets are off.  I'm slowly adapting to the "new normal".  In many ways it's much harder dealing with a chair.  At this point, I think it's well worth the hassles, if anyone stares I havent noticed.  Maybe I just don't care.
It took 2 concerts and several mishaps for me to understand the fairly basic concept that fun beats fear everytime.
I've spent most of two years clinging to my idiotic ways....I'm slowly waking from my slumber, (don't really get much of that)  and realizing that just because I can walk, doesnt always mean that it's the safest or best option.
Next concert is Morrissey (yes, again) and I will take Lilac.  Of course my chair has a name....if you know me, would you expect anything less?

Tattletales

Fink, snitch, nark, rat fink.....whiny little tittie-baby.
I can not stand tattletales. 
People who phone the police over legitimate concerns, complaints, or for aid are never to be confused with tattletales.  Of course there is often abuse of the system, but that determination should be made by said police.....i digress
Rotten whiney tattletales!  Our state was finally allowed to sell and use fireworks.  This is a VERY new thing.  Like all new things, we play with them until bored, until accessories cost too much, or any number of personal reasons.  The city council in a blinding flash of wit, wisdom and zero input, decided to ban them in my city.  Wtf?  This is so inane and obtuse.  Somehow...(in a decicion affecting a static store in a slow economy and the populace of said town),  these self-important, blustering, buffoons take the onerous burden upon their feeble shoulders....to just ban fireworks in our city.   Thats it, no citywide input! 
This town has a habit of making annoying calls to the poor peons (myself included) everytime the prinipal of any school wipes his or her behind.  These peppy voices reminding you to do moronic things no one wants to do (hello?  Just charge a flat $20 per family and skip the crummy fund raisers!) invade our homes for MONTHS.  The overpaid lazy middleschool principal never can lift a phone to return a call.  Yet she bravely plods onward hiding her duplicitous face behind canned messages and a bloated salary.
Again i digress....
Honestly, how much could an automated phone system cost?  How much to record a message along the lines of,  "This message concerns the recent law permitting the sale and use of fire works.  This is Blowhard Buttkisser from your city council, we have noise concerns and are considering a ban on fireworks in our town.  To vote no on this ban, press 1...to vote yes on this ban, press 2."   How hard is it to put  together a message/ vote system like that?
Also...we have a noise ordinance.  I'm an insomniac...i was awake when teens were setting some smaller, yet loud, fireworks off at 2 am, in a crowded subdivision.  Not once did I see one single resident go out and ask them to stop.  Not once did I see a single police car.  No one truly confronted the problem.  No one even asked them to please stop.  This baffles me.  Total lily-livered cowardice.
So now, because no one in the city has the balls or mammaries,  to simply ask ppl if they would kindly refrain from loud fireworks at nught.  Perhaps suggest a daytime free-for all...we now have a ban.
Can anyone else see the absolute irony in this?  Please, by all means, do not speak to any neigbors....just call the city council.....but for heaven's sake, let's not do anything rash!! Or rational!
Tattletales!  Dont confront anyone!  Also, child molestors...worry not!  We have a tattler network, firmy entenched!
Good little masses.....just continue to follow me...please help yourselves to the kool-aid, put on this lovely brown  shirt, and armband...never mind the design on the arm band. 

where did they go?

Where did they all go, it's like they just packed up and left over night in some cases.  All I know is so many of them are just....poof...gone!

Remember that song that you LIVED for back in the ----'s?  Whatever decade, whomever you are there was a song, most likely per year (probably more than one) that really touched you.  Whether the song made you dance, cry, identify with, cut straight to your soul......there was a song.  Those songs gave voice to our deepest desires, strongest feelings, deep fears, secret dreams..the things we dared not feel, think, say, or do.

I dreamed of the day I would one day dance to ABBA or the BeeGee's in a discotheque. (never happened)  I did however dance with some great friends to Madonna's Vogue in a gay bar.  I dreamed of the day the highschool love of my life would take me to prom for magic moments, we would gaze deep into each other's eyes as Up Where We Belong played on, or Forever Young by Alphaville played on (never happened) but some good friends and I did act like morons at prom, we slow danced comically and had a good time.  I dreamed of making out in a car to some fabulous, daring, make out song.  My done perfectly, my trendy shirt tucked in my trendy jeans with my trendy hair done oh so trendy, and my make up "just so".  Nary an awkward moment, only tender, deep heartfelt love...oh and total respect!!  (never happened)  My first make out happened during the movie Fletch.  The rest were all just kisses, no songs that I recall.  I also discovered that no matter how hard I tried, how much I wanted it...I couldn't make myself be happy in pastels, I couldn't find a boyfriend anywhere.  I strongly began to suspect there was something wrong with me.  I terrified guys apparently.  Maybe it was just all of me.  I was not what the songs said I should be.

When I got together with my husband at the ripe age of 19, the soundtrack of our love was Vain's cassette No Respect.  There really was none.  We were teenagers doing what teenagers did..that was each of us selling out parts of who we were to meet what the other wanted.  I forced him to listen to some punk, he dragged me through heavy metal.  As a result 22 years later we are attending our second concerts this year of our melded tastes.  Alice Cooper and Ace Frehley, Morrissey and Kristeen Young, Iron Maiden and Alice Cooper, Morrissey and Kristeen Young.  All in the course of a melded 12 month period.  Melded, just like our lives in the most unlikely of hook ups ever musically and in life!  He was the song that NEVER stopped playing in my head through all those years from 1982-1990.  Well that and Jack and Diane...I mean totally classic!!

Lately I've been going through the mental storage vault with a friend.  I have insomnia, he knows of this miracle I missed  "I Love The 80's"  and apparently "I Love The 70's".  Watching with him has dusted off so many layers of the years...oops another song...Holding Back the Years.  What a great song!  I hear them in the background of the videos, all those melodies that dominated my life, held me glued to the boom box, left me in tears, filled me with hope, the songs I prayed would be on the radio, Solid Gold, or I would hear as someone drove by.

The soundtracks of my life changed as the music changed.  Today's favorite song would give way to tomorrow's favorite...all lost along with yesterday's favorite song as they years march on.  When I hear a snippet I wonder HOW how how how could I have possibly forgotten that song??  It was the love of my life for that week the radio played it!  When did that song stop being played?

I sit here and wonder...where did they all go?  The songs, the plans, the images, the wonder, the timidity?  Music does something to me, to most of us.  It causes us to feel, joy, lightness, darkness, pain, love, loss, pure lust, hunger, fulfillment, lifted, a desire for something I could never reach, or be...a rock singer!!  I am music and I write the songs.....heck yeah!

Then like the worm in the apple...sometimes the dreaded brain melt when a song sucks so much you want to turn it off, but you can't turn it off because it's such a train-wreck you have to keep listening, jsut to see if there is ANY redemption whatsoever in the song.  I have songs locked in my brain that I detest so much I feel like screaming when I hear them...ugh...make it go away!!!  What were they thinking when they sung it, wrote it, recorded it and WHY did no one say..."ummmm this totally sucks"  Is it possible that people actually liked those hideous songs???  Were THEY someone's dream come true in music?  Did those songs fuel desires, hopes, longing, all those good feelings?  Did they touch in someone those deep emotions.  Is it possible that not everyone agrees with my musical taste?

I am sitting here wondering, over the next years how many of my cherished songs are going to disappear from my mind to make room for new cherished songs.  I thought all the good songs had been written by 1988 and I was only 18 then.  Now I think all the best songs must surely have been written by now...then I turn on the radio and hear another song I know I can't live without.  I LOVE music :)

Roses, blackberries, thistles and thorns

Life is like that.
There is always something worth finding even if you have to dig through a lot of  thorns to get there. 

I remember being a young girl and learning that sometimes you had to hurt to find fulfillment and joy.
I had never seen chestnuts in my life!  I was about 5 when i saw them.  Spikey, soft green balls.  They were so neat.  We climbed the chestnut trees and touched them.  As the season wore on, they started to feel firmer.  Some of them were used as baseballs.  We played with them.  The summer gave way to the fall and the soft yielding chestnuts were now brown, split open with an x at the top just daring us to open them.  My cousins showed me how.  I DO NOT recommend doing it in flip flops, jandals, zories, thongs, shower shoes..whatever you call them.  I also DO NOT recommend doing it in those nylon sided sneakers they had in the 70's.  But if you do, and you get stickers in you (you will) you will find 4 types of pleasure from the pain.  3 nuts...1 large in the center, 2 smaller ones flanking the larger one; and...the softest most velvety lining inside what my Mama called them cockleburs.  We ate them raw...I had never had a roasted chestnut until I moved away from my chestnut trees.  We had to fester a lot of them out with eggshell lining.  It hurt, but I looked forward to the sweet yellow chestnut meat every fall.

Blackberries.  The vines would wrap around my wrists as I reached in to pluck them from the vine.  They would leave tiny scratches and little hairlike thorns behind.  Blackberries are totally worth the pain!  Ours grew around a barbed wire fence...Mama called it bobwire.  I remember my cousins and I staying out picking black berries hiding in the trees just before they cut them down to make a road and build a new park down the street.  Sam Adkins Park in Blountstown, FL.  We would climb over or under the barbed wire fence.  It was rusty and we always got cut somehow.  We would play games about being lost in the wilderness and surviving on blackberries.  Nevermind the blood on our legs, arms, backs from the vines and the bobwire.  When they cut the trees down to make way for the road, we suddenly had pain-free access to the blackberries.  Really great, but not as much fun as pretending to be fugitives, or lost pioneers making our way in the wilderness.

Roses, for a short time I think there was a split rail fence portion in our yard with wild tea roses growing on it, like a small trellis.  If not that is a lovely idea.  I remember meeting tea roses.  Deceptive to a child used to seeing normal rose bushes with large scary thorns on them.  Tea roses or wild rose vines have these tiny little thorns too.  They get under your skin the minute you reach down to pick some for Mama or to smell them.  The smell of wild roses are another thing worth the pain.

Thistles..wow do they hurt when you pull them bare handed (I never claimed to be wise).  They also hurt when you go out barefoot to gather grass for your cat only to step on the thorns left behind when your wonderful son pulls them, drops the pulled weeds on the ground and walks away.  The thorns fall off when he finally drags himself over to them with a bag to throw them away.  The fallen thorns later bite you when you least expect it.  The beauty of thistles is the draw, and the color.  I've watched butter flies visit them, hummingbirds fiddle with them but the best was watching a pair of finches...male and female on the same thistle eating straight from the plant.  I love to see wildlife just being wild.  Not eating store bought bird seed, but visiting my thistle patch for the fresh seed.  We watched the male feed the female, we watched them flit from dead head to dead head.  I have other wild flowers in my yard.  I'm sure the neighbors love my yard.  The lawn Nazi's abound up here.  I don't care.  I'm not supposed to pull weeds.  After watching the wildlife visiting the wild flowers...I decided to let one small section of my yard go wild.  It's beautiful.  I don't care what the neighbors think, they just better leave my thistle patch alone.  My hurting feet were forgotten as I watched those birds feed.  The pain was worth it, if only to remind me to look at my thistles and enjoy their beauty and usefulness.

There are so many other things in our lives causing pain that we endure because it's worth it. I've learned a lot about pain in my life, physical and emotional.  Some wounds run deep but those memories are so dear and each one are treasures in themselves.  I spend a good deal of time in physical pain but life is worth it.  I would hate to see a life without pain because I really don't think the person would ever know true joy, love, happiness...they would only know one flat emotion.  I never appreciated the simple act of walking before, or cutting things.  I can appreciate those now.  The pain and confusion are worth it because they woke me up to the life around me.  The simple things I took for granted are now treasures.  While digging my way through my current patch of thorns I am learning how sweet sleep is and how I took it for granted, just assuming slumber will be there.  Finding it isn't the case, then having one good  night's sleep is worth it because it reminds me that I take so much for granted and I appreciate that rest so much more.

I hope you find lots of blackberries, finches, chestnuts and other treasures in your own briar patches.