I have lived with a lot of men in the span of my life.  I would say a conservative estimate is 10, a more accurate estimate is 15, but I'll say 10 to account for memory.  It never ceases to amaze  that all these men save one, I single him out because though I know he will not read this because he is dead I do know he would be offended, being the tidy and fastidious man that he was if he thought I thought of him this way, think that there is a magical place, a black hole of sorts where if a person drops something it disappears forever.  I call that place the floor.  It isn't magical at all.  What they drop remains, I have seen it with my own eyes.

I don't write this to claim tidiness, I didn't acquire that skill from the man I spoke of before.  However, I do like to think that I did learn and acquire his fastidiousness.  Though there is tons of shit laying around on the floor of my abode, with each item I give concerned thought to how it will effect the beautiful little blond creature that lives so near the floor, puts everything in his mouth, and goes by Bucket.

There is a collection of symptoms that some people get when there brain has been damaged in a specific area by a lesion from one thing or another.  When they look at their loved ones they believe them to be impostors or a person identical to the people they love but a stranger.  They think this because they don't feel any of the things that a person is supposed to feel when you look at your loved ones, such as love and a connection of some sort.  The part of the brain that joined the feelings with the image is gone.  I feel this way when I'm with my family, like I'm around a bunch of strangers at a party.  I know one or two people and that is it.  It is very uncomfortable.

I have been having a lot of tumultuous feelings with the death of my grandfather.  The trouble is I don't know how to feel.  I'm dealing with it by not thinking about it.  I don't have to feel anything when I don't think about it.  Since I didn't know him, I don't have any triggers that make me think about it.  When the wound isn't so fresh I can revisit, but until then I'm coping by turning my head and not looking at the blood.

The only good thing

I got to hear a lot of stories today.  Not necessarily about my grandfather, but about a ton of stuff that I had never heard.  Turns out my brothers know a lot more about our family than I do. There was a brief moment when we talked about my brother's in-laws and how normal they were.  He told us about there one little blimp in the mild soup.  Mild cheating in a relationship, to which I replied, "If you can't start a story with I'll never forget that night daddy was gonna kill that judge...." you're in pretty good shape.  For the record I heard that today, in regards to the sleeping, doped up man dying in the other room.  There the story petered out, I thought it poor form to then yell out, "Wait! Go back to the killing the judge thing!"

I feel like my life is changing, but it just can't get there. Like I just bowled a strike, if only that last pin would fall.  That last pin is 60 feet away and wobbling. I want to throw a 6 pound kids ball over hand at it, but that is against the rules and the management would likely throw me out.  For all I know, this was my first time up to the lane and most of my strikes are ahead of me, so all I can do is stand back and watch it wobble. It never falls.

I was really hoping that 2011 would be the year of no deaths.  My grandfather will be dead in less than six months.  Probably a lot less.  I don't even know how to feel.  My dad didn't even tell me. I found out from my brother. It is like I share my name with a bunch of strangers.  Shit, I have known strangers better.  I don't have a memory of ever spending any time alone with my grandfather.  Not one.  In the past 10 years the handful of times I have seen him I feel like he doesn't know my name.  He must.  It is silly to think that he didn't hear it a thousand times right after I was born.  Sadly, that is the only time I can think of that he would have definitely heard it.  I'm sure my mom said it over and over. I have shared my name with this man for almost 28 years and I couldn't fill of a lined piece of notebook paper with the things I know about him.  What little I do know about him I know second hand.  I would say it isn't right, but the only right I know is a direction.  There is no time to fix it. The cancer has arrived. Hospice has arrived. What does it matter if he knows my name?  Soon he'll be ash. Erased from the page. The only thing that will be left are little grey remnants waiting to be swept away carelessly with the back of a hand.  What will it matter then?

I had a dream

I was on a barge or some other kind of big ass boat.  We were honking the horn an waiving for something to get out of our way.

I woke up to the train horn that alerts every 30 minutes when a train goes by.  Damn trains.

Reading

I was in Half Price Books with Corley last week and I couldn't remember the last book I read.  I was thinking that it was on the plane coming back from Korea.  That was almost a year ago.  Naturally, I was a little disgusted with myself.  How could I forget that I read books this summer. I would read on my lunch break when I was working at the pawn shop.  My coworkers looked at me like I was going to stick hot spoons up my ass when I told them I was going to read. It hasn't been a year, but I have hit a dry spell.  Nothing sounds good.  I want something light, funny, nothing too deep.  I want to relax.  All the books I have to read are nothing like that.

Walking through the grocery store I had the scarecrow's song in my head.  If I only had a brain.

I have been sick for a week now.  Big giant green snots.  Nasty.  This morning I was trying to cough that green snot up.  Slight problem, it wouldn't come out of my throat.  Snot was hanging out of my mouth and still stuck in my throat.  I have experienced fewer things that are grosser.

This year I have decided that I will just get high every day, work at DairyQueen, and wait to die.  Just give up. I can't decide if that is what other people are doing or they are actually happy with the grind.  Maybe I'm just missing that thing that can make me happy, maybe nobody is happy.  Maybe it is a secret I just can't figure out.

Sometimes I daydream of me and Bucket sleeping in a hammock, or something that looks like a nest only instead of sticks there are pillows, on a porch in the tropics.  Besides sleeping, we walk in the rainforest and take pictures.