Stopped

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 20, Verse 9

"Who can ever say, 'I have cleansed my heart;

I am sinless'?"

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

My life has been a series of "stops" lately.  Or, rather "stopped's".  

I've stopped taking my Viibryd.

I've stopped looking at porn (how do you really know for sure that they're eighteen?)

I've stopped my Facebook account.

I've stopped trying to get rid of my car for something more economical.

And what's the other thing....  Oh, right:

I've stopped blogging.

For a good while there, I was like clockwork.  Monday Thursday, Monday Thursday, Monday Thursday.  

March.  

Tick 

tick 

boom.  

Even when a Proverb really didn't make sense, I beat it into submission until we got where I wanted to go.  These Proverbs are really just along for the ride-- and I think they know it, too.  They know.  I mean, really-- what does Proverbs 20, Verse 9 have to do with not looking at porn anymore, or any of the other jumbled shit going on in my brain that I feel compelled to try to put down?  I don't know.  

It's been about a month since I've been off my medication.  I was just telling someone the other day that I don't seem to notice any difference (I'm certainly not shedding pounds like I was hoping I would) and then, just today, I noticed a difference.  Short with my children, inattentive, restless, agitated, exasperated, frustrated, down, vacant, closed.  

Stopped.

Now, yes, we all have "off" days, but this was a little too "off" for my liking.  I wonder if part of it's the heat.  It was 84 today, and muggy, sloppy and slow.  Even just standing in the kitchen, there was sweat on my brow and my skin felt like it would set my arm hair on fire in an instant.  I don't do well in the summer.  I snap easier, I'm more overworked, more raw.  Less patient and less refined.  I guess being half Israeli only does so much in regard to tolerance for the heat.

I don't know what I'm supposed to do-- am I supposed to go back on my meds?  Were they making me "nice"?  Funny?  Effervescent?  Were they making me who I was, or someone I never was?  Or were they very expensive sugar pills?  Hey-- maybe that's okay-- I like sugar.  If I need medication to get me back to who I was before, why the fuck is that?  What happened, and when?  And why?  I don't want medication and, much more, I don't want to need it.  

My birthday is on Monday-- I will be thirty-four.  This will be my first birthday sans-Facebook in quite a few years, I guess, and it will be interesting to experience my birthday free from the exploding Wall phenomenon.  Obviously, there will be a dramatic decrease in well wishes-- Gary from elementary school will probably not remember-- but I wonder if whatever contact I do receive on my birthday will be of a higher quality, if it will come from the heart, from someone I didn't expect.  Of if there'll just be texts from my sisters and my parents and my best friend, and dinner with my wife and my babies and the dog and presents on the couch.  And I wonder if that will be just fine with me, or if that's what I'll say to conceal the hurt at being forgotten about by my 458 "friends"-- whomever they were.  

Of course, my life hasn't all been about "stopped's" lately-- I've started some things, too.  I auditioned for a film/television/commercial talent agency to try to get my name and my gorgeous face out there.  If I get anything, I'll probably play a doctor holding a clipboard, explaining the side effects of the latest grape-flavored adult suppositories in a commercial that'll air between two and four-thirty a.m. on that Christian network, but I'm okay with that.  Work is work.  I also started to not be afraid of flying solo as a director.  I'm directing a show, all by myself, like a big boy, for the first time in a long time, and I am terrified and head-over-heels with the show already, and I haven't even cast it completely yet.  And I started something else, too... what the fuck was it?  Oh, right:

I've started blogging again.

The Middle Ground

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 22, Verse 1

"If you must choose, take a good name rather than great riches;

for to be held in loving esteem is better than silver and gold."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

I'm learning to accept that I'm a man of extremes.  

And it's rather annoying, because I don't often practice what I preach.  (Who does, right?  Certainly not preachers.)  When I advise others, it's often with words and tone and timbre that stink of conciliation, smoothing things over, reasoning, rationality, compromise.  When talking to others about their problems and their conflict, I'm much more comfortable steering others towards that middle ground.  I like the middle ground-- for others, it's fine-- it's soft and grassy, cool and clean.  You can walk upon it barefoot or shod only in socks, and you'll be okay.  Sure, there might be a pebble or two, but they're small and round.  You won't get a blister walking along a path on the middle ground.

In my own life, though, I'd lose my way blindly crashing around through thorny bush and terror tree such that, if I ever tried to find the middle ground, I'd probably die trying to get there.  And it'd be ugly.  I'm either here, or quite a far ways over there.  There's nobody that I tolerate, accept, who's just, you know: there.  I either love you, or I'd sooner take a shit in your mailbox and kick you in the throat.  

That's, well, that's me.  Mister Prince Charming.  Got me LOTS of dates in high school.

My extremes are often in conflict with one another.  They don't make sense.  For instance, take the opinions of others.  Now, you'd think that someone who so rigidly categorizes people would have a pretty easy time dismissing the opinions of the mail-box-shit, throat-kick crew, and focus solely on the thoughts and feelings of the people whom I love, but you'd be wrong.  I vacillate between not giving a shit what anybody thinks about anything I say or do or think or wear or eat, to being wildly obsessed with it.  If I know that somebody is angry with me, or doesn't like me, well, that's pretty much all consuming for me.

I can't help it.  Of course, neither can preachers, apparently.

And I'm not quite sure why it's this way with me.  I was never taught to conform by my parents, never instructed to do this or that, hold my knife this way, comb my hair that way so that others wouldn't think I was a freak/gay/retarded/untoward/pro-simian/incompetent/priggish/equine.  They let me do whatever I wanted and, I suppose, if there were some negative social repercussions, they expected that I would deal with it/them.  If I had some bright idea to dress up like a nun with my friend and run around our elementary school's track while my father video-taped it, he was right there with the camera, no questions asked.  Though, looking back on it, I'm not sure he'd know which questions to ask.  

About... that.

And I wonder, sometimes, who I'd be if I were a little bit less concerned with the thoughts and feelings of others.  While my parents never taught me to give that much thought, I, evidently, somehow, taught myself.  I developed some idea that, if I was #1, that this was somehow bad, sinful, arrogant, unkind.  Un-Christian.  Yes, I worry about being un-Christian.  Is that wrong?  William Blake said, "The most sublime act is to put another before you."  And maybe I bought into that a little too much.  Maybe just hook and line would have been enough.  

Because, sometimes, I feel like I'm a sinker.  Dipping below the surface of others' stares and thoughts and perceptions and my perceptions of their perceptions and the hairs on the back of my neck responding to their potential looks of disdain.

I don't know.  

It's exhausting.  So, of course, is anxiety, and insecurity feels a lot like anxiety, and it's a component thereof many times.  "What are they thinking about me?  Did what I say come off like I think it did?"  "Did I forget to zip up my fly?"  "Did I forget to put my penis back in my pants?"  "Does this open fly make my penis look fat?"  You know how it is.  There's a lot going on in this little hamster wheel upstairs.  

And, as you know, it's a very un-Christian hamster wheel.    

A Good Vomit

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 12, Verse 25

"Anxious hearts are very heavy, 

but a word of encouragement does wonders!"

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

Scott Stossel, already the editor of "The Atlantic", and the nephew of the mustachioed TV journalist John Stossel (not sure which of those two distinctions is more meretricious, depending upon the quality of John's uncle-tude) is on the road to getting appreciably more famous.  He just wrote a book about his anxiety, his innumerable therapeutic and psychopharmacological interventions, and his significant phobias, the most severe, according to Stossel, is emetophobia: a fear of vomiting.  

Stossel hasn't vomited since 1977 (he knows the exact month, day, date, and time-- I don't) and he also knows that he hasn't vomited since then, and he also knows that the fear of this thing he hasn't done since Gerry Ford was in office is irrational.  He knows all that.  He's a pretty smart guy.  Funny, that the editor of "The Atlantic" is a smart guy.

Isn't it?

My former best friend was, and, I'm assuming still is, an emetophobe.  I lived with him for a few years and, as far as I can recall, it didn't impact our friendship too much.  It's interesting, looking back on it, that, for someone with a deathly fear of rauwlfing, he sure ate Papa John's pizza a lot which, just thinking about it, makes me want to throw up every inch of my intestines.  

As I was listening to the interview with Stossel on "Fresh Air" today, I, of course, thought about my former best friend.  My ex.  Whatever he is.  And I was intensely annoyed that I couldn't enjoy a simple radio interview with this intelligent, very talented, not altogether funny freak without that enjoyment being intruded upon by memories of my former best friend.  I can picture him, standing in our dorm room, grinning, the same way he used to when he was in fourth grade, when we first met.  He has big teeth, and big, black hair.  I wonder if any of it's gray now.  I can see him in his black jeans, white t-shirt and white socks.  He wasn't exactly a fashion plate.  Black sneakers.  Black Tague watch. 

I remember.

I guess he won't ever get his chance to write his book about emetophobia.  Of course, I'll never get to write my book about anxiety, about obsessive compulsive bullshit, about dysthymia, about worrying I'll be found out as a fraud and a phony and a bastard and a mean, yucky meanie man.  

Stinky butt.  

I don't want you to know the truth about me, and yet, it seems like all I do is graffiti it all over your face.  And mine.  There's graffiti over the map of Israel and it's telling my terrible story and I hope it diminishes my glory so you will finally know and stop reading this blog and leave me alone and think to yourself, "Jesus, he really was right."

Maybe that's the only thing that would make me truly happy: for you to go away.

Please, don't go.

I wasn't just annoyed, of course, about being forced to think about my old best friend, but because Scott Stossel's bankrolling his mental illness, and, gee: I'd like to do that.  That'd be swell!  Sign me up.  I want.  He's smarter than me, but I'm funnier.  I'll even pull down my pants to prove the point.

Christ, he's not even really Jewish.  Where does he get off anyway, pretending to be anxious?  Come on, man.  

I want to show him.  I want to teach him a lesson.  I want to go to his book signing in my neighborhood.  I'll sit in my car in the Barnes & Noble parking lot with a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken (dark meat) and eat that shit in under two minutes flat, wait in line with his book clutched to my chest and then, when I get up to him, I'll fucking throw the hell up all over him.  Then we will see what's what.

Then I'll have something to write about.  You know, for money.

A grand adventure.  A good vomit.  A tall tale.  That's what my life's missing.  It has all the typical stuff, the peaks and the valleys, but there's nothing there that's really ZING-KA-ZOING, you know what I mean?  Nothing that really grabs you by the lapels or the taint and pulls you closer and says, "Now, listen here, my darling; this is a tale that ought be told for approximately a $250,000 advance."  

And maybe that moment will come and maybe it won't.  Maybe I won't need a Colonel's Original Recipe bucket to make it all come true for me and for my family, and, if it doesn't happen to me, for me, for us, well, I will have to be okay with that, like I've had to be okay with so much.  Like we all do.  We can't all have John Stossel for an uncle, and we can't all hide our stinky butts from the world or hang onto our best friends like our childhood dollies forever.  All we can do is what we can do, and that will just have to be enough.  It will have to be enough for you, and, I guess, for me, too.  I suppose, as long as I have you, I'm good.

Anxious, but good.       

It Used to Be

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 31, Verses 6 & 7

"Hard liquor is for sick men at the brink of death, 

and wine for those in deep depression."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

It used to be, if you asked me why I believed in the death penalty, I could tell you.  And I would tell you.  I wouldn't just tell you about it, I'd write about it, too.  I wrote about it, a lot.  It's recorded.  It is on record.  

Now, it all seems like somebody else's thoughts and words.  And bile.  And animus.  And violence.  I'm in there, somewhere, of course.  I'm in there somewhere, floating around, circling the drain, watching for cues, thumbing my nose at the memory of myself.  Back then-- way back then.  

I don't believe in the death penalty anymore.  I've seen what it does-- I mean, I haven't seen somebody being put to death by the state-- but I've seen how it martyrs people, I've seen how it turns people's brains to yogurt.  If you read Monday's post, or the book I wrote when I was in college, well, you know what I'm talking about.

You know.

It used to be, if you asked me why I like to wear ties and what I call "Tier 1 pants" (trousers that could pass for suit pants, typically necessitating dry-cleaning that I wouldn't be caught dead spending money on) and dress shirts, I could tell you.  I'd prattle on about self-respect and dignity and how my grandfather was a haberdasher and all of that muck.  But, really, I don't know why.  I have a hundred ties.  Maybe two hundred.  There's around a dozen bowties.  And sometimes I look at them and I don't know what they're doing in my room.  Why do I wear ties and not bowling shirts, or flannel shirts?  Now, it's just what I do.  I wear ties to the beach.  

Gee, that's silly.

Used to be I could tell you why I liked sad folk songs-- I could tell you why if you asked me.  I'd talk about how they're moving and they're poignant and about how their stories of sorrow or loss or struggle speak to me, and about how they're more lasting than, I don't know-- than that other stuff.  Now, if you asked me why I cry when I hear Dar Williams's "When I Was a Boy", I'd probably just take a sip of coffee and change the subject; to the weather, or the bomb, or the gumbo.  Let's talk about something else, cuz my mom and I, we'd always talk, and I'd pick flowers everywhere that we'd walk.

But you knew that.

Used to be I knew why I wanted to be a cop.  I'd tell you a story about-- I don't know-- something, anything to explain it.  To make sense of the most irrational desire of my life.  I'd explain it away for you until it almost made sense, until it almost made your brow stop furrowing.  I'd talk until you left me the fuck alone about it.  I'd talk and talk and talk until I almost understood it myself.  I'd tell you that it started in high school, or college, or the months after college, after she'd broken up with me and after the book and after I waved to Charles after getting that stupid piece of paper wearing that oversized trash bag, but, a couple months ago I was looking at pictures that my father took of me back when I was nine or ten.  I'm dressed in dark pants, a dark blue polo shirt and a child's-sized police hat.  I have cheap metal cuffs and I'm doing various police poses-- talking on an imaginary radio, pointing off in the distance while squinting my eyes (probably at the direction a "suspect fled on foot"), even cuffing an imaginary suspect up against my father's white Oldsmobile Ciera.  There's a badge on my chest, with a piece of black mourning tape over its center.  

I don't know.  I really just don't know.

Used to be I could tell you why I don't drink.  Why I've never had a drink.  Why.  People think I'm in recovery, but I'm not even that advanced.  I'm so entrenched in my own bullshit I don't even have the slightest idea what I'd be in recovery from.  Maybe I don't drink because I'm frightened.  Maybe it's because I think alcohol is evil, that people who drink behave like idiots.  Maybe I don't think I need any help behaving like an idiot.  I've got that covered pretty much.  Maybe I don't want to be out of control.  Life's pretty out of control as it is.

Isn't it?

Used to be I could tell you anything-- even if you didn't ask.  Now, I don't know what to tell you.  I could have told you, once, very clearly in writing.  I was always afraid of speaking, because I never knew what was going to come out.  I'm still like that, but now it's metastasized to infect not only my speech but my writing.  I still don't know what I'm talking about.  Or why.  I don't know who I'm addressing, who is out there, why I'm writing or why you're reading.  But I suppose all I can say it that I like that you're here.  Here with me.  "Stay with me," I used to say to my mother so she wouldn't leave my bedside as I lay there, awash in anxiety and fear-- irrational and sane-- and she would stay.  She'd stay with me.  

And I always knew why. 

The Lexapro Isn't Working

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 5, Verse 23

"He shall die because he will not listen to the truth;

he has let himself be led away into incredible folly."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

"So, how bad is this O.C.D. of yours?" he asked me.  Nobody'd ever asked it quite like that before.

I looked at him.

"Well, I wouldn't say it's bad, but it's definitely a part of me.  I mean, it's there.  Like, for instance, just this morning, I went to a conference, and it was downtown-- would have taken me twenty minutes to get there.  And it started at nine.  Well, my wife left the house at a little after seven.  I didn't have anywhere to fucking be, but I left with her.  So, I'm driving around like an asshole with nowhere to go, and I thought to myself, 'Oh, I'll go to Starbucks,' which makes sense, right?"

"Right," he said, furrowing his eyebrows.  He could tell I didn't go to Starbucks.

"So, I go to Starbucks, but, as I park the car, I remember, 'Oh, this guy I used to go to school with works there, and he's really nice, but I really can't stand interacting with people and making small talk and shit like that-- plus the mother of a girl I went to school with has some kind of intellectual bullshit discussion group at that Starbucks in the morning and I'll definitely run into her, in fact her car's in the parking lot and I really like her and I loved her daughter like a sister but I think I'll just sit here in the car for an hour'.  And that's what I did.  Idling, wasting gas, listening to fucking intellectual bullshit NPR like a dickhead dipshit asshole for forty five minutes until I couldn't take the anxiety of not knowing what traffic would be like and I left and got to my conference over twenty minutes early."

He looked at me.

"So, maybe this isn't working."  Pause.  "Are you feeling any... any spark?  That's what we're looking for; a spark.  Have you had moments like that?"

I looked at him.

"No."

-----------------------------

Maybe it's too soon.  Maybe that's it.  Or maybe I don't want it to work.  Or maybe they're sugar pills.  Or maybe I'm a horse.  Or maybe it's the day after Halloween and I should be writing about how my babies went as a Hershey's Hug & Kiss and how the dog at my wife's glasses while we were trick-or-treating.  Maybe I'm getting myself into trouble with my big mouth and my self-disclosure and oh, listen to that, my daughter's screaming.

Deal with that, would you?  I have neuroses to dissect.

Ordinarily, I'm a pretty decent judge of when things are or aren't working.  If I'm involved in a play and it's a disaster, I typically know it, though I am powerless to correct any piece of it aside from my own performance, and sometimes I'm not even adept enough to fix that.  I know when writing's working and when it isn't (this piece could go either way at this point) and I've known that my former romantic relationships were going down in flames while it was happening-- hindsight was not required, though it helped.

As for medication-- I don't know.  I'm not terribly aware of my emotional state at any given time to be especially keyed in to give a good report.  I feel the same as I did four weeks ago as I did fourteen years ago.  I don't know what to tell you, or him.  I don't know whether I should stay on this smack for the rest of my life just because I know I have anxiety and depression and all that other nonsense that goes merrily along with it, or if I should try something else, or just stick to drinking decaf and putting bacon on everything and split the difference.  

In the end, it doesn't really matter, because I'll be dead, and whatever decisions I've made or haven't made relating to diet and caffeine intake and psych meds and wingtips vs slip-ons won't really amount to much.  Sure, they seem like big decisions now, but really, who gives a fuck?  So I'll be a little more anxious, or a little less depressed.  I'll be out a $5 co-pay, or $10 when the insurance changes.

Whatever.

I don't know.

Would it have been such a Zen triumph over the ego or whateverthefuck if I'd gone into Starbucks that Monday morning and hob-nobbed effervescently with the guy I went to school with and the mom of the girl I went to school with and I traded witticisms with the bearded, latte-swilling members of her faux-Mensa group?  I do or I don't.  The therapist thins his lips or gives a wan smile.  Either way, I give him fifty bucks.

I think about death all the time.  Not suicide, just death.  It pops into my head at lunch or during sex or on a walk or a drive or when I'm holding my son.  It happens when I'm being cynical or brooding, but also when I'm funny or contrite, ballsy or bashful.  I don't know what it is, or why.  But I know there isn't a pill for it and, if there was, I don't know that I'd take it anyway because I don't know what, other than sex, I'd think about.  

It's silly, isn't it?  It's silly and strange and peaceful and terrible all the time.  Each and every day.  It's rainbow vomit.  It's a Crystal Light chandelier.  It's Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.

-----------------

"We'll try 15 mg and see what that does, okay?"

"Sure," I said.  "What the fuck, right?"

Saying Yes

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 24, Verse 6

"Don't go to war without wise guidance; there is safety in many counselors."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

A few months ago, I found myself at the library where my mom works, dressed up as the Cat in the Hat, reading Dr. Seuss stories to a bunch of kids.  

These things happen sometimes.  

One of the books I read was "Green Eggs and Ham".  I guess, when reading Dr. Seuss stories, you don't really trouble yourself too much thinking about what internal struggles the characters are going through during the course of the story.  But try it some day.

Try it, try it, and you may!

I was thinking about how much I identified with the poor stuffy bastard in the crumpled top hat with the big furry ass who doesn't want to eat the green eggs and ham.  

I mean, I get it.  That's me-- my ass is even furry, though big it's not-- and that's how I've always been.  Anyone who's ever tried to convince me to have an alcoholic beverage or watch "Titanic" can tell you that I'm as truculent as they come.  When I try to convince my children to ingest even just a small morsel of food at dinner time when they don't want to, and they twist in their chairs and swipe off every comestible speck from their trays and defiantly shout, "NO!" I have that sinking feeling that tells me unmistakably that, yeah, they're mine.  

"NO!" is my middle name.

I say "NO!" a lot.  To social engagements-- I've said it so often that the inevitable has happened: people stop asking, stop inviting-- stop.  There are no texts that come in saying, "Let's hang out".  And I'm not crying in my Caffeine Free Diet Coke about it, it just is what it is.  

If a solution to a problem is offered to me, "NO!" is generally how I respond, even if I never petulantly come out and say it.  I've learned to at least behave polite, but I might as well be standing there with a frowny face and my arms crossed in front of my chest peeing my pants just to make the point that I want you and your solution to STAY AWAY FROM ME.  

STAY.  A-WAY.

I don't like you.  

In therapy, I've said "NO!" to mindfulness, to meditation, to alternate ways of thinking, to behavioral modification.  I've said "NO!" to homework, and even to something as simple as "give this some thought for next time".  I just... don't.  

But, after three years, I'm finally saying "yes" to medication.

Why now?  Because I am an absolute anxiety-ridden mess.  And I'm depressed.  I am so consumed with panic that some days I can barely function, barely focus.  Barely get through the day.

Now that I have a desk, it's very tempting to just curl up into a neat little ball underneath it.  That space underneath desks makes a great hiding place.  No one will try to feed me green eggs and ham if I'm all folded up like a pretzel in there.  Especially if I'm peeing my pants.  

My therapist is happy, my wife seems happy, but I'm not happy.  Maybe that's because I haven't found an in-network psychiatrist yet.  Maybe it's because I haven't looked for one yet.  But I have made up my mind to try it.  While I am extremely apprehensive about taking medication that "the way __________ works is not completely understood", I've resigned myself to it.  It's the best we've got at this point in time, and clearly what I'm doing for myself (saying "NO!") isn't working terribly well, so it's time to try something else.  And if I go running down the street naked while ululating and playing the triangle, we'll know I probably need to, um, not be on meds.  Or different ones.  Maybe it'll take some fiddling and some switching and some tweaking and-- hopefully not THAT kind of "tweaking"-- we'll see what happens.

He was so gentle in his suggesting.  He's quiet.  His tactics were barely perceptible.  But I noticed, and I pushed him off.  Away.  

No.

And he would yield, and be quiet about it-- for months sometimes.  And it wasn't because I'd be doing well.  I wasn't.  I don't.  I don't do well.  Not in therapy.  But he knew when to be quiet and when to speak up.  It's a dance, you see.  He leads, I lead-- it's a whole thing.  

"But I shouldn't need it.  I should be able to do this on my own."  He raised an eyebrow.  "Well, with you."

And maybe I could.  But how much longer would it take?  Five years?  Seven?  That's a lot of $50 co-pays. Maybe I'll be paying those forever regardless.  Who knows?

One thing I do know, though, is that every day feels like I'm going to war.  And that may sound a trifle dramatic, but it's how I feel.  And even Robert E. Lee didn't feel like that every day.  That's too much.  You get tired.  And I need to not be so tired.  I have 20-month-old twins that I need to be awake and alive and silly for.

Thoroughly silly.

I was rolling around on the bed with them kissing their necks and their ribs and they were laughing so hard that I wanted to eat the world, hug the globe, kiss the sun.  Go to war-- but in the good way.  The lusty fife-blowing, drum-banging, button-gleaming bagpiping your brains out up and down the square way.  

Cannons.

Sabres, glistening in the sun.  

Left wing, right wheel.  

BAYONETS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Charge.   

A Sensible Fish

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 27, Verse 12

"A sensible man watches for problems ahead and prepares to meet them.  The simpleton never looks, and suffers the consequences."

 

---

 

CHIPPED WISDOM:

 

What if you were a fish.

 

You know, in a tank.

 

(A fish tank.)

 

And there was brightly-hued gravel on the bottom and little fishy shit squiggles were all mixed in there.  And there was faux seaweed made in China and a little treasure chest, too.  And the little scuba man with the fucking Hannibal thing on his head. 

 

And you're the fish.

 

But, see, you're not just "the fish".  No, that would be too easy.  And you don't get off that easy, pard'ner.  Nah, sorry.  No, you're the fish, alright, but you're also a certain kind of fish.

 

You're a Nervous.  Fish. 

 

Nervousfish.

 

Pescadorus Nerviensus. 

 

You're one fucked fish. 

 

Now, as a Nervous Fish, you have certain... responsibilities.  Certain... obligations.

 

You have things to do, and you have to do them in a very certain way.

 

Or, rather, you have things to do, and you have to NOT do them in a very certain way.

 

Because, you know, you're a Nervous Fish, and a Nervous Fish can't just go around doing the things it has to do because it's, um, nervous.

 

TREASURE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Yeah.  There's TREASURE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! down there, but there's a little problem.  You're just a wee bit nervous about doing anything other than holding perfectly, serenely still in the water. 

 

Christ-like. 

 

Except he'd be on top of the water.  Wait a minute-- wasn't Jesus a fish?  And he went with a loaf of bread?  And a Bearnaise sauce?  

 

I really wanted to go to Catholic school when I was a kid, because they wore neckties.  I loved ties, even as a six year old.  I knew enough to know I couldn't get away with wearing one in public school, even an effete public school, I had enough restraint to stop myself from doing that.

 

You know, because, even at age 6, I was a pretty nervous fish.

 

What will they say about me?

 

Who will be my friend?

 

Will somebody choke me out with my tie in the bathroom?

 

Okay, maybe I didn't think that last one when I was six.  Anyway, I didn't go to the bathroom in school until I was in 12th grade. 

 

*****  SO IT WASN'T EVEN AN ISSUE  *****

 

I hate fish, not because they're boring and because they don't make sounds and because they look at you all fucked up-- I hate them because they're so free.  I mean, yeah, they're in a bowl or a tank and they're actually terribly restricted, but they don't know that.  They're too stupid, with their stupid fishy brains the size of a tick fart.  Watching a fish slide and glide through the water, that's an incredibly irritating experience for a Nervous Fish to watch. 

 

See, because there are no nervous fish.  You never see a fish hesitate.  A fish never goes "Hmm, God, I don't know, should I shoot myself effortlessly across this glistening scenery of plastic flora until I am satisfied with the distance I have achieved or shouldn't I?  Shit, um, well, let me make a pro and con list and a Ven diagram and a Zone of Proximal Development and a clothing chart and a call to my clergy and let me sleep on it and oh wait I don't sleep and let me toss it around a bit and let me run it by a few dozen people a consortium a focus group a parent teacher conference a minyan let me stroke the rabbi's beard and rub Buddah's belly and Band-Aid Christ's stigmata and let me pop a pill and canvass the neighborhood and profile suspects and step out of the car sir and wait no wait oh yes no wait should I no wait no no no no no no."

 

You never see a fish doing that. 

 

They just fucking go.

 

And I hate them. 

 

I can't just go.

 

Let it go.

 

Go.

 

---

 

*No fish, Nervous or otherwise, were harmed in the making of this blog. 

 

**I'm lying, but that's okay.  You must be used to it by now.      

In the Top, Right-Hand Corner

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 27, Verse 1

"Don't brag about your plans for tomorrow - wait and see what happens."

 

---

 

CHIPPED WISDOM:

 

It's 9:02.

 

In roughly an hour, I will be in bed.

 

In spite of the relentless, throbbing heat of the second floor of our house, I will sidle up close to my wife as I have done for ten-ish years and hold onto her as if she were a life-raft. 

 

Because, basically, she is.  A life-raft with glasses.  And moles.  I love to count her moles.  On her leg, she has three moles that are aligned in an almost perfect diagonal.  I like those three the best.  There's a crescent moon-shaped one on her big toe.  I forget if it's the left one or the right.  I'm not good with left and right.  They gave us numbers in first grade, and you had to put your number on every piece of paper you wrote on or drew upon, in the top, right-hand corner. 

 

Top, right-hand corner.

 

My number was 16. 

 

I wrote it on everything. 

 

You're never too young to learn that, in this life; you're just a fucking number.

 

Tomorrow, I will go to work and stare at a screen for a long time.  No one will tell me I have to write the number 16 on the top, right-hand corner of what I'm working on, but my employee I.D. number is 30014.

 

It's on my paystubs, so I know it's real.

 

Tomorrow I will do things and learn things and say things and I will say some stupid things and some insightful things and most of the things I'll say will pass for normal, banter, palaver, junk.  It's symbolic of JUNK!

 

On Sunday I had some direction about Monday.  But then Monday came and I did what I had to do for Monday and Tuesday, well, I just don't know.

 

I don't know about Tuesday.

 

There's a lot that I don't know.

 

There's a lot, probably, that you don't know either, but you're better at hiding it than I am, and I hate you for it.  No, hate's a strong word.  I detest you.  No, I adore you.  It's going to be okay.  I love you.  I love you all the time.  I love you in the top, right-hand corner.

 

I am Number 16. 

 

It was suggested to me today that I use my anxiety, channel it, use it as a springboard to thrust me into the work that I have to do.  I liked that suggestion.  I don't know how to do it, but I liked it.  As I may have said before, I like suggestions, and I often take them.  So don't suggest that I go fuck myself.

 

That was a joke.

 

That joke is symbolic of JUNK!

 

My mother used to love planning for tomorrow.  She had a clothing chart that she would make every Sunday-- she'd sit herself down in the living room, cross-legged on one of those stupid marshmallow chairs that they just got rid of, and she'd take a spiral notebook and she'd make a list of what she was going to wear to work, Monday through Friday-- the navy blue blouse with the green leaves and the big orange blossoms with the green linen pants and the beige sandals.  She even wrote down which earrings she'd wear, too.  I don't know if my mother still makes clothing charts anymore.  I don't know anything about her anymore.  Not really.

 

If I had to guess, I'd bet that she doesn't make clothing charts these days.  These days her life is filled with mourning the loss of her son-in-law, and helping to bring up her grandson and, when there's time, squeezing my babies in for a visit every now and again.  She's tortured by ghosts, tormented by a very painful reminder that life blows-- a reminder she hadn't received in many decades.  The seventies, eighties and nineties were good to her-- no, great.  They were great.  But it's been crash-and-burn time lately.  Who can plan for tomorrow when you don't know what the fuck is going on today, or what the hell happened yesterday?

 

I became anxious in second grade.  64 math problems in 5 minutes.  I wasn't Number 16 anymore, and I had to put my name, my real name, on the top of this paper and do 64 math problems in 5 minutes. 

 

It never happened.

 

I always shut down.

 

Shivered.  Shook.  Ram-a-lam-a-ding-dong.

 

Ring-a-ding-ding.

 

DING!

 

Time's up!

 

One time I got a zero.  Didn't even try.  Couldn't.  Or, wouldn't.  I don't know.  Still.  Ever get a zero on something?  It's hard to get a zero, even in second grade.

 

Second graders shouldn't have to know anxiety.  My thing is, if it's a thematic element in any given Woody Allen film, you don't need to be experiencing it at seven years old.  But there it was. 

 

And we always knew when the tests were coming, because that corduroy pants-wearing Nazi would tell us, and so I knew.  But I couldn't plan.  For tomorrow.  There was only dread.  No nightmares because there was no sleep, not for years. 

 

These days, as the full-time workerbee father of twins, I can't help but fall asleep moments after I scoop my wife up in my arms.  There's lots of waking up way before the alarm clock says, "Number 16?  Time to shine," but, for a few moments, there is peace.  Peace.

 

Let us have peace, in the top, right-hand corner. 



Festina Lente

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 29, Verse 13

"Rich and poor are alike in this: each depends on God for light."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

I heard on the radio today some stuffed shirt talking about how, typically, young men tend to get radicalized nowadays somewhere in their early twenties, and that extremist radicalization occurs at this point not just because young men are susceptible to fanatical idealism, but because this is when young men are starting to grapple with whom they are, they're struggling with their place in the world and the meaning of it all, and they've gotten angry and frustrated by inequality and failures.

Always ahead of the game, I got radicalized at fourteen. 

These days, twenty-something men get radicalized, according to this guy on NPR, over the internet.  In 1994, there wasn't all that much internet to speak of.  I got radicalized under the hot lights of my middle school's theatre.  I needed no anti-capitalist literature or bomb-making diagrams/instructions.  At my fingertips, I held perhaps the most powerful tool I could have possibly come into contact with at that extremely sensitive and formative time in my life: the script and score of "The Pajama Game".

While the idea of 100 (seriously, there were 100 of us) pre-and-barely pubescent children running around onstage singing about how "seven-and-a-half cents doesn't buy a *HECK* of-a-lot" might just be funny enough on its own, I was cast as the comedic lead to end a bit more humor to the already extant comedy of the situation.  Vernon Hines is his name and, as his introductory song reveals, he's a "Time Study Man".  An efficiency expert.  Vernon's job at the Sleep Tite Pajama Factory in Cedar Rapids, Iowa was to make sure that work moved along at a reliable, consistent, brisk clip.  

Hurry up.

Hurry up.

When you're racing with the clock, and you're racing with the clock.

And the second hand doesn't understand that your fingers ache and your back may break

It's a losing race when you're racing with the, racing racing racing with the clock!

Vernon Hines is ever-present.  His well-worn clipboard clutched tightly against his chest like a baby's bankie, his pocket watch hardly ever resting inside his vest pocket.  In Act II, Hines interrupts a meeting to complain that the elevator is stuck, which, obviously, is throwing off productivity at the pajama factory.  Which Hines can't have.  During the scene, Hines is convinced to remove his trousers and model a pair of pajamas, which he grudgingly does at first, and then finds he enjoys the attention.  The comic highlight of our middle school production of the show was a wordless bit of panto where my, um, pants are removed onstage to reveal boxer shorts featuring two enormous pocket watches on them.  After I model the pajamas, which slide down to the ground, I hastily put on my pants, backwards, not realizing, and try to zip up the fly, which is behind me.  I then remove the pants again, put them on correctly, zip the fly only to catch my cuff in the zipper (which, by now, is also slowing down productivity).  I try in vain to remove the cuff from the zipper and get tossed off stage by the woman playing my character's fiancee.  And she throws my shoes at me while I'm off stage.  It was the first time I had ever done a scene and received applause on an exit, and it was drug-like.

Obviously, I'm still talking about it, and it was almost twenty years ago.

But aside from that being the moment I decided to bite into acting and not think about removing my teeth, it was also the moment that I found religion.  And it wasn't a quaint, peaceful relationship either.  It was fanatical.  Radical.  When I got cast in "The Pajama Game", I went with my father to a jewelry store.  I used $300 of my Bar Mitzvah money from the year before to buy a gold-filled antique Elgin pocket watch, which I wore, strung across my vest, in the show.  I wore it in lots of shows thereafter, too.  There were other pocket watches to come, and wristwatches, too.  There's an Ogee clock on our mantle from somewhere around the 1880s downstairs.  

Tick tock, tick tock, tempus fugit.

Tick tock, tick tock, time goes by.

Aside from the accouterments, which are almost always expensive, there was a very clear and very strange relationship with the abstraction of time.  I began, almost instantly after the close of the show, to become obsessed with it.  Controlled by it.  I walked down to the bus stop a half-an-hour early in 9th grade.  Once I could start driving, the time I would show up to school was, um, not normal.  Let's just say I sometimes beat the janitor.  And everybody else.  

And I liked that.

Instead of wasting my free time after school and rehearsals on homework, I did it the morning it was due, sitting on the floor in the hallway outside my locked homeroom.  When I was too early to access the building at all, I scribbled my history or English work on my 5-Star notebook in my car.  

And, nearly twenty years later, it hasn't gotten any better.  I wake up at 4:37 in the morning.  I'm out of the house by 5:15.  I'm at work by 5:40.  I come down to the chartroom by 5:52.  The night-shift nurses know.  They probably think to themselves, "Jesus-- this is one sick bastard."

And they're psych nurses.  They know.  And, you know what?  They're right.  I am.  I can't help it.

I mean, I can.  But I choose not to.

I choose this.  I don't know why.  Anxiety?  Fear?  Identity?  Had Vernon Hines become who I was, or wanted to be, or am today?  Can I really blame a musical from 1955 for the mess I am today?

Maybe.

I don't know.  I do know that I don't believe in God, and I don't believe in Judaism, but I do believe in time.  And I suppose that's just as well, because time is just as man-made as the 1967 Seiko 5 Automatic on my left wrist, or the Festina 17-jewel dark-blue dial Automatic that's on its way to my doorstep from Oviedo, Spain and it's just as man-made as God and Judaism, too.  I hope one day that my fanatical devotion to the 12 and the 1 and the 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 and 12 again becomes more taciturn as I grow older.  Maybe one day I'll realize that it isn't so important when I show up for things, that people won't judge me if every task isn't done just so, that everything won't come crashing to a fiery end if I show up on time as opposed to forty-five minutes early or, God forbid, on time, or Christ help us: late.  

Right.  Maybe.  Maybe not.  I don't have time to think about that right now.  I have to empty the dishwasher.

One thing, though, before I go.  I did have time, while writing this, to reminisce a little bit about that production of "The Pajama Game".  Remembering that moment onstage, with my pants off in front of my parents and yours and around 500 other people howling in laughter at my Gumby legs and my clowning and my pretending to be older even than I am now-- that might have been the happiest I've ever been.  Thanks for helping me remember.  That was nice.   

Sissy

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 3, Verse 25

"Be not afraid of sudden terror, or of the darkness of the wicked when it will come."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM: 

It's funny what you remember.  I remember nice things-- like my first kiss with the woman who would become my wife (precipitated by my undeniably romantic utterance: "Let's get this over with already") and I remember the surge and roar and growl my first car's engine made when I stomped hard down on the accelerator as an idiotic 16-year-old.  I remember how it felt to be ensconced within my mother's arms as a boy when I was sad and I remember the exhilaration of riding the conveyer belt at my father's factory when I would go with him to work on Saturday mornings for his customary half day.  

Wouldn't you know it, I also remember things that are not so nice?  

You don't forget being bullied.  My bullying was not so terrible, but it was rather consistent, and it lasted I think longer than is probably customary.  I was bullied pretty heavily in college.  My hallmates covered the doorknob to my room in a substance that was most likely ejaculate, which made shaking hands with my doorknob, um, unpleasant.  They downloaded porn of dubious quality and taste onto my desktop computer when I wasn't there and my roommate let them in, and probably supervised the operation-- then they made pictures of obese women masturbating the subject matter of the screen-saver.  

Cute.

One intoxicated gentleman decided to trim his pubic area while sitting on my bed.  With my office scissors.  While I was sitting in the chair next to him, daring me to do something about it.  He was a lot bigger than me, and, you know, he had office scissors.  With pubes stuck to them.  I chose the Gandhi route.  

Predictably, the bullying occurred, though not to this degree, in high school, and middle school, and elementary school-- where kids first establish a pecking order once they realize some kids are different than other kids and are, consequently, to be targeted.  My bullying, however, started even earlier than that.  My kindergarten teacher, after witnessing my perhaps excessively negative reaction to a picture of a tarantula in a storybook, yelled, "Oh-- don't be such a sissy!"

It hurt to hear it, and I crawled under a table in the corner for the better part of the day and cried, but really, it was good advice.  If only I'd listened.  

I'm not scared of tarantulas anymore-- though, to be fair, I can't say I've ever seen one in person... let's just say I'm not scared of pictures of tarantulas anymore-- though I do have a significant amount of fears.  High on the list is a fear of dying in an airplane crash.  Now, I haven't been on many airplanes, so the probability is very low but, every time I fly, I am about 90% certain that the flight is going to terminate in a twisted inferno necessitating consultation of my unfortunate dental records.  How my wife ever got me on many, many planes to get me to Indonesia for our honeymoon without the aid of copious amounts of Ativan and ether is beyond me.  I guess you do crazy things for love.  

When I was eight years old, Pan Am Flight 103 fell from the sky and its remains, and the remains of its passengers and crew descended on the town of Lockerbie, Scotland.  I had a youthful affection for news anchors because they wore three piece suits and so I watched the news all the time as a kid, and I was mesmerized by the images of the broken plane, lying inert and in tatters, as helpless and bewildered local policemen stood impotently around the scene.  Nothing to do.  No one to help.  

Nothing.

I watched endless footage of the bodies set alongside one another, in endless rows, in a makeshift morgue, covered in shrouds.  They reminded me of candies in a box, just all lined up, identical looking in their wrappers.  I watched film of hearses coming to the morgue to take this body or that to this morgue or that.  If I wasn't watching that, I was watching reruns of "Monty Python's Flying Circus"-- so I'm not really sure which one is healthier. 

One day, speaking of healthy, I assembled my family, and a friend of my 11-year-old sister who had the misfortune to visit our house that day, in the living room.  I brought in our Casio electronic keyboard.  I put a toy hearse (what?  Didn't you have one of those growing up?) on the glass table in the middle of the room.  I lined a bunch of Playmobil action figures (supine) onto the table and methodically covered each one in a white Kleenex.  I played a modified version of Chopin's Funeral March on the keyboard and then loaded a Playmobil figure into the back of the toy hearse, drove it to the opposite end of the table, unloaded the action figure, and repeated until all of the Playmobil men and women victims were successfully deposited.  I wish I could describe for you the facial expressions of my family members, and my sister's friend, but I never looked up once.  When I was done, I wordlessly picked up my gear and walked out of the room.  Maybe I knew what I was doing was wrong.

"You were trying to develop mastery over your fear," my wife said to me recently.  I'm not sure that's true, and, if it is, I don't think it worked.  Yeah, I've flown to Pittsburgh, North Carolina, Australia, Indonesia, and Ireland, but I've been an absolute wreck each time.  Not only that, recently, when we had some free time to ourselves and it was my turn to pick the evening's televisual feast for the evening, what did I choose?

"Air Disasters" on the Smithsonian Channel.  Subject matter: a 1978 mid-air collision between a passenger jet and a Cessna over a crowded section of San Diego, killing 144 people.  I mean, what was I supposed to do?  "Bob's Burgers" was a re-run.

Fear doesn't stop me-- not from doing anything, really.  It doesn't stop me from working in a dangerous place with dangerous people, it doesn't stop me from flying or driving too fast or doing things I know I'm not qualified or capable of doing.  It doesn't stop me from loving or losing or taking risks.  It doesn't stop me from eating salty and fatty foods, or from going downtown to see a show.  It doesn't stop me saying how I feel.  But it does haunt me in a way-- I know the darkness of the wicked is always there, even when it's not.  It's fastening its seatbelt and returning its tray and its seat-back to the upright position next to me.

And it's always letting me know, never letting me forget that, deep down, where it counts the most, I'm still a sissy with a bowlcut and an aqua blue sweatsuit, hiding under the snack table, fighting back tears with everything I've got.

A Lion in the Street

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 22, Verse 13

"The lazy man is full of excuses.  'I can't go to work,' he says.  'If I go outside I might meet a lion in the street and be killed!'"

---  

CHIPPED WISDOM:

Usually, when I'm asked how long I've been anxious for, I answer, "since 1985".  That goes one of two ways with people-- it either abruptly halts the conversation in its tracks, which is almost always my preference, unless I'm talking to a young woman with size 34-B breasts, or it prompts more questions, which only make me more anxious.  People want to know if I'm "kidding" when I say that I've been anxious since I was five.  

No, I'm not.  I don't kid.  I don't know what "kidding" is.  Harvey Korman once said, "Funny is when you're serious", and I find that I'm never not serious, especially when I'm trying to be funny which, I guess, is what "kidding" is.  I don't like that word, though.  "Kidding" sounds like something a creeper uncle does in the basement to his nieces and nephews and then tells them not to tell.  I don't "kid", I tell the truth.  It's much funnier than trying to "kid".  

Once I learned about what death was, courtesy of "The Jewish Book of Why" (Rabbi Alfred J. Kolatch, hardbound edition, currently housed on a 2nd floor shelf at my mother and father's house [the book, not the rabbi]) and I realized that death applied not only to me (which upset me) but also to my parents (which upset me greatly) I began my gentle descent into anxiety.  I thought about it, um, often.  That is to say, constantly.  While I was eating Cinnamon Toast Crunch.  While I was reading "Ziggy".  While I was yelling to my mother from the toilet that "My penis does tricks when I think about Vanna White!" While I played the cantankerous old man in my elementary school's production of "The Gingerbread Man".  While I slept.

Oh wait-- I never slept.  Because my parents could die while I was sleeping and then I'd have to wake up and pad down the hall to their room and find their bodies.  

(Of course, they would perish in unison-- that's how it happens, you know.)  

In my second grade picture, I have hair down past my shoulders and a terrible blue sweater and bags under my eyes to match it.  I'm trying to smile but it's hard when the photographer is saying, "Say, DEATH!" and you can't say it because you're too busy deathing about death.  Also, I'm leaning against a log in the picture, too.  A log?  What are we-- in Vermont, for Christ's sake?  Who the hell thought that was a good idea?

In my brain, there are always lions in the street.  They're in the trees and in my bronchioles and in the cake batter, too.  They're in my shoes and in my heart.  I am filled with fear and dread and worry and petrified that, if I let down my guard, if I become a smidgen less hypervigilent, my parents will die, and I will go broke and the house will implode and my twins will go mad and my wife will combust and the car will get leprosy and I will, well, probably be relatively untouched except for a social disease or two that I'll have mysteriously contracted from having a nocturnal emission in the same time zone as a prostitute (or a quarrlesome woman) and I'll just be left there to watch it all happen.  Impotent.  Powerless.  Vacant, like a dream.  

A lion in the street?  Bring it, motherfucker.  Maybe that's what being anxious really means to me-- not being lazy.  I look at people who take a more cavalier approach to life and, mentally, I scold them.  "You're clearly not working hard enough at being cautious," I think, "at being miserable, at wringing every last drop of fun out of your life because life is scary and bold and furious and there are deer crossing and there are trains coming and there are pitfalls and layoffs and takedowns and there are lions in the street and you just have no idea and one day you will stand at a gravesite and say Kaddish or whatever over your mother and your father and maybe then you will understand and there'll be lions in the coffin and they're waiting for you with fur and teeth and eyes and claws and don't you ever stop looking over that bony shoulder of yours, mister, cuz I love you and you don't understand."

Okay.  You call it "laziness", I call it "anxiety".  All's fair in love and war, Mr. Potato Chip Man.