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.

Pirouettes in my Brain

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 26, Verse 4-5

"When arguing with a rebel, don't use foolish arguments as he does,

or you become as foolish as he is!

Prick his conceit with silly replies!"

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

As I was driving to work this morning, I was treated to a story about botched young adult circumcisions in South Africa.  Not just bungled procedures, but inept aftercare by "very young, inexperienced female nurses."  Call me what you will, but, if I were a young adult who had just been circumcised, I'm not sure having my mutilated genitals and my wounded pride tended to by a nurse of that description would necessarily be unenviable.  

Of course, I suppose it would be if said nurse wrapped the bandage so tight that it ceased all blood-flow to my penis, resulting in tissue death, gangrene, and, yeah, amputation.

In 2013, these incorrectly-performed and dubiously cared for circumcisions resulted in 43 deaths, and countless disfigurements and irregularities.  Out of how many, I don't know, but that seems to be a pretty significant failure rate for a procedure that was executed on my son by an octogenarian on my parents' dining room table in front of a not wholly insignificant audience, many of whom, I hasten to add, were armed with iPhones.  No photographs were permitted by the mohel during the actual procedure, and I cringed when he said that, because I'd like to think that nobody in the room, at least nobody who was related to me by blood, would need such an admonition but, sadly, I knew that probably wasn't the case.  I wish he'd said "no eating", too.

And as I turned the wheel of my Volvo this way and that way, as I do on my automatically adhered-to meandering route to work, best performed when 75% asleep, I couldn't help but think about medicine-- how far we've come, how slow we've rolled, how much we know and how much we don't.  I was thinking about what would happen if a victim of one of these Dr. Tremblefingers operations stumbled somehow into a state-of-the-art American hospital.  He'd be all septic and infected and they'd administer drugs to stabilize all his functions and they'd drain puss and they'd save whatever inches they could so that, when they guy recovered and felt like hitting the clubs again, he might, one fortuitous night, end up taking a cab headed straight to Poundtown.

Because, when your dick's infected, and you take an antibiotic, you can pretty much tell if that's working.  Your pee-hole stops frothing, I mean, it's pretty obvious.  If you've cut your goddamn arm off with a grapefruit knife and somebody applies a tourniquet, the bleeding will stop, and you can pretty much see that, and that's good.  

I've been on Viibryd for a good few months now, and, when the psychiatrist or the therapist asks me if I'm working, I always feel slightly exasperated.  I want to say, "What?  You mean you can't you see my dick isn't throwing up anymore?"

But, of course, it's not like that, is it?  There's nothing really to see.  It's just me, cross-legged in that chair, staring absently at the carpet, or my therapist's knee, or at a pile of paperclips on the desk.  Or the guacamole stain on my trousers.  (Thanks, son.)  And I'm supposed to talk about how I've been doing for the last two weeks, or the last month.  Like I know.  I want to bring in supporting testimony from friends, family, and coworkers.  I want it to be a trial, and I want the medical professional to make a ruling.

I don't want to be the judge.  

Besides-- I can't see anything.  I mean, seriously: what the fuck is this?

Is that what Viibryd's doing inside my brain-- spinning the Christ around like that?  When the ads say "The way in which Viibryd works is not entirely understood," are they really saying, "We don't know why Viibryd does pirouettes in your stupid dysthymic head"?

So, when they ask me, I usually say, "I don't know."  But I suppose one thing I have noticed lately is more sillies.  More prancing and dancing around the house.  More goofery with the children, and with my wife.  More lightness of being.  More pirouettes 

And so I told my therapist that.  He doesn't take notes during session so, afterwards, in between me and the next guy, as he sips Dunkin' Donuts iced coffee and bites a piece of a Nutrigrain bar, I don't know if he checked off a box that said, "Eurythmic", or if he scribbled "more sillies" or what, and I know it's not an empirically valid estimation of, well, much of anything.  And I still think about death and brood about my shortcomings and I am terrified of the future and there's the hopeless insecurity of tomorrow and the dismal, petty failures of yesterday, and the incompetence of today that I haven't even processed because I'm far too entertained watching that blue and gray and white and red Viibryd spinning and twirling in the glow of my computer screen, too busy thinking about you and what you're thinking about me and what we're thinking about each other and I just spent ten minutes clutching my sweet, tear-stained son because he was crying in his crib in the dark and if I have passed on this little monster to him I will be very sad indeed, but at least his circumcision was a success so, you know, we've got that.

And that's something to dance and be silly about.

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?"

Just Another Porpoise

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 25, Verses 21 & 22

"If your enemy is hungry, give him food!

If he is thirsty, give him something to drink!

This will make him ashamed of himself, and God will reward you."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

I'm trying an experiment.  

Don't worry-- it doesn't involve spraying Maybeline into Thumper's eyes or replacing Christian babies' blood with Ecto-Cooler.  It's just a teensy little experiment.  

A writing experiment.

Tonight, I am going to see if I can be a little bit more in tune with, or attuned to, my emotions.  Now, I'm obviously off to not such a hot start because, if I was, I wouldn't have done that cutesy little phrasing (in tune with, or attuned to-- God, shut UP) because I would have been paying closer attention to what I'm feeling right now and less attention to being clever.

I'm not, that's why I have to pay attention to it.

What I'm feeling right now, frankly, is cold.  Not emotionally, but physically.  My feet are freezing and my nose is schnuffling, and my shoulders are cold.  I've got a sweater on, and pretty thick socks but this room and this house are both drafty and I don't have the wherewithal or the ambition to go downstairs and turn the heater on.  If I had one of those nifty apps on my smartphone I could turn the heater on using that, but those are for assholes.

I don't need HVAC cellphone apps to be an asshole.  I've got it covered.

I suppose I'm feeling a little lonely tonight.  My wife is at her band rehearsal and the babies are asleep, as is the dog.  I could wake her up to play with her, but that feels a bit selfish.  Plus, she'd probably just get riled up and bark and yelp and wake the babies up, and that would be mightily sad for all involved.  I usually don't mind being alone, but I don't like the way it feels right now.  I feel like I want to call up a friend, but why?  What would I say?  

"Hello in there?"

It's frustrating when you're not sure where to go with a piece.  That nice moment there doesn't mean much if it's not picked up in a thoughtful way, or an energetic paragraph that goes somewhere else.  It sort of just hangs there, doesn't it?  Like some forgotten dream, that we've both seen...

I've been worried recently that I'm not terribly funny anymore.  And I've been thinking about it a lot.  In writing and in life.  That I maybe don't have the knack for it, or the energy for it, or the interest in it.  I looked at the homepage of John Elder Robison's wife's blog for some random reason today, and it made me crack up, just silly captions she put under pictures or the way she phrased things and I was thinking, "I used to do that, didn't I?"

But maybe I'll be funny when I'm supposed to be.  Maybe, right now, when I'm not feeling funny, I'm not supposed to be being funny.  Oftentimes, people are funny because they have to be, or they think they have to be, to cover up what they're really feeling-- to help someone else out, to prove something to themselves or the world.  It's our way of making Ecto Cooler out of lemonade.  It's a neat trick: Hey!  I can do that!  Look at me!  I'm depressed as hell but I can still make you laugh.

It's a neat trick.  Better than a goddamned porpoise bouncing a beach ball on his fucking nose at Sea World.

I saw a headline today, I guess it was on an advice column, and the title read, "Should I Take My Child to Sea World?" and I was thinking "No, you fucking stupid cunt," and I was thinking about how much I wanted to smack the asshole who wrote that, and then do the same thing to the asshole who printed it, and then do the same thing to everyone who clicked on it and read it.  And then I thought, if my children want to go to Sea World, I am going to take them.  And then I will want to slap myself.  Because I am my own worst enemy.  My mortal enemy.  I'm going to be around myself forever.  

No, don't take your lousy lopsided miserable kid to Sea World.  Buy him a Siamese fighting fish instead.  He'll love the fucking thing because it's beautiful, and Sea World isn't beautiful.  I've never seen it; 

but I know. 

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.   

Happy, happy. Joy, joy.

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 15, Verse 15

"When a man is gloomy, everything seems to go wrong; when he is cheerful, everything seems right!"

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

I'm a happy-on-the-inside kind of clown, I guess.

Inside, my heart is a rainbow.  My eyes, kaleidoscopes.  My colon's a disco ball.  I fart unicorns.

I am a happy man.  

I'm told, though, that I have dysthymia, which, incidentally, SpellCheck tried to correct to "hysteria".

(I have that, too.)

Dysthymia comes from the ancient Greek word "melancholy" and, even if you don't speak Greek, or DSM, I'm sure you can pretty much guess what it means.  It's not so good.  Of course, it's not a hole in the heart or the brain or an extra one in the nose, so it's not so bad either.  People live with it.  They deal.  The smart ones take meds.  The dumb ones, like me, hand over $50 every other week and slide around aimlessly on a pillowy leather couch in a climate-controlled office and vainly complain, whine, and refuse to take meds.  

"This has been going on for a long, long time," my therapist said, like he knew, "I mean, you were telling your mother you needed to see a therapist when you were, what, eight?  Nine?"

"I don't know.  It's hard to remember dates.  It was the eighties.  We were all high on Tab and Cosby sweaters."

I'm funny in therapy.  You know, for a dysthymic guy.

I meant what I said earlier, though-- inside, I am happy.  I'm desperately in love with my family, I am loved and supported at work.  What few friends I have left are straight and strong and true.  Well, they're not all straight.  I have my (physical) health, aside from asthma, and I can run and jump and prance and mince, and, trust me, that comes in handy when your hobby is Gilbert & Sullivan.  I can even sing a little, too.  I love folk music and the Love Bug and falling down and getting up and the whole stupid thing.  

I love it.

My basset hound has a hundred thousand wrinkles.

I love it.

Life is good and fun and sweet, even when it's terrible and a kick in the balls and a hole in the body and a wreck of a mess of a sham of two mockeries of a sham.

It's good.  I love it and it's good.  

Still, when I see certain people bound enthusiastically into a room grinning like Garfield in a lasagna advertisement, I want to kick them in the teeth and never stop.

Happiness as an outward expression fills me with anger.  

Who the fuck are you to smile so?  What gives you the right?  Don't you know there's a patient in that room strapped to his bed?  Don't you know that the ceiling's falling down?  Don't you know?

Or don't you care.

I mean, look at these assholes.  Teeth.  Crinkled eyes.  Laugh lines.  And, what the fuck-- is she his wife or his daughter or his schtuppenfrau or what?  And what does the caption say?

AUTO ACCIDENT CLIENT

What the hell, exactly, are you so happy about?  Like you're watching "When Harry Met Sally" together.  No.  You wrecked your Kia because you were texting your cat and lolz you got a big settlement because you blamed Nokia because if the @ button on your phone hadn't stuck you wouldn't have had to take your kaleidoscopes off the road and I hope you die.  You're an ad for a shill shyster slapped onto the ass of a bus, I get it.  

Still, die.

I wonder how much shill shyster bus ad models get paid.

In college, when I took Acting II, my professor regarded me silently one day and, when she broke her silence, it was, as usual, a doozy:

"You know, my dear, you'll never be a model or a leading man, but that face of yours was made for character roles."

And I was tempted to spit in her eye, but she was right, of course.  I have never, and will never, play the romantic lead in a show.  You'll never see me grinning like Rock Hudson on the back of a SEPTA bus, because, when I smile, my lips stay closed to hide my teeth, not just because they're misaligned, but because I prefer to keep my happiness, my true pulsating insatiable glow, beneath my olive skin and my unseemly amount of body hair.  Because, for some reason, there's some piece of me, and I don't know what it is, that tells me every moment of every day that that's where it belongs.  

So down it goes.  

I have my grandfather's smile.

I have my mother's smile.  

But I have it.  It's mine.  And, dysthymia be damned; I love it.

I Can't Say

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 21, Verse 14

"An angry man is silenced by giving him a gift!"

CHIPPED WISDOM:

My birthday's coming up soon.  I'll be thirty-three.  I share my birthday, May 12th, with a host of colorful characters who were, are, and always will be, more famous than me:

Katie Hepburn, famous star of the silver screen and the first woman to wear pants at Bryn Mawr, or something.

Florence Nightingale.  She was a nurse, you know.

Skater dude Tony Hawk, Sheen dude Emilio Estevez, and Ving Rhames, the funny Secret Service agent from "Dave".  

Hahaha-- he said, "I can't say".  

That's funny!

Usually, around about this late Aprily time of year, I start to get a hankering for certain material items that might serve to fill some kind of voidiferous void in my existence.  Some hole that one might put something in, say, something from an antique shop.  Or say, e-Bay, which is really just an antique shop without that musty smell that makes you somehow instantly have to take a huge shit.  

Don't ask.  I'm no gastroenterologist.  I don't understand it.

This year, I got nothing.  This is kind of driving my wife up the wall, as she cares about these things and wants to make me happy, and that's nice.  I suppose what I really want for my birthday is a wife who cares about making me happy on my birthday, and I've got that, so I'm pretty good.  A month or so ago, I asked for permission to demolish our old vacuum cleaner that sucked (HA!  "I can't say".  GENIUS!!!) and for further permission to purchase a new one which I thoroughly vetted.  (It's a Shark Professional Navigator Lift-Away Upright Vacuum, Model NV356e and no they aren't paying me to endorse their product but they kind of fucking should now that I think about it and if you're a Shark marketing asshole who stumbled upon this blog while Googling your product, I think you should send me a check.)

So, I spent $200 on this vacuum, and I absolutely love it.  Now that we have a Basset Hound that sheds like a bastard (and isn't 100% potty trained -- why?  I CAN'T SAY!  AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!) we need a vacuum cleaner that rocks the Casbah, whether Sharif likes it or not.  That was kind of a gift.  From me.  To me.  I love using it.  I love emptying out the canister that fills up with unholy amounts of dust and shit in a matter of, oh, three minutes.  It brings me immense joy to know that, for the next twenty-seven minutes, our living room carpet is clean.  

(Ish.)

So, what do you buy for the man who has a lovely wife, two beautiful babies, a slobbery, almost-there dog, and a Shark Professional Navigator Lift-Away Upright Vacuum, Model NV356e and who, hence, has everything?

I CAN'T SAY!

I'm pretty ambivalent about my birthday this year.  I don't know why-- I always have a good time, especially since I've been married.  My wife knows the protocol.  She decorates the dining room, the way my parents used to do for me when I was a boy.  And a lot... older than... a boy.  There is a delectable home-made comestible that is set ablaze in the customary manner.  And there are always thoughtful, useful, silly, wonderful gifts, even when she struggles to come up with something.  She always pulls a hat-trick out of her ass, and, while that sounds uncomfortable, it is always appreciated, and always just right.

This year, though?  I don't know.  I'm somewhere else.  I'm resisting.  I'm not allowing my brain to go there.  My father hates his birthday, or at least he pretends (very well) to hate it.  "WHAT BIRTHDAY, EVERY DAY IS MY FUCKING BIRTHDAY!" he'll roar in that precious Israeli way of his.  I kind of feel like every day is Victoria Day, but I'm in therapy for that, and other things.  Speaking of which, I want to be not depressed anymore.  Or angry.  Or anxious.  Or hopeless.  Or sad.  

Can I have that for my birthday?  Do they have that at Kohl's?  Is there an apostrophe in Kohl's?  

My birthday parties growing up were always at home.  Always.  Me and my awkward friends assembled in the dining room and I held court around the table, which handily extended to accommodate the pre-pubescent awkwardness, imitating uninvited leper classmates and socially imprudent elementary school teachers with whom we were all familiar.  Home-made (my mother was different then) cake was served and then we would go out side to play a lusty game of Ga-Ga, an Israeli sport that mixes soccer, dodgeball and counterinsurgency tactics, with my father (who was never different).  I loved being outside playing this game that involved grass, a ball, and the very real chance of getting injured, which clearly means that I was definitely different then.  After the game, parents picked up their children and were generally not amused to find that the party favor for attending my party was something living: a hermit crab one year, newts another.  There were Siamese fighting fish and baby frogs, too.  I'm glad we gave up this pet party favor thing by the time I had my Bar Mitzvah, or my friends' parents would have had a hell of a time shoving their kids' new donkeys into the trunks of their sedans.

May 12th will be a quieter day this year, I think.  I have the astonishing good fortune to be off on my birthday this year, and that is present enough.  I will cling tightly to my family and my dog on my freshly vacuumed rug and wonder about how I ever got to be thirty-three, and what the hell does that even mean anyway?  I hope you know, because Sharif don't like it.  Why?  

Eh-- you know.