I am fortunate. I am a fool. I am a fortunate fool.

I am fortunate. I have true and good people in my life. With them I have survived in relative comfort in our journey together admist the apathetic terrors that surround it. Many others have not this fortune.

I am a fool. I have this fortune and yet I will let it deteriorate and squander away. I can't just be fully present and alive with those precious individuals I cherish all the time, can I? Instead I must stow away my soul and indulge in the distracting delights of the shadow play dancing upon the wall's of Plato's cave.

I am a fortunate fool. In spite of my failure to live up to the precious gift of themselves in my life; the wonderful people persist alongside in our journey together. To be granted more time with them elicits the greatest reverance in the deepest depths of my being.

How to shine brightly alongside them? How to give back in equal measure what they gift me and finally end the reign of foolishness to which I bound myself?

2020

How many write about their reflections of 2020? About all of us collectively going a little insane this year in facing the things we can't adequately manage. Failing a little more to keep whatever systems we care for in a healthy state. Whether it's our passionate actions themselves causing the damage or whether it's our environment shifting in discomforting and life threatenting ways; we then face our illusions of reality and realize how vulnerable we are when we don't want to be. And it's life's humorous game that in the contradictions and counterbalances of things that we can find some solace when accepted and/or applied. However, we have to let go of those illusions that seem to be built into us from our start or that we wrap around ourselves as we change moment to moment.

I was one of the fortunate ones in 2020. I am, so far, safe from death. I am, so far, safe in my efforts to support my life and the lives of my family. We have a safe place to lay our heads, food on our table, and opportunities to explore as we are able to go beyond basic survival in our life together. I can't say I see the same for some out there and even, seemingly to me, more joined the ranks of those struggling with all that went on this year. I hope their game of life get's better for them. That they get to enjoy fortune and privileged opportunies for themselve as well. I hope this coming set of seasons brings more optimal situations and less struggle to maybe counter the increase that went on in this year.

Love and Peace to all under heaven and beyond :)

Death day, Love day.

It is year three since his death. I struggle with my trauma, my insanity is a buffer. My love of others and self my driver to still yet become something more something continually better in the face of entropy and death. Time fades my memories or the emotions contained therein. I betray my own past experiences and resolutions because of it. I just breathe and be grateful I have breath. I just look on at the promising future of those I love and be grateful and I can feel that. I just fight myself and struggle to prove the good without the fairy tales of man.

I wrote this for my wife for valentines day tomorrow. I read past posts and realized I hadn't talked about her here. I had embraced singlehood and then irony struck in 2015 and I met again my second wife to be. It's been four years now, half the time of my first wife. I wonder if I will make it to that milestone this time. I wonder, if I do, how far I will go past. I wonder how long she will put up with me and I with her.

She is different, of course, then my first wife. She also knows the sting of being betrayed by a partner and is seemingly very loyal. She has simple tastes and it's refreshing. My stress is less on how to please her whims but instead more how to avoid being a monster to her. I do recognize her risk of falling to dependence and victim-hood, something I struggle with too. I hope I can do my part, and her do hers, to make our relationship work for us. And, at least, I have a chance again to enjoy the little things and big things. Like my aforementioned second son; thanks to her willingness and personal risk of health and wellness in the process.

So this message for her below is a good step for me I think. That I am not all consumed by dad's death even though I feel like I still betray the loss by not being so consumed. It's like I have to hold on or I won't be me or some other such childishness. And I am ever the foolish child struggling to hide that fact in this world so that 'they' can think I am an adult. I digress, at least I wrote something for someone else with the intent of just her benefit.

You are mine. My euphoric freedom. My unseeming muse.
You are mine. My relentless companion. My nurturing gaia.
You are mine. I am yours.

Life and Death

I have the opportunity to again be the proud dad of a baby son. He will likely be my last child I have in my lifetime. The experience of having him brings me back to the experiences I had with my first son. I have been comparing and contrasting them against who I think I was then versus who I think I am now. It's an interesting adventure. I spent a month off of work with this baby taking care of him. It was a wonderful and challenging time. I look forward to all the firsts again. To hopefully build a bond as I have with my other son and now my step daughters. To be his fan and a spectator in the awesome journey he gets to now undertake with his life all ahead of him.

The loss of my dad last year and birth of my son this year have me thinking about life and death quite a bit. I can't even seem to escape the subject in my dreams. Last night, for instance, I was gifting my dad some custom made alcohol and preparing to take a shot with him when I woke up. Sad part is it was 3am and I haven't gotten back to sleep so today at work will be an adventure in tiredness. Good part is that I still get to see my dad sometimes, even if it is just my dreams.

I am an agnostic atheist, I tend to quiet about that to most people in my life because I'm this way for myself alone and not any antagonistic reason. I just don't see an evidence of anything religions claim to exists. No god(s), no after life, etc. I bring this up because a challenge of this view has been it makes coping with the death of loved ones pretty hard.

I recently spent some time reading and watching videos on the subject of death and came upon a talk from Sam Harris. It was a rather tender talk compared to many others I've seen by him and helped me see him as not just a Neuroscientist but also as human and I really liked that. He talked a lot about perspective and about just trying to be in the present. He even used mindful meditation techniques in his talk.

And that helped me some. I still feel the sting of the loss. I still get angry at myself for letting myself get so down, especially with this wonderful new child in my life. But, at least, I can now be practical about it; I observe these feelings and thoughts don't have to crush me under their weight. I can let them go. And if / when I need to feel them again then that is okay too. After all it's a cost and testament of our bonds with those we have lost. And I would rather grieve that never have had that relationship with my Dad. I feel like I am better for having known about him, learned from him and spent time with him.

Dad...

In two weeks, it will have been a year since he died. I wish I can say I've been healing and mending well but I feel like such a failure because I'm just barely hanging on. I put up a good front for everyone else but inside I am naught but confusion and chaos. I bounce back pretty good from things eventually and I don't let myself fail ultimately at these kinds of processes but this has been the hardest yet for me.

In spite of the aforementioned confusion and chaos I do know what actions I can take to help myself get further than to just cope. I'm going to try more and do better. I don't want to fail or lose to this grief. Plus Dad would think I'm an idiot for doing so. I'm a very self centered person most of the time so it's easy for me to let things like this go so long and just dwell in my own muddy pit of self pity.

Well it's not doing anyone any good being this way and it's certainly not about Dad. He's gone now. I miss him and I miss who I was when he was alive because I was more okay than I am now. So time to try to become whoever I am to be, now that he isn't a part of my present, instead of just wallowing and waiting for some magic change in myself. I love you Dad. I will be stronger.

To celebrate the arbitrary...

The clock ticked by and then it was midnight on November 9, 2016. In a way I feel like I'm newborn yet again. Death certainly has some finality to it but the truth is there is many smaller deaths you go through in your life. Because death is merely a convention attempting to identify some change. And we go though many such changes. We die and are reborn. It's like reincarnation without the mystical overtones.

This is the first arbitrary period of time without my dad. And he is one my mind in a big way. I'm going through old photos, found some audio and short movie clips where I hear him talk. You know, those things you prize because they all you have due to taking things for granted way more than you should have in hindsight. He's a part of me, and he's not here to celebrate that part. And it's very noticeable even moments within the really meaningless change from one day to the next because we measured the oscillation of an atom yet again.

I defy myself, however, and I end with hope. Hope because there is my son. And now, since last year, my three daughters and my wife. Because there is still the rest of my family and my friends. There is still my life to embrace and wring the life out of for as long as I can. To burn bright in the darkness of space and enjoy this evolved treasure trove of conscious experience that I have while I am still a running event. My gratitude for what was and who that was. My gratitude for what is and who still is. These things I have this arbitrary day.

And a year goes by...

I didn't realize I haven't even blogged in a year. I think about this space, more so lately, and the comfort I find here writing to no one but myself. Still somehow thinking this space will survive me for however long the internet (or at least blogspot) does.

So yeah, a whole year. Well more than a year. In that year I went from my dad and son living with me and happily being single; To now living with someone I was dating a couple years ago and our kids with us together in a house. And my dad is dead.

That is actually why I have been thinking about this space so much. Because I wanted to talk about him. It took a month of saying I would get around to it and now today here it is. He's dead.

Dad found out he had colon cancer this past October. He had it removed, spent two months recovering and started Chemo in December. He was doing ok on Chemo. However, he had to go back into the hospital early February because he had a blockage in his colon due to scar tissue. While dad was in the hospital getting that scoped he also was having Arrhythmia issues again. So they shocked his heart to reset it. He was released home from all of that and the next day he was dead. He died from being treated for his health issues, not from the issues themselves. This is a new life lesson for me.

People die from disease, of course, but the treatment? Supposedly they do because he did.

So now my dad's body is just a pile of bone fragments found in a box in my garage. A month later and, while I know what to do with this world, I just don't know what to do with myself. Grieving sucks...