give thanks?

Today will have been the last day I saw my grandfather, James Allen, alive.

 

He's in the last stage of Alzheimer's at 73 years of age, and he'll be gone any day now.  He is the closest approximation of a male role model that I've ever had, i love him very much, and will miss him dearly.  I will have nightmares of what I've witnessed today for the rest of my life.

He lay there, in a fetal position, more bone than flesh, a skeletal and helpless shadow, completely devoid of dignity with his mouth agape.  His arms and legs have wasted away from atrophy, but the tendons remain only to torture a good man with constant tremors of the hands and feet.  His own body is now his worst enemy, with dry and red eyelids hardly able to open and lips just as useless, and chapped like peeling paint.

Contact with my patriarch was questionable. He can hardly hear and found it difficult to speak, only stating "yes" when offered water by the spoonful.  His eyes while open constant

ly blink with a consistency akin to the tremor in his extremities.  I had to test our contact by moving closer and farther and watching his pupils slowly find focus, and to the side to see if his eyes followed. I think he did see me, but I could just be deluding myself.  

I told him of a chance encounter I had with his former place of work, FDNY Engine Co. 33, where he served as a lieutenant, and of his photo on the wall from the 2005 "Bowery Boys" Old-Timers Reunion. I told him that I always miss him. And I do. He's the only one in the family willing to entertain a discussion of politics, if only just to push my buttons. I told him I love him, held his head, and kissed him goodbye.

His older brother Larry was there, speaking of him as if he were already dead, and musing that he's "got a few years left and then he'll go." This disturbed me profoundly. 

Back at the house, where we had earlier eaten a pressured noontime turkey dinner, my grandmother made me choose which of his suits he will be buried in.  And then a tie. 

On the way home, my uncle, grandfather's namesake, told me that grandma wants us to serve as pallbearers. I could only think that there are but two adult males in the family capable of this, that my brother Jack and cousin Errick are still too young and small. This did not sit well with me.  

It took every ounce of my will to hold back the tears that are currently pouring from every hole in my face as I type this. My composure was reserved for my family. I treat myself now to a total lack thereof. This is what I am thankful for on this day. That I can give water in honor of a man that I love.

So, the lower east side delivers, with a cheap dive once again.  

I found myself at the bottom of a barrel of beer, having a conversation through a snorkel with these three girls.  Didn't get any numbers, because frankly, it was boring.  Although I did enjoy the way they looked at me.  Instead, I chewed out Kristen for going to New Zealand. Fine, fine, fine. JustfriggingotoNewZealand, itsfineIdon'tneedanyfriendsoranything. 

Then, who do I see on the subway but Jessica Louise and Sarah.  According to them, I peed in the street on our walk home.  Ah, friday night.  Yes, I believe I do prefer the company of lesbians to fucking a stranger.

follow through

So I went to the psychiatrist today.

She actually took a history.  That's enough for me.  She asked for details, past and present, rather than just writing down observations.  I am to be referred to a therapist, and will follow up on the 6th of December.  And I gots pills.

Bupropion and lorazepam.  Generics.  Still too expensive.  The point is, no freaking out beyond tolerable human capacity, and stabilization; no more shutting down.  

While I wait for the chemicals to kick in, I'll be ice skating in Bryant Park.  Because meds make ya fat.

yerba mate

So, its been said that I look like this guy, and that's a first.  Cool.  He sang about perfect days and heroin and all things darker than all things cool at the time, a bit like that other weirdo on the west coast.  The difference being that the eastern anti-star underwent a bit of electrocution, which he was told was for his own good, whereas the western medicine-man just saw some dead folk bleeding on the roadside.  These are apparently turning points.  

Unlike, say, ice skating with your mom on a sunday afternoon in Bryant Park.  Mom is so damn cool!  Every time somebody fell, she said "that was a good one!"  Heh.  Mom.

My next search in this burg is to find some yerba mate, and there's a paraguayan place that hopefully will serve it in a gourd.  Then maybe I'll look like this guy.

YUP!

YOU GOTS TO KNOW YOUR CHICKEN!

Brooklyn Botanic Garden

The Dutch are an horticultural force unlike any other.  

Since the age of their long-gone empire, they have hybridized and engaged flora species, taking mother nature to the salon, and given her a makeover.  The Dahlia didn't look like it does after the Dutch took her from Mexico, but now, some 400 hundred years later, she hardily blooms still in November in New York.  This is what amazed me at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden today.  

The Japanese hill and pond garden is a most serene and auspicious place, fit for a time spent alone, sorting quandary.   Unfortunately, the rain does its job on everyone, and makes us betray our feelings.  It makes the future mirror the blackest parts of the past.  So, strife seeming nearly amenable, easily turns tragic.  Solutions unbalance.  

The rains do keep these hederae, colanthus, and cacti alive, though.  And things don't just stay bleak and repeat themselves like the rain's melancholy mirror says.  The proof is in the Dahlia, tempered to strength and stability by endless care, trial, and error, and fed by rain for thousands of generations over hundreds of years.

festivals of fall

Halloween.  The Black Mask attended a parade, and evil Jamie left the parade.  None of the makeup left except the black in the eye sockets, and the black dye of my follicles, I trudged through the gorgeous maelstrom that was New York breathing for the first time in months without being motivated by its wallet.  The concern in this air has been pasted on thick; but Halloween blew the caps off the steam tunnels and the streets were full of the bacchanalia, a well deserved reprise for the nation's nerve center.  

New York took some ecstasy and had a parade round its heart, while its citizens screamed the fear out of its circulatory system like antibodies executing pathogen invaders.  Yesss... New York is well. It stayed up well past dawn taking care of its most precious lovers, delivering them from evil in return for the therapeutic exuberance that washed the dread from its streets.  New York most certainly got laid this Halloween.

A few days later, after commuting in reverse to where I'm still registered to vote, stumbling off the G train in a neglected neighborhood, New York's least represented answered a collect call from their ancestry.  "Excuse me folks, do you know who your next President is?"  

The streets were still there somewhere, under the choir, but the hope and the optimism that this neighborhood hadn't ever seen had laid down a thick cloud cover over geography and economics... All that was left was a promise, the "checks cashed" establishment has opened its doors, and the poor in white neighborhoods and the poor in black neighborhoods wait for Barack Obama to deliver.  

Atmospheric tendency had felt like the opposite, I had been expecting to emerge from the underground to cars flipped and on fire, flaming effigy, and pain, after some of the whispers I had overheard prior to the election.  This is much preferable.

Eatin Mac'n'Cheese

Last night went and dun did some quick makeup shopping for costumin, then to the Nancy Whiskey Pub! The pitchers are cheap enough, and the chicken cutlet sandwich is damn near the greatest presentation of human fuel imaginable.

What is it about the Nancy, you ask, that impels such fondness? Well, there's the half-deaf bartender, whom I refer to as The Captain, with his beard and his sunglasses on 24 hours a day. There's the Moon Landing spoof newspaper cover with the headline "SO WHAT!" There's table-top shuffleboard. There's the jukebox. And finally, there's upstairs, where the ceiling is so low that its like being below deck on a ship. Y'aaaargh!

And we'll dance.

wha-lloween?

Well, I do have a costume, but I have no idea what to do or where to go.

The costume, the Black Mask. The anti-Bruce Wayne. They were friends as children , but whereas Bruce's parents were murdered, and he became the machine of vengeance and a hero, Roman Sionis, the Black Mask, killed his own family and lived a life of brutal and self-indulgence. Contrasted to the Joker as the Dionysis to the Batman's Apollo, rather than the same force without the filter. It's a more overt form of what the Batman would be if his motivation were not premised on incident, but instead on will.

Unfortunately, this character has never been witten well, to the point where its motivation can be examined and its potential realized. Instead, he's been relegated to the pages of ugh, Catwoman, where he was recently killed off. So, Cheers to dead heroes. (What this is actually about is that I've already done the Joker when I was like sixteen, and this is not the year to be one of a billion Jokers, though I really wanted to. Again.)

The events??? Well, there's the Danger. And there's straight up beer. And my wee cousin, who insists on making me feel old by inviting me to rooftop parties in my own neighborhood. Okay. We'll have to see.

motions

Friday, I surrendered and became a sous chef.  It was perfect.  Saturday, i got soaked in the rain, listened to Queen and the Clash, and drank me a redneck or two (1 shot Jim Beam, 1 Pabst Blue Ribbon). Also perfect.  Sunday, today, I went to a doggie halloween costume parade, thrift shopping with Michelle for costume materials, a bowl of bacon and lentil soup, and then Saw V.  It was once again, perfect. 

I am a bit unnerved by the things said between friends exclusively under the influence, the strange sadness that isn't owned-up to, and the fragility of the situation that does not allow for expeditious reconciliation. I'm working on it, laying down cables for communication and transparency.  Ears and eyes open. Now, back to work.

on and on

I went to the doctor.  He stuck me again, undoubtedly to see if i am a junkie.  However, his reluctance to immediately prescribe meds does instill a sense of "maybe this is a GOOD doctor."  Well, I'm okay with this.  I've got a psych referral for the 13th of November.  

Mother is too much these days.  Because frankly, I'm really bored of this self-analytic crap at this point, and really done with pursuing treatment.  I don't wanna hear it from moms. 

So instead, I'm listening to Genesis and eating frozen pizza, but not the kind I want, because I can't find it in Brooklyn.

binary stars

shout just let it on out

confusion becomes a philosophy
down we're reaching the town where we
don't have to stand around and look
over our shoulders
hell I never knew was what we made it
let's just take it slow IN THIS HOME ON ICE!

yesterday... was an exercise in patience for patients.  

referrals from the awful hospital:

clinic 1 - closed for Jewish holiday

clinic 2 & 3 - robots answer the phone.

My next step in my endeavors was the ever-trusty internet, where I found an over-eager referral service.  Dude wanted to make sure I was okay, and I just wanted info on where to go.  So I got some numbers out of him, and called, called, called.

Alas, I was referred fourth-hand to Bellevue.  Fifth-hand, I was sent to their Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program.  Sixth-hand, I was told to go to the walk-in clinic at 7:30 am today, because they only help the first 10 people that show up. I thought "cool," and went ice skating with Michelle.

We did skate.  We did laugh.  My hips, ankles, and lower back are paying for the un-atrophied activity that is gliding on metal over ice.  The funny thing about it is that some people look like they're the best in the world at it, but they're all just going left the whole time.  The rink is essentially an ice roundabout, and nobody dares go right.  It's eerie.  We still both have our teeth, though I doubt either of us are altogether intact. This is most assuredly my doing.

This a.m. I did get up and go to Bellvue after mayhaps 2 hours of sleep.  I waited an hour only to find that they do not accept my insurance.  Then I went back to work for the first time since...?

I tore through my daily nonsense, until I became impeded by an interview with a crazy old lady, and her very frustrated son, a rockabilly architect.  This again, reminded me that I am going to be fine compared to the REALLY insane, but it dragged on for 2 hours.  With thin patience, I ended it and went out for lunch at Mahmoun's and made an appointment to see a doctor on Saturday.

and so I might be getting somewhere.

and the point.

So, being in the hospital, getting bad care, puts things into perspective. It gives you goals.

Number one - Get Out (goal), you don't belong there (perspective).
Number Two - Live your life (goal), because you'll get abused no matter what (perspective).
Number Three - Cook (goal), because hospital food SUCKS, and gives you the runs (perspective).
Number Four - Forgive (goal), because some people are just built the way they are (perspective).
Number Five - Find good treatment (goal), because when you can't get it all out, you learn how important it is (perspective).
Number Six - Trust (goal), sometimes the meds can help, even though they make you fat (persp..yeah).
Number Seven - I dunno, but shaving goes both ways, its bad and its good. The only way to find this out is to be deprived of it.

Yeah, resolve crystallizes in the face of strife. I know what I want, when to try it my way, and how to bend to get it done. It all matters too much. This is serious. And This Is Radio Clash from pirate satellite. Italian mobster shoots a lobster... I suppose today comes tomorrow.

treatment

I had intrusive thoughts of jumping in front of a train.  I could not sleep, work, or do any meaningful form of thinking.  This is mostly due to loneliness, and missing the love of my life.  It has a lot to do with it being fall, my grandfather being put into a nursing home, still working for jerks, living on a couch, and having nobody to tell everything to anymore.

My mother, having called me several times and finding me barely coherent, thought my state necessitated a trip to the ER.  At the emergency room, I was paranoid, distrustful as I am of doctors and the healthcare system in general, and degraded.  When asked to remove my clothes and put on a gown, it didn't strike me as necessary for a psych referral, and I withdrew.  Then they put the IV in, and I thought they would dope me into incoherence, for some reason.  They took blood, and I called them out on the drug screening, which they denied they were doing.  (They  didn't trust me, why should I trust them?).  

I finally saw a shrink, and he put words in my mouth.  Whereas I said that I had thought of harming myself, he told me that I said that I had intent.  In the small tent of a bed area, a very tight space, I was not taking kindly to any of his questioning, and he didn't even get a full history.  When I acquiesce into getting psychiatric help, I just need to say what I need to say, the whole story, and I didn't get that at any stretch of the track.  Then I asked about meds, and he said its always a last resort AND of course it will be part of my treatment.  This was before he was even done with me.  This did not bide well with the caged animal I had become in the cramped ER bed.  And so, me on intravenous Ativan, I passed the hell out, and he assigned me a GAF of 25. 

The guys in the ambulance during the patient transfer showed me my drug screen.  All clean, bitches.

Okay, the hospital was terrible.  Their website is fucking blank.  There was quite literally, shit on the floor.  The first twenty hours were spent sleeping, playing crossword puzzles and finger-painting, all of which were supposedly "therapy."  Then I complained that I hadn't seen a doctor the whole time and told them I wanted to leave.  This got the doctor's attention.

When I reminded the doctor that it is against the American Psychiatric Association's code of ethics to put orders on a patient without a personal examination, he just wrote "grandiose" on a sheet of paper.  He then told me I was now an "involuntary" patient rather than a "voluntary" one and that I would not be going anywhere for a month.  After said month, he said he would be taking me to court. 

This made me ask for more Ativan.  I certainly did panic.

Well there's more to come, but this post is too long.  Oi! Today was rough.

mission

To abolish those dark spots that shut me down

OR

to control those dark spots that shut me down.

I'm out of the psych ward, and I'm going to a center in Brooklyn to follow up with care. The details of the hospitalization are too intense to describe here and now. Let's just leave it at the GAF score of 25.

So, anyway, I want to be lovable and not a burden beyond what should be expected of a human. I want to be able to help myself with no more than the help I can expect from others.

So,

I'll be okay.

I love you.