Last Year
I'm out of air. I'm out of ideas. I'm out of any motivation what-so-ever. I'm writing plenty. I have stuff backed up in my draft box, ready to push publish any time but it doesn't seem right somehow. I'm hurting so damn bad right now, I can barely type and the pain pills just aren't working anymore. I'm doing enough dope to put down a horse and I can hardly walk for the pain. I don't know what to do. I'm out of air, ya' know.
I know you're tired or hearing me complain, day after day like a child crying and running after their poor, downtrodden mother in a fucking grocery store, throwing stuff into the basket that she has to take out, slap the kids hand and keep pushing the buggy because she is counting every item, hoping the tax doesn't go over what she has bought, because $20 damn sure doesn't go as far as it used too. Out of air, you bet.
You ever count your friends. Your good friends, not acquaintances. I used to have a lot of friends. I was never alone, the phone was always ringing and there was always something to do, except it always included alcohol or drugs and life was no fun unless I was high. Sobriety was a joke and I loved getting high and having fun, constantly doing things. Fishing trips, camping trips, boating trips, etc., etc. it was great, but I always had to have a beer in my hand and some kind of dope in a pocket. So I quit. Now, I'm out of air.
What do sober people who don't believe in an invisible man in the sky who is a God but will "smite" you for stealing a bike, do? I'm a hermit, except I have a wife who puts up with me. I watched the final "House" last night and almost cried because I hate most TV and now this is another hour I have to fill in. I write. Boy, do I write. But most is shit and will be in the air somewhere, deleted until some smart-ass hacker figures out a way to find everything you've ever deleted and will publish it if you don't pay them. What you write never really disappears anyway, but at least it should never see the light of day. I am really our of air.
Not the air you breathe, that keeps you alive, oxygen, but the air that keeps you fucking motivated and wanting to get up in the morning. Well, if you call 3 a.m. morning. I don't know what it is, but I bet Steven King could write a book about why my eyes pop open at 3 a.m. every morning. It's the weirdest thing. I don't care when I go to bed or how much sleep I've had, at 3 a.m. my eyes open and I'm writing something in my head before I realize my eyes are open and the clock is on 3:00 on my digital. Air, fresh mountain breeze air. I've been in the south too damn long. I need some different air. I wish I was a kid again. I would damn sure find some.
The Cavalry Arrives
I wrote this post early this morning. As I got up to take the trash out a few minutes ago, the bird who laid her eggs on my porch last year is back, with a brand new crew. I counted five eggs, just like last year and maybe she brought me some fresh air. I will have a few pics in a few days and like last year, I hope they all survive. Last year, when one baby bird fell out of my chimney, Terri and I fed it with droppers but it didn't make it and I wrote this poem. It was so sad, until I saw another bird feeding it's baby and that is what life is about I guess. Life is always re-newing itself. I have to quit bitching so much and start watching the good things that happen in the world. Believe it or not, there is good in the world, you just have to look really hard to find it.
A Bird's Eye View
You watch them glide
through air overhead
riding the waves of the wind
thinking only of Mother Nature
and her graceful grandeur
defying the very laws
of gravity that keep us
mortals grounded
but once they were babies
breaking out of their shelled jails
kickin' and screamin'
wanting, wanting, wanting
Mother scourer's the Earth
searching for nurishment
to keep her babies alive
when out of the blue
one falls into the lap of a stranger
who watches in wonderment
as he fights for life
only succumbing to life's injustices
just a little baby bird
no more no less
in the scheme of things
just another dead thing
in a world filled with death
I only wish he could have
just once in his short life
felt the air under his wings
and looked at the world
from a birds-eye view
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M. C. S.
Yagoda- Yezhov
Steve Kenny
Lyle Elmgren
sandra wyllie
Kenneth Sibbett
Salon.com
Comments
May love , peace and healing power surround you and ease your suffering. Glad your little bird of happiness, at least, flew in.
You have those little birds to remind you and I have my horses and other various animals. Like you, I am pretty much a hermit. I have lived in Missouri for four years now and I know maybe five people by name. My sweet wife, on the other hand, knows and is known by half the damn county and that's okay with me. People tend to gravitate to her and leave me alone....I like it that way. Maybe it's our age that makes us that way. Just know you are not alone with these feelings my friend.
You received.
That's beautiful.
I hope you have a better day today, Scanner.
i go through airlessness at times
i feel it's part of the creative mind recharging
Peace and MSM to you, bro.
(It's cheapest at your local feed and grain, buddy...the best natural anti-infalmmatorry I've found for chronic pain. You'll have your first dose, if I have anything to say about it, in a little over 2 weeks. Hang in there.)
R
Lezlie
Nothing like the lilies of the field to give you an epiphany, though, right?
Carry on. r
Some of that is real, if I quit smoking I'd get back another 50% of my lung capacity in less than six months; but the air that we're both missing is that motivating purpose to get up every morning and venture out into your life... that's caused by depression and the unresolved conflicts of life, the kind of stuff that crawls out of the shadows of memory and pisses you off or soaks you with waves of regret about the stuff you did to other people, or worse, the stuff you didn't do when you could have/should have. It's the fog of the aftermath that's the worst, brain and heart exhausted making it nearly impossible to see any worth in doing anything... that's the worst part of all of it.
Thank God for birds, squirrels, dogs, cats, true friends and kids under ten... they all give us the chance to get some perspective and even a smile now and then, and maybe, just maybe a very rare laugh out loud!
JMac, this is to you too---
don't realize is this simple fact: you few sane old boys
are the air I breathe, and young guys like me
who have been fucking asphyxiated our whole lives
without what the psychobabblers call
"strong male role models"...
I am collecting you guys...I put old Paust in there
and our new pal Gerald Anderson,
and of course the elusive Arthur James.
There is a tradition that must be passed on.
I cannot put it into words, what it could possibly
be defined or described as...
"life re-newing " itself...
grace under the crushing pressure of Insanity coming in
through every crack.
Fucking Hugh Laurie, goddamn quitter. After only 8 seasons.
I havent even gotten to the last episode yet.
I am savoring the goddamn retrospective.
Drinking in every moment of it.
Carry on. Please. Bitch all you want, if it results
in grand writing like this.
I love ya kenny.
HUGGGGGGGGGGG
HUGGGGGGGG
Take care.
r.
Imitation is a form of flattery, pay it no mind at all...( even if slightly annoying)
The original is always, always , the best : )
~huge hug to the scanman~ Just remember, out there, somewhere, is someone who is worse off than you, unless you happen to be the worse off fellow, then, well, even then, go watch the birds damn it!! :D
Rated!
just another dead thing
in a world filled with death
I only wish he could have
just once in his short life
felt the air under his wings
and looked at the world
from a birds-eye view]
This is good.
You live your pain through your writing , as all good writers do..cathartic and soul searching.
A great read.
Hope a mountain breeze steers its way toward you soon : )
Here's to all of us finding our tiny birds like you just did!
The pain thing. It's one of the major reasons I live alone. I get mean, and I have an uncanny ability to know a person's weakness. When the pain is too bad, I let it out and let it hurt others. Living alone I can manage to take minimal pain meds at night...just enough to sleep because I learned that lack of sleep exacerbates the problem.
I know the motivation thing too. I selfishly lure finches and hummingbirds to my window with their favorite food. I retreat to my river house and watch the ducks who raise their young across the river, the eagle that hunts salmon, and the Canada geese. It keeps me sane and almost pleasant. But best of all, I make my granddaughter laugh. I am her favorite toy. I have a purpose.
There's a bird nest on my porch, crammed in over one of the porchlights. The other day my daughter reported a baby bird fell out of the nest. She grabbed some grass to line a box with and put it into the box. I came out, the baby was still, but then moved and opened its beak. I grabbed a pair of work gloves (because I don't know how much my scent would be an issue to its mother), grabbed a ladder, climbed up and gently slid the baby out of the box and back in with its siblings. I hope all is well; I don't want to climb up to the nest again because I don't want to interrupt or spook the bird.
Sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes they live.
You know, facing my own mortality I am amazed at life around me. I have come to realize, when we die another is born. Life just goes on!
a dust of snow from a hemlock tree
gave my heart a change of mood
and saved some part of a day I had rued...
author unknown
Hope it makes you smile...