bobbot's Open Salon Blog

Dear Mom

Fri, 7 Jun 2013 11:06:45 -0400

Hi Mom,

This is something that I have to say while I can. You are my hero, my friend, my rock in this world. You always have been and always will be. What ever I've learned about life is what I've gotten from you. You taught me how to accept, to care, to cook, to work for justice. These things are what I value most about myself. They all came from you.

You showed me that love is unconditional and that I have to be able to forgive the human frailties that we all have. That it isn't weakness that forgives and accepts, but strength. That we have a responsibility to the world to leave it a better place.

I can't tell you how many times that your courage and compassion has saved my life, literally. I learned so much from you and even if I haven't been the best son to you there is no one in the world that I respect and admire as much as you.

You grew up in a world where so much was dictated by society. You were expected to say and do certain things and never to cross that boundary. You didn't get a chance to use your gifts when you were young and I wish that you had. I don't think anyone ever told you just how intelligent you are but I will. You have one of the best minds I've ever known. I really wish I'd told you sooner than this but I didn't.

There may come a time when you hhave trouble remembering who I am and who you are, I would like you to keep a copy of this letter with you forever and when you feel lost or confused someone can let you read it and it might help.

You are my mother, a brilliiant and amazing human being who raised me to be a kind and caring person. This is to me, the highest honor that a person can have. No matter what happens in the future, you will always be that person and I will always love you even when you can't figure out who I am or why I'd say these things to you.

I will never be angry with you or resent you or stop caring about you, you've given me the greatest gift that anyone could ever give another person, my life.

I love you Mom, Robbie

Time Passing

Thu, 23 May 2013 12:05:07 -0400

I know I'm an infrequent poster these days and while I see many familiar names I don't know if any remember me. That's cool, I can dig it.If you want to be well known you have to play the game. So what fame around here I used to have is gone. It's still cool.

Open invited me here way back in 2007, maybe it was every one but still it was the first time I'd ever had any independent affirmation of any minute degree of writing talent. I know, I know, hooray for me right? You have to understand where I come from to know what this meant to me.

I spent most of my life feeling like I was just not good enough. Not smart enough or talented enough. Not handsome enough, or even funny enough. I felt doomed to be the failure that I have long since become. I know that some may try to convince me of otherwise but it's okay, you don't have to say nice things (not that I don't appreciate them) to make me feel better.

It's okay, I know that there are some things that I've done that have been pretty great, I never said I didn't try to do things or never ever succeeded at anything. No, the failure is a personal assessment of what I wanted and what I accomplished. I had a dream and my own personal weakness never allowed it to come to fruition, that my friends is where failure comes in.

I wrote hundreds of thousands of words in stories that accumulated not just a regular readership but encouragement from mentors right here that are and were successful writers. Advice on how to make that critical next step. Advice I thought I understood and for a long time tried in my own inept way to make it happen.

I would look at thaose hundreds of thousands of words and think, "how do I start?"

I would stare and shuffle, I'd cut and paste and copy and attempt to make sentences efficient and beautiful and then? I hit a solid wall. Fear stopped me in my tracks. Even with encouragement and praise, I could not finish the job.

Now? Now time rears it's ugly head and I don't know how much of it I have to put into this. Oh I don't see myself as vanisishing from this mortal coil in the next few weeks or anything but, my body IS failing me. My hands, for example are stiff and my fingers tend to lock up and have to be taken in hand and straightend. My back screams if I spend any time in my chair. There is a new dimension that truly frightens me and that has yet to be identified and that is when my entire body begins to twich and sway and shake and I am unable to control it.

Maybe someday in the future one of my kids will pull those discs out and get the job done for me. Who knows? I know that the one thing that would make me change my mind would be to see it done and bound before I am gone.

Thanks for looking at this and reading. bob

Losing a Parent Without Losing the Body

Sat, 11 May 2013 11:05:30 -0400

My mom is a hero, she made it through a hard life, a big family, and number of disasters with her smile intact and her love for us all unimpacted. She came from little, she married young and had six children.

We were all of us beholden to her for the things she gave us. She worked, she gardened, she cleaned and she taught us how to be decent human beings. We learned how to bake a loaf of bread and to use the peelings from potatoes to plant a new crop. She did everything that a mother could ever be expected to do and so very much more.

She taught me to sew, with a needle and thread and with a machiine. She told me the most important thing I ever heard, "If you can't stop it or change it then there is no point in worrying about it", and always remember to help others even if you have to give up something yourself. That there are no sure things in life besides death and that means you have to make the most of what life you have.

She didn't inherit a lot from her parents, mostly she got her mothers stoic ability to keep a large family afloat in the midst of the depression with not much other than sheer will to do it. She learned that in a family we all have an obligation to help and to do it gladly.

She was brilliant too, she came from a time and place where that was unnoticed though. She never thought much of her intelligence but, she was likely to have a very high I.Q.. I know, I'm biased. There was another thing she inherited, Alzheimer's Disease.

We all knew it was there, waiting like a thief to steal her but, she was doing okay and didn't let on that the thing was there already, eating away at her mind. Stealing the mother that raised us and cared for us like no one else could have.

It's so hard to do this. To write about her as though she is already gone, she isn't, she still knows me and my family and still lives at her home. It is there though, drawing an opaque curtain across the the world, shutting us all out a little at a time.

So, I wanted to take a little time and try to tell her what an amazing person she is and even if some monster eats away a her ability to recall, that those things she worked for, sacrificed for, and most of all taught us all will never change. They will never erase her from us or the world.

I love you mom.

Jonathan Winters, 1925-2013

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 15:04:49 -0400

I hate getting old, my heroes evaporate like so much mist on the breeze. We lost Jonathan Winters today. Okay, he WAS 87 years old so it isn't like it was early, it is just that I have to accept the end of my own life as an eventuality as the people I admire go.

Winters was an innovator in comedy and really there was no one like him, his unfrogettable characters like Maudie Frickertt, and Junior. He invented Robin Williams style comedy without cocaine. He embraced the surreal and absurd with an unidentifiable skill that made it all reasonable and normal as it played out in front of you.

He looked like the penultimate square but in his way he was as hip as Lenny. He starred in films like It's Mad, Mad,Mad, Mad, Mad World and The Russians ae Coming, the Russians are Comeing and neither of those films would have been as good had another been given his roles.

His internationally syndicated variety show that was titled simply, The Jonathan Winters Show, broke television and social norms and featured real rock music.

I could go through and give a bunch of details that any one of you can find easily enough about his life and statistics but really, I wanted just to say goodbye and maybe get someone to look up his work and maybe see the genius we lost when he left. So long Jonatan, I'll miss you but the whole world should.

Eros

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 11:03:25 -0400

Thick smoke and pulsing strobes combined with the thudding electronic beat of dance music wipe out any chance of comfort. Combined with the hazy blue glow of a black light that highlights the tiny flourescent fibers in her costume.

Her steps timed to the beat she struts, in dangerously high platform shoes to a brass pole and takes it in her hands like a giant cock. She pulls it close resting her cheek against its smooth surface while guiding it between her white breasts. Closing her eyes she slowly slides to her knees, turning her lips to the pole and rising up she drags a full, pouting lower lip as she does.