I’m so excited! I’m going to the Gay Pride Parade for the first time tomorrow. It’s gonna be FABuloussssssss!!!
I can’t help but think how much Val would’ve loved this (though I bet she used to go all the time back in the day). I would’ve loved to make this a tradition for us. Sigh. I’ll be sure to catch some beads for her.
Next time I go to the city, I need to hit up the Big Gay Ice Cream store/truck.
Two years ago today, my mother suffered a massive blood clot to her brain and passed away. She and my father were on vacation in Palm Springs. It was very sudden, and although she wasn’t in the best of health, it was unexpected. From what I can tell, she was having a great time on vacation, and didn’t suffer when it happened. I take some comfort in that. We should all be so lucky to go that way.
I got the news just hours before one of my best friend’s wedding. Needless to say, it was a very tumultuous day. It was the beautiful wedding and the love between my friend and his wife that kept me from falling apart that day.
But this is not a post about me. This is about my mom.
What I Learned From My Mom
My mom was a very giving person. She believed in helping others, and she would sacrifice her own desires to help someone in need. That is what I learned. I learned that the greatest virtue is giving of yourself. A good person helps their fellows, they build a family, an extended family, and a community.
I also learned that it’s near impossible to change the world alone. I learned that what you can change is your world. You can focus the scale down to just your circle, and change their lives. You can teach those people to improve the lives around them, and pass that on, and they pass the same on. That’s how you better the world. It’s not the grand gestures. It’s the small ones.
I do my best to follow her example. I don’t always succeed, but who knows the kind of impact I’ve had. I’d like to think that I’ve made my small patch of earth a little better. It’s a lesson well learned. I hope that more people learn it.
Be Like Mom. Pass It On
So if you ever wondered while I sometimes get all preachy and hippie-dippie here, now you know. I write about heroism often, because as a writer, I deal in heroes and villains. From my Mom, I learned that heroism isn’t strength of arm, it’s the willingness to sacrifice for the greater good.
I try not to preach, but I honestly do think that people should try to focus less on the big picture, and more on the little one. Be a good example and you will make a difference. Do what you can, give what you can. Change your scale to change the world.
My mother was a good person, a good teacher, and a good role model. I hope that I do her justice. Rest in peace, I love you.
Don’t worry, it’s not as serious as it sounds.
On Friday I had surgery on my neck to remove a fatty mass (insert “fatty mass” joke). It was my first time under the knife, and I admit that I was a scared little puss.
It’s not that I didn’t logically know that it was safe. Of course it was safe. My surgeon is very competent, and a nice guy too. It’s not that it was on Friday the 13th and a full moon. That kind of thing doesn’t bother me. It’s that I have a pretty severe anxiety disorder, and getting a scalpel to the throat was more than enough to trigger it.
I’d prefer Hump Day
So what could’ve been done with a local was done with sedation. I knew that the second that knife came to my throat, I would flinch. That’s a bad place to flinch. The mass was directly over my jugular, and I didn’t want my death certificate to read “death by pussification.”
Sedation, by the way, is awesome. I think I saw Cosmic Kitteh.
Presenting: Cosmic Pizza Kitteh!!!
When I came out of surgery, I rambled about Chaos Theory (which I think I combined with Newtonian Calculus, both of which I know only the basics of) and how my friend’s daughter “K” was the most fantastic kid in the world. I don’t think I’ve mentioned K before, but she is so brilliant and adorable. I’m sure people always say that about their friends’ kids, at least when they have none of their own (and probably never will).
So I’m all done with surgery for now, but I have a bunch of other doctors to go to. And I don’t have to pay for them. Say what you want about Obamacare, but I would be dead without it.
The bandage they had around my throat was awful and cumbersome, but the doc removed it today. Thank goodness. I’m freaking sick of sponge baths.
Not that this happened…
I do have to pay for the upcoming dental work, but I’ve been saving up for that. Dental work is so freaking expensive, especially when it’s painful and embarrassing.
So it’s been the Month of Many Doctors. Last month was also the Month of Many Doctors. It seems like every month is, but it’s something I’m used to. I’ve been living part time at doctors’ offices for thirty years. If it keeps me alive, I’ll take it.
So I had a bit of a philosophical moment last night (yes, there were “sandwiches” involved). I thought about how in the vastness of the universe, nothing we do has any effect or real meaning.
You’re bringin’ me down, man
This was bringing me down and ruining my sandwich, but then I thought something else. The universe may be infinitely vast, but we are not. We exist in a small place, in a small amount of time. Who gives a shit? Everything that we do affects the world around us as we know it. It effects the people we know, and the environment we live it. It’s about scale. If you think small, think local, than anything you do has “universe” changing effects.
You can’t change the universe, or even the world. You can, however, change yourself, your family, even your town. The ant may be insignificant to us, in an anthill, each one is as important as can be.
Take it or leave it. It’s all fucking philosophical stuff that has no meaning besides what you give it.
Maybe the sandwich was given to me by aliens?
Mind…blown
Hey everyone. I just wanted to say that Valerie’s anthology is now in kindle and paperback.
Here are the links.
You know how I feel about her work. Remember that the profits are going to the Mercy College scholarship in her name.
Keep her work alive.
Before I start, let me just say that the HIMYM finale last night broke my heart a hundred times. They pushed more buttons than a 9 year old me in my apt building’s elevator.
Now then:
I was born in the Bronx, in a part of the Bronx called Co-op City. I lived there until the 3rd Grade. My New York experience was very different from other peoples’, and I feel weird about that. I didn’t live in a row house and hang out on the stoop. I lived in a massive 33 story apartment building with a courtyard of asphalt and a playground of sand and aging wood. I didn’t have a bodega on the corner. I had an island of shops floating in the middle of the street.
Co-op City is very isolated from the rest of the City. There is no direct subway line (you have to take the bus to the Pelham stop and catch the 6 or just take the bus crosstown). Because I moved out before I was old enough to travel alone, I never got to explore the city. It’s not that big a deal, but it somehow makes me feel unauthentic. It doesn’t help that I speak very slow, with a bit of a drawl. I had severe speech problems as a kid and even today, I can be uncomfortable to listen to.
When I got older, I took regular trips into the city to drink and see shows, but I only went to certain areas. If you asked me how to get somewhere in the West Village, I could probably lead you right there (although it’s been years since I was a regular). Outside of that, I’m fuzzier.
Here’s the issue: I love history, and I am very enamored with the history of New York. I’ve never done the touristy New York things. I’ve never gone to the Empire State Building. I’ve never gone to the statue of liberty (nor would I, it’s a long, hot, trip to the top). But I would like to see Castle Garden. I would like to visit the Lightship Ambrose. I’d like to do the lit walk in Central Park. I want to go inside Trinity Church. I want to experience the city like a tourist.
I don’t like tourists.
I don’t want to walk around with my nose in a tour book. I don’t want to have to carry a map. But the truth is: I am a tourist. I may have once been a New Yorker, but now I’m not. I’m somewhere in between.
I need to just suck it up and go full tourist. There’s a lot of history I want to absorb. I’ll try not to stand in the middle of the sidewalk and block shit up.
Here’s a question for you: Are you more of a New Yorker if you are born there and move away after 10 years, or if you move there as an adult and live there 10 years?
Earlier this week I visited my father. He is moving to Las Vegas next month, and needs a lot of help packing. I mean, a lot of help. There is a ton of junk.
Much of the stuff is my mother’s and that’s the hardest to get rid of. My mom loved doing crafts, and there is a lot of her old knitting, needlepoint, and jewelry materials. My mom’s belongings must be the hardest for my dad to get rid of.
The hardest for me are the old photographs.
This generation will never deal with this. Their photographs are online. They don’t take up physical space. You don’t have to decide what lives and what dies. I found so many pictures that made me misty. Pics of my mom, picks of a much younger me with friends that I don’t get to see anymore, pics of me and my brother before the world got its hooks into us.
I found a picture of me and Valerie and it broke my heart. Of course I brought it home with me, because I obviously like to torture myself.
Shoeboxes and albums of memories. Pictures in frame. I can’t bear to part with them. It’s like abandoning memories. It’s turning your back on your life.
Maybe I’m just a hoarder in the making. Maybe I’m a sentimental fool.
Maybe, but I don’t care. I won’t leave them behind.
For the past few weeks I have been working hard on Valerie’s anthology. It finally went live on Kindle last week.
This is the most important thing that I have ever done. I’ve never stressed about my own work the way that I have about hers. I guess because it’s permanent. I can always edit my own stuff, but Val is gone. Her stories are in my hands now, and the responsibility of that is overwhelming. It has to be perfect. I won’t settle for anything less than perfect.
That’s not true. I’m sure that there are some problems with it that I haven’t seen. Knowing that they are out there kills me.
Valerie was a much more talented writer than me. She was a professor at Mercy College. When she died, she was entering a PhD program for Writing. I’d estimate that there are only a thousand of so Doctors’ of Writing out there. Literature, there are plenty. Specifically Writing, a scant few.
But telling people that she was a great writer isn’t enough. I feared that her stories would fall into obscurity. She deserved a better fate.
Right now the anthology is available for $1.99 on Amazon. Mercy College set up a merit award in her name, and all of the proceeds are going to it. Her stories deserve to be read. For two dollars, you’re getting something that will change you. She changed me.
I wanted to write something profound today. I have a lot to say. Instead I will take a nap.
Hey there dear readers. I have a story, “If You Leave Me,” in the anthology Twisted Love. If you don’t want to invest the money in buying Song of Simon, or the time in reading “The Watchmage of Old New York,” I’d recommend starting here. It’s completely FREE, and it’s a pretty good story. As one fellow author said, “It’s the only zombie story that gets you right in the feels.”
This was a very difficult story to write. I started it not long after my girlfriend Valerie died. I began having nightmares that she was still alive and trying to dig her way out of the grave. I combined it with my own fear that I would someday move on and find someone else to love (a fear that I still have, but that’s a completely different issue). Writing this helped make the nightmares go away (mostly).
The other stories and poems in the anthology are very good too. You should download it.
casandersdotnet 