never again never again never again

i fell asleep in the wee hours to simon and garfunkel's "my little town." maybe you know it.

In my little town 

I grew up believing 

God keeps his eye on us all 

And he used to lean upon me 

As I pledged allegiance to the wall 

Lord I recall 

My little town 

Coming home after school 

Flying my bike past the gates 

Of the factories 

My mom doing the laundry 

Hanging our shirts 

In the dirty breeze 

And after it rains 

There's a rainbow 

And all of the colors are black 

It's not that the colors aren't there 

It's just imagin-ation they lack 

Everything's the same 

Back in my little town 

Nothing but the dead and dying 

Back in my little town 

Nothing but the dead and dying 

Back in my little town 

In my little town 

I never meant nothin' 

I was just my fathers son 

Saving my money 

Dreaming of glory 

Twitching like a finger 

On the trigger of a gun 

Leaving nothing but the dead and dying 

Back in my little town 

Repeat and fade: 

Nothing but the dead and dying 

Back in my little town

i had pain, spasm, and depression problems, all complicated by another series of dreams about the beginning of school -- this time, i got to be, both alternately and at the same time, student and teacher, élève and professeur.  the last episode of my oneiric creations had me slicing tumors as some sort of biology lab assignment, except that i fell asleep in the middle of the session and woke (in the dream) to find my face half glued to the black lab table by all the tape covering the eye guard on my weeping, pussy right eye.

i took this as a sign to get up, pee, take pain meds, morning meds, and suck on a couple of hard candies, as my blood sugar was a tad bit... low.  i also put in every eyedrop i could identify as still being on the eye drop list.  then i went back to bed.

later, truly up, doing domestic duties, then checking in on the world, i went feral.

fred, doing one of his domestic duties, ran off to buy groceries, including an alarming amount of mushrooms, despite the fact that we have, on hand, a considerable amount already.  for some reason, this sent me from a feral state that i'd been able to mask as a result of physical discomfort, into pure bitchiness.

while he was gone, i'd had a long talk with the two male cats making out at a dangerously close distance to my feet.  they were close to blushing as i took in their coziness... but i explained that homosexuals were some of my best friends, and if the pope, el papa, himself, could say, "who am i to judge?" -- well, then it was official.  their sexual orientation and lifestyle was none of my concern.

they looked hugely relieved but made the mistake of assuming that i felt like hanging out.  so when i rolled into the kitchen to do dishes before the arrival of fred and the foodstuff, they followed.  GETTING IN MY FREAKING WAY.

so a new ditty has broken out.  they are going to hear it frequently:
"it's okay to be gay, but it's not okay to get in my way."

try it in your life.  i'm sure you have some analogous situation to which it applies.  maybe a co-worker who is a lesbian but is always using your paperclips.  or maybe you are gay, and someone is blocking your access to the mr. coffee.  it's a great little ditty.

In my little town 
I grew up believing 
God keeps his eye on us all 

fred is sharp.  i think my pheromones shift when i go feral, and then pure bitchy.  we unloaded groceries, found a place for all the mushrooms to lay their little caps, stashed the two kinds of taters and the three kinds of onions, my damned yogurts, and then each retreated, rapidly, to our separate corners.

none of this, none of it, has anything to do with fred.  he just catches it because he is here.  and because he is sweet.  and because i trust him.

with a wariness born of 23 years experience, we emailed each other from each end of the mansion. i'm hanging out up in the computer turret, watching episode after episode of the wire, a show i still miss.  and it suits my... mood.  i still think the opening scene of the first episode is one of the most brilliantly written ev-ah.

snotty booger.  that's the name of the kid who is the first casualty of the series, set in west baltimore.  snotty booger.

anyway, i figured fred deserved something of an explanation for my crappy attitude, and since i don't dare share any of his emails -- his are so pithy and perfect as to be worthless to my blog (he's no fool) -- here's my first one.

it's not that i think my emails are breath-taking.  i want to make a point.  i want you to understand my point. AND i want my point to become the first rule of this blog.  i will highlight (underlight?) the aforementioned point in red so that you won't miss it and therefore, you won't be the first to break the RULE, should we ever correspond.

punishment for breaking the rule?  extrajudicial execution by forced over-consumption of wild, unwashed, psilocybin mushrooms -- i don't know how to spot a psilocybin mushroom, but there are over 200 mushrooms that produce the blessèd stuff, so i ought to hit on something when i go a-shroomin'.

and by the hell way, TW, are you out there?  i sent you a card and it got returned.  "no such number." i KNOW i got the number right this time, mine brother, so what the fuck is going on between you and the postal authorities in your neighborhood?  i need you.  i have always needed you.  i need bobby, too, but sense that he, par contre, does not need me right now.  the overwhelming feeling is that i am one useless piece of severely damaged crap.

okay, so here is the email, edited so as to make The New Rule (the only rule, actually) POP:

hi ya.
thanks for shopping.  i am looking forward to some mushroom creations.  good things, mushrooms. 

so... if you go to the xfinity homepage, one of the things they feature (it changes every few seconds, but it's there) is an ad for the hbo preview weekend.  let me know if anything leaps out at you as something you'd like taped. recorded.  saved.  whatever the hell it is we do now in the preservation of electronic media entertainment. point and click, copy and paste, shred and reset. i realize you get most of their holdings through netflix anyway, so you may wish to look just for newly released movies... i dunno.  don't care.  i've got my new pirate eye patch and am gonna watch every damned episode of the wire... to sustain my loving, cuddly mood throughout the weekend.   

the vision in that eye is going, going, going, and it throbs.  my right shoulder is barking, as are both hips, and the thermometer mocks me with extra fast beeps.  if that motherfucking bacteria has taken hold of the lens in that eye, well, you may have to go ask abbot truffatore if you can borrow his 9 millimeter. 

we really have everything covered, between you and netflix, me and xfinity. hulu. the bazillion stations we don't watch.  this is wretched excess and sickening indulgence, isn't it?  you, of course, have the cream of the crop. me, i love watching stuff over again.   

because i have mushrooms growing in MY head!  not only have we cornered the market on white button mushrooms in all of tête de hergé, and cornered them in our refrigerator, of all places, but i have other species sprouting at a phenomenal rate between my buddha-like pendulous ears. 

i have decided that i don't know shit about syria.  i don't know shit about shit about what would happen if we do this "without boots on the ground," limited, precision strike. 

 maybe the u.s. would get attacked by iran and iraq.  maybe the israelis would go to war.  maybe russia and the u.s. would tangle 

did you hear? putin is putting his own "assets" in the region 

but you know what i don't ever want to hear again -- not in the rest of my lifetime?
i don't want to hear a sanctimonious "never again!  never again!" -- not from a holocaust survivor, not from someone beat down during the civil rights' movement, not from a bra-burning, abortion-denied feminazi.   

i believed in "never again." 

like i said, i have mushrooms growing in my grey matter.

*

love,
profderien
anarchist extraordinaire, former socialist (as of about an hour ago)
friend of françois hollande, lover of liberty fries,
but doubting barack obama more by the minute

* ILLUSTRATION CREDIT:  actually, the artist claims they are jellyfish.  but they look like mushrooms in my head to me.  and whose blog is it, anyway?

© 2013 L. Ryan