Stationary Unicycle

"my mind is a big hunk of irrevocable nothing..." to quote my favorite grammar dissing poet ee cummings and (i) haven't been able to write anything more scintillating than a grocery list. So, in a last gasp fit of despair I decided to give a random blog topic generator a try. Because I was desperate. Pathetic, apathetic. Blah.  Into the random blog topic generator I put these sort of random words, kind of randomly: anger, time, stupid Because, of course, those are the three words that came first to my mind. I have a limited amount of time to work, I'm dealing with a lot of unresolved anger, and why do I feel angry? Because, dear reader, there is just so much stupidity. Violence, idiocy, rudeness, racism, sexism, ignorance, all that shit that's in the news every minute of every fucking day, it all falls under the heading, Stupid. And it makes me ANGRY. So, you've got my three keywords for the generator: anger, time, stupid.   and this is the brill...

The other day the kids are I were walking. We passed by a small group sitting in a small yard in front of a small house. They appeared to be enjoying the effects of  more than a few beers. They were sitting in a semi-circle, two skinny scruffy dudes with regrettably unbuttoned shirts and un-regrettably buttoned pants and a large woman in a tight tank top and shorts, a shiny tan, a perm and a cigarette. They were sitting in those cheap white plastic chairs you can buy at the Walgreen's. The chairs with the thin legs that feel as though they will bend or break if you so much as shift your weight or fart. The chairs you see on their backs by the side of the road  road on garbage day with three legs in the right places and a jagged stump where the fourth had been until Jimmy wiggled in his seat trying to dislodge a wedgie.  One of the scruffy men was carefully speaking in a slow motion slur that sounded raw and sore like a rug burn. This is what he said; "They rolllll...

The other day I was walking downtown, I was in a hurry. While crossing the little bridge over the stream, I saw a family of ducks swimming around. A young mom and her two little kids were walking by, they looked to be in a hurry, they didn't look particularly happy but I took a chance and said, hey! did you see the ducks swimming in the stream? And they said, huh? And I pointed at the swimmy ducks and the mom and kids said, "Awww....how CUTE!!" and the little kids laughed and the mom thanked me and it was sweet and I'm glad I took a chance; I could have been mistaken for a weirdo but wasn't and ducks! Yeah. Today I was in a hurry again, I seem to be in a hurry always, and yet I took a moment to stand on the bridge and look at the ducks. The babies are getting bigger and soon they'll move out, go to college, get jobs, and tattoos and beak grommets or whatever, and so I'm glad I took a moment out of my crazy day to look and see the ducks while they...

I haven't written in a long time. Facebook updates, no matter how quirky, cute, droll or witty do not count as writing. My facebook posts have not been particularly quirky, cute, droll or witty, but pathetic attempts to reach out to humanity, passive aggressive entreaties for comfort, compassion and money. Kidding about that money part. I've been a little blue. I've said it before and I'll likely say it again and again, depression is a fuck...a bad fuck. Some of the sad is due to sad things happening in the world, in the bigger world  (right wing nut bags, right wing nut bags with guns) and in my own small world; my mom is ill and I've been trying to take care of her and my kids, my marriage, my house, my dog, my lawn, my garden, my hopes dreams aspirations and sanity. I haven't talked about it publicly, but my dad is ill. Very ill. It appears my parents might both be gearing up to depart this earthly plane soon. It's just a matter of time and stubbornness...

April I walk through the rundown neighborhood to the rundown neighborhood market to buy a bottle of soy sauce. Soy sauce for the dinner I was preparing to make. Because I forgot to buy it earlier when I was at the grocery store. Earlier, when the sun was warm and bright and the dirty snow shone with drops of water held suspended for a shimmer of a moment only to fall and be replaced by another quivering globe of bright shimmering melting. But now, it's later. I walk past dirty snowbanks, refrozen. Dirty puddles filmed with ice. Old bags and discarded papers catch in the wind like tails or wings. The gray pink early spring sky that earlier had offered warmth like a kindness cools as the sun slides smoothly away like the well manicured regretful wave of a newly wed princess leaving the balcony and the adoring crowds below. Inside the dirty little store, smells sweet, oily, smells of boiled coffee. Stale cigarette vapors off the jacket of...

I began having suicidal thoughts as a child. The thoughts grew large or diminished, but desiring to not be a living person was always there at the back of my brain, as a big presence or a wisp of an idea, in some form, always. When I was a little kid, I shut down. I was blank. Despite everyone's best efforts to knock the “weird” out of me, I managed to hide a kernel of my self hoping that some day I would find it and tend it. That was brave and hopeful of me. To my family I was simple, dumb, blank, hapless, a loser. The real me was internal and far away for safe keeping. Middle school was a nightmare. I managed to endure and didn't die. High school was a horror story. I wanted to die, but I didn't. College was fraught with crisis and fear, and though I never got a degree, neither did I walk in front of any of the tractor trailer trucks that sped past me on my walks to campus, nor did I throw myself over the bridge railing into the Stillwater River. At one ...

The obnoxious Salon headline read: "Generation X gets really old: How do slackers have a midlife crisis?" Fuck you, Salon . Just fuck you. First: I am not getting REALLY OLD, thanks very much. And heads up, youngster, the next 20 years are going to fucking fly by. You're going to be 40-something and be as shocked as I am now every time you see your 40-something year old face in the mirror, because on the inside, you still feel like the funky little hipster you used to be. My kids are going to be the hip happening cool youthful adults when you're middle-aged. They will mock you for being getting REALLY OLD. When this happens, I will get all Schadenfreude on your middle-aged midlife-crisising ass, and I will laugh and laugh, if I'm not already dead and sleeping the dirt nap of the ancients. Second: You wanna know how a slacker has a midlife crisis you smug little millennial?  Come over here while I lace up the Grunge era combat boots of my youth, and I will m...