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There was once a fire in my heart
'till I pissed on it,
stirred the ashes
and buried the remains
and I still remember it's presence
and have felt it's absence every second since.

Once, I worked with the shadows
and molded forces in the aether
calling forth beauty and knowledge
and frolicking gently with the creatures that live in it
but I forgot how
I slammed the door
wedged it shut
and painted the black cross on it
and expired waiting for the cart

Once I danced before the castle
'neath a blood-red sunset
on the hillside near it's cold dead walls
but there, now, only the zombies dwell
and I dropped my gate-key long ago
thinking I'd never want it again.

Once I told myself that I wanted no regrets
never revisiting a decision
or reliving a choice
but somewhere regret has creeped into me,
and I wish I had done other things

John, have you taken your meds today?

As therapy (to get my brain working after the heart attack) I designed a blowgun that can propel a toothpick through a half-inch of plywood, and an aluminum nail through 1/8" of plate steel (provided it is both sharpened and lubricated). Now, I have no idea what an asthmatic would do with a blowgun like that, but it was a hell of a lot of fun figuring out the aerodynamic qualities of a film-cone dart. I even figured out a way to make the darts spin as they leave the blowgun, improving accuracy (out to about 25 yards.)

Hmm. I have an unmedicated paranoid schizophrenic for a next-door neighbor who regularly annoys me and scares my kid. I bet I could tranq him up by dipping the darts in.... no, wait, that would be mean. Nevermind.

Health Update -

Whine, moan, complain. More hospital, more pain, more bullshit.

Spent last monday night in the E/R with crippling chest pain. I had a lot of that before the heart attack, and it was all written off as non-cardiac pain. Then I had a heart attack. Now, I have chest pain, and they are calling it non-cardiac pain again. I wonder why I am not completely reassured? Probably just hypochondria. I mean, all that chest pain before the heart attack was obviously non-cardiac, of course the chest pain I suffer AFTER the heart attack is just bound to be non-cardiac too. It is so obvious.

Anyway, that is why there have been so few entries into this blog. It is kinda hard to write and clutch my chest at the same time. But, since the doctors are so sure it is non-cardiac mystery pain, i am sure it will go away soon.

Pointless Introspection

I try to never meet and associate with people in groups larger than about 4 (and even that is three too many for me unless they are friends, in which case the number is unimportant, as long as they all know each-other), because it is my experience that people have strong reactions to me, positive or negative, and I'd rather handle that in low numbers.
I have sometimes thought that my trouble with people is that they are prone to misunderstand me, either my words, or my appearance or my general intent, whatever.
I am now convinced that I was entirely wrong about that.
The problem is that I make myself TOO well understood. And when people understand me, bad things happen.
People fill in what they don't know with what they want. If they like you, they generally assume you agree with them. And people general encourage this by keeping their opinions to themselves, or asserting those opinions softly and quietly, just to assure they do not offend.
I never learned to do that. If you ask me what I think, I tell you, without the probing many engage in, to pre-vet the reactions to their opinions. I assume a person who asks my opinion actually wants it, and that is a mistake. When people ask for opinions, they are generally looking for reinforcement of their own opinion. After they know me for a few minutes, either they hate me, or that expectation changes. People who know me don't ask unless they want an answer.
It sounds arrogant, but it isn't. It is reality.
It is why my employment record is so sporadic. I do not know HOW to kiss ass (or flirt, or smalltalk). And it is not a good quality, it is a horrific curse. If I could do it, by this time in my life, I would be in a position in which I no longer need to. I am not in that position. I need to, and I can't.

The Elephants Foot

Every once in a while, idly sitting in front of the computer, refreshing my political blogs every thirty seconds or so waiting for a congressman to get caught blowing a donkey or abusing infants, I will stare at a blank google screen and think to myself "what do I want to know more about" and I will search my mind for fragments of something that once caught my interest but had gone unresearched. I have rarely regretted idle curiosity as much as I did the day I remembered something I had seen on PBS ages ago, maybe in the late 80's.
"Elephants Foot" I typed. and some nasty-assed truth got vomited onto my computer by the internet.
Ask a bizarre question, get a bizarre answer.
My History teacher, Bill Forstchen, had taken a class of kids to the Soviet Union. I had been expelled the year before, but most of my friends were on that trip. Chernobyl blew up while they were there. None of them (as far as I know) were effected, as they didnt go to the Ukraine or Kiev. It was national news that affected me personally (via my friends) so I payed casual attention. So, when, years later, I saw that a documentary was scheduled about it, I watched.
The entire premise of the documentary was calming. There were scientists working in the same building as the reactor that exploded, and a thousand people worked every day in the three other reactors in the same complex. It MUST have been a minor accident that had been resolved, except for this particular area in one building, to have all those people working there. Some scientists had located most of the nuclear fuel, absorbed into melted sand (dropped by helocopters in the first days of the crisis) and formed a glass mass which had dripped through cracks in the concrete containment and pooled and cooled in the rooms underneath the reactor. The Scientists dubbed the mass, when they found it, "the elephant's foot" for it's shape.
I (mistakenly) downloaded a film called "The Battle of Chernobyl" and watched it.
There are some things it is better not to know.
If you are really into being VERY depressed about something over which you have no control, watch this film.

More than 500,000 people got doses of radiation that would, in the west, be considered hazardous. And these are only the workers that were used (mostly red army, but also miners and steelworkers were drafted) to clean it up. No study has been done of "civilians" evacuated from the area that may number from 10,000 (the residents of Pripyat, the employee's town and Chernobyl itself and the surrounding countryside) to several million (the Soviet government, usually drowned in red tape and paperwork, kept very spotty records about this event)
About 500 helicopter pilots were redirected from Afghanistan (where they were fighting a war with Osama Bin Laden, among others) to Chernobyl, and ALL of them died. Gorbachev blames Chernobyl for the Soviet's withdrawal from Afghanistan. He also credits Chernobyl for the dissolution of the Soviet Union itself, holding the position that because of Chernobyl, the Soviet Union had neither the money nor the manpower to keep up with the West. He is probably right.

Here is the real information, tho. They were very close to a meltdown to groundwater, which would have caused an explosion powerful enough to vaporize the three other reactors on the site, which would have combined to form the largest "dirty bomb" imaginable, which would have rendered the Ukraine and Belorussia uninhabitable for 250,000 years. They averted it by tunneling under the reactor and laying a 30-foot thick concrete disk under it, at the cost of hundreds of lives, and the health of thousands more.
The government allowed the Mayday celebrations in Kiev to go forward, despite knowing that radioactive dust was settling on all the participants, turning Kiev into a place that had radiation levels so high that in the west, people wouldn't have been allowed anywhere near without protective clothing.
It is stunning what damage a government can do to it's people just by being in stubborn denial for a few days.

"it"

Until my thirties, I wondered when "it" would happen
and I lived in almost constant terror of "it".
The fear ruled everything.
"Don't go outside! the pollen will bring "it" on"
"Don't run to hard, you know 'it' is waiting"

My breath would catch
and the rattling sound in my lungs
taunted me mercilessly
with the specter of "it".

"It". The Last Attack,
The Big One.
Death. By asphyxiation.
The picture was clear, and constant.
Gasping, the breath would not come,
I would watch as the skin under my fingernails
turns from pink to dusky blue
and all would fade
as my brain starved for oxygen
and my system shut down.

In my thirties I had come to terms with it
thinking maybe what I had always been certain of,
could be avoided.
Maybe I would die,
and, for the first time, I thought,
maybe I wouldn't.

Then I had a heart attack, and the old terror is back.
A single twinge of pain in the chest,
and I am staring, again, at "it"
and the only thing I can think to tell myself
is that this "it" is much quicker than the old "it".
Small consolation.