This'll be relatively short. I think. But I just have to whine. I wanted to talk to a really good friend about this today, but she's just not in a place to hear me, to even listen. She asserts she understands, but I don't think she does... she doesn't because she hasn't let me say anything other than I'm in a whiny mood. So, you all get to hear me out.
About a week ago, our division underwent a little reorganization, and we ended up with a new Director, a man I think will be good to work with. Today we met with this gentleman. He wanted "to get to know you all". So we went around the room(s) (it was a teleconference, as our team is split up between Omaha, Baltimore and Secaucus) and introduced ourselves, including how long we've been with the company, what we do here, and whether or not we're married, have brats, hobbies, you get the idea...
And that's what's put me in a pissy mood.
I get so fucking tired of hearing about everyone's family, the adorable little munchkin snotty faced brats (no I don't really hate kids... except when I'm in this funky mood).
Man. Talk about rubbing ones sexuality in other peoples faces. Those damn straights. Oughta be a law against 'em.
That's all.
No it's not. Ya know, I just want to say, "And I'm married to the greatest guy in the whole world" when it comes to me in one of those things.
Wouldn't THAT be a hoot? I'd love to be able to watch everyone's face!
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
On Death
Death. Having just written about the passing of my beloved Travis, I can't get my mind off of death. Well, okay, I can, but I don't want to. So there.
And so, fellow pilgrim, you've really gotten into me today. And so, once again, I write in response to you... and to one you wrote in response to... I'm assuming your post was a response to this post.
Which brings us back to death. I've been relatively sheltered from the experience of late. Yes, Travis is gone, so is Savannah, and Pam. Jim & Jerry left in 1998. Fran on New Years Day this year. I guess someone I've at least known and cared about has died just about every year for the past five years.
I know in the years ahead there's a lot more to come. My folks are nearing that passage, I know. Sometimes a little cloud seems to come up and hint that my passage is approaching as well, but I generally discount that thought. I don't fear it, I just don't trust the message.
But I've noticed that death is effecting me differently than it used to. It really hit home with Fran. After the rosary (my family is Catholic, even if I'm not) I stood beside her casket with Mom. Mom got misty eyed... I know she'd cried earlier in the day. She'd cried lots. My eyes misted a little too. But I looked at the body in the casket and thought "That's not Fran."
I saw it in Travis too, even before he died. You look at the face of the one you loved and... it's not them. That wasn't Fran's face, it wasn't Travis looking back at me in those final hours. They were the faces of the bodies that I was familiar with, but there's more. Gosh, I can't put my finger on it... can't get the concept out here.
Life is a journey, I've written here. Or a dance. But it's culmination here on planet Earth is not the end of the journey... nor the end of the dance.
Is there an end? I don't know if I'll ever know. And I'm not sure I should even care.
I do know this. That we all come, eventually, to a place where we can not go beyond in our current mode of transportation... we come to a place where the shell that has defined us is no longer capable of going on. We transition to a different place. "Abraham" calls it the Energy Stream. I call it heaven. I really am not sure there is a difference.
It shouldn't be something that makes us sad, either at our own dying or at the passing of our loved ones and friends.
Most of us do mourn the loss of others. I know in spite of these words I'll mourn the passing of my parents. Christianity hints pretty strongly that death should not be a time of sadness for us, but of celebration. Celebration because the one who is gone has achieved the prize, is with God. I remember during my time with the Benedictines that they celebrated the passing of a brother. They put on their whitest garments, and they sang happy songs. They may tear up, saddened, but over all rejoicing. They mourned what we all really mourn... OUR loss of the one going. They recognized it for the innate selfishness that is what mourning truly is.
Death, where is thy sting? Only we who live are stung. Those who die are not. They are set free, transitioning from this earthly reality to another reality, one that I trust is happier than this one, but different, that's for sure.
And so, fellow pilgrim, you've really gotten into me today. And so, once again, I write in response to you... and to one you wrote in response to... I'm assuming your post was a response to this post.
Which brings us back to death. I've been relatively sheltered from the experience of late. Yes, Travis is gone, so is Savannah, and Pam. Jim & Jerry left in 1998. Fran on New Years Day this year. I guess someone I've at least known and cared about has died just about every year for the past five years.
I know in the years ahead there's a lot more to come. My folks are nearing that passage, I know. Sometimes a little cloud seems to come up and hint that my passage is approaching as well, but I generally discount that thought. I don't fear it, I just don't trust the message.
But I've noticed that death is effecting me differently than it used to. It really hit home with Fran. After the rosary (my family is Catholic, even if I'm not) I stood beside her casket with Mom. Mom got misty eyed... I know she'd cried earlier in the day. She'd cried lots. My eyes misted a little too. But I looked at the body in the casket and thought "That's not Fran."
I saw it in Travis too, even before he died. You look at the face of the one you loved and... it's not them. That wasn't Fran's face, it wasn't Travis looking back at me in those final hours. They were the faces of the bodies that I was familiar with, but there's more. Gosh, I can't put my finger on it... can't get the concept out here.
Life is a journey, I've written here. Or a dance. But it's culmination here on planet Earth is not the end of the journey... nor the end of the dance.
Is there an end? I don't know if I'll ever know. And I'm not sure I should even care.
I do know this. That we all come, eventually, to a place where we can not go beyond in our current mode of transportation... we come to a place where the shell that has defined us is no longer capable of going on. We transition to a different place. "Abraham" calls it the Energy Stream. I call it heaven. I really am not sure there is a difference.
It shouldn't be something that makes us sad, either at our own dying or at the passing of our loved ones and friends.
Most of us do mourn the loss of others. I know in spite of these words I'll mourn the passing of my parents. Christianity hints pretty strongly that death should not be a time of sadness for us, but of celebration. Celebration because the one who is gone has achieved the prize, is with God. I remember during my time with the Benedictines that they celebrated the passing of a brother. They put on their whitest garments, and they sang happy songs. They may tear up, saddened, but over all rejoicing. They mourned what we all really mourn... OUR loss of the one going. They recognized it for the innate selfishness that is what mourning truly is.
Death, where is thy sting? Only we who live are stung. Those who die are not. They are set free, transitioning from this earthly reality to another reality, one that I trust is happier than this one, but different, that's for sure.
Yeah, OK, call me weird
I'm weird. I have to face that little fact. I'm weird. I believe in that which we all believe, yet spend our lives denying. I just read this blog, by my fellow pilgrim. He emailed me earlier inviting me to check out his writing... and this isn't what he focused me towards, but this caught my attention. My fellow pilgrim "sees things". You know. THOSE things. I'm not telling. Go read his blog and find out for yourself. My first thought was a really more of a physical reaction. I rolled my eyes. But I shouldn't have. 'Cause I've seen that, too. Been there, done that, now I want the shirt.
So, pilgrim, I'll share my tale... or is that tail... you decide.
In 1998, my partner and I adopted Travis, a 6 week old White German Shepherd Dog pup, and his sister, Savannah. These two quickly earned the mutual applause "Monster", devouring in short order a full 5 piece sectional and it's successor sofa, not to mention numerous other otherwise inedible substances. This isn't about their shenanigans, though. When Travis was 1 1/2 years old, he began having epileptic seizures. His seizures almost always occurred at night, and I'd awake at the first sound, and sit with him through the night... In those wee hours I learned so much about my own humanity. I became comfortable holding his rigid form, cleaning up his vomit, his excrement... I didn't mind being soaked in his urine. I knew his thoughts, and in time he came to know mine. My life, our life, became rooted in Travis's patterns of seizure activity.
I know more than once I called him back from that other place, that place that seemed to call him inexorably to it. He returned the favor once. We had taken him with us on a road trip to Kentucky, and one night in the hotel "something" happened, I don't know what, but it seemed I severely pulled, in my sleep, several muscles around my chest and rib cage. I never felt it, but at some point that night, I began to have trouble breathing.
Laying on my side, my breathing stopped. I couldn't move, I couldn't breath, I couldn't do anything to rectify the situation. I lay there, silently panicking. Travis came to me, and pushed me over onto my back and that kick started my breathing again. This happened two more times that night before I finally decided to wake up Scott.
One year ago this coming Thursday, Travis could no longer battle the "monster" as we came to call his epilepsy. One year ago today, he had a horrible episode of seizures. I had to hospitalize him. His living body came home the next day (a year ago tomorrow) but that which was Travis was not in that living body. The following day, Scott and I held our little boy as we eased him on his path to that other place that had called him for so long, so relentlessly. We both knew he joined Savannah there, and Pam.
Twenty four hours after he passed, Scott and I joined my family for a week in Mexico. I didn't want to go, but couldn't back out. That first night in Puerto Vallarta, well actually early the next morning, I woke before 4 a.m. At first, I thought I heard his body flailing in the throes of a seizure, and when I realized he was gone, I wept silently. O Travis, my beautiful boy, I miss you so, I thought.
It was then I felt his nose on my elbow, and turning my head saw him briefly. Then he was gone. This happened every morning I was in Mexico, awaking feeling depressed, then his cold wet nose and a glimpse before disappearing. On our last morning there, I slept a little later than I had been, and I awoke feeling relatively happy. As I crawled out of bed quietly so as not to awaken Scott, I saw him. He sat quietly looking at me, his tongue hanging out, that expression of happiness and bright intelligence on his beautifully radiant face. He thrust his nose at me then walked to the door to the balcony (we were on the 6th floor) and looked back at me. I opened the door for him and he walked out, and just kept walking until he disappeared from sight.
I didn't think about it much. Until last night, when I had that vague sense of a shadow in the room, and Nikki stirred and started wagging her tail. Then it was gone, and instead of making me get up, Nikki just rolled over and went back to sleep.
Yes, sweetie. I know. You're so much happier there!
So, yes, pilgrim, the reality is I DO believe you saw and experienced what you wrote about.
So, pilgrim, I'll share my tale... or is that tail... you decide.
In 1998, my partner and I adopted Travis, a 6 week old White German Shepherd Dog pup, and his sister, Savannah. These two quickly earned the mutual applause "Monster", devouring in short order a full 5 piece sectional and it's successor sofa, not to mention numerous other otherwise inedible substances. This isn't about their shenanigans, though. When Travis was 1 1/2 years old, he began having epileptic seizures. His seizures almost always occurred at night, and I'd awake at the first sound, and sit with him through the night... In those wee hours I learned so much about my own humanity. I became comfortable holding his rigid form, cleaning up his vomit, his excrement... I didn't mind being soaked in his urine. I knew his thoughts, and in time he came to know mine. My life, our life, became rooted in Travis's patterns of seizure activity.
I know more than once I called him back from that other place, that place that seemed to call him inexorably to it. He returned the favor once. We had taken him with us on a road trip to Kentucky, and one night in the hotel "something" happened, I don't know what, but it seemed I severely pulled, in my sleep, several muscles around my chest and rib cage. I never felt it, but at some point that night, I began to have trouble breathing.
Laying on my side, my breathing stopped. I couldn't move, I couldn't breath, I couldn't do anything to rectify the situation. I lay there, silently panicking. Travis came to me, and pushed me over onto my back and that kick started my breathing again. This happened two more times that night before I finally decided to wake up Scott.
One year ago this coming Thursday, Travis could no longer battle the "monster" as we came to call his epilepsy. One year ago today, he had a horrible episode of seizures. I had to hospitalize him. His living body came home the next day (a year ago tomorrow) but that which was Travis was not in that living body. The following day, Scott and I held our little boy as we eased him on his path to that other place that had called him for so long, so relentlessly. We both knew he joined Savannah there, and Pam.
Twenty four hours after he passed, Scott and I joined my family for a week in Mexico. I didn't want to go, but couldn't back out. That first night in Puerto Vallarta, well actually early the next morning, I woke before 4 a.m. At first, I thought I heard his body flailing in the throes of a seizure, and when I realized he was gone, I wept silently. O Travis, my beautiful boy, I miss you so, I thought.
It was then I felt his nose on my elbow, and turning my head saw him briefly. Then he was gone. This happened every morning I was in Mexico, awaking feeling depressed, then his cold wet nose and a glimpse before disappearing. On our last morning there, I slept a little later than I had been, and I awoke feeling relatively happy. As I crawled out of bed quietly so as not to awaken Scott, I saw him. He sat quietly looking at me, his tongue hanging out, that expression of happiness and bright intelligence on his beautifully radiant face. He thrust his nose at me then walked to the door to the balcony (we were on the 6th floor) and looked back at me. I opened the door for him and he walked out, and just kept walking until he disappeared from sight.
I didn't think about it much. Until last night, when I had that vague sense of a shadow in the room, and Nikki stirred and started wagging her tail. Then it was gone, and instead of making me get up, Nikki just rolled over and went back to sleep.
Yes, sweetie. I know. You're so much happier there!
So, yes, pilgrim, the reality is I DO believe you saw and experienced what you wrote about.
Sunday, January 23, 2005
Addendum to excuses
Oh, the bane of laziness!
After emailing in my previous post, I did a little searching around. Why, I wondered, is my Privacy Service preventing me from logging in to my own blog to post? And why can't I play games?
It seems at some point I blocked blogger.com from setting cookies on my computer! So, I cleaned THAT up, and voila! Here I am, posting from the dashboard, and all is well with the world.
The games thing was a little harder to solve... but, I did. So, now I can blog away, and play Gin to my hearts content.
If I were a cat, I'd purr.
After emailing in my previous post, I did a little searching around. Why, I wondered, is my Privacy Service preventing me from logging in to my own blog to post? And why can't I play games?
It seems at some point I blocked blogger.com from setting cookies on my computer! So, I cleaned THAT up, and voila! Here I am, posting from the dashboard, and all is well with the world.
The games thing was a little harder to solve... but, I did. So, now I can blog away, and play Gin to my hearts content.
If I were a cat, I'd purr.
Excuses, excuses, excuses...
In November, 2004, my home computer crashed. I had noticed it slowing down significantly and I knew I have a fairly robust computer. Then, my privacy software notified me that it suspected there was at least one spyware app on it, so I downloaded a spyware detector. Sure enough, there was not one, not two, but over 250 separate spyware or spyware related software that had found a home on my harddrive. I wiped them. My computer returned to it’s regular robust behavior. And then 2 days later, crashed. Like a brick. Bam. Dead.
Thanks to the rather remarkable folks at Dell, who had already seen this phenomena (the spyware detector I had purchased was from a major spyware provider! And it was unstable on WinXP systems.) I was able to get into my system JUST enough to back up all my files to CD. I could only get about 300 Mb per CD, as opposed to the normal 750, but hey, who cares? I got my data safe and sound.
And then, I completely wiped my harddrive, and reloaded it from the ground up. Somehow, unfortunately, and I really would like to know how THIS happened, but I LOST one CD of data… the one that had the most important stuff on it! Oh well. I still search from time to time… it’s bound to turn up, I guess. Or not.
Why do I write about this? It’s totally NOT in keeping with my normal themes. Well, one side effect of this is that for some reason, I absolutely can not do some things I used to do. I can’t go to Yahoo!Games and play my Gin, or Collapse… or any other game for that matter.
And I can’t get logged in to blogger.com in order to post. I can’t do it with Firefox. I can’t do it with Explorer. It’s really rather irritating. I’m relegated to posting here only from work.
Until Friday. That’s when I (re)discovered that I could post via EMAIL! So, this is my first post from email, on a weekend, from home for over 3 months. Trouble is… I don’t really have anything to say. Just felt like burning a little bandwidth to explain why I don’t usually post on weekends.
So… Pilgrim. I stand by my earlier post to you. If you find your path to God In Us travels through Judaism, or Jewish Mysticism, then that is the road you need to travel. I can not, nor do I wish to, judge you for that. God brings all who listen to God along many routes. My path leads one way, yours another. And yet, the two paths converge inexorably at a single point.
I do believe that there are paths that don’t lead to this singular place I call God In Us. But those paths are reserved to those who choose not to listen to the siren song of love reverberating in our bones… the primal homing beacon of God’s Love.
Those who do choose to listen and to follow that beacon will get to the destination. And I think it’s rather remarkable, my friend, that even if we choose different paths we can still travel together.
So now, we operate with two separate metaphors, eh? We dance together to different tunes, or we travel together on different paths. Perhaps we can dance together on our separate paths?
Thanks to the rather remarkable folks at Dell, who had already seen this phenomena (the spyware detector I had purchased was from a major spyware provider! And it was unstable on WinXP systems.) I was able to get into my system JUST enough to back up all my files to CD. I could only get about 300 Mb per CD, as opposed to the normal 750, but hey, who cares? I got my data safe and sound.
And then, I completely wiped my harddrive, and reloaded it from the ground up. Somehow, unfortunately, and I really would like to know how THIS happened, but I LOST one CD of data… the one that had the most important stuff on it! Oh well. I still search from time to time… it’s bound to turn up, I guess. Or not.
Why do I write about this? It’s totally NOT in keeping with my normal themes. Well, one side effect of this is that for some reason, I absolutely can not do some things I used to do. I can’t go to Yahoo!Games and play my Gin, or Collapse… or any other game for that matter.
And I can’t get logged in to blogger.com in order to post. I can’t do it with Firefox. I can’t do it with Explorer. It’s really rather irritating. I’m relegated to posting here only from work.
Until Friday. That’s when I (re)discovered that I could post via EMAIL! So, this is my first post from email, on a weekend, from home for over 3 months. Trouble is… I don’t really have anything to say. Just felt like burning a little bandwidth to explain why I don’t usually post on weekends.
So… Pilgrim. I stand by my earlier post to you. If you find your path to God In Us travels through Judaism, or Jewish Mysticism, then that is the road you need to travel. I can not, nor do I wish to, judge you for that. God brings all who listen to God along many routes. My path leads one way, yours another. And yet, the two paths converge inexorably at a single point.
I do believe that there are paths that don’t lead to this singular place I call God In Us. But those paths are reserved to those who choose not to listen to the siren song of love reverberating in our bones… the primal homing beacon of God’s Love.
Those who do choose to listen and to follow that beacon will get to the destination. And I think it’s rather remarkable, my friend, that even if we choose different paths we can still travel together.
So now, we operate with two separate metaphors, eh? We dance together to different tunes, or we travel together on different paths. Perhaps we can dance together on our separate paths?
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