Learn From It

The word has many definitions:

n. The configuration of the sun, the moon, and Earth lying in a straight line.

n. The combining of two feet into a single metrical unit in classical prosody.

n. The association of gregarine protozoa end-to-end or in lateral pairing without sexual fusion.

n. The pairing of chromosomes in meiosis.

n. the straight line configuration of 3 celestial bodies (as the sun and earth and moon) in a gravitational system.

I'm not sure why the word 'syzygy' popped into my head. I first heard of it in some book my dear dear friend from my past, Marti Lawrence, lent me awhile. But that was in 1981. Go figure. I knew it had something to do with something. Gee, that's good. I mean to say that it had something to do with the connections between things.

So the alignment of the Sun, the Moon and the Earth. Check. If I am Earth, Sam is the Sun and if you take a bite out of the right side of the Moon.....well, that's interesting. Two different beats coming together in a strange versification? Downright spooky.

Organisms parasitic to spineless hosts, standing abreast. Well, there's a certain syncretic value to it, but nothing I want to go into in this forum.

Meiotic pairing. Crossover events. Blue eyes and black hair...things that don't go together necessarily but somehow finding their way to traveling in the same space, again abreast.

Syzygy is a fun word. It's a weird word. It's one of those self-referential words, like obfuscatory or pedantic.

I have words on the brain, I think. Ya think? Well, it's all his fault.

Posted by Jeff at 09:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

There's an expression, “Past as Prologue”, which I never really liked. It seems a bit, I don't know, trite and smarmy. It's yet another silly aphoristic bit of nonsense. Many people nonetheless glom on to because it's simple (actually, simplistic), easy to remember and it gives one the appearance of depth.

Ahh, so gratifying! Then you have it all! A clear and direct and simple statement that smoothes over all those nuances and complexities, and you appear wise and with an old-growth intellect.

Only it's not real. You can't have a simplistic world view and then claim profundity and wisdom at the same time. Wisdom requires accepting subtlety and the existence of paradox—raw, unvarnished paradox that remains orthogonal to sense and immune to the ministrations of magicals Threes. Wisdom requires abiding the unprovability of some truths and unassailability of some falsehoods. Tough luck if you were expecting to be wise and rational at the same time.

That said, I find myself cozying up to the more cautionary aphorisms. Maybe because they're the ones that are just plain simple, not overstepping into simplistic. Maybe it's because they're so innocently brave. Or maybe, just maybe, they're the ones that tend to leave interpretation up to the reader/listener, instead of laying out rigid, concrete advice.

Anyhoo. “Past as Prologue”. Those who repeat the past are doomed...Nothing new under the sun...seen it all before... Booooring.

Present as Epilogue. Same flavor, same balance. But instead of boosting the past, it boosts the future. Instead of dissing the future, it reality-checks the present. The Dutch have a similar saying: “Tomorrow always comes back; yesterday never does.” Same thing. And if you look closely, you can see that being displaced from the immediate present over and over again—continuously, if you will, along the continuity of Time—creates motion. The direction of the motion is arbitrary and void of meaning or intent, but there's momentum! Blessed momentum.

When Now is the End, Now is also the Beginning. Fickle Present. Codependent Past. Devoted Future.

Which one would you rather spend the rest of your life with?

Posted by Jeff at 08:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Birthday arrived early, or at least some birthday presents did. Not my doing. Sam hates surprises—I only hate them lately—and so I ended up opening a big pile of lavender and pink packages (with pink and lavender frilly bows and ribbons, no less!) last night instead of next Saturday.

So I'll be a prime number year again. Well, spin the propeller on my cap and call me geeky. Oooh, and my unlucky 13th prime age. Yeah, ew.

It turned out that across all those packages, I ended up with a Playstation 2 with a couple of games: The Incredibles and Katamari Damacy. I seem to recall mentioning to Sam a few weeks ago that I was thinking about the game and how weird and gay and druggy it was, and how interesting the play of it was....and now I have it. Hurrah! (Click on the image below if you have trouble reading the text)

It's all about rolling, and one's big gay kingly/queenly Father, who wears a bellyshirt, has a massive bulge in his royal tights, and whose mouth issues big spreading rainbows in order to transport his tiny, tiny princely son (you, the player) from one place to another.

So get thee to a Sony store and pick up a copy of Katamari Damacy, especially if you're the type who doesn't like the typical shoot 'em up. That's me, by the way, and the single biggest reason I'm not typically a game player. There may be a bazillion games for Windows PCs compared to the Mac, but most of them all look the same to me...same action with different graphics and different (but still thin) storyline.

Katamari Damacy, though...it's so weird, it's queer. And it's so queer, it's fabulous. And it's so fabulous, it's trippy. And so trippy, it's just plain fucking weird. I love it.

Posted by Jeff at 10:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Congratulations to our beloved Congress and our beloved President of the United States and Leader of the <irony>Free</irony> World—and now also the Highest Court in the Land—for all but halting the machinery of government in order to save the so-called life of one person who's personhood disappeared a long time ago.

But human bodies are important, y'all, because at the end of the day, the simplistic and literalist dunderheads of the Right in this country really don't believe anything at all that their senses can't report directly: God is a Fudge Factor, like Entropy; God is a Threat, like 'Or Else'; God is a Weapon, like a Torch or a Pitchfork. And to them, a Pulse == Life. End of story.

Most vocal Christians aren't 'Pro Life' so much as they are merely Pro Birth. They don't care what happens to children after they're born because they care more about keeping the parents of those post-born children in line. And when the Morals Folks want to ban abortion of all kinds, they trot out Partial Birth abortion as the visual aids to their cause. Makes for a good PowerPoint preso, for sure.

And that's what they're doing now, with poor Terri Schiavo. They're making her into a visual aid to go with the sound bites. They don't really care about Terri in particular, it just makes good news, along the way putting the fear of 'Or Else' into the rest of the god-ridden who would otherwise think instead of react.

If those people really wanted to respect the sanctity of life, they wouldn't defile a single life by making it a poster, a sound bite and a rallying cry. They wouldn't defile a single life by dragging out the biological aspect of the end of that life pointlessly.

Terri Schiavo is America's first Partial-Death abortion. And that's as anti-sacrosanct a thing as I can imagine.

Posted by Jeff at 02:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

Last night I had a profound experience: a whole evening spent with one of my oldest, dearest friends who created a space that was entirely about me and about what I was feeling.

Chalk it up to the one-off trauma or the emotional-aftermath abnegation thereof or both, but it seems like forever since my own well-being came first in my own mind and heart. My friend did that for me: he let me let myself off the hook, let me put myself on the front burner.

Accepting that I have friends who are there when I may need them is quite different from availing myself of their help and their wisdom when I do need them.

The complete man takes wisdom where he can get it, decides whenever he has opportunity and leans when his own strength runs out. Here's to a wisdom-seeking, decision-making, leaning, more complete me.

Posted by Jeff at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Stasis is not a natural condition. The stand-still does not appear in nature, except as attitude. Absolute Zero is only theoretical.

Such goes life, where it moves and moves. It turns and turns, both world and worm. And so it comes down to a choice: not whether or not to move, but in which direction you're going to go.

Time, tide and winds often dictate our fates, but there are those times when we allow them to. And in allowing, we make a choice: to do nothing. Back in the day when I handed my fate over to a god my heart didn't really believe in, I was a fan of the pray-and-wait. And that may seem strange to others, for how do you rely on something you don't have faith in? Well, setting aside the fact that this very thing is done all the time—reliance on drugs, alcohol, people who are undeserving, Republicans, government—I may not have had faith in a god's own presence, but I had faith in a large group of well-meaning people who all believed in the same thing. That was very powerful, and very comforting. Humankind's perfect soporific.

Last week, I chose. Several times, in fact. But first and foremost, I chose to decide for myself. I chose to stay put. I chose to stay true to myself as well. I chose to work hard for the things I want and need. I chose a nuanced path over a tradition, over bravura, over ego.

And Sam and I chose together. Yesterday I began the day with a first, professionally. Last evening, we found our way to engaging our lives back into gear. Only first gear, mind you...engines still rev high and hot and there's not so much motion, but there is motion. Forward motion.

And forward is my favorite direction of all, my chosen direction.

Posted by Jeff at 09:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I've got this 1970s crap pop psych going on in my head and I can't make it stop:

“Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”

Except that I've got it in reverse. In a sense, for all the years I considered going to work at the Mothership—even before there was a building called the Mothership—for all the times I looked for my place there, for all the times I'd decided I'd fare better on my own or at least at some distance from there, for all the weighing of the Pros (near infinite) and Con's (just a couple), in about an hour from the time I'm writing this, I'll officially be an employee of the Mothership.

So today doesn't so much feel like the 'first day of the rest of my life' (how goddamn trite were the 1970s anyway?) as it feels like the last day of The Long Flirtation.

Maybe there have been too many First Days for me, or maybe I'm one of those that believes we really only get one beginning and one end. Or maybe, just maybe, I'm one of those earthy-nutty-crunchy-Northern-Californians who doesn't like to rubberstamp things and call them absolutes.

No destinies. No ordained passages.

Or maybe I just have butterflies.

Posted by Jeff at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Culminate. That's the verb for my life right now. Lots of, well, stuff building and building and building.

Still so much to be sorted through, so much history to get past, so much time I don't have—and yet still so much hope that the healthy resolution to it all is also a happy one.

Approximately five hours and 36 minutes from now, the Spring Equinox occurs, where Winter pointedly gives way to Spring, where an apocryphal egg can be balanced on end. I find myself wondering if the pending celestial transition may turn out to be allegorical as well: is this finally the time when I/we can start to shed the burdensome aspects of our lives and start to build some happy, lilting ones?

Winter's got to end sometime, right?

Right?

Posted by Jeff at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Via him.

My japanese name is 藤原 Fujiwara (wisteria fields) 拓海 Takumi (open sea).
Take your real japanese name generator! today!
Created with Rum and Monkey's Name Generator Generator.

Posted by Jeff at 03:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday was my “Uncle” Bill's birthday. Since he was born the same year as my father, he's just turned 67. He's not really my uncle, in the blood sense, but he's honest-to-god family, someone there like a gifting angel who was always just there. As I said, family.

I was to find out at a very late date that he's gay. When I was growing up, he was a bachelor who never had a girlfriend, just friends. It never occurred to me that anything was something to think about, but I do recall remembering that he was an example of the only alternative lifestyle that Northeastern Pennsylvania could or would understand: he was single.

And I suppose that was enough for me, as I came to discover that my sexuality wasn't just a phase, wasn't an auxiliary aspect of my life. It was enough to know that there were other options in life that made a person happy.

That said, I can't say how happy Uncle Bill has been in his life, except that he always seemed to be enjoying himself, was always the life of the party, was always that one person in every crowd that seemed almost magnetic. The guy that everyone wanted to be in orbit of.

Except in my life there were two men like that: Uncle Bill, as I said; and my father.

Quite a sight, seeing my father and Uncle Bill and all their friends that they stayed so close to from their High School days. I think it ended up serving as some connection between childhood and adulthood for me. Otherwise, “being an adult” in NE PA meant things so horribly foreign to a gay boy that adulthood itself was a far-off, far-flung thing that involved black-and-white TV families and twin beds. Crazy.

When I came to find out that Uncle Bill was gay—it was Marie that told me so, in somewhat cautious and doleful terms—I found myself outwardly comforting her that it was not disruptive news to me, and inwardly rejoicing that not only did I know a well-respected and much-loved gay man, but that I could be one day a well-respected and potentially much-loved gay man myself!

Life shifted gears as that news settled into me. I hesistate to use terms like “soul-soothing”, but that's exactly what it was: a cool salve across a scorched and wind-blown surface.

Hopefully, I've done Uncle Bill proud in how I've lived my life so far. I know I've done proud by my parents, my brothers and my friends and myself.

Happy Belated Birthday, Uncle Bill.

Posted by Jeff at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I must be getting old[er]. Or there's just been too much “interesting times” nonsense going on over the past two weeks. Or both. Yeah, let's go with both.

I forget that I've told people about my good news, remembered that I'd forgotten to remember to tell other people, and still others, I just don't remember and end up telling them stuff all over again.

My life is about to get a whole lot more structured, a whole lot busier, a whole lot more interesting. Twice as interesting.

Interesting times...2.

Posted by Jeff at 02:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Who's gonna be a Software Architect at Apple Computer?

I can't imagine who.

Posted by Jeff at 04:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (0)

I want to have better relationships with my friends. I rely too much on serendipity and the limits of combinatorics to spend time with my friends. A 'beer bust' here or a specialty-night there, or just showin' up where people show up.

Friday night, Fred & Donovan came over to have a meal with Sam and me and my folks. Marie (Mom) cooked. It was spectacular in its unspectacularness. By that I mean that people were just people together. No beer to trade off alteration for lubriciousness. Just my lovely Fred and his (and my) lovely Donovan. My loving parents. My LOML.

Emerging from the horrors of last weekend, still numb, still tentative, still not there yet. Torn between wanting to get back to how we were and never wanting to go back to anything of it.

The bright spot of my future is a Tempting Fruit with a Bite taken out of it, fallen into my lap out of the Knowledge Tree.

Circumspection and abstraction are tedious, I know, but I've learned a lot in my years and I've learned not to let any situation precipitate into concreteness too soon. Please bear with me [woof, grrrr].

Posted by Jeff at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Friday evening at approximately 6:30pm, our internet connection died. There's no explanation for it, and we won't get the comcast.net folks to fix it until Tuesday morning.

When it rains, it pours, but what's the verb for when it's already been pouring?

Posted by Jeff at 05:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

There is one room in all of San Francisco that is my own cathedral. It's a room with rounded bay windows and a western exposure. I am there once a month, typically. There are no priests, nor even priestesses because this room is no god box.

The place is a sanctuary, but not a refuge. No praying occurs and no penance is ever paid, but understanding comes, always comes. Sometimes it takes some time. Other times the onset of instant recognition hits you in the tummy as you plunge from a precarious height down the rail to a more amenable level. Near to the ground, to fortitude, to firmament.

Away from Sam, away from parents and brothers and sisters. Away from friends and other loved ones. Away from the flickering tableau of that city of lights that is the sum total of the people in my life. Sometimes the light hurts your eyes. Sometimes the paparazzi lay in wait. Sometimes it's simply that it's the Dark that you want or need to see, or the dim twinkle of a Big Sky, and the homespun magical lights interfere.

Sometimes, solitude. Sometimes, aloneness.

But a guide is different than a priest or a judge or a diagnostician of any stripe, and a guide is always welcome, even in the solitude: he doesn't interfere, but merely enables.

And after the Cathedral, and after the tears and the bottomless weeping and the restorative hand on the shoulder, the world is too small. The house is too small and too many things happen in 900+ square feet of Home.

To sit atop my City, just for a while. To look at there and there and there. There's the house; 50¢ gets you a closer look. There's the POX's house, just a nudge of binocs and you're there, one street down and two blocks over. San Francisco General. The Transamerica Pyramid. The Castro. The International Orange of the Golden Gate Bridge. The Panhandle. Angel Island. The Bay Bridge. Emeryville.

Down just below, the pink cube of a building where Bob Matgen used to live. He's dead now, these five or six years now. Back to Bernal Hill. To the Bay. To Candlestick Park. All the way down the Bay as it fades into a brown-yellow smudge of haze across the horizon.

Back to the Vespa, sky blue with my red helmet strapped to it. Back to self. Back down the hill. Back home.

Home. Feeling placid now, with my thoughts spread out over area measured in square miles instead of square feet.

Sam. Mom. Dad. Spruced up house. Clean.

Sprucing up Home will take a little longer—a lot longer.

Hope is there, but Hope is just the quiver of opportunities that Tomorrow arrives with.

Tonight is for smiles and conviviality. Tonight is for me.

Hope can wait; Now is Here.

Posted by Jeff at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

This week has brought some of the worst events to befall me—ever. This week has also brought the single best offer I've gotten—ever.

The two are not at all related.

How to reconcile, how to reconcile? I have no idea. I'm to exhausted too celebrate anything at all; I get excited about the good stuff but then some small thing flashes white-hot misery into my vision like a matchbook set aflame.

Maybe I shouldn't be operating heavy machinery, but my brain won't stop operating all on its own. Sometimes I want to make it stop, but I'm afraid that stopping won't stop anything at all. Or it will stop too much.

I'm whistling past my own graveyard.

Posted by Jeff at 11:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

There's a certain fuckwit who's taking it upon himself to be the biggest of attention whores in commenting—anonymously, of course...hiding his true IP address, of course—here with some of the most vulgarly hateful crap I think I've ever seen.

So maybe I'm way over-sensitive, but fuck him, you know? I am over-sensitive because my family here is falling apart because I almost lost my partner to a 30-second episode of ultimate stupidity.

Regardless: post something stupid and hateful that adds to my own burdens and you get deleted. You get banned. You keep getting deleted and banned as you slither from one anonymous address and fronted IP address to another, you fucking coward.

Look at that, I've moved onto Anger.

Posted by Jeff at 02:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm just about exhausted. Running on fumes.

Sleep comes, but isn't a very good restorative.

Too much world and too much all-at-once in this tiny house on the side of a hill in the middle of my City.

Posted by Jeff at 05:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm one of those progressive types, one of those bleeding-heart types who prefers to bet on the natural tendency for a human society to generate more good will than its individuals consume. Or at least I bet on that with friends, know the true of it in family, and hope for it in the at-large.

If I have dissembled to my friends over details or small realities, I apologize for not giving them enough credit. As I have let more and more people in on the abject dreadfulness of what has been going on, about what happened in Saturday's early hours, and the details leading up to the horrifying event, the understanding shown towards us has overwhelmed me. Even moreso, my friends' willingness to admit they don't understand, that they don't know what to say, that they are at a loss to help me but are nonetheless willing to help in however each of us—or both together—might need it is touching beyond any reckoning.

There are good people in the world, some vastly unable to comprehend the nature of male relationships, some far too acquainted with the nuanced complexity of them, all willing to offer support as they are able.

I've been crying over the almost-loss, crying over emotional distances, crying over the reprieves, crying over the anger, crying over the gratitude for Sam still being with me and all of us, crying over the humble honesty of human beings I don't even know, crying over the joy of family and most-loved friends, and just plain crying because of too much of everything.

I'm a mess, but you're all there for me. I don't know what I'd be if I were alone through all of this. I'm glad I haven't had to find out.

Posted by Jeff at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Sometimes you have to hang an opaque disk over the bright sun of self, just to inspect the corona. Interesting things happen at the surface, deep-down things are only seen at the surface. Flare and spot, turbulent plasma, unpredictability.

Observation that can ruin the eye, without certain precautions. Sometimes there's no time for precautions, though, but you risk it. Anti-Darwinists only focus on what isn't said, while not saying a thing about the world beyond the genotype: phenotypes, effects, context, competition.

Was it worth it? Is it ever? Yes. And no. But who ever wonders what 'worth it' means? Worth defines the fitness function.

I know What's worth it. And I know Why. And I'm quickly discovering new ways to accomplish How.

Posted by Jeff at 08:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It's odd to have had a good night's sleep. It's odder still that the sun shines again, like it did yesterday when I emerged from SF General. Sunshine in San Francisco shows up at the odd times—some might say the wrong times, but that's not for me—and it's either a providential punchline or just a karmic counterweight. Either way, the initial inappropriateness of Gaia's gesture gives way to sunny smile—something that may also seem inappropriate—but I guess I've learned to take the smiles where I can get them in more tenebrous times.

Reprieve or happy ending, though, there are two people in this house still breathing, still talking, and trying to look forward again.

And I'm smiling about that.

Posted by Jeff at 01:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm not going to say anything beyond what he has said, for obvious reasons, but after 12 hours at San Francisco General, in a couple of ERs with at least 3 shift-changes, with no sleep since 7am Friday morning and nothing to eat for over 28 hours, I still must give my heartfelt thanks to the tremendous job the healthcare workers—especially Jennifer in Zone 3 in the standard ER and Greg in PES—did for him last night and throughout this afternoon.

In the last 12 hours, have never felt so consuming a panic, so morose and sullen and angry a mood and so deep a gratitude, than I ever have in my life.

Send some good thoughts Sam's way, will ya?

Posted by Jeff at 04:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

There's always a certain little thrill to putting on a coat that you haven't worn in a very long time. I'm not talking metaphors here, I mean a real coat.

Yesterday, I had need to dress up somewhat—I clean up pretty good, if I do say so myself—and so I retrieved my gray peacoat from the back of the closet.

It's a bulky, kind of stiff coat, so it wasn't noticeable right away that the pockets contained anything at all. It wasn't until I was waiting for a cab at one point that I remembered to check the pockets. What fun!

In the inside left breast pocket I found a cheap Bic pen...and a partially used stick of Maybelline 10 • 60 “Sandy Rose” Wear-n-Go lipstick! Oy. All I can remember about it is that I'd noticed it in there last time I wore the coat, but couldn't remember where it first came from. That's what happened again this time.

Since I can't fathom what it was there for in the first place, I thought I'd ask around: what might I be doing with a lipstick in a dress-clothes kind of coat?

I look forward to your help in solving this mystery—or at least providing an entertaining fictional cover for my memory-loss.

Posted by Jeff at 01:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)