Month: August 2006

I’m feeling really…edgy…as if everything I say must have a point, or that…I don’t know…as if all of my words are emphasized, like they are in italics or something.

My computer screen has a problem as well. A month ago a very thin, yellowish, vertical line appeared on the screen, running from top to bottom, showing up then disappearing intermittently, like blinking. I was pretty sure it had to do with my LCD display and not the PC specifically.

Then it went away for a few weeks.

Yesterday it came back, in the same place, same demeanor, etc…so I think I need to replace the screen, unless you folk(s) out there have any bright ideas that may save me mucho dollars and headaches. The warranty has expired, so that’s no good.

If I don’t look at it, it doesn’t bother me. It’s very thin, and actually doesn’t show up on light colored backgrounds. It doesn’t effect how the thing runs. Maybe I’ll just live with it until it drives me insane and then go have it fixed.

Why do I have the premonition that the repair will cost almost as much as a new PC?

On the family front…

My father has ceased any hope of ever visiting his grand-daughter. There seems to be no desire for any communication from my sister (her mother) and that makes me sad. I feel it is wrong for my sister to use her resentment against my father as a way to keep him away from his grand-daughter. I wonder if my niece even receives the gifts he sends her? I know that I never receive any real responses of my gift-giving, unless of course I ask about it.

The fundamental memories I have of my sister are not very positive, I’m afraid. They mostly entail screaming arguments, slamming doors, the tears of my mother, and heartache and bafflement from my father. My roll in the picture was usually to curl up in the fetal position and try not to get in the way of the hurricane. Then she left home. That’s it, really. The rest are snippets from holiday get-togethers when she would steamroll in and express love so fiercely that no one would be able to reciprocate. God save anyone ever telling her to back off, slow down, or easy does it…then she’d play the ‘hurt feelings’ card (“everyone hates me”) and pull away in a reverse of the Love Steamroller.

She has found her own life, away from the family, not wishing us to be near, really. Only mom is allowed to visit.

I sense, however, that she is curious about how we are and what we are doing. She reads this blog occasionally, I think, snooping for clues or information, instead of being naturally interested and asking questions…She’ll probably read today’s entry, and the phone will ring…this is an old story, with a typical outcome.

It makes me sad, but I am learning to accept the fact that I really only have one sister.

Johnnyboy

So this week ahas been one of those ‘when it rains, it pours’ kind of weeks. Emotions have run high in my mind about my future, present, and past and the eternal question ‘what will become of me?’. The answer, of course in in the hands of a power greater than myself, and by that I do not mean a person, but rather a Force that guides and bends to the natural magnetic fields within us and without us.

I finished my paper on Martin Hiedegger and sent it to my professor. That means I have officially completed my first year of college, and as of now, have retained a straight ‘A’ average. I have been able to do this only because I am sober today. So much rests on my sobriety…thank the Force I don’t have to keep myself sober, just do the next right thing and try to turn over the rest.

My session with my shrink the other day was very interesting as well. We spoke about all my anger, that has seemed to turn into sadness these days, and both agreed that I was grieving over the past (what could have been, what was, etc…). This is different than the pity pot, because if used in a healthy way, the grief leads to acceptance, and then to letting-go, and that led our conversation to emotional attachments. Without going into too many details, lets assume that emotional attachments are a good thing. They are, too, until they start to infringe on the well-being of others and the mental health of the emotional volunteer. That’s when they need to be let go and dumped…the attachments, I mean. I think the 3rd Step says something about that in the 12/12…but I’m not sure.

Another thing we talked about was my art. He reminded me that although I could never be the painter that my sister was, or the academic wiz of my other sister, or a writer like my father, he felt that what I may find out, in the second half of my life, is that I am the real artist of the family. Not to be too presumptuous, but I do write and play my own music, write pretty well, and my prints, photographs, and sketches are pretty good (people who know have told me so). I also have a great sense of culinary balance, a natural love and understanding of engineering and design, and the ability to comprehend dense philosophical thought. All this stuff existed while I was drinking, for sure, but it was always suppressed by my own fears (that I would never live up to…to….to what?). So this is all stuff I can explore, and it’s no race, because I really don’t care what any of my siblings, relatives, or anyone else, thinks about my artisitic bent.

To celebrate my finishing my Freshman year, I bought myself a new guitar. I haven’t had a new guitar in about 8 or 9 years, and when I got sober (about 4 years ago) the music stopped coming out of me (which it does. I can’t help it. I ‘hear’ songs fully composed in my head, complete with lyrics) and I was despondent that it would never come out again. It seems that this phase is over. A song washed over my noodle last night as I was falling asleep, so I jumped up and wrote it all down. Nice tune, too. Dark, spooky, with juju grease in between the words. True story, too, I think. It’s called ‘The Haunted House of Dreams”…the chorus reads…

‘Orchid powder, cottonmouth juice
the organ grinder’s gone to town
to the creaky haunted house of dreams
and the monkey’s not around’

So I bought the new guitar, an acoustic-electric, made by Dean, a very nice company, and it sounds super. Here’s a picture…as well as a picture I took at the Metropolitan Museum of Art last week…

Johnnyboy