Divorce Cake

No, it wasn't my birthday. It's my divorce cake! Hooray! Of the guests in attendance, it didn't leave a bad taste in anyone's mouth.

A Sheen Getaway

I just returned from a fabulous two-night three-day getaway to Atlantic City, New Jersey. The greatest freedom about becoming single again is the punching of your own time clock. I used my time wisely until I was punch drunk and out of time.

I auditioned at Ryan Casting for a speaking part in a pilot TV show for True Crime network. I participated in Bally’s casino promotional filming for the grand opening of their ICandy burlesque lounge headlined by sultry Baywatch cast member Angelica Bridges. In between acting, my method was to overindulge in life.

On Thursday, I saw a mesmerizing Cirque du Soleil show at Boardwalk Hall. Chock full of unusual acts, the evening’s biggest surprise may have come when the establishment carded my company before serving her wine.

The following day, I got reacquainted with a woman my contemporary who I used to work with twenty years ago.

Like a glutton for more sensory stimulation, I basked in four hours of deep tissue massage, pushed my body through gym workouts and ate like a heavyweight at buffets. On Saturday, I got befriended wearing my bathing suit in an inhalation room then put on some good threads to see Trans-Siberian Orchestra play in Ceasar's Circus Maximus Theatre.

Duh, I heard the Charlie Sheen tour is off to a rough start. Well, I felt like two and a half men for a couple of days anyway.

Bathroom Stall Tactics

I am still trying to extract nostalgic terms about returning to my high school as a middle aged man. After watching a comedy show with my company last night, I left her grace in the auditorium in search of the closest bathroom. Bladder retention isn’t what it used to be as when I bounced around these halls as a testosterone laced lad circa 1980.

As I passed by a dusty sports trophy case of yesteryear, I reminisced about sports that I can only marginally play for exercise now. The wall-mounted video cameras seemed an intrusive addition to a place of learning but the passage of time took its greatest picture on my memory banks. Perhaps it was nothing more than a man now walking commensurate with his age, but I entered the bathroom in what seemed like slow motion. Although it looked and smelled alarmingly the same, I sensed one changed variable. A person who has aged and changed.

I remembered last using this same bathroom urinal after watching our school’s senior play. I recalled the cockiness of my whole life that once laid before me. Now I do not even take pissing straight for granted. It took me all of thirty-one years to return to my high school. As amber urine trickled down a porcelain throne, I realized that my life was more than halfway over and many of those years came with its own wrecking ball. I mused why we are all here. Returning to my stomping grounds produced such a residual effect on me that I pulled out my high school yearbook today…There I was wearing pictorial optimism alongside the haunting caption…To find the meaning of life…a seemingly lifelong journey as it's starkness continues to imprint on me.

Face the Nation..with Facebook

I joined the glorious multitudes on Facebook for unkown reasons. It seems like everyone is registering on Facebook. Let's just say, I grew curious about people soliciting me emails wanting to be my cyberspace friend.

I will still keep the blog up and running. Admitedly, I do not know how to use Facebook or what its advantages are. Anyone who wants to find me can Google my full name. The time I checked on this my name was #1 in the world in frequency of hits. How Facebook will unite me to the masses...I do not know.

Blog on Hiatus

I am having surgery next week. My next post will be on the other side of a doctor's knife recuperating on painkillers.

To quote Jack Nicholson's character in the movie The Bucket List, "Somewhere some lucky son of a bitch is having a heart attack right about now."

A Wrong of Passage

In the vestibule outside the movie theatre, two silver haired foxes sat on a bench chatting about The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I just emerged from the same theatre so naturally my ears bent to hear elder wisdom.

Judging by the similar physical features of the women, I suspected they were related one generation apart. The wrinkles outlining their faces told stories and there must have been a century and a half of invaluable experience between them. Two pairs of prescription glasses, one walking cane, and a hearing aide were adaptive adjuncts to their time on this planet.

Rolling tears still with me from the movie's ending, I stood against the wall waiting for my wife to exit the ladies room. Watching the duo, the irony struck me because there may be no better movie encapsulating the entire aging process than The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

For we are all a body of work in a body that eventually will not work, with one not completed until the other expires. So while living we must lead a purpose driven life. We must do what we must with the cards that we are dealt. We must keep moving to find purpose, deriving meaning for the celebration of life as it changes and for as long as it is here.

The only time I feel grounded to this earthly plane is when I write. Nothing feels better, feels more right, or more cathartic to my soul than writing. For me it is truly living unencumbered. It is breathing. Almost everything else in my life is a duty, obligation, responsibility, work, chore, a custom followed.

God-willing, my life is already half over and I have spent the better part of it writing for free for the benefit of only a handful of people other than myself. That matters not because I believe I am doing what I am supposed to - chronicling memories and experiences. It is the cruelty of forgetting that cannot be underscored. Dying brain cells from the aging process, traumatic brain injury, dementia, repression, and even overwhelming stress rob us of short and long term memories. Although embedded in the taxing nature of life itself, forgetting is a thief that steals from us before it is time to leave our physical hosts. It is for this reason too that I write…to develop a permanent record so I cannot forget my life, however ordinary.

After sorting these thoughts from my perch, my keen mind returned to the elderly couple’s movie review.

“Mother, in the Benjamin Button movie, didn’t Cate Blanchett look lovely as a dancer?”

She hesitated. “...Are you sure? I do not remember dancing being in the movie.”

“Dancing was featured in the entire movie, Mother. Surely, you….”

She stopped mid-sentence. The frightened look on the daughter's face seemed to be a capsizing glimpse of her own future. For every rite of passage between them, this seemed so wrong. It made me cry harder. I would like to think that moment is something I will always remember…now that I have written it down.

Catching Rainbows

This washed out picture does not do justice to the maginificient luminous rainbow that formed after a recent rain shower. Right out the front door to our house, the color-rich rainbow could be viewed from arc to arc for about seven minutes. Our house sat like pot of mortgage in the middle.

In all of my 46 years, I had never seen a complete rainbow from one side to the other in such dramatic fashion. I made the most of the time that it could be seen. Grabbing my camera and camcorder, my wife and I took stills and home movies of the rare atmospheric event.

Appreciating rainbows are alot like not taken life for granted. You never know how long we are here to catch the next rainbow nor how long we or the rainbow will last.

Cutting Out The Middle Man

With underscore and exclamation point, I wish to announce that all of my children are now teenagers. On a personal note, this dubious distinction for a parent my age has caused me introspection.

I have nine years remaining before I can retire and owe eight small years on a dwindling mortgage. I obsess over health matters that I took for granted earlier in my life. Whereas before I thought only about wanting to leave a legacy on this planet, my ideas are now selfishly consumed by my mortality. The proverbial bottle of life is dastardly both half empty and full.

This benchmark arrived for me this week like a snake pit with no vacancies. The snakes wriggled around my ankles and up my pant legs until one wrapped around my neck to constrict my breathing until I said its full name: Middle age has arrived. Middle age with all the rights, privileges, and responsibilities appertaining thereto.

My youngest daughter shared her birthday remorse. “I want to be five. I want to just play house and watch cartoons.”

My seventeen-year-old disagreed with her sister . “I want to be your age. Yeah, thirteen. Seventeen sucks. I got to go to work at my age.”

My children’s candidacy prompted this reflected state of mind. When I was younger with my whole life ahead of me, middle age seemed a distant star on the horizon. My children have only begun to realize that life gets harder as you go along. I convinced myself right there and then that I just want to be seventeen again with all the rights, privileges, and responsibilities appertaining thereto.

A Lonely Number

-Taking the day off from life to feel like a big zero.

Soul in a Bowl

The culmination of life amounts to the indelible imprint on our soul. I see no other explanation than humans being an intelligent model designed by a higher power. From the moment we arrive on this earth, we squirm free but are subject to physical boundaries and its nagging mortality. Gravity and the laws of the universe begin to press on us in a mad mad world.

I have never prescribed to one lifetime being enough time to get things right down here. Reincarnation seems plausible for it would mean the marriage of one soul to many lifetimes. I believe that our thoughts are not only real things but they are as important as our actions. For this reason, I believe that life also occurs on a subconscious level. Reactions to past thoughts become our fate, destiny, and karma. An individual’s fate is simply the rebounding effects of previous choices remembered by its soul. I believe the soul of each individual has purpose driven fate.

We live for today but ultimately we are here for a better tomorrow. In the meantime, souls have debts to pay over the course of many lifetimes. God is not keeping tally with a scorecard. God has created us as free will beings exercising our own destiny. We are small worlds unto ourselves and entire universes effecting each other in an ever-changing matrix. Contrary to crime and punishment sociology, sin is really crime against ourselves. Since our conscious mind is not always in tune with our subconscious, it is up to each individual to derive purpose and meaning from free will choices. The green green grass of our soul wants it that way. Time and space do not matter as much as we have been conditioned to believe in this measured existence, for poor choices can substantially derail the development of an infinite soul.

What is with all this heavy introspection on Freudian Slips? I just got to thinking of my purpose driven life while scrubbing toilet bowls in an interfaith church for supplemental income.

Appetite for Self-Destruction

All I wanted was a Taco Bell ½-pound bean burrito to quell a hungry stomach. I had been carrying around gads of disposable loose change in my car’s center console. I circled the building only to find the drive-thru closed. Strike one. So I parked in just the right spot of the side entrance to gauge the waiting lines for service. The lobby echoed empty. Without a line to hold up, I planned to use entirely loose coin to pay for my purchase. Putting embarrassment aside for the moment, I counted 150 pennies and foot raced to the counter with my wallet left purposely behind.

The silver haired senior citizen for a cashier greeted me with a venerable matronly smile. Not your typical Taco Bell employee by fifty years I thought to myself.

I apologized, “You’re going to hate me by the time I’m done this transaction. I left my wallet home and only have loose change to get by for the day.”

The woman patted my balled fists full of change. The tone of her voice breathed reassurance and empathy. “You have come to the right place. I am going to take care of you.”

Her wrinkled hand felt warm to the touch. I said, “Thanks for understanding.”

Before filling my order, she asked, “Do you want a second burrito for free?”

As if a school bus of passengers emptied in the parking lot, a line began forming to my immediate rear. I sorted through a pile of brown pennies and sparse silver on the counter top. I wanted to be anywhere but there.

I said sheepishly, “I barely have enough change for one burrito let alone two.”

“I said I was going to take real good care of you. The first one is free. I don’t know how hungry you are or when you last ate so I’m offering to front you another burrito on the house.”

I felt the need to shake my head to separate myself from the likes of a beggar. “I don’t want a free handout. I just want you to accept my loose change. Surely, this establishment can use loose change in the register.”

She probed, “Being without your wallet is a total inconvenience. I didn’t know if you had enough loose change for two burritos. That’s all I was saying.”

“One bean burrito will be plenty.”

Her charity magnified my white lie about leaving my wallet home. She bagged the burrito then handed me my order. She swept the money from the counter without even counting it. The coins clanged in the register compartments louder than penny slots at the casino. I started to walk away with plummeting eyes on a head hung down.

She hollered, “Sir, you forgot your change.”

I turned around and walked back towards the front of the line. “I gave you exact change.” I muttered. “I don’t have any change coming back to me.”

She gave me a hooded wink then whispered. “Sure you did.” She held up two crisp dollar bills for the taking.

I replied, “You’re mistaken. Don’t you remember the onslaught of pennies, nickels, and dimes?”

She raised her voice loud enough for every impatient hungry patron in line to hear. “Gas money. We will borrow from the till. You’re broke, remember.”

I high-tailed out of the restaurant too embarrassed to say anything. I got to my car and sped off. After fumbling with the wrapper, I bit the head off my Mexican burrito. Within a few chews, my taste buds let me know it was the wrong frigging order. There on the center console, my lump wallet laughed itself silly. Lies just eat at me.

The Truth Lies Within

Anyone care to pick out the single lie among a dozen truths? Freudian Slips might say that the lie truth withins.

I keep an internal clock that makes it virtually unnecessary to set an alarm clock for sleep.

I make daily visits to my favorite blog, Anonymous Rowhouse.

I was once charged with criminal trespassing.

I purposely overpay on my one and only credit card to mockingly use it as a debit card.

I lost my virginity at age seventeen and never once looked for it.

On Christmas Eve, a bank teller once gave me an extra $500.00 gift with my transaction.

When people speak, I visualize their words like a teleprompter scroll.

Three different women asked me to have casual sex during the course of the same day. I refused each of their sexual advances then had trouble sleeping that night.

Onboard the Carnival cruise ship Ecstasy, I experimented with a substance by the same name.

My Rolex watch didn’t cost me a dime.

I once sold my home FOR SALE BY OWNER on New Years Eve to a woman wearing bedroom slippers.

As a child, I laboriously counted up to 18,704 in spiral notebooks.

Under hypnosis, I sang a Rolling Stones song on stage in front of a live audience.