my careless contagion

  One of the weird things about me is that I forget about myself. That may seem strange to my readers, as I'm writing about myself here an awful lot. However, this forum is the exception. My life is not my blog, though I talk about my life here. Most of the time, I simply disappear. Maybe we all do this to some extent. Anyway, as a fun excuse to write, I thought I'd post a few of my favorite things (and strangely enough, somehow Taylor Swift shows up yet again). Here they are in no particular order.   Food - I've always thought food was pretty bomb. When I was a baby, I was eating food. In fact, I still eat food. I eat food almost every day! Though the importance of food has become pretty basic (as in, I need it to live), I still think food is pretty great. While there aren't any "floor lunches" with meats and cheeses and breads and olives and other stuff from Zingerman's anymore, I still get down for some boiled peanuts and pistachio ice crea...

  Originally my plan was to end this blog after one year. Frankly, I wanted to put the damn thing out of its misery. Today is the one-year anniversary, but I just can't do it. There have been some really ugly posts lately. Still, in all the ugliness, I feel a cathartic cleanse. It's like sitting in a therapist's office and hearing myself say things that never would have been said otherwise. There may be no truth whatsoever in them, but at least they are out there and they can go bother someone else instead of me. The little buggers.  After 238 posts, I'm not going to call it quits as I intended. I do need a break from this, though. It's a virtual problem-solving exercise, and what I need is real-world problem-solving. That will be my focus. I wish to thank all of you who have diligently read my ups and downs over the last year. It's been intense at times, and too often it's been tedious. If you're just discovering this blog, I was dealing with a d...

*** Spoiler alert. ***  Netflix's series You is a journey into the mind of a self-proclaimed "good guy," as in the last good guy in New York, who happens to be a serial killer. He's not just a serial killer, though; he's a guy who has convinced himself he's killing to protect those he loves. He never wants to kill. But he has to. Because he's really just a good guy who is forced into some bad situations, right?  It's hard not to see this as another brick in the wall of the narrative that there are no good guys, a theme that has been running in popular media for a few years now, highlighted most recently by the MeToo and TimesUp movements, movements I wholeheartedly agree are past due. Without getting into the irony that MeToo's great push came out of heathen Hollywood, a town long given over to vices such as giving sex for work (prostitution), let's take a look at how You fits into things.   Let me say first that I agree with the MeTo...

Shawn Mendes' Treat You Better was, at least for a moment, the theme song for my relationship with the woman I fell in love with during my separation. She had told me some things about her husband, and I thought, "I could treat you better." I thought, erroneously, that any man could have treated her better, and, most certainly, I could! It's true, any girl like her deserves a gentleman, but that man is not me. While it may seem I'm walking over the same old ground here, I also feel it's necessary to let things run their course. Bear with me. As she shared more about this complex man, this man whom she loves dearly, I've come to respect him on many levels. And I've changed my mind and now say no one could treat her better than him. He is truly a wonderful husband, father, mentor, coach, and all the other roles he fills. He fits her like a glove, and it's easy to see why she loves him so much. It's time for me to recognize my mistake her...

King Kong (2005) is not a particularly strong movie, but as an update to the original, it does the job. There have been so many movies featuring King Kong, it's kinda ridiculous. The only thing more ridiculous, perhaps, is me trying to show a parallel between this movie and my life. Go ahead and laugh. This movie relies on symbolism and metaphors (much like Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness mentioned in the film). This is a long movie (by Peter Jackson, who I don't think makes short movies), most of which is bogged down in typical action movie stuff. The story is widely known, but we find Kong on a Jurassic Park sort of island, Skull Island, a place inhabited by dinosaurs and giant bugs, etc. It's ridiculous, but gloriously so. He is king of the island, and the savage inhabitants feed him sacrifices to presumably appease him. Well, when Ann is one of those sacrifices, something changes.  It's hard to pinpoint the exact moment this beast has a change of hear...

  February 8, 2018, was the day I learned my divorce was final. It is a date I will surely commemorate in my mind for many years to come. Leading up to that day, there were many paper signings and much notarizing. I remember walking with her to the courthouse to notarize our final divorce documents. I don't believe she ever looked at them. She just wanted to get it over with. I have to admit, I did too. This was the beginning of my closure.  I made a decision months earlier that no matter what happened with anyone else, I had reached the end of my dealing with Kate. I wanted to be done, and I made a decision to go forward with a divorce regardless. An ominous voice told me I would end up alone. I still did it. No one put a gun to my head. No one told me what to do. No one else influenced my decision. It was mine and mine alone, and I chafe at the notion that anyone else contributed to my final decision. It's nonsense.  Having said that, it was difficult to see some...

Love is blind. As I was taking my run today in the blowing snow and with darkness creeping in (and before telling a nice man I didn't need a ride because I was just out for a jog), it hit me like a bolt of lightning. How blind can one man be?  It doesn't matter what people tell you. It doesn't matter what you tell yourself, either. The truth exists on its own plane, and we have to find it where it is. Nevertheless, sometimes it comes looking for us. Today was that day for me.  I didn't see all the danger signs when I fell in love the first time. I wasn't even looking for them the second time I fell in love. But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm really disappointed in myself because of the things I did when I fell in love the second time. I broke too many rules. I was a good man who did some really bad things. I can't really dwell on something that's been confessed and forgiven. But sometimes it's shocking what I did.  Maybe it ...

Without beleaguering the point, my readers know my life has not been a cake walk. It's not something I try to dwell on, but it's unnerving sometimes how difficult it has been. Still, in my darkest moments, I was able to see beauty around me. Something at the heart of me cried out for beauty, and it was always there.  The greatest defeater of happiness seems to be comparisons. It's so unfair to ourselves. No one lives the same life, so it's never going to be a fair comparison. Given our innate drive to better ourselves, we, of course, focus on those who have, in our opinion, done better than us. Social media makes this comparison process available 24/7. We can't even hide in the safety of our own homes, deep inside the womb of a hot bubble bath, without unfair comparisons.  I know my life will change again, like a constantly evolving landscape, being built up and eroding at the same time. How can I compare my life to anyone's when I can't even sit stil...

I've had to do a thousand hard things in my life. By far, the hardest has been letting you go. Something ancient and new and lovely and perfect in me found something ancient and new and lovely and perfect in you. Letting you go meant leaving those things behind because they got lost in you somewhere, and I couldn't go back to find them. So today, walking away, I'm far less new, far less lovely, and so far from perfect. Tomorrow will surely find me the same. Trying to trace the steps of our last dance, our last time together, and our last conversations yields no clues. I'll never know what happened. All I know is I got so desperate and so scared because you knew what you knew and then I was no longer in the know. I was on the outside looking in like I've always been. While I spent time with you, looked as deeply as I could into your eyes, and almost made my home in you, I still didn't know you. I saw a sliver of your beauty, and I was awestruck. Then you we...

It's the echo of my own mind. It's the words of a friend. It's the sharp blast of winter wind in the eyes. It's waking from a lovely dream only to be thrust back into an awful reality. It's living with a decision you didn't make. It's an accident on the freeway. Your dog getting hit in the street. A miscarriage. A letter you read and discarded but wish you had back every single day. It appears to be that time, dear readers, to face reality. I've been chasing butterflies, riding unicorns into the sunset, reading fairy tales and imagining the man in the moon coming to life for too long. It's time. I hear it in the words of a friend. Sometimes it's just a gentle tug that I need to get me back on the road. Sometimes I need to be hit over the head with a map and cursed at a little. THAT WAY. Go that way, dummy.  There is a period of adjustment after the end of a relationship when one feels free. You can do anything you want! I've imagin...

This week has been a struggle. It's hard when the blows just keep coming and I have to keep getting up every morning and slog through another miserable day. But, hey, this is the world I created. These are my decisions. I have to live with them. Pardon me while I vent, though. My ex-wife is currently enjoying a 10-day vacation with my parents. How many ex-daughters-in-law go on vacations with their ex-in-laws (who leave their sons behind)? I mean, I can't really take a vacation anyway since I'm taking classes and someone has to take the trash out at work. It reminds me of the scene in She's Out of My League where the main character's whole family goes to Branson (all wearing their Branson Bound sweatshirts), even taking along his shitty ex-girlfriend AND her new boyfriend. I mean, it's comical, yet it's my life. You can't make this shit up. I mean, how is one supposed to feel about this situation? What's the logic? Clearly, this broadcast...

After times of great tumult, what we're left with is the often difficult task of making sense of what happened. How many tomes have been written about the world wars or the Great Depression or other significant upheavals? Well, I may not have been through a war or the Great Depression, but I feel like I've had my own skirmishes and have endured a significant amount of depression the past few years.  Starting about a year ago, I've been chronicling my emotional landscape. The major themes are: the end of a 20-plus-year relationship, falling in love with a different woman, and subsequent heartache as that relationship failed also. I've spent a considerable amount of time on the latter two, mostly because I have already dealt with the former for the last five years. We expect our progression to be linear and oftentimes we are surprised when we go backward or laterally in relation to where we'd like to go. What we may see as a setback, however, is probably just emo...

**Spoiler alert. Do I need a spoiler alert for a film that's 25 years old? Sure, why not?** The Crow was released 25 years ago — 1994 — and quickly became a cult classic. The circumstances surrounding the filming and release of the film were fodder for theories that ranged from the mundane to the supernatural. The film franchise is clearly cursed, most notably accounting for Brandon Lee's accidental death. Yes, Lee died during filming. I'll steer away from the controversy involving the film and subsequent The Crow films as well. I want to talk about the theme of this movie — revenge.  I recently watched The Crow on Netflix and realized it had reached a milestone. It was now 25 years old. A quarter century! It feels like I watched this movie for the first time just yesterday. It's easy to see why it became a cult classic, revered for years by many a goth and emo kid. Originally a black-and-white comic, the theme of revenge is universal. Almost anyone can relate...