Saturday, July 27, 2013

Just Sayin







Hey, you look like crap this morning. Just Sayin.
Facebook is fascinating. I have over three hundred friends on Facebook. I know, I know, you have 1115, and you have 3000 and you have 750 and you feel fucking great about yourselves. I’m happy for you. I have over three hundred friends, I don’t even know most of them, wouldn’t recognize a lot of them if I sat next to them in a bar and don’t even like them. How do I know I don’t like them? By their posts. Sure, it’s an easy way to assess whether you’ve made a mistake in choosing these social network parasites as your friends. And the tipoff? What really convinces me that I’ve “friended” the wrong people.
 They use the phrase, “Just Sayin” when they write something.
The fuck does it mean? Why use it? Don’t you have the courage of your convictions? Afraid you might lose “friends”?
Hey, you sure look fat in your picture, just sayin.
Sorry you have aids, but you should have worn a rubber, just sayin
Man, your mother is really ugly, and so is your daughter, just sayin.

Just Sayin is Facebookspeak for:
I’m not really sure what I’m talking about, I don’t want to be pinned down, I have no real opinions, you’ve heard this before, I’m tricking you into thinking I give a shit, you’ll never know my true feelings, I can be a total asshole and still distance myself from whatever I write, I’m so evolved that I toss out unclear, judgmental or abstract statements and move on to the next incoherent, illiterate post, I’ve never had an original idea, I have trouble thinking, I’m insecure, cowardly, over weight, laid back, blasé, please don’t take me seriously, I’m a fraud, a fake, a fuckup, too scared or ignorant to back up my viewpoint, I’m codependent, needy, self-loathing with good reason, probably drunk, no one pays attention to me, I have never been laid, was a crappy student, I irritate everyone and I’m despised by most of my friends and I wear sunglasses in my profile picture. LOL. Just Sayin.

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Bedridden and Bored





     Aging is, for the most part, unavoidable. If you’re six you’ll be twelve. Twenty becomes forty faster than you can imagine; forty to sixty takes about five years. Seventy-five, eighty, old, old, old, old.
     My mother is ninety-six and getting better. She had a bad scare, undefined symptoms, worried, and lost her appetite. My capable sister worked hard, loved, cared, monitored and reported. A difficult job that she pulled off brilliantly. She called in Hospice and we were preparing for The End. Now, a couple months later, mom looks good and sounds sharp. I’m glad. Her friends and the nurses at her residence say she looks better than ever.
     “They say I look better than I’ve ever looked and I feel worse than I’ve ever felt.”
     She has not lost any cognitive abilities. She’s a retired head nurse, a controlling, smart, resourceful woman and she is alive and well and kind of pissed.
     Of course, I don't want her to suffer. The Big Fear. The last years will be spent suffering. She’s not really sick; no diabetes, no cancer. She’s gotten old. Her eyes are bad so she can’t read. I’d kill myself, but she’s found that classical music is a good way to pass the time and she’s considering books on tape. She’s said that she can’t listen to stories because she can’t concentrate. I guess once the senses begin to fade, the ones that remain become vital and can sustain an individual. When I was visiting her a couple months ago, she was complaining about her eyes and I asked if she could hear.
     “Oh, God, yes. I hear everything. Too much, I think.”
     That was cool. She’s using a walker, her appetite still hasn’t returned, senses of touch and smell are probably all right but not terribly important at her age. Born in 1917, she saw damn near the whole 20th century, the wars, Depression, the joy and misery and changes, inventions and political upheaval. She was a good watercolor artist, but has given away her paints. She is computer literate, used her computer all day, played games, and wrote emails and studied the News. Now it’s the early 21st century, she’s still going, but not as strong, not as mobile, no painting, no computer for diversion.
     But she can hear. She said that I should record books on tape because I have a good voice. 
     What would I record? Should I record something for her? What? "War and Peace"? I don’t think either of us have the time for that. I personally love the writing of Henry James but I’d probably speed her termination if I inflicted his convoluted, multi-clause, labyrinthine sentences on her. Not “light” or “popular” books, either. She’s always been mature and never dug children’s books. She never read to us when we were kids. I learned to read and was on my own. I read comics, science fiction, mysteries, and even a few confusing soft-porn stories from so-called men's mags. I don’t remember mom censoring anything; she didn’t care. I think she considered herself lucky that I was a voracious reader and never bothered her to “read me a story”.
     It’s ironic that now, late in her life and pretty late in my own, she’s telling me that I have a good telephone voice and should record books on tape. So she could listen? To me? Reading to her?
     It’s all too weird.
     What would I record for my mother to listen to, now that she spends so much time in bed, bored, frustrated with long life, losing her sensory apparatus? What stories? My favorites?
     Kerouac. Such a big heart; a tragic daring writer with great soul.
     Faulkner. Complex southern family dysfunction perfectly rendered.
     Virginia Woolf. Magnificent stylist, feminist, depressive genius.
     Hemingway. The great, manly, damaged alcoholic understated adventurer.

     Do young people ever think, “When I’m old as hell, really old, unable to do much, to do anything, paralyzed, alone, blind, can’t speak, I wonder if I'll be lucky enough to hear? What would I want to hear? The shitty music I listen to now? Nah. New music? Classical? Jazz? Latin? Opera? It would probably confuse my old brain. I guess I could listen to Tupac and Phish and The Beatles and JLo and the Justins and other popular crap for the duration of my bedridden Golden Years. Might get boring, though. All day, every day.”
     Literature.  Perfect. That’s the ticket. Nodding off, fading in and out of consciousness, dying to books and stories full of complicated tales of characters in crisis, people solving problems, dealing with disasters, unraveling mysteries and resolving conflict. Chekhov. Cheever. Mansfield. Munro.
     Bedridden, tuned into an iPod or CD player, I'm waiting for the nurse to come in and switch the program, change my I.V., feed me, powder me, turn me.

     “Jeez, all you ever listen to is that highbrow stuff, sweetie. I’ve brought you something new. Here you go, let me plug you in. It’s called ‘Eat, Pray, Love’. It changed my life.”

     Damn, I’ve just scared the shit out of myself again.