Some lyrics

A young friend passed away about six months ago. He seemed like a troubled young man to me, a deep thinker, burdened by the world and his own personal sadness. He felt most at peace floating in his little boat on the river. I was thinking about him this morning when this song came to my mind. It was recorded by Styx, one of my favorite bands.

Take Me Back by Styx

for David

Take me back to my boat on the river
I need to go down,
I need to come down
Take me back to my boat on the river
And I wont cry out any more

Time stands still as I gaze in her waters
She eases me down, touching me gently
With the waters that flow past my boat on the river
So I dont cry out anymore

Oh the river is wide
The river it touches my life like the waves on the sand
And all roads lead to tranquillity base
Where the frown on my face disappears
Take me down to my boat on the river
And I wont cry out anymore

Oh the river is deep
The river it touches my life like the waves on the sand
And all roads lead to tranquillity base
Where the frown on my face disappears

Take me down to my boat on the river
I need to go down, with you let me go down
Take me back to my boat on the river
And I wont cry out anymore
And I wont cry out anymore
And I wont cry out anymore

What is This Blog About?

This web log is mine. It's about whatever I want it to be about. It's about things far away from me, things that interest me, my feelings, my tastes and distates. It's about me and my thoughts. Sometimes I write about things as trivial as Dubai, sometimes I post poetry I've read from far and wide, and sometimes I write about things intensely personal. So personal the things you read may make you wince or put your hand over the screen. But even when it's personal, I want you to read it. I would like you to comment. If you comment, I know you are paying attention. If you pay attention, in some small way it feels to me like I am noticed, like I am alive.

I spend many Wednesday evenings/nights alone. My children usually spend Wednesday night with their father and tonight was no exception. I have been alone since I dropped Camille off around 5:30. My apartment was a wreck but I didn't feel like returning just to clean. I had no one to go see, I had nothing to do, I had nowhere to be. It's simultaneously sad and liberating.

I decided to take myself to the movies. The film which worked out best for my arrival time was entitled Fracture, starring Anthony Hopkins. I arrived at the theatre around 6:20 but the movie didn't start until 6:55. I drove to the liquor store and bought some tangerine zimas, salt and vinegar chips and peanut M & Ms. Drove back to the movies, drank a zima in my car and ate a few chips while I watched people. Smuggled another zima inside my purse and drank it during the film.

I chose a row of seats to the right of the theatre, a row with just two seats. I sat on the aisle, put my foot up on the chair in front of me. There was another lone man many rows behind me and only a few scattered couples. There weren't more than 30 people in the entire room.

I didn't know what Fracture was about going in. Anthony Hopkins flicks are usually entertaining yet deep and this was no exception. It was a legal thriller. I identified with it. I wouldn't say the film is slated to be a classic or that it will make my best list. But - it was carefully crafted. The lighting was very precisely placed at all times. I noticed that light was important to this film maker. The film begins with two lovers at a hotel. The light is behind them, getting close to sunset, it gently surrounds their faces. They spend time frolicking in the pool, same light. The woman is captivatingly beautiful. She has a perfect face, short bob, incredible figure, the man is the tall, dark and handsome type.

Soon we realize that the two are having a rendevous, an affair. Their affair is not just about sex, it is apparent that are feelings wrapped around these two, which is odd considering the woman has withheld personal information from the man, even her name. The movie takes a dark turn, however, as we realize that a man, much older than the adulterers, is spying on them. He manages to enter their room and go through their things. The lovers say goodbye and the beautiful woman returns home.

Her husband, played by Anthony Hopkins, is waiting for her. She is surprised to see him, he's not usually home so early. They talk. There is a stark contrast between the two; the woman's beauty and youth, her firm skin, full lips, silky hair. The man's advanced age, wrinkles, thickened body. His face is pained, he knows. Then - she knows he knows.

She begins to walk away and he says something, causing her to pause and turn around. He shoots her in the face, the bullet exiting her head. Anthony Hopkins character, named Ted Crawford, fires several more bullets into the windows, causing the gardeners to scurry. Soon afterward, police surround the place. Crawford demands that the investigating Officer Nunnely, a tall, dark and handsome type, enter the home to talk. They each place their guns out of reach and Crawford tells Nunnely that he shot his wife. Nunnely freaks out when he realizes that the woman, whose trail of blood he follows, is the woman he has been sleeping with!

Crawford is immediately arrested and arraigned after confessing--a seemingly slam-dunk case for hot shot assistant district attorney Willy Beachum, who has one foot out the door of the District Attorney's office on his way to a lucrative job in high-stakes corporate law. But nothing is as simple as it seems, including this case. Will the lure of power and a love affair with a sexy, ambitious attorney at his new firm overpower Willy's fierce drive to win, or worse, quash his code of ethics? In a tense duel of intellect and strategy, Crawford and Willy both learn that a "fracture" can be found in every ostensibly perfect façade.

The plot held a few surprises, twists and turns but it was the treatment of the characters, their depth, that most held my attention. The camera followed each character closely and allowed us to get into them, understand them, see things through their eyes. I understood Willy Beecham's dillema. I understood how he must have felt.

After the film, as I was driving home on a twisty windy narrow road, I felt unusually introspective. For some reason, the movie made me think. It made me think about myself, my law career, my life. It made me think about what I want, where I'm going and where I'm not going. I felt myself in the middle of a life tornado for 10 minutes or so, the parts and participles of my life swirling around me furiously.

Why am I here? Am I supposed to be here? Do I need to rethink my path? A respected friend recently told me that I am not as important as I think I am. Is this true?

Quote of the Day

Hope is lost so quickly because it is impossible to store.

Don't Eat Bats

[Important note - bats worldwide are benevolent and ecologically vital creatures. Do not harm bats. Don't touch them and don't eat them and we can all live happily ever after]

Fruit bats may carry Ebola virus

Bats are thought to harbour several deadly viruses. Fruit bats may be acting as reservoirs of the killer Ebola virus, responsible for several deadly outbreaks in central Africa, research suggests.
Three bat species captured during outbreaks between 2001 and 2003 in Gabon and the Republic of Congo show evidence of symptomless infection.

Writing in Nature, researchers in Gabon say this means the animals may play a key role in spreading the virus. They say local residents should be encouraged to refrain from eating bats.
The first human outbreak of Ebola was recorded in 1976, but scientists have still to pin down which species harbour the virus. If bats are among the culprits, they are more likely to pass the virus on to great apes such as gorillas and chimpanzees, which have been badly affected.

EBOLA

One of the most virulent viral diseases. Damages blood vessels and can cause extensive bleeding, diarrhoea and shock. Killed more than 240 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1995. Transmitted by infected body fluids. Kills up to 90% of victims, depending on the strain
There is no cure. However, it is also possible that bats could infect humans directly.

Researchers from the Centre International de Recherches Medicales de Franceville trapped and tested more than 1,000 small animals in Ebola-affected areas. They found fruit bats of three species - Hypsignathus monstrosus, Epomops franqueti and Myonycteris torquata - had either genetic sequences from the virus or evidence of an immune response to it.

Traces of the virus were found in the animals' liver and spleen - two organs specifically targeted by Ebola. Each of the three species has a broad geographical range that includes regions of Africa where human Ebola outbreaks occur. Previous research has suggested that bats may also harbour the deadly Marburg and Sars viruses.

Death rates from Ebola among the great apes tends to increase during dry seasons, when food is scare in the forest, and animals are more likely to come into contact with other species as they compete with food. Immune function in bats is also known to change during these periods, providing the virus with more favourable conditions in which to reproduce.

Professor Tony Hart, of the University of Liverpool, told the BBC News website bats had long been suspected of harbouring Ebola. One of the earliest outbreaks of the virus in Sudan was linked to a cotton factory filled with the animals. Professor Hart said: "This is another piece in the jigsaw. It is good to know where this virus comes from, and it might help us to get some idea about the diversity of different strains. "But whether it will enable us to do anything about the virus is another matter.
"Ebola tends to amplify itself through the great apes, so the best way to avoid infection is to avoid contact with them."

Dr Dilys Morgan, of the Health Protection Agency, said bats appeared to harbour many viruses that were posing a growing threat to man. For instance, they have been implicated as the natural reservoir for the recently discovered nipah virus, which also produces deadly fever. "Bats are long lived, highly gregarious animals, and there is a suspicion that they may have modified immune systems which we don't fully understand that can harbour these viruses," she said.

Dr Morgan said humans were coming into increasing contact with bats because agriculture was encroaching into territories where the creatures traditionally thrived.

The Chamorro people of Guam loved the taste of flying foxes. An American military presence in Guam suddenly made guns more available, and therefore made the delicious giant fruit bats more available too. After downing a flying fox, an aboriginal resident of Guam would drop the whole thing unskinned into a pot of boiling milk. In an hour or so, soup was on. But every scrumptious spoonful was causing cumulative poisoning.

Primitive, fern-like trees called cycads grow on Guam and neighboring islands. These plants produce brightly-colored fruits that often contain neurotoxins. The native peoples ate the seeds, but were wise to the danger, and they therefore washed the seeds thoroughly. The bats, however, were not so discriminating. They ate the fruits with relish, accumulating toxins in their flesh. And then the Guamians ate them. After downing enough bats, these people started showing tragic symptoms of a new disease christened ALS-PDC. The syndrome was a ghastly amalgam of Alzheimer's-like dementia, ALS-like slow paralysis, and Parkinson's-like shaking. Eventually the disease became the leading cause of death among the adult Chamorro people.

Then just as suddenly, new cases of the disease stopped happening. Turns out that the native bats had been hunted to near-extinction, and different species were being imported from Samoa and other places where no cycads grew. The origin of the disease wasn't worked out until years later, so it remained a deep mystery for decades. The answer was over their heads the whole time– they merely needed to look up to that leathery flapping sound.

After all of this, bats need a friend. Hug them but don't eat them.

My boyfriend and I discussed the connection between Ebola, Sars and humans who eat bats. He believed that they would not have gotten these diseases if they had properly cooked the bats. This makes sense but I wondered if this the entire issue. I did some research and called my mother, an infection control practicioner.

Apparently cooking properly does not kill all viruses and bacteria. There are some strains that can survive at high temperatures. The people who eat bats apparently do/did cook them properly but nevertheless contrived diseases from them anyway. The CDC and other such specialists theorize that the people contract the diseases BEFORE cooking. It's not like the people of the Congo and Guam go out and buy their bats form the local grocery store butcher. "Yes, I'd like that fruit bat there", they say to the Kroger worker, pointing to a plastic and styrofoam wrapped critter at $2.59/lb. People who eat bats are down at the food's level. They actually go out and catch the bats, and come into contact with the animal's feces, mucus, blood, etc. while the animal is alive and/or before it is cooked. Therefore even if they eat the bats, they contracted the disease prior to eating. The sick person then spreads the disease to other people.

Woo's Tongue

My sister, nicknamed Woo, has the
longest tongue east of Texas. I have always
known of the peculiar length of her tongue but it was brought to my attention again earlier today. I was sitting next to her at the kitchen table, feeling low, but drinking a glass of delectable pinot noir.

I said something about her wine tasting notes and she stuck her tongue out at me. It's really long and she can make it very pointed.

Since her college days she has been able to perform parlor tricks at parties with her tongue; you know, tieing cherry stems in a knot, undoing buttons and such.

While daydreaming about her tongue I imagined it attacking me like in some horror flick. I and a date would be watching the horror film and already on edge when the pink glistening muscular monster would come sliding up the back of the chair and then into my hair. I would scream and run from the theatre.

What is rejection?

Emotional rejection is a feeling of sadness and disappointment one feels when overtures of friendship or romantic affection are not reciprocated. Feelings of rejection are commonly related to an unfulfilled quest for emotional relations, such as, but not limited to romantic involvement or peer acceptance. A person may feel rejected due to a specific act or acts targetted to indicate that the person or group was rejecting the person.

The actual rejection of person implies that a person does not wish to be involved with that person, either in a particular way or at all. There are innumurable reasons for this decision to have been made such as: lack of reciprocal interest, circumstances like marriage desire, societal codes or boundaries, desire to make the other person perceive difficulty ("playing hard to get") and fear of placing himself or herself in a situation of vulnerability.

The act of rejection can be passive in that a person may be unresponsive to act or request from the other person, but not actually take specific steps to indicate that the other person is rejected. Examples of such behaviour may include where the targeted person is not returning a phone call, an e-mail message, which the caller or sender interprets as them being rejected. Whether or not the action or inaction is done purposely to reject someone, the person who is requesting or expecting a response may perceive this event negatively. She may have negative thoughts about the reasons for the action or inactions of the other person, which focus on them being motivated by a desire to reject the other person. For example, such thoughts may include: "He is refusing to return my call because he doesn't like me," or "I don't matter, that is why she hasn't responded," etc. There may of course be reasons which are unrelated to the person who feels rejected as to why their message has not been responded to, other than this act being indicative of a desire to reject another.

The feeling of rejection (whether based in fact or on false beliefs) can make the person experiencing it undergo a grief response, upon learning or believing that their anticipatory desire has been dashed. This emotional response to rejection can manifest itself as symptoms ranging from a vague sadness to major depression. The rejected person may have feelings of helplessness, perceiving that he or she is at the rejecting person's mercy and/or limited by their own inadequacies of remedying the problem of rejection. The depth of feeling or the emotional impact felt as a result of the rejection may tangibly demonstrate the importance of the subject that one party feels has rejected them.

People avoid or cope with rejection in various ways. For example, they may wish to correct this situation and to bring the rejecting person or group within their control, or to address the feelings about this person and make them less unmanageable. Composing poems or drafting unsent letters is is a relatively innocuous way of dealing with feelings of rejection. Destructive responses include stalking or forcibly abducting the rejecting person. Specialist medical intervention may be needed for persons who experience deep feelings of rejection, as they may lead to or exarcebate more serious psychiatric illnesses.

these nugatory paper words

by Drewe Raine

These nugatory paper words
Are like of bottle of zinfandel all to myself.
A letter to a lover,
Who no longer wants to hear from me.
Oblivion, the only outcome.
Sense and logic hide away

These nugatory paper words...
Exactly what the helI is really going on here?
Self-destruction
Self-negation
Self-doubt.
Each decision
Hides behind a screen
Of self-deception.

To my love, I scream.
A scream that comes
From where my heart
No longer operates
As hearts should.
'Tis no wonder
That you cannot find a way
Of coming to me
Acceptable
To either of us.

Still I scream, miss you,
And go fucking haywire
In the meantime.
So much have you hurt me.
I hate myself
For letting you destroy me
In this way.

Despite
The pain of what you are doing,
Of rejection, of indefinite forbearance with usury interest,
The abject surrender of my soul, of our love,
I still feel we could have
A love eternal,
Stable, strong, enduring.

Despite
The denial of your own confused internal monologue
Of who is worth the effort
To accommodate.
And who is right and who is wrong
And who is who.
I still cannot deny the depth of feeling that I yearn for you.

Now,
Alone
Unloved.
I fear you will not have us be
Or you would be telling me
Words of deep import
And sense and love
In your own way...

These nugatory paper words
belong to me on 3:23 a.m.
Thursday night when only the crazoids roam.
I'm on my knees here once again, love.
I am begging for a clue
To reach your place within
Where you can sift the many particles of our sandy existence.

Are these mere nugatory paper words?
Love, dedication, commitment, marriage,
Words that mean more than
The dictionary admits.
Bits of magic?
Or are they everyday bullshits
With which we kid ourselves?
Nonsense filling both our heads?

Still the hope within me burns
Like acid at this late hour.
My stomach writhes and twists
For I have hope despite my screaming id.
It seems to me that something
Outside me
Keeps you from seeing that
I want to love you like no other.
Perhaps an enemy of love within you
Dwelling like a demon possessor.
Not in me darling for I can say with precision
That I have been prepared for one
Parent and child of Annus Mirabilis
To live with you and be thy love.
As Christopher Marlow’s passionate shepherd
Plead, "if these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my Love".

I extended and offered my tiny
Left hand for you to take.
That you might love me enough
To slide a kiss of gold.
I extended and offered my tiny
Left hand for you to take
Accompanied by hesitant recalcitrant
Words of litany, devotion and supplication.
Yet you suddenly, horribly, endlessly,
Rebuffed, denied,
Vetoed my Groveling plea.
"Not yet, not soon, not known".
You said.
"If you must have that kiss of gold
I shall but withdraw my advance
For such ring would blind my young
And handcuff me at a cruel distance."

No balance to bear.
A strike suffers the sifting particles.
Has my quintessential desire for
you to accept the offered hand,
Beat us, pushed us?
Where every touch and word was full of doubt and demons?
Cast these demons out!
Sift the particles once again.
Weigh them, feel them, see them.
I am among.

These nugatory paper words
Like a bottle of zinfandel all to myself.
Now drunk with them.
These words here are mere nugatory paper words
But they dwell deep within my mind and heart.
Oh my love, the words worm their
Mealy, evil selves throughout my
Internal organs.
Consuming, tunneling passages
Big enough for a congregation
of nightcrawlers to gather.
Their slinking, slithering, burrowing
Shall continue until all channels merge
To form one enormous unsupported room
Like the echo chamber of our playground.
And the walls and ceiling
Of my heart, body, mind and soul
Will come tumbling into a vast emptiness
Called Me.

I beg of you, Love.
Take reflection upon these nugatory paper words.
And accept my offer without novation.
Don’t throw me away.
Don’t sift my particles away from the sand of your existence.
I am ready to repudiate any
Sins of mine.
That prevent you from trying me anew.

These are nugatory paper words.
But only you can take away the pain.
Without their countenance
Watch me crumble
Into the gutter.
Forgotten and washed away.
Don’t leave a bloody mess of tears
And broken pieces in your wake.
It’s not too late.
Nugatory paper words
Are occasionally,
If heeded,
The perfect insecticide
For killer boring
Fatal bearing worm words.

Nugatory paper words
Could save us all
If heeded.

Medical stuff