Varied Musings

Do I feel like stringing cohesive thoughts into a loose narrative today? No. No I do not. Ergo… random pics it is.

The extra deep sill I had installed on this window ensures they’ll save a place for me in cat heaven, just in case I don’t make it into human heaven. Nice to know I have a backup plan.

I found a box in my husband’s closet I hadn’t gone through the other day- 4 sim cards in a bag and 5 old phones. Two of the phones powered on, and I’ve been able to save photos off of them to my google drive. I have also ordered chargers for the other two and a sim card reader. Memories snatched from the void. Five videos of him playing on 6th street with his cousin, back in the day amongst them.

I also found his second journal/song book- where he’d write random thoughts and work on song lyrics and wonder about the future. I had wondered where that one was. This particular one was from 2003 to 2014. (I have the one before that and the one after that already.) Looking through it was bittersweet- here was my love and the creation of songs I heard him play many times over the years. I shared the entries he wrote for both of our older girls the night they were born with them- their father loved them so much. And there are funny turns of phrase he liked and some drawings and other things too. He also wrote my name, with its new last name, on a page margin the month after we got married. He loved me as much as I loved him, and he made that so obvious to the world. How lovely it all was.

It was just so good to “see” and “hear” him again, you know? It has also made me really sad, but its okay, it isn’t like a new weight. It’s just the same ol’ weight getting pulled out of my pocket to stare at closely and run my fingers over again. I’ll slip it back in my pocket soon. It is all okay like that. Or alright. Whatever the worse one is… as I used to say.

Anyway.

It also has his entries from the last cluster headache cycle he ever went through, and so there in “real time” is the record of us curing him with psychedelic psilocybin mushrooms. And let me just say… he HATED mushrooms with such a passion. He could not get over the body feel of them, and it seems unfair that so many people do them for fun and he had to take them and hated it. He has MANY entries of bitching about it. One of those things you just have to shake your head at in this silly ol life, you know?

I always thought it was funny- I’d have to shoo him outta the house with a 6 pack of beer to go fishing or camping to make taking his medicine palpable.

I did find this truly hilarious entry though:

Looks like it took less than two and a half hours, on the medicine. Good to know, for the science and all.

The handwriting, the sentiment… I literally did laugh out loud when I saw it.

They never came back, his cluster headaches. From that one entry in August 2013 until the day he died in May of 2024 he never had another full blown cluster headache. So his toast up there before he took his dose? Totally called it.

I love him so much, that one, you know? I wish I could just reach through the page at him, there on the other side of it, holding that red pen.

There are memes and such you see floating around the grief-o-sphere online saying “what do I do with all this love now that they are gone? Where do I put it?” And I’ve always thought that was ridiculous. You put it exactly in the same spot you did before they died.

I hope it lights up his sky over there, all the love I send him, filtering though the prism between these worlds. I’d like to think it does.

We shall leave grieftown soon and return to silliness, but allow me just one more brief stop here before we do…

That feels very apt, as it pertains to this unexpected life. I am resolved to be riveted and spellbound by it, whatever it is that it turns out to be and in spite of it all.

I shall never hide my 18th century poet heart through all of this. And I shall allow all it’s various loud yearnings to spill forth into the world, forever. (~threat~)

Back to silliness.

My 16 year old honest to god checked with me first and asked if this was too mean to post… and I had to remind her the cat doesn’t have Instagram nor can read.

She is hilarious. I laughed and reposted it with lightening speed.

I wonder if his scrawny, street cat mother knows how bad and fat he ended up? I assume she’d be thrilled.

Some memes and then that’s it for today.

I have nothing but respect for artists and musicians, even if they don’t appeal to my taste; because at least they are out there and DOING THE THING while so much of humanity spend their lives doing nothing and sitting on the sidelines.

Not Andy Warhol though.

Andy Warhol is the WORST.

The way this has wedged itself in my brain, you know?

God we should all have a bit (or bits) like this- it makes living palpable.

I have two.

Bit one- whenever a cashier asks me if I’d like a bag (if I don’t need one) I respond: “No, no. Save the plastic trees.” Not one has ever even really smiled. I will never stop doing this.

And bit 2: When a waiter asks if I have any allergies I reply: “Only jazz and napkin rings.” They are never, and I mean NEVER, amused by this.

I retired a third bit years and years ago, but rest assured I enjoyed it for a good long time before I hung it up. Ages ago when I’d order a mixed drink at a bar and I was asked what liquor I wanted it made with I’d reply: “Your finest well vodka please…” or whatever liquor the drink I was ordering required. I had to retire that one because one bartender kinda laughed one time, and also I grew out of drinking cheap, garbage liquor.

I have ALWAYS been a quirky 78 year old man in a sweater vest, tottering through life, turns out- even when I was a 20 year old in a halter top using a fake ID on 6th street in Austin. Even then.

The small joys in life.

Speaking of joys: there is a VERY specific glee I get to the most random historic references in memes… they just light me up. Maybe the best example of this: