Comment complications

Several people have inquired as to why I am not posting their comments.
I have posted and enjoyed every comment that I have received and I really appreciate all the support.
There is some kind of error with the comments that I am not sure how to fix at the present.

If you have sent a comment and thought I was not posting it on purpose, I am very sorry.
You can always e-mail me at incongruently@gmail.com and I will attach it every time. Promise.

David

Conflict

It was so loud and ear splitting that birds flew up in a clamor from their comfortable perches in the trees, rising in great squawking swarms that ominously blackened the sky like a huge cloud passing in front of a swollen red sun. The entire neighborhood ran to their windows to nervously peek from behind the safety of closed blinds or up from the protection of dense shrubs, around thickets of trees and through the cracks of wooden fences - a couple of the very boldest and bravest of them even daringly walked, with obvious strained caution, towards the commotion and the violence. Mothers tightly grasped their small children in their confused and nervous panic - while fathers herded their families behind them in a protective stance.  The bloodcurdling screams of death, pain and determination ran like chills of icy cold water through the trembling bones of every man, woman and child within earshot – and earshot was as wide as a mile. What they witnessed would dramatically change their lives forever. What they witnessed was nothing short of war. 

Regardless the natural passivity of a personality, there will come a time when the only appropriate action is conflict. The greatest stories of conquest and heroism arise from the everyday-man’s instinctive animal ability to dig deep within his soul and the recesses of his mind to tap the necessary fight-or-flight adrenaline in order to perform super-human feats in the face of impossible opposition.  I am not speaking of the crazy quests of Captain Ahab or the practiced and perfected moves of professional fighters. I am speaking of the rage that dwells within all of us. I am speaking of the animalistic ferocity that resides within the center of our entire being and once unleashed, will ravage and devour everything in its path. Seriously, I am talking about a lot of anger here (I hope that you are appreciating the effort).

The air was a wavy and dizzily stop motion home-made-film that only eyes pressurized by panic, anger and immense pain can produce - filled with water, mud, blood and shouts of rage and pain. I am screaming obscenities like mother-f-ing Samuel L. Jackson in every mother-f-ing movie that he has ever been in. I am demon possessed and filled with murder. I am as stealth and athletic as a turtle on its back (with a broken leg), screaming like a mad woman giving birth. I violently and spastically rolled towards my assailant, my attacker, my enemy. Fighting through the grip of a massive seizure brought on from falling and smacking my head on a rock; the pain of a busted and bleeding knee and a throbbing, freshly smacked and already kind of soggy noggin. I stretched out my left arm (my only working appendage) and gripped the very sharp stone that is now very slippery from head blood.

Summoning every ounce of strength - pulling as hard as possible against the restraints of nausea, fatigue, dizziness and pain, I laid into my foe with every fiber of my being. I was Thor's mighty hammer. I was the Hulk’s rage. I was an incredible dork that watches too many cartoons with his kids and should probably focus more on current events and environmental issues, but of course I find them both depressing and discouraging and I already have a hard enough time with depression issues without focusing on a crappy congress, bleak future and… Sorry, where was I? I was an angry, fairly gimpy and kind of crying just a little in a very manly way from the pain and frustration, badass ninja.

Several minutes later, after what felt like a three-hour battle, the yard lay in complete waste. I stood in the middle of carnage shaking from effort and hoarsely gasping from the cries of battle. A wreckage of lawn, dirt, brick, blood and pottery pieces littered the ground as if a bomb had exploded and left only me – just me standing and bleeding over my fallen enemy. My provoker and object of my hate lay dead at my feet. 

Slowly, and with caution, the neighbors approached to stare in wonder at the pitiful corpse that was broken, battered, gashed, twisted and grotesquely strewn across the yard. Waiting for the wild in my eyes to recede, my wife finally approached and touched my shoulder. “Do we need to go?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Are you really hurt?” she asked.

“I am alright. I just wish the neighbors would stop starring at me,” I answered.

“They have probably never seen anyone kill and mutilate a garden hose because it tripped them before,” she said.

“It didn’t just trip me! It was like the fourth time! The damn thing was possessed and needed to die! Look at my knee! It kept coiling up and…” etc, etc and on and on... I protested.

In the end, when all was said and done, I had succeeded in destroying the demon hose and alienating every single smiley-faced neighbor before I was eventually banned permanently from watering the yard (and from every movable appliance with a cord or hose attached). But sometimes late at night, when nobody is watching me, I still fight with hoses. Just kidding – I don’t do that anymore.

I am

When I was diagnosed with brain cancer, it was only a couple of days before chaos rushed forth from the recesses of everywhere to fill areas that felt like only just a few moments prior were occupied by extremely tangible and solid constructs of a reality that I manufactured from the artificial desires of success posters, and catchy clichés. Within the span of what felt like seconds, I was surrounded by an onslaught of confusing and foreign medical babble that stripped away the carefully crafted foundations that I had painstakingly built over a lifetime: I was once again a 13-year-old child that had just realized that death and mortality were a very real part of living and not a distant and unimaginable future to be dealt with by an older, and therefore… somehow… a wiser and calmly accepting man in possession of years of hard won knowledge and peace of mind; a man that truly lived and is ready to pass on . It is now unfortunately apparent though, that that was a romantic scenario that was never meant to be mine, because I am still too young.

The fabric of society, false in every sense of the definition, is easily understandable by even the simplest among us and is therefore worn as foolish gaudy and grotesque layers of protection against the cold harsh truth of our actuality. Adam Smith said, “With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches, which in their eyes is never so complete as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possess but themselves.” We are like greedy crows in search of shiny objects to occupy, distract and create a sense of purpose which in actuality exists only in the fact that we are incomplete and unprepared for the unknown reality that we must all face. And now stripped of all material pride and possessions, and without any braggart marks of opulence to provide for distracted focus of worth and comfort, I have been left naked and wanting for external warmth, because I am so cold.

Several times throughout the span of even the most trivial, mundane and average of existences, there will be a crumbling of the false material reality and moments of brief harrowing glimpses into the vast unknown and unanswered questions of purpose and reason. Our innate inability to comprehend the very nature of our own being and existence has caused us all to recede into the constructs of disillusionments of purpose that is based solely on weightless and unimportant goals of material for the sake of material alone. The reality of disease has poked holes into my artificial shelter of comfort and reminds me that I am but a small creature hiding from a massive and scary unknown. And like the rest of the world, when all material warmth has been shed, I stand in complete knowledge of nothing other than the fact that I am very alone.

Only the souls of the naïve and wide-eyed children have not yet learned to grasp the fear and mortality of the flesh and the solitude of being and can truly and simply stand free on the precarious periphery of the abyss and stare with wonderment and an honest appreciation of the world around them. This innocent appreciation begins to fade as we become old enough to ask questions that are impossible for us to realize. I honestly feel that the tasted fruit of sin was not any kind of knowledge in and of itself; it was instead the question of a knowledge that we could never completely fathom, let alone answer. I am now falling into that dark and unimaginable future that has eluded forever all of my repeated and restated grasping questions and empty reasoning. 

And here I am feeling still too young, so cold and alone…and I am really afraid. 

Childhood

When you get older, you sometimes look back at your childhood with a mixture of both nostalgia and regret. Lately, I have been thinking about my relationship with my sister and all of its complications. Our relationship has come a long way since our childhood and will probably continue to grow and become stronger as age, maturity and love closes the gap that can sometimes form during childhood.

I am the second oldest of five boys. My baby sister on the other hand, is the first oldest of one girl. I am not being cruel or sexist, that is just the breakdown of family dynamics when five boys precede the birth of the only girl: A mob of monkeys, a Faberge child, a worried and protective mother, all lead to separate and distinct childhoods. This is not to say that she was not loved: on the contrary she was loved immensely, just loved in a different kind of way and could not be included in any of our games or activities that required copious amounts of face punching, taunting, face punching, ridicule, face punching and nut kicking that I played with my brothers (it is a tradition of male siblings that pre-dates the written word, culture or even language and must be applied to the end of all games including ball, board, video, invented and yes, even Bible trivia).

Despite the best efforts of my parents our house resembled a tree house: We knocked out the window screens for easier access in and out of our rooms, tore apart our bunk beds to build forts, disassembled the shower doors to use the metal frames as ninja swords and built clever weapons with nails, screws, wiffle-ball bats and sawed off broom handles (great for nunchucks). By removing the wick from your mom’s giant decorative candles, securing a thick rubber band to the sides of the candle with wall tacks or wood staples and feeding a shish kabob skewer through the hole in the middle, you can create one of the world’s best dart guns and can launch a wooden dart at speeds and force that can penetrate through your brother’s jeans and at least 2 inches into his thigh allowing you to hit him right in his stupid face with your homemade smoke bomb while he is gasping from pain (smoke bomb constructed from a baby’s snot-sucker filled with Ajax and a bungee cord for quick retraction after poisonous face smacking).

You are probably wondering where my sister was during all of our super cool, and mom approved by the way, games of boyhood innocence and tolerance exploration/exploitation (So is my mom at this point). Well, I will solve this mystery and at the same time successfully prove that we were not complete monsters that would endanger our baby sister and risk her becoming injured or even merely included in our too dangerous for girls excuse for not wanting to play with girls in our games. We kept her safely locked away in the closet or some drawer or something, I think.  I don’t remember, but she was safe for sure, I think… Oh, I should tell you that probably the most fun thing that we did was our tennis ball gun that required just a couple of soda cans, hairspray, a tennis ball and some matches… Forgot about my sister – I will call her later today and ask her where it was that we safely kept her so that you can stop worrying.

Back to the story about my childhood and something.

My youth was sort of a medley of Stand by Me, To Kill a Mocking Bird, and Lord of the Flies. On any given day we could usually be found running around and playing barefoot in the hills or orange groves behind our house and surprisingly often our days ended with poking something dead with a stick (honestly, I am not sure why there were so many dead things around our house – thank God my sister was safe). In both the hills and orange groves we had multiples of amazing forts built from what I can only assume to be donated materials and tools that were purposefully left unguarded at construction sites, the junkyard at Shafer’s Horse Ranch and my dad’s tool boxes and truck (he was always so excited to buy new tools and it made us happy to help – plus, it was totally worth the beatings ; ).  By the time we were finished, we had created the Ewok Village. It was the most amazing collection of tree forts ever assembled, complete with ladders (both wooden and rope), pulleys, decks, swings and precarious placed large boulders that were capable of crushing to death any intruders. When I talk about it with my sister, it is obvious that she would have loved it (I am always happy to let her vicariously enjoy the moments that made my childhood amazing and magical).

This post is going on forever. It feels like I am writing a book – I am not sure how to wrap it up. Do I keep talking about childhood stories of me and my brothers – like when we hit golf balls off our driveway with tennis rackets, or when my oldest brother tried to pee through a knot hole in the fence and got his penis smacked by the neighbor kid with a wiffleball bat? That literally ended in a puddle of laughs. Or maybe I should just apologize to my sister for the years of neglect, abandonment and indifference that she suffered at the hands of her older brothers. I am sorry…For real. Even though it was really mom’s fault when you think about it. Conscience cleared!

My Blog

When I started writing this blog, I did so in secret. I have never been confident in my writing abilities and was not sure that I even wanted anyone to know I was writing at all. Other than business memos and the occasional erotic suggestion letter slipped into the offering basket at church, I have never written anything outside of college. Only two weeks after starting this blog (and really only 3 days after announcing its existence), I have had over 1,000 views into my mental musings – all of them coerced and guilted by family and friends of course (I know that guilted is not a word by the way, but it should be). Now, like it or not, I am exposed and feel like I am butt-naked on an extremely well lit and very cold stage (I am way more impressive when it is warm AND you are drunk).

It is an odd and slightly stressful thing to post my thoughts into a public forum for all to view, and worse, consider. This blog is supposed to be some kind of therapeutic emancipation from the permanence and struggles of brain cancer – and possibly some kind of therapy for others with terminal illnesses as well (my guess is that I allow others to think, “I might be sick, but at least I am not that jackass writing this blog”). It has to be slightly amusing that in an attempt to mentally deal with a stressful and permanent condition I am choosing a medium that is also stressful and permanent (this blog is as visible and stylish as mouth herpes and I am only hoping that it will not be as enduring or have that bad herpes after taste either – you’re welcome for the image).

If you have been reading this blog, then you are either my mom (hi mom) or my wife (I know you’re shy, so I won’t say hi to you here in the open like this) and if this is your first time here, I can tell you honestly that this is as good as it gets - sorry. The truth is that I get really bored sometimes and I hate talking on the phone (actually, I don’t mind the talking, it is the listening part that sucks) and I do not want to start muttering to myself (any more than necessary, that is). 

If you have not read this blog, it is a fairly dull and snail paced account of how my life has slowly become a blend of different Michael Keaton movies. After surgery and during radiation treatments I looked and smelled just like Beetle Juice (we both looked like we smelled like pee). And now life resembles some sort of combination of My life and Mr. Mom (both movies are depressing and discouraging, but Mr. Mom makes you want to die and My Life makes you want to live). Either way, if I have to be living a Michael Keaton movie I’d rather be in Batman or Johnny Dangerously.

It’s my blog though, so I should probably just make something up or just word it better.

(Life Reworded)

This week I used my super human abilities to not only restrain a deranged and extremely angry middle-aged madman with a brain tumor from beating and choking to death a small annoying child and his damn dog that chews on everything (even though both child and dog really deserved it), I also valiantly destroyed several evil and malicious inanimate objects that were obviously trying to wound and/or kill me and my family (the evil toe stubbing chair leg, Satan's evil scatterings of small and very sharp toys, the demon possessed vacuum cord that continuously wraps itself around a man’s bad leg in an attempt to kill him and that stupid sliding rug have all finally met their match). Next I will figure out a way to destroy or at least seriously injure that damn slippery shower – maybe I will just smack some divots into the shower floor with a bat. Because I’m Batman… You know, because Michael Keaton was Batman and the bat shower thing – it’s not funny if I have to explain it.

Brain Cancer: A guide, part 1

Okay, so you have been diagnosed with brain cancer, now what? First off, let me be the one to say welcome to your new life of confusion, self-doubting, regret, weird physical disabilities and an unexpected and sizable quantity of humiliating examinations performed by copious amounts of strangers involving highly inappropriate and uncomfortable levels of fondling that leave you feeling dirty, exposed and simultaneously mentally exhausted from answering a constant barrage of questions that increase in difficulty, designed to strip what was left of your dignity and stamina - if you have read any of my other posts, you are aware that the questions mostly involve poop (yours). It could be worse though. If you were in a third world country, they would just beat you until the demon left your body (not sure if they make you answer questions about poop during the beatings, though my assumption is they can perform a visual examination after a few bashes of the demon stick).

You should be aware that you will get a ridiculous amount of support from a ton of sympathetic visitors the first year and especially the first couple months after the diagnosis. Do not feel guilty, swallow your pride and let them help you for the sake of your family – they (your family) have to put up with your grumpy ass and deserve the help. From experience, I can tell you that if you continuously turn people away, they eventually stay away and it is your own damn fault. Also, there are certain people that will not come to visit you because they are frightened by the situation, hospitals in general or because they just don’t like you (I do not know you, so I cannot make that call). But, I can tell you that the people that do not visit usually make good babysitters (because they (A) feel bad for not showing face or they (B) feel guilty for still not liking you – either way its a win-win).

Now you might be feeling depressed that you have brain cancer or you might actually feel just a little bit of relief from the affirmation that you are not crazy and in fact are actually sick (I was the later first and the first later, but that was before combining the two and eventually dropping the later again and accepting the first). After you have been diagnosed, everything should follow along in step with the way Hollywood has portrayed that it would. If it does not go exactly as you have been shown, then you are doing something wrong and you need to keep trying - remember that the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results (fortunately, your condition allows you to be insane if you choose). Once you have perfected being terminally ill, you will start to become enlightened and cannot be bothered by the mundane problems that used to plague your work-a-day life. At this point you should be able to give extremely sound advice that will change the way others live their lives (give it a try, it is a lot easier to point and give directions then it is to actually move the furniture it turns out). Also, this is probably the opportune time to draw-up an unaccomplishable (another new word, you can use it) and absurd bucket list that someone else that loves you can complete after you have passed away. Tasks should include things like trekking the Gobi desert, dogsledding to the North Pole or (my favorite) rafting in the Appalachians.  If you do not have a missed dream to pass on and you love the people that love you, you can always invent something cool like going to Machu Picchu or killing a Zebra (mmm, high protein tasty cancer fighting exotic little people).

I am proud of you. That was a very long paragraph and you made it all the way through. This next part is important, so do not bail out yet. You should probably get something to drink or watch Fox News and let your brain rest.

*Intermission*

Welcome back. Are you ready? NEVER STAY OVERNIGHT AT THE HOSPITAL ALONE. You are not going to be a reliable witness if something happens with your treatment or narcotics, because you will most likely be on the narcotics in question (at this point you look and act like a homeless junky and people talk to you the way you talk to homeless junkies - and grand parents unfortunately). Most medical professionals are amazing and caring people, but not all. It is not a complicated task to fake the administration of a patient’s 3:00 AM dosage if there are no witnesses and the patient is highly medicated, possibly addicted and mentally clouded from an exhaustive surgery. So again, have a chaperone at all times – the best chaperones, by the way, are sleep deprived wives and mothers (your siblings, on the other hand, might remember the horrible things that you did to them when you were young, and therefore, can never be trusted).

Since you have brain cancer, that was probably a lot of information for you to absorb - brain cancer does not really have that much to do with it, but I do not want you to feel stupid because you have enough to worry about right now. Next week we will discuss the excitements of contracting cancer, losing your meticulously designed future, the art of re-planning, re-planning several more times again and then finally giving up.  See you then.