SGFE--Devil in the Details

I talked to Ricky on Skype today. I axed him if he still had the Fisher-Price toy called Warren Waters. Before we went to Az together, he was axing me for “a robot on a motorcycle,” and I really had no idea what it meant. Sth like The Terminator cop? A new toy I ain’t seen yet?
Well, when we got to Az, “Uncle” Steve had a gift waiting for him—Warren Waters, who looks like the Terminator in something like a space suit, on a quad. And it magically fit the bill--Steve had more or less bought it over another on a whim, uncertain that Ricky would like it and if he had made a good choice. Steve presented it and axed Ricky if he wanted it or if he should give it to sbdy else. He didn’t say anything, just pointed to his chest. That was his first communication w/ Steve; as he’s shy and kind of slow to warm up to and talk to new people. You couldn’t get that toy away from Ricky, and I was in a real panic when I started packing a month later and couldn’t find it immediately.
I been watching the show Hoarders on TV on Saturdays, my TV day. It’s about people with OCD who hoard things obsessively—food, animals, trash, whatever. The rooms in their homes are essentially inaccessible, not to mention unsafe and unsanitary. My own anxiety is high, even though talking to r on Skype helps. Maybe it has sth to do w/ being in a new sitchiashken. My first anxiety attack occurred in Midland, Tx, on the evening when my family had just moved there. I was fifteen. I was high as a kite on some pot my brother-in-law had shared with me and went out for a walk and got lost. Ever since then I have suffered with anxiety.
My anxiety takes different forms over the years. It started in sleeplessness due to thinking if I relaxed my heart would stop. When I was in the Navy it briefly morphed into thinking I had to say things I didn’t want to say to people; when I got out of the Navy I went thru a hand-washing phase. After I dropped out of grad school, I went through a long period of struggling with wanting to (or thinking I wanted to) give my life to Satan. Now my anxiety tends toward the bizarre impulses. I can’t really go into what my thoughts are like but look up the site bizarrethoughts.psych.org 2 see the kinds of bizarre kinds of things people can get completely obsessed on thinking they want to do.
Vie is now suing me for child support, and maybe I’m having more anxiety because of that, too. I been married ten years and I can tell you my marriage is the one area of my life where I have had the most difficulty finding coping tools. When she talks to me or writes to me and starts in abt my fault and her necessary reaction, I instinctively start fighting back but really have always felt that none of my words are the right thing to say. Abt half the time I mange to keep my mouth shut and reply later if sth sticks with me. On more than one occasion V threw things (sometimes at me) and pushed me and yelled at me or beat on me and backed me into a corner. I knew I could floor her with one punch and when I noticed myself making a fist involuntarily, I knew that was not good.

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If you have your guitar now, the best thing to get started playing a few licks is to go online—you tube, etc.—and look for some vids of steel guitar. Practice them and you will immediately get some satisfaction. Also practice dampening the notes after you have played them--with the edge of your hand is best. Buying a book to help you is a whole other story—the reason you are reading this is because there aren’t any good generally-available instructional books out there on your instrument of choice.

SGFE--Remove All Jewelry

I took my wedding band off three weeks ago and still miss it, like my finger is naked, though that feeling is diminishing. I guess I took it off to hasten the process of divorce. If a woman sees me ringless and is interested, and I am interested, I would more quickly finalize the process, or so I think. But in Poland they wear their wedding rings on the right hand. So IF I wore it here, chicks might not even know that I was married. Maybe I should get dressed.
I was planning on going square dancing, too. That was one of the things I really wanted to do when I couldn’t do it overseas. I also watched Star Trek, the original series while overseas, sth I would never do while Stateside. I don’t know what kind of people I’d meet at a square dance, and maybe it would be awkward. When my dad was going through his first divorce, from my mom, he went to live with his parents too, and so did my mom with her parents. My dad’s parents, Church of Christ people, told him he couldn’t stay there if he was going to dance. But when he was on his own, he took it up w/ his new wife and they enjoyed it for a few years. In the Church of Christ, smoking and drinking weren’t allowed at all, but three of my grandparents’ four kids were alcoholics and all four were smokers. It didn’t take.
I been thinking abt how much I drink—usually two or three beers, exactly, every night. When I say two or three, I really mean that. It is not a phrase I use to hide a larger number. I guess I’m telling on myself. I used to homebrew, so I could produce great low-alcohol ales, but now I can’t do that and am consequently consuming more alcohol. I think even if I drink low alc stuff it affects my memory, but I can’t say no to it.
I will eventually get set up to homebrew again, as I suppose it is better for me and my growing waistline.
But I guess I didn’t tell you that as far as getting my own place goes, I only have abt one month to do it, and right now I have zero means of doing that.
Here’s a poem I wrote a couple of months ago about the frustrating search for a job.

The Psalm

Does he really care
When you got no job or
Income, have been giving
Everything to him?

Does he give two hoots
And a holler
Abt anything more’n
Food & clothing, with
With which we must be content?

What abt ale?
A good dark French roast?
The decadent snack?

WWJD? It’s a hypothetical
Question and has no real answer

He had no fierce wife
But had his Judas,
The pilfering prick.
Imagine what a satisfying
Relationship that was

It’s enough just to
Be like him—that’s
The answer to every
Situation he’s never been
in but you are.

I guess I have to pull
This psalm out of
Its similar tailspin and say
It’ll all work out.

After all they wasted nard,
Didn’t they?

Steve, who has a published essay and takes poetry writing classes says it needs tightening up. I wasn’t thinking abt jobs when I quoted me, but rather a place to stay.
Job-wise, I went to a public-school teacher certification orientation meeting today, and it looks good to go for that. Because I am fifty, I have my own personal counselor and can apply for a scholarship. Because I have expertise in two areas—teaching ESL and literature—I can sell myself as a teacher in residence and get work soon, as I am getting my ed. reqs out of the way. So that psalm may have to now be used to think abt a place to live.
I picked up my wedding band and put it on briefly and took it off again. I’m feeling less and less naked.

SGFE--Stepdad Voice

I got a wireless router and now can go online and talk to and look at my son. It’s almost like meeting with him, really helps w/ the feelings of anxiety and the vague desire to hop on a plane to Poland. He just sits in front of the camera and plays mostly, and we talk too. The first time was 90 min. He was building things with scrubber sponges and asking me to count the sponges. Everything he built he subsequently proclaimed to have exploded. Three sponges made a car; two made a bridge, etc.

His mom—Vie—is furious that I sent her some links to computer games for r:

Thank you for ruining my weekend because of those games. We were doing fine without your suggestions for the time being. Ricky was watching dvds and I could work on computer with my promotion paperwork which I ve got only a week to finish and during the week days I can do hardly anything. There is no peace at home: crying, screaming and frustration at home even being overseas you can ruin everything and don't talk to ricky about you coming for Christmas if you are not sure for 100% because the kid doesn't hear the word "maybe" this way you do harm to him and yourself if it appears that you can't come and at the end somehow everything will be my fault.Please first ask me without Ricky hearing about things...

Stepdad brought me up short again. He is going to Poland himself for two weeks to help a local church with its addiction recovery program. I wished him a safe trip and told him to say hello to Poland for me.

“You don’t miss anything from there, do you?” “Sure, I do,” I replied. “Like what?” “A place of my own.” “You can get that anywhere,” he wished. “I miss my son.” “Of course. That’s to be expected.” “But you never really got into the people and the culture there.”

I don’t know what I said but fumed on the bus and couldn’t get anything written to you. So I had to send him this email:

Chuck, That kind of hurt my feelings when you said that I never really got into the people and culture of Poland. I feel that you think I must have arranged to leave there because I was fed up with the place. It needs to be said over and over that I tried to stay. It also needs to be said that I do speak Polish. It is a difficult language to acquire (category 4 of 5 in difficulty for English speakers), but I regularly did and my Polish wife, despite her early promise, would not usually help me at doctors’ or dentists’ offices, stores, businesses, etc., and I got by. As far as integrating fully into Polish culture goes—no, I chose to retain my Americanness. I was an ambassador of my culture and language there, and think I did pretty well at it. Viola’s final complaint was my lack of use of Polish in the classroom—which really went against my training as a teacher.

I also feel that it’s not quite right to say that I don’t miss anything from there. I miss my great students, my great friends, long winter nights inside a warm home, a change of seasons, my church family, and some things that Europe just does better than America. There’s no place like home (here) though and it’s good to be here, except for being away from Ricky.

I feel like there is a lot unsaid between us and I don’t like that. I’m sorry that I’m not finding the job you want me to and will try to listen to any suggestions you have and hope that you will communicate that to me. I am still applying for jobs as I become aware of them, and in the mean time I am trying to get subbing going. I pray that you have a fruitful time in a place I wish I could visit with you.

Your stepson, Rick

Well, dear reader, at least you can see that I said what needed to be said. In personal encounters, I never seem to say all I want in any attempt at communication. I read in Psychology Today once that that is the way it is w/ everyone. But at least I did say those things. I had the huevos. Thank you, O Communicator. One down, a lifetime’s worth of relationships to go.

SGFE--Getting Started and Experimenting

Word. It has been a while since I talked to you.

I’ve been playing a lot more steel guitar. By now, since you may have started reading this blog because you are learning steel guitar, you may be wondering how to get started. That would really be funny, because anyone who was looking for such information here would probably have given up long ago. But here is some advice for starters.

I would buy a simple instrument to get started if I were you. I bought mine on Amazon for a mere $79, including shipping. It’s a Rogue EA-9. It has six strings and it’s a lovely deep metallic blue. But you will need a slide and fingerpicks too, the kind that you put onto your fingers. Metal ones are best—a steel guitar is an electrified instrument which depends on amplification and definite plucking. I have a plastic thumb pick, metal on my index and middle fingers, which do most of the plucking; and for some songs I have to put a plastic one on my ring finger.

You must have a slide, though you could use your fingernails instead of the finger (and thumb) picks, but again it’s back to the noise you need to produce and whether you could stand having long fingernails.

You’ll also need a small amplifier—a 12”x12” one can be had for as little as $20.

More on the would-be-subject of this book later.

The train is really full today. I can’t even get to my backpack in order to check my notes abt what to write. I gave the address of this blog only for the second time—I’m so nervous abt what would happen if Chas or Vie seen it.

The other day I wrote some things in ink on toilet paper then flushed it. Those things had to do with what I needed prayer for: relationships and my bizarre obsessive compulsive disorder impulses. I suppose my anxiety is flaring up due to my being away from Ricky. That is the one thing in my life that cannot be easily amended. The other day—I talk to r on Mondays and Fridays—he said to me, “I’m tired of being by myself, Daddy.” That’s his way of saying he misses me. That hurt. I regularly wonder if I should just change my December return ticket to Poland to tomorrow and just get on a plane.

Being away from r is like OCD. Throughout my day, I regularly remember that I’m not with my son. It is a continually alarming thought, which asks for action but doesn't specify one. Anxiety is that way because if you have a compulsion, say, to mentally keep your heart rate up in order to ensure that it don’t slow down ‘n’ stop, you regularly catch yourself as “not working on it” and panic abt it.

I can’t give my blog address out because there is swearing (most of my friends and family are Christians) and personal names are mentioned. So no one might ever read this. Also, too, I feel like I rely on gimmickry instead of just good writing. I did the same kind o’ writin’ on one cover letter I submitted for a post as a “creative” teacher. Hell, in this job market, no one is going to read your resume seriously unless it stands out from the din:

Subj.: Job-winning cover letter?
Please consider my smoking/ resume as a radical, some times goofy English teacher. I have had to prepare all my own lit. materials and go balls to the wall in teaching (no, I would never talk like that in class.). I often die in class and demand nothing less of my students. I done ( I listen to too much country music—but don’t teach THAT kind of English) gobs of ESL teaching. In proper ESL teaching the teacher must make the students the star of the show: the teacher don’t (Co. music) have the answers—the students do. The jump from teaching ESL grammar to native-speaker grammar is easily achieved. Thanks for reading this. May I direct your eyes below?

I didn’t get that job. Screw ‘em if they can’t take a joke. May I direct your eyes above?

SGFE--All the World's a Stage

Boy am I tired. But the show must go on. Not used to working, I guess. The Arizona heat don’t help.

I have been away from here for abt 13 years, except for “vacations,” and it seems like I see more and more wierdos. The guy across from me on the train is wearing a rosary around his neck. Are those things necklaces? On the way here, I seen this 55 or so year old sun-scorched woman wearing a pink tube top on a bmx bike. I can really people watch on the train. Arizona around here is such a mix of glitz and crap. We really want to show the world that we’ve got sth, but it’s all facade. The buildings are mostly throw-away. Having said that, there is plenty of southwestern culture that needs no spaghetti. I saw another girl who was dressed in a long dress that was some sort of flower print on a black background, the upper part of the dress ending in an orangeish tube top. It was too nice looking a dress for the out of place frisbee she was carrying, but it didn't bother me. I sometimes wear cowboy boots with shorts. It's a fashion statement. The leg of a cowboy boot is decorative and therefore should be seen. I don't need earrings and studs and tatoos--if I feel I need to stand out, I just wear my standard jeans shorts and don the boots. One woman spotted it at a movie theater--I was seeing Monsters vs. Aliens w/ r. "Gross," she said.

I can’t decide on a voice, and you are not helping. I guess if I had sth good to write, I wouldn’t need gimmicks like abbreviations and contractions and ain’ts and she-don’ts, etc. My grandma, from Mississippi, talks like that, and she don’t even know she’s doing it.

The new job is ok. It’s only part-time, and I’m trying to get into public school sub teaching too. My step-father thinks I ought to be looking into other work too. So, yesterday, as HE was leaving to substitute teach, he asked me if I was done job searching for the day. I didn’t plan on searching that day, I said. I can’t really write what I feel about that. Not true. If I said, “screw him,” it wouldn’t really capture how I feel. I guess I WANT to say the worst that I could say, but it ain’t always true. I’m watching A Love Song for Bobby Long, and in that movie, people say things the way they want to say them. I guess I can’t do that, tho it’s soitenly a goal to shoot for.

Those two ¶s are all abt me finding my voice, I now see.

I finished A Love Song. I still don’t talk like Dr. House and say whatever the fuck is on my mind (laugh, as if one movie would change me). Shame. This morning, Chas (step-dad) was bringing in a computer which had been in the shop for repair. “Did they fix it,” I axed. “That’s why I was bringing it in,” he said. “Duh,” he implied, “you’re stupid, and I have other issues, some of which center around you.”

I’m supposed to be writing abt Ricky and what those wonderful days of the month with him were like. I’d better get started on ‘em. We—Steve, me and r stayed up every night until 2 am. R and I were sleeping on the fold-out couch. I would wake up first, feeling proud to be the “early bird,” at abt 10:30 am. You may think it’s criminal keeping a kid up that late, and I would not disagree. I tried to put him to bed earlier a couple of nights and he just lay there for 1 ½ hrs., requesting endless drinks, snacks and trips to the bathroom. So from then on he would stay up w/ us watching Adult Swim, me trying to edit content by changing the channel or asking him a question or commenting on sth he was doing at the controversial moments to distract him.

It was hard getting Rick to eat American food. I had this wild idea that Apple Jacks would be a no brainer for a kid’s breakfast. Wrong. Kraft Macaroni and Cheese? Try again. Coke and endless ice-cream from the well-stocked freezer? Sure!

After breakfast, it was time to go swimming, the last thing in the world I wanted to do. Swim in the direct heat of the day in Tempe, Arizona, in the hottest part of the day, 115 degrees? Not. But what are you going to do if you have no real reason not to say no? I kept it to a 20 minute minimum, though. When we started swimming, he couldn’t. While here, people kept supplying him w/ pool toys, all of which helped him. When he had a squirt gun in his hand, he would swim to me, first 10 feet, then the breadth of the pool. He would not let go of the gun, tho, and he would not swim to me w/o it. Eventually he could swim like a frog the length of the pool. When I told my step-dad abt it, he didn’t think it was much of an achievement, but I thought it was great. We often swam in the eves, too.

I prayed in that water too. I don't know why it is that when I get in water I start praying.

Aftns we would do whatever our hands or butts found to do. The first day we went to the local park and he ran around through the sprinklers—first time in his life. We watched a ton of Spongebob and Yo Gabba Gabba! We also went to Del Taco. R liked to sit on the rides even though I didn't have a quarter to operate them.

I’m not sure there is anything else to describe abt the month. Maybe I’ll think abt sth else for the next entry.