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Showing posts with label Meredith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Meredith. Show all posts
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Saturday, April 21, 2007
What I really mean: I wish you were here.
Despite being a 30-year old man, silly little things really freak me out sometimes. Like David Cronenberg's film The Brood, about a genetically engineered breed of mutant, murderous little kids who hide in people's kitchen cabinets and jump out and attack them when they least expect it. After watching that movie, everytime I came home from anywhere, I had to check all of my cabinets and closets, usually with my boyfriend on the phone with me, just in case I were to be attacked. I'm not sure what he could have done through the telephone, but at least someone would know. He was patient with me, despite sighing and saying, "Ryan, you're almost a thirty-year-old man." This went on for about a week.
When I was a little kid, one random day my pet dog decided to stand at the threshold of the bathroom, stare up at the light fixture and bark and growl incessantly at it. But if you tried to coax him into the bathroom (or worse, push him in there), he would freak out and run away, only to return some time later and resume his barking without ever actually going into the bathroom. This lasted about 3 days, and my entire family was, of course, convinced that we were being visited by some kind of poltergeist or ghost. As a child it both enthralled and terrified me, and despite not having any real feelings one way or another on God, ever since then I have been a firm believer in the supernatural. You know, they say animals can sense this stuff, and they know, and they do their best to protect you (like bark and growl at the bathroom, and try to warn you not to go in there). I don't know what an evil spirit would have wanted in our home, and why they wouldn't bother to wreack (sp?) anymore havoc than tormenting our dog, but there you go. I'm convinced it was real.
I hadn't thought about this in a long time, until last night. It was my seventh night of house-sitting for Kurt and Meredith, and thus far, I've been surprisingly comfortable in their home, and not at all freaked out by stuff at night. It helps having a hyper, noisy dog around to keep the bad guys away.
Or, to completely freak you out and convince you there's a ghost in the doorway of the bedroom.
I got home late from work last night (around 11) and did my usual nightly activities (showering, pouring some wine, and settling in to a big comfy chair to read a bit before bed), leaving Ruby (the dog) outside a bit longer before corralling her in for the evening.
When she came in, she immediately crawled up into her sleeping chair and laid her head down, but a moment later, suddenly jerked it up and began staring in the direction of the bathroom/bedroom. It was such a sudden movement that I noticed her doing it, so I watched her. She stared. She perked up her ears, without for a moment moving her eyes. I called her name, but she just glanced my way, then turned immediately back towards the bathroom/bedroom.
She had a chew toy between her paws so I picked it up and threw it in the direction of the bedroom/bathroom to see if she would go get it (as she always, always, always does). She didn't.
Chills went over my entire body.
Finally, after a moment, she slowly got out of the chair, meandered over to where the toy lay, hesitated a moment, then picked it up and trotted back over to me.
I tossed it again, and this time she went to get it, but about two feet in front of it, stopped and continued to stare at the bedroom door.
She slowly walked towards it, picked it up, and walked back over to me.
I swear to God, she turned around, actually turned her head, to look back at the door.
I wasn't interested in performing any more experiments, and watched her behavior as she left the toy, crawled back up in her chair, laid down her head and went to sleep.
I read for a few more minutes to observe her behavior and try to take my mind off the fact that I might be attacked in the night by some unholy apparition lurking in the bedroom.
But eventually my fatigue got the best of me, and I braved my way to the bedroom, where I immediately regressed to childhood by covering my whole body, including my head, with the blankets. So, you know, the ghosts wouldn't find me.
I guess they decided to leave me alone, as I'm still here this morning, and Ruby is back to being her loud, rowdy self. But I haven't been that freaked out in a long time. It was the kind of freaked out where the hair stands up on your neck and your breathing gets shallow. I have chills now just writing it.
When I was a little kid, one random day my pet dog decided to stand at the threshold of the bathroom, stare up at the light fixture and bark and growl incessantly at it. But if you tried to coax him into the bathroom (or worse, push him in there), he would freak out and run away, only to return some time later and resume his barking without ever actually going into the bathroom. This lasted about 3 days, and my entire family was, of course, convinced that we were being visited by some kind of poltergeist or ghost. As a child it both enthralled and terrified me, and despite not having any real feelings one way or another on God, ever since then I have been a firm believer in the supernatural. You know, they say animals can sense this stuff, and they know, and they do their best to protect you (like bark and growl at the bathroom, and try to warn you not to go in there). I don't know what an evil spirit would have wanted in our home, and why they wouldn't bother to wreack (sp?) anymore havoc than tormenting our dog, but there you go. I'm convinced it was real.
I hadn't thought about this in a long time, until last night. It was my seventh night of house-sitting for Kurt and Meredith, and thus far, I've been surprisingly comfortable in their home, and not at all freaked out by stuff at night. It helps having a hyper, noisy dog around to keep the bad guys away.
Or, to completely freak you out and convince you there's a ghost in the doorway of the bedroom.
I got home late from work last night (around 11) and did my usual nightly activities (showering, pouring some wine, and settling in to a big comfy chair to read a bit before bed), leaving Ruby (the dog) outside a bit longer before corralling her in for the evening.
When she came in, she immediately crawled up into her sleeping chair and laid her head down, but a moment later, suddenly jerked it up and began staring in the direction of the bathroom/bedroom. It was such a sudden movement that I noticed her doing it, so I watched her. She stared. She perked up her ears, without for a moment moving her eyes. I called her name, but she just glanced my way, then turned immediately back towards the bathroom/bedroom.
She had a chew toy between her paws so I picked it up and threw it in the direction of the bedroom/bathroom to see if she would go get it (as she always, always, always does). She didn't.
Chills went over my entire body.
Finally, after a moment, she slowly got out of the chair, meandered over to where the toy lay, hesitated a moment, then picked it up and trotted back over to me.
I tossed it again, and this time she went to get it, but about two feet in front of it, stopped and continued to stare at the bedroom door.
She slowly walked towards it, picked it up, and walked back over to me.
I swear to God, she turned around, actually turned her head, to look back at the door.
I wasn't interested in performing any more experiments, and watched her behavior as she left the toy, crawled back up in her chair, laid down her head and went to sleep.
I read for a few more minutes to observe her behavior and try to take my mind off the fact that I might be attacked in the night by some unholy apparition lurking in the bedroom.
But eventually my fatigue got the best of me, and I braved my way to the bedroom, where I immediately regressed to childhood by covering my whole body, including my head, with the blankets. So, you know, the ghosts wouldn't find me.
I guess they decided to leave me alone, as I'm still here this morning, and Ruby is back to being her loud, rowdy self. But I haven't been that freaked out in a long time. It was the kind of freaked out where the hair stands up on your neck and your breathing gets shallow. I have chills now just writing it.
Sunday, July 02, 2006
I'm back
With mixed feelings. I'm happy to be home (and thrilled that it's been raining all day!), but I already miss Mexico. I can't wait to go back.
Kurt and Meredith picked me up from the bus stop at 7 this morning, and we had breakfast, then I came back to my new home, which I've been setting up all day. I took about a 5-hour nap this afternoon, but I'm thinking of going back to bed soon. I only slept about 2 hours on the bus, and the whole previous week, I'd been sleeping badly, so I guess I've got a lot of catching up to do. My bed felt so wonderful during my nap today. I love it.
Kurt and Meredith picked me up from the bus stop at 7 this morning, and we had breakfast, then I came back to my new home, which I've been setting up all day. I took about a 5-hour nap this afternoon, but I'm thinking of going back to bed soon. I only slept about 2 hours on the bus, and the whole previous week, I'd been sleeping badly, so I guess I've got a lot of catching up to do. My bed felt so wonderful during my nap today. I love it.
Thursday, June 15, 2006
Adelante
In relation to Meredith's blog entry the other day, I have another question to sort of add to it.
If, as she says, the search for relief from your suffering is ultimately what relieves it, and not, so to speak, a specific cure, can the same thing be said for wisdom? If there is no cure for your suffering and hopelessness, except to search for the cure, then is it also the ultimate in wisdom to finally admit that you know nothing? Can it be that the older you get, and supposedly the smarter you get, that ultimately you have to face up to the fact that you're a complete idiot? That you know nothing? That the black & white rules you lived by in your youth are now completely meaningless to you?
Is wisdom actually the subtraction of knowledge? Or pseudo-knowledge? The young think they know it all. They think they've got it all figured out. Maybe no one over the age of 22 should be allowed to be put into any position of importance whatsoever. Maybe the older we get, if we're truly honest with ourselves, the less we actually know. But we can only admit this because we know it to be true, which is its own sort of wisdom. So really, the accumulation of wisdom through age is really just an acknowledgement that life and people are just too complex and confounding to comprehend or decipher in any meaningful way.
We impart meaning to things because we have to. It is simply too painful to admit that maybe, just maybe, that relationship you were in that lasted for a year, or 2 years, or 8 years, and ultimately ended, in the end, meant absolutely nothing. For example. We can sit back and say, "Well, I certainly learned a lot from that," but what if what you learned isn't helpful? What if what you learned about yourself, or about the other person, or about people in general (is an "understanding" of collective behavior wisdom, or just a smoke-screen to keep from having to admit that people are just idiots and cowards?), is just terrifying and hopeless? What if what you learned is that when you fall in love you hate the person that you become? Does that mean your heart should close up shop because it's hopeless, or does it mean that you just fall for the wrong people, or does it mean you just haven't discovered exactly what it is yet that's compatible with that whiny, clingy, insecure, subserviant but demanding and terrified child inside of you?
Great. So you have to suffer through tortorous relationship after tortorous relationship just to figure that out, and the person who will supposedly fit with those pieces of you eventually (or not) comes along, and that person then renders all previous relationships totally meaningless. Yes? No?
If the giving up of hope is what leads to contentment, is the giving up on any kind of true wisdom what also leads to enlightenment? Is the giving up of any expectations what brings you happiness? What the hell is happiness? Beats the shit out of me. Does it just mean you don't want things to change? Does it mean you don't feel like throwing yourself in front of a bus every day? Does it mean that you feel ecstatic joy every minute of the day? I guess Happiness, like Love, is too abstract to have a satisfiable definition. Do you just know it when you feel it?
I feel like once I finally decided to stop trying to figure it all out is when I achieved some sort of peace. When I finally decided to throw up my hands and say, "To hell with it, I'm done, I can no longer analyze, critique, or take apart this or that or whatever," is when I finally could let it go. Which came first? The letting go or the resignation?
I just drank about six glasses of incredibly cheap vodka in my friend Greg's room with him and Princeton. We listened to Harry Nilson and a bunch of other shit. I put on a Mexican wrestling mask and took off my shirt and ran around the room growling and howling while Greg took pictures. It was pretty funny.
I need to study but instead I'm going to sleep.
If, as she says, the search for relief from your suffering is ultimately what relieves it, and not, so to speak, a specific cure, can the same thing be said for wisdom? If there is no cure for your suffering and hopelessness, except to search for the cure, then is it also the ultimate in wisdom to finally admit that you know nothing? Can it be that the older you get, and supposedly the smarter you get, that ultimately you have to face up to the fact that you're a complete idiot? That you know nothing? That the black & white rules you lived by in your youth are now completely meaningless to you?
Is wisdom actually the subtraction of knowledge? Or pseudo-knowledge? The young think they know it all. They think they've got it all figured out. Maybe no one over the age of 22 should be allowed to be put into any position of importance whatsoever. Maybe the older we get, if we're truly honest with ourselves, the less we actually know. But we can only admit this because we know it to be true, which is its own sort of wisdom. So really, the accumulation of wisdom through age is really just an acknowledgement that life and people are just too complex and confounding to comprehend or decipher in any meaningful way.
We impart meaning to things because we have to. It is simply too painful to admit that maybe, just maybe, that relationship you were in that lasted for a year, or 2 years, or 8 years, and ultimately ended, in the end, meant absolutely nothing. For example. We can sit back and say, "Well, I certainly learned a lot from that," but what if what you learned isn't helpful? What if what you learned about yourself, or about the other person, or about people in general (is an "understanding" of collective behavior wisdom, or just a smoke-screen to keep from having to admit that people are just idiots and cowards?), is just terrifying and hopeless? What if what you learned is that when you fall in love you hate the person that you become? Does that mean your heart should close up shop because it's hopeless, or does it mean that you just fall for the wrong people, or does it mean you just haven't discovered exactly what it is yet that's compatible with that whiny, clingy, insecure, subserviant but demanding and terrified child inside of you?
Great. So you have to suffer through tortorous relationship after tortorous relationship just to figure that out, and the person who will supposedly fit with those pieces of you eventually (or not) comes along, and that person then renders all previous relationships totally meaningless. Yes? No?
If the giving up of hope is what leads to contentment, is the giving up on any kind of true wisdom what also leads to enlightenment? Is the giving up of any expectations what brings you happiness? What the hell is happiness? Beats the shit out of me. Does it just mean you don't want things to change? Does it mean you don't feel like throwing yourself in front of a bus every day? Does it mean that you feel ecstatic joy every minute of the day? I guess Happiness, like Love, is too abstract to have a satisfiable definition. Do you just know it when you feel it?
I feel like once I finally decided to stop trying to figure it all out is when I achieved some sort of peace. When I finally decided to throw up my hands and say, "To hell with it, I'm done, I can no longer analyze, critique, or take apart this or that or whatever," is when I finally could let it go. Which came first? The letting go or the resignation?
I just drank about six glasses of incredibly cheap vodka in my friend Greg's room with him and Princeton. We listened to Harry Nilson and a bunch of other shit. I put on a Mexican wrestling mask and took off my shirt and ran around the room growling and howling while Greg took pictures. It was pretty funny.
I need to study but instead I'm going to sleep.
Saturday, April 22, 2006
Long Time Gone
Hey there. I guess it's been awhile. Only two weeks, I suppose, and not much has really happened. Well, it has, I guess. I've been incredibly busy with school; end of the semester and all. I only have 3 class days left. It's almost unfathomable how quickly the time went by. I've been busting my ass the last 3 days on my final paper for my Theories of Personality class. We have to do a personality analysis on someone, either real or a fictional character, anyone we want, and I chose Brenda from Six Feet Under. She is truly one of my favorite characters that ever has existed. I wish she was real and we could be BFF, I love her so fucking much. She's by far, I think, the richest and most complex character on the show, and really the reason I kept watching it. So that's going well.
Today I started my volunteering at Doug's House, the AIDS hospice here in town, and still the only one in Central Texas (again, God bless Austin). Today was actually my orientation, but I'm going to start this week, probably Thursday, and work one 4-hour shift a week until I get comfortable with it, or have more time or whatever. There were 2 other volunteers with me today at the orientation, both of them women, probably around my age or slightly older. I liked them both a lot right away, and one of them even made a pretty off-color joke to me while we were talking about changing diapers, which of course immediately endeared her to me. I think I'm really going to enjoy my time there, though it's gonna be rough. Today we met 2 of the patients currently living there. One of them is a man in his early-40's, who looks about 70, and is in the final throes of AIDS. He has about 2 months left, tops. He's nothing but a skeleton lying in his bed watching television. He eats around half a sandwich a day, which takes him about 30-45 minutes to eat, and you have to break off little pieces and feed them to him, and even then, it makes him so tired he has to sleep for hours afterwards. The other was a middle-aged black woman, covered with open sores from an advanced Herpes infection, fresh out of prison. She has 3 daughters, but only one that ever comes to visit or seems interested in her fate. I got really choked up about 3 times today just talking to the orientation leader, without even having done anything, or having yet become emotionally involved in any way. But I am looking really forward to starting, to talking with the patients there and just getting to know them, holding their hands, feeding them, giving them their medications, or just sitting and watching television with them, which is mostly what they want. Some company, someone to talk to. Most of them have just been through fucking hell that you couldn't imagine, largely abandoned by family and often even friends. It's so fucking tragic. But that's why I decided I wanted to be in this field: I want to know these people, I want to help them in any small way that I can. Maybe that sounds really self-righteous or pompous, but I don't care. It's the truth.
Oh, and we went through "death procedures" today too: what to do if somebody dies on our clock. We have to fold their hands across their chests and make sure their eyes are shut, and pull a sheet over them. There are numbers for the mortuary and coroner on the wall in the office for us to call, and if the patient has a call list of friends and family, that's our job too.
As an interesting side-note: every room has a really nice wall-mounted CD player and stereo, which the orientation leader said were all donated and paid for by Sandra Bullock. I was always very ambivalent about Sandra Bullock, but that seems like a really thoughtful thing to do. Like, she actually wanted to give them something, improve their quality of life in some small way.
I guess this post is getting really long. There were other things I was going to talk about, personal stuff, but I guess it's all pretty irrelevant. The last 2 weeks have been a pretty mixed bag of mostly incredibly good, and some really awful stuff. But I've learned to just let certain things go, finally. It feels nice. For a brief 24 hours almost 2 weeks ago, I thought things might be drastically different right at this moment, and then my hopes were shattered by indifference and detachment that was incredibly painful. But what I needed, really, to just finally let that bird fly free after a year of keeping it close to me. I know I'm being incredibly vague, but whatever. Kurt & Meredith's wedding, which was just fucking amazing, Matt Kane in town for 5 days, also amazing. It was really nice to see him, and just immediately fall back into our old groove after not seeing one another for almost 3 years.
I've been drinking wine (left over from the wedding and it's delicious!) like water while I've been writing this, and now I'm drunk. I want to go to bed.
Today I started my volunteering at Doug's House, the AIDS hospice here in town, and still the only one in Central Texas (again, God bless Austin). Today was actually my orientation, but I'm going to start this week, probably Thursday, and work one 4-hour shift a week until I get comfortable with it, or have more time or whatever. There were 2 other volunteers with me today at the orientation, both of them women, probably around my age or slightly older. I liked them both a lot right away, and one of them even made a pretty off-color joke to me while we were talking about changing diapers, which of course immediately endeared her to me. I think I'm really going to enjoy my time there, though it's gonna be rough. Today we met 2 of the patients currently living there. One of them is a man in his early-40's, who looks about 70, and is in the final throes of AIDS. He has about 2 months left, tops. He's nothing but a skeleton lying in his bed watching television. He eats around half a sandwich a day, which takes him about 30-45 minutes to eat, and you have to break off little pieces and feed them to him, and even then, it makes him so tired he has to sleep for hours afterwards. The other was a middle-aged black woman, covered with open sores from an advanced Herpes infection, fresh out of prison. She has 3 daughters, but only one that ever comes to visit or seems interested in her fate. I got really choked up about 3 times today just talking to the orientation leader, without even having done anything, or having yet become emotionally involved in any way. But I am looking really forward to starting, to talking with the patients there and just getting to know them, holding their hands, feeding them, giving them their medications, or just sitting and watching television with them, which is mostly what they want. Some company, someone to talk to. Most of them have just been through fucking hell that you couldn't imagine, largely abandoned by family and often even friends. It's so fucking tragic. But that's why I decided I wanted to be in this field: I want to know these people, I want to help them in any small way that I can. Maybe that sounds really self-righteous or pompous, but I don't care. It's the truth.
Oh, and we went through "death procedures" today too: what to do if somebody dies on our clock. We have to fold their hands across their chests and make sure their eyes are shut, and pull a sheet over them. There are numbers for the mortuary and coroner on the wall in the office for us to call, and if the patient has a call list of friends and family, that's our job too.
As an interesting side-note: every room has a really nice wall-mounted CD player and stereo, which the orientation leader said were all donated and paid for by Sandra Bullock. I was always very ambivalent about Sandra Bullock, but that seems like a really thoughtful thing to do. Like, she actually wanted to give them something, improve their quality of life in some small way.
I guess this post is getting really long. There were other things I was going to talk about, personal stuff, but I guess it's all pretty irrelevant. The last 2 weeks have been a pretty mixed bag of mostly incredibly good, and some really awful stuff. But I've learned to just let certain things go, finally. It feels nice. For a brief 24 hours almost 2 weeks ago, I thought things might be drastically different right at this moment, and then my hopes were shattered by indifference and detachment that was incredibly painful. But what I needed, really, to just finally let that bird fly free after a year of keeping it close to me. I know I'm being incredibly vague, but whatever. Kurt & Meredith's wedding, which was just fucking amazing, Matt Kane in town for 5 days, also amazing. It was really nice to see him, and just immediately fall back into our old groove after not seeing one another for almost 3 years.
I've been drinking wine (left over from the wedding and it's delicious!) like water while I've been writing this, and now I'm drunk. I want to go to bed.
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