Sunday is a big day.
Changed my profile picture on Facebook and checked to see how many people liked it.
I am recovered from my East Coast tour last week, with an exciting afternoon spent in the big apple last Monday, mostly at the airport working feverishly as a NONREV trying to find standby seats to Maine or Boston. But Southwest Airlines had other ideas, and after skidding their 737-700 down the runway without suitable nose gear we made our escape from New York, or Queens actually.
I have found in situations like that, that an alternative plan you have already accepted in your mind should be in place so that moments of indecision do not eat away at time better spent putting PLAN XYZ into action. The key is recognizing the moment to go to that plan. So, to the car rental company we went and we got there before the other people who had suffered those moments of indecision and got on the road ahead of them.
I can't shake this race mentality.
Although the other tens of thousands already on the road didn't make a different because it seemed they were all stuck in traffic going southbound...caused by some knucklehead who couldn't read the sign that said no trucks (especially tractor-trailer trucks) on the parkway because the bridges are too low. But I guess he thought somehow his 11 foot high trailer was going slip beneath a 9 foot 7 inch overpass on one of the old, and very quaint, stone bridges that cross the parkway. Well, he didn't, causing unknown cosmic unrest in the automobiles of tens of thousands of New Yorkers heading southbound on the Hutchinson Parkway, and an accordion like new look to the trailer he was towing. But, we were going north, and aside from an occasional nut driving too fast on the rain soaked roadway, it was a pretty smooth escape into CT and northeast on the Merritt Parkway, one of my favorite roads.
A friend mentioned that I should make a list of all the unlucky shit that has happened to me, and thus residually to my family, this year. But, believe it or not, I don't see any of it as unlucky, or as I mentioned in another post, that I am the victim of something. And believe it or not, I have had worse years. For me, a victim is someone who suffers from the malignant intent of someone else or group of someone else's. Spousal abuse, child abuse, that type of thing, or racial abuse, anyway, something that has taken some inner energy by another critter of this species to do something bad to another critter of this species. Just because things happen that interrupt an otherwise bland life doesn't mean that that event deems you, or me, unlucky, or as my brother says, "You drew the black pebble, grasshopper."
Personally, I don't remember drawing any fucking pebble and if I had I'd be happy to put some return postage on it. The DNA of which I have grown up with, and suited me quite well until now, is the culprit, and the metaphoric black MF pebble that has decided to test me and see how I respond to another part of my, and the emphasis is, on my body and how it is hosting a branch of mutant fuckers that belong to me, and that they are otherwise breaking down my health with the suicidal intensity which would result in the ending my life, and thus their life too. Curious thing, that.
Although my feelings about alien probes is being tested as a very viable option, but I digress.
This is all me and luck or no luck had nothing to do about it. It just is, and like being stuck at LGA wishing for open seats on a plane going in my direction, if they are not there, well time to have another plan in place to put into action that uses time effectively.
I have never really believed in luck. I mean really, the idea that some cosmic force has somehow deemed it lucky for me not to be sent to Viet Nam in 1972, would make me relatively important in the larger forces of nature. And, if I sat around thinking about how lucky I was then, how about all those poor guys (and gals) who got their number punched somewhere in Southeast Asia. Were they unlucky, or was it just the way it was and their intersection with the larger forces of the world around them got them killed. Victims? maybe, but some wanted to go, like me at one point before I realized just how "lucky" I was to get orders to do something else. Now, my body is trying to cause my end, and unknowing, causing an end to the forces that are trying to cause the end. Say that three times fast. But, that is the way it is. Arteries clot, cancer grows, shit happens, but usually better after taking a stool softener.
So here I am, with some of you listening in, and looking at my body I know that it is doing what it has to, like it has for countless millions before me, attempt to destroy itself, while I try to, with the help of the current state of medicine, save myself for more adventures in the time I have left, before it is ultimately successful. Which it always is.
SO, luck or no luck, you have to have a PLAN XYZ that can be adapted to your life. And during that adaption you have to persevere, until you overcome the current malady that is interrupting an otherwise smooth and uneventful life.
The best plan I know is to think mostly about recovery, no matter what you have wrong with you, and judging by the black pebbles distributed out there in the world, my black pebbles are reasonably manageable. Recovery, because that means that you are not laying in a corner of the proverbial terminal because your flight has been canceled, but that you are taking positive steps to do something about it, no matter what. And, don't count on luck, because at that point you might as well be stringing garlic around your neck to keep the vampires away.
Be positive, assert your self against the illness, and do not let it win while you can still open your eyes.
WTF anyway...I have been almost surprised by the grim reaper a couple of times now, not because of things I was actively doing, like getting down range of some contemporary war, driving too fast with the headlights off (did that, and WTF was I thinking at the time) or any other life activity that might cause serious bodily harm to me...no, these experiences are not even exciting or interesting, except that they are happening to me. But I feel this time around that I have learned, from my earlier cancer and near death experience, that I don't have to recoil from the illness just because my flight is being delayed or canceled, but get that fucking rental car and head for the parkway!
Changed my profile picture on Facebook and checked to see how many people liked it.
I am recovered from my East Coast tour last week, with an exciting afternoon spent in the big apple last Monday, mostly at the airport working feverishly as a NONREV trying to find standby seats to Maine or Boston. But Southwest Airlines had other ideas, and after skidding their 737-700 down the runway without suitable nose gear we made our escape from New York, or Queens actually.
I have found in situations like that, that an alternative plan you have already accepted in your mind should be in place so that moments of indecision do not eat away at time better spent putting PLAN XYZ into action. The key is recognizing the moment to go to that plan. So, to the car rental company we went and we got there before the other people who had suffered those moments of indecision and got on the road ahead of them.
I can't shake this race mentality.
Although the other tens of thousands already on the road didn't make a different because it seemed they were all stuck in traffic going southbound...caused by some knucklehead who couldn't read the sign that said no trucks (especially tractor-trailer trucks) on the parkway because the bridges are too low. But I guess he thought somehow his 11 foot high trailer was going slip beneath a 9 foot 7 inch overpass on one of the old, and very quaint, stone bridges that cross the parkway. Well, he didn't, causing unknown cosmic unrest in the automobiles of tens of thousands of New Yorkers heading southbound on the Hutchinson Parkway, and an accordion like new look to the trailer he was towing. But, we were going north, and aside from an occasional nut driving too fast on the rain soaked roadway, it was a pretty smooth escape into CT and northeast on the Merritt Parkway, one of my favorite roads.
A friend mentioned that I should make a list of all the unlucky shit that has happened to me, and thus residually to my family, this year. But, believe it or not, I don't see any of it as unlucky, or as I mentioned in another post, that I am the victim of something. And believe it or not, I have had worse years. For me, a victim is someone who suffers from the malignant intent of someone else or group of someone else's. Spousal abuse, child abuse, that type of thing, or racial abuse, anyway, something that has taken some inner energy by another critter of this species to do something bad to another critter of this species. Just because things happen that interrupt an otherwise bland life doesn't mean that that event deems you, or me, unlucky, or as my brother says, "You drew the black pebble, grasshopper."
Personally, I don't remember drawing any fucking pebble and if I had I'd be happy to put some return postage on it. The DNA of which I have grown up with, and suited me quite well until now, is the culprit, and the metaphoric black MF pebble that has decided to test me and see how I respond to another part of my, and the emphasis is, on my body and how it is hosting a branch of mutant fuckers that belong to me, and that they are otherwise breaking down my health with the suicidal intensity which would result in the ending my life, and thus their life too. Curious thing, that.
Although my feelings about alien probes is being tested as a very viable option, but I digress.
This is all me and luck or no luck had nothing to do about it. It just is, and like being stuck at LGA wishing for open seats on a plane going in my direction, if they are not there, well time to have another plan in place to put into action that uses time effectively.
I have never really believed in luck. I mean really, the idea that some cosmic force has somehow deemed it lucky for me not to be sent to Viet Nam in 1972, would make me relatively important in the larger forces of nature. And, if I sat around thinking about how lucky I was then, how about all those poor guys (and gals) who got their number punched somewhere in Southeast Asia. Were they unlucky, or was it just the way it was and their intersection with the larger forces of the world around them got them killed. Victims? maybe, but some wanted to go, like me at one point before I realized just how "lucky" I was to get orders to do something else. Now, my body is trying to cause my end, and unknowing, causing an end to the forces that are trying to cause the end. Say that three times fast. But, that is the way it is. Arteries clot, cancer grows, shit happens, but usually better after taking a stool softener.
So here I am, with some of you listening in, and looking at my body I know that it is doing what it has to, like it has for countless millions before me, attempt to destroy itself, while I try to, with the help of the current state of medicine, save myself for more adventures in the time I have left, before it is ultimately successful. Which it always is.
SO, luck or no luck, you have to have a PLAN XYZ that can be adapted to your life. And during that adaption you have to persevere, until you overcome the current malady that is interrupting an otherwise smooth and uneventful life.
The best plan I know is to think mostly about recovery, no matter what you have wrong with you, and judging by the black pebbles distributed out there in the world, my black pebbles are reasonably manageable. Recovery, because that means that you are not laying in a corner of the proverbial terminal because your flight has been canceled, but that you are taking positive steps to do something about it, no matter what. And, don't count on luck, because at that point you might as well be stringing garlic around your neck to keep the vampires away.
Be positive, assert your self against the illness, and do not let it win while you can still open your eyes.
WTF anyway...I have been almost surprised by the grim reaper a couple of times now, not because of things I was actively doing, like getting down range of some contemporary war, driving too fast with the headlights off (did that, and WTF was I thinking at the time) or any other life activity that might cause serious bodily harm to me...no, these experiences are not even exciting or interesting, except that they are happening to me. But I feel this time around that I have learned, from my earlier cancer and near death experience, that I don't have to recoil from the illness just because my flight is being delayed or canceled, but get that fucking rental car and head for the parkway!
Love your story Tim! Love them alll, can you go back to Walmart again?
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