Therapy, Passion, and No Good Title For This Particular Post

I went to visit my therapist on Friday.

This is a little odd for me to write here. I have no problem voicing my deepest, darkest neuroses to flesh-and-blood people. I'll share phobias with strangers waiting behind me in the beer line at a ball game. I'll one-up any and all who decide to trade their worries with me while in the line for the urinals. Here though, on the Internet, particularly in blogland, I feel vulnerable talking about my therapist. I don't know why. I've read some really frank, earnest blogs, and I've stumbled across some banner ads online that would flush the cheeks of even the perviest miscreant. Online, I've read about failed marriages, dysfunctional childhoods, abuse, drunkenness, depravity, murder and all manner of other tumult. You'd think that a simple chit-chat about a therapy session would be okay. Wouldn’t it?

Well, what the hell.

Let’s go there.

I’m irregular about going to my therapist. I should go more often. I should schedule once a week, or maybe once every other week but, for some reason, I decide that I can slog through issues on my own, and I hold off on going for weeks at a time. During these weeks, I go around in circles, chasing my tale [sic], and then, when I finally do go to the therapist, I end up heading in the right direction. I end up thinking, "See, I knew I should've come in sooner. All better now." Maybe it's that false sense of "all better now" that keeps me from going back when I should.

The session on Friday was a good one. Toward the end of my session, just as the therapy-meter was about to expire, my therapist asked me an interesting question. We had been discussing careers, or life-paths, or passions. "Are you passionate about anything," she asked. It was a fair question. I’ve asked myself the question a million times before. It wasn’t like she was needling me about being some broken personality, incapable of feeling anything. I think we all ask ourselves this question. If we don’t, we’re taking our lives for granted.

It’s a question that I’m still working on. I’m looking at it from all different angles. I’m not looking at it just so that I can say “wow, I’m really exploring myself.” I’m looking at it so that I can actually find that passion. There’s so much more to write here. I’ve tried to do the rest of the writing, but it’s difficult to do. Maybe once I actually find that passion it will be easier.

Groceries

Grocery items doubling as songs:
(I realize that I'm buying both cough syrup and Ny-Quil, but those generic cough syrups don't always do it for me. Gotta have a backup.) And yes, there could be Green Onions, and Guava Jelly and a bunch of other groceries, but I don't have those songs loaded into my computer!

Sweets For My Sweet ==> The Drifters
Mexican Wine ==> Fountains of Wayne
Appels + Oranges ==> Smashing Pumpkins
Cough Syrup ==> Butthole Surfers
Chop Suey! ==> System of a Down
Pepper ==> Butthole Surfers
Orange Crush ==> REM
One Cup Of Coffee ==> Bob Marley
Red Vines ==> Aimee Mann
Bones ==> Radiohead
Rock Lobster ==> The B-52’s
Tabloid Magazine ==> The Living End
Velveeta ==> The Mr. T Experience
Brownie Bottom Sundae ==> AFI
Sassafras Roots ==> Green Day
Tenderloin ==> Rancid
Ny-Quil ==> AFI
Lipstick ==> The Buzzcocks
Flowers ==> Camper Van Beethoven
Peas Porridge Hot ==> De La Soul
Lemon Jelly ==> New York Citizens
Big Cheese ==> Nirvana
Pennyroyal Tea ==> Nirvana
Too Many Twinkies ==> The Queers
Pea ==> Red Hot Chili Peppers
Brown Sugar ==> the Rolling Stones
Mayonaise ==> Smashing Pumpkins
Burritos ==> Sublime
Sweet Potato ==> Cracker
Mexican Seafood ==> Nirvana
Vegetable ==> Radiohead
Crème Brulee ==> Sonic Youth
Water ==> Sugarcubes

Apizzalypse

I stopped in after work the other day at Arinell Pizza, on Shattuck Avenue, in Berkeley. As I walked into the place, Black Sabbath's War Pigs was just starting to play over the restaurant's speakers. The song's long, slow guitar intro filled the whole room, echoing off of the high ceiling and exposed-brick walls. Warm pizza-oven air wrapped me tight with a yeasty hug just at the point where a plaintive air raid siren comes into the song. Imagine the Apocalypse with garlic and cheese instead of fire and brimstone. That's almost what it felt like. Dark but benign. It was pleasant, like a thirteen-year-old's birthday party.

Apizzalypse.

The tall, young hipster standing behind the counter, taking orders, looked like a slightly older version of Jimbo Jones, one of the bullies from The Simpsons. He wore black pants, a black t-shirt, and a black knit cap. Bushy mutton-chop sideburns crept like unruly ivy down the sides of his face, and his eyelids rested at about three-quarter staff. My guess is that he was probably in a stupor induced by not less than a toke on a joint, but not more than a long, deep bonghit. He was resting comfortably at "cool buzz" on the Stonerometer. I ordered two cheese slices from him and had the sudden impulse to ask him about the song playing over the speakers. "Hey, is this the radio, or are you guys playing this?"

"Man, we're rocking," he said. The corners of his mouth turned upwards just slightly.

"Oh cool," I said. "This song rocks."

"Right on," he said, "It's a song for our troubled times." He said this with such conviction, as though he were letting me in on some deeply thought-out secret.

"Hmmmm," I said, nodding my head in agreement. What was I going to do, tell the kid to lighten up a little?

I paid for the slices and left him my change as a tip. I grabbed the slices as he slid them onto the counter, and took them to the front of the restaurant where I started to eat them at a small standing-room shelf. I bobbed my head with the music, following along with its stops and starts and chord changes.

I like War Pigs. It's a good song, but the biggest problem I have with it is in its first two lines:

Generals gather in their masses
Just like witches at black masses.

Here's the thing. The word "masses" is used twice in consecutive lines. Sure, the definitions may be slightly different, but still, the same word is repeated as if it were a clever rhyme. And it's not. It's the same word. This has bothered me since my first listen. Over time, I've just come to accept it. I've decided to overlook this factoid, and appreciate the song for the pure, balls-to-the-wall, raucous, apocalyptic screed that it is. I can do no more than that.

Actually at that moment, all I could think was:

Pizzas gather in their ovens
Just like witches in their covens

I gave myself a little chuckle, and then another thought occurred to me. I had heard this song in this pizza place over twenty years ago. I stopped chewing my pizza and looked across the street, at the store offering passport photos. It had been a student travel agency at one time, and a camera store before that. Down the street, on the corner, Birdie's Toys had done what had seemed like a bustling business, until it just disappeared one day, about eighteen years ago. A Subway Sandwiches had taken its place. Even Arinell Pizza had recently remodeled and changed places. It used to be two doors down. Now it was in a space that had once been occupied by a store that sold Tibetan prayer flags, incense, Indian print curtains and hookahs. I had never been in that store, but I had checked its window display many times while devouring slice after slice of pizza. It had cool hookahs. I let out another audible chuckle as I actively took note of the changes that I had only glossed over before.

Breakfast Schlub

Recently, I've been spending my days asleep and my nights awake. I've been wandering the neighborhood in my flannel pjs (with feet), a bottle of Old Smuggler in one hand, and my .45 in the other. I've been shooting the heads off of garden gnomes, and cursing the cops when they come to get me. I'm lucky I'm not dead.

I'm lucky I'm not telling the truth.

I don't know when my life turned into a John Hughes film, but all of a sudden it has. I've been wandering the house in a foggy, distant headspace, listening to The Smiths and occasionally staring at the ceiling. I'm becoming a stereotypical teenager, as a friend pointed out. I'm going through a period of angst (the affected pronunciation is with the long "a"--so it sounds like "onkst") or ennui or something French and pretentious. And yes, pajamas are somewhere in the mix. I'm doing a lot of sighing and a lot of talking to the dogs. My questions about life are met with a hearty round of panting and face-licking. Well, at least their attitudes are upbeat. I think that's what I need just about now.

He IS As Close To 40 As He Is To 30

From the comments section of my last post:

*gently reminds him he IS as close to 40 as he is to 30*


Hee.

moon1178


(Moon, I hope you don't mind me using your comment--I appreciate the humor!)

It's interesting that this comes up. I've discussed this in converstation and email with people recenly, so if you've heard this or read this, forgive me for repeating myself.

I like getting older. The age thing is not really one of my hot buttons. I'm comfortable with my age, because it really doesn't matter to me how old I am. You can be rough with me when you remind of me how old I am. You don't need to be gentle. Call me "old paint" if you want. Send me adult diapers and some "hairpiece in a can" for my next birthday. Honestly. It's the thought that counts. I can always sell them on Ebay. Oh, and if anyone's making a list, don't bother with the nose/ear hair trimmer. My mother already bought me one as a Christmas gift.

Enough with the wish list. The thing is, I'm not between 30 and 40. I'm here. Now. I'm in the present, and the present is bookended by the past and the future. Both are infinite. In terms of a human life, I might be living the last year of my 35 years, or I might be living the first third of my 105 years. Whichever it is, all I really have is the present.

I appreciate the present, and the challenges I face, moment-to-moment. I enjoy being able to try new solutions for old problems. I'm more patient now. I find myself trying to figure things out like a puzzle. Part of that involves recognizing old or existing patterns and dealing with those in new and different ways. Believe it or not, this is actually fun for me, now.

Finally, here's an email I sent to someone a while back that pretty much sums up how I feel about getting older:

Part of getting older, I guess, is learning that the stuff you thought was so ridiculously cheesy when you were young actually carries some weight or meaning. I used to think that stuff like "I'm thirty- or forty- or fifty- something (fill in the blank) and I'm really beginning to appreciate the mysteries that life has to offer," was something that older people told themselves to rationalize getting older but, you know, it's all kind of making sense to me about now. Life IS a mystery, and it's a challenge, and I'm actually enjoying the rise to life's challenge now. I don't feel like life is beating me, because it's just what it is, and you have to find your own peace (sound vague and annoying enough for you?). I'm getting older, and maybe even enjoying it to some degree.

So, there it is. Really, I'm not lamenting the loss of my youth, and I'm not worried too much about old age. All I really hope is that any retirement home that I end up in will play The Ramones over the PA. Rock N' Roll Retirement Home. That's just where I want to be.

A Zillion Thoughts

I've got a zillion thoughts on a zillion subjects, but unfortunately, I've got a zillion things to do around the house and in my life, generally. There is weeks worth of dog hair to vacuum, a washer full of laundry to dry, and dinner to eat, both for me and the dogs. My wife is in Yosemite for the summer, so there's stuff to pack for her, lunch to make for tomorrow, and sleep to catch up on tonight.

All of this doesn't mean that the thoughts are put on hold. They're floating around in my head, growing, changing, evolving. They'll get out one of these days. And then they'll disappoint or inspire or amuse.

I hope.