Atonement

When I left the rehab hospital last summer, I went home in a turtle shell body brace and neck collar, and once again humping around on crutches. Prognosis was full recovery, but with a minimum of at least a year before I approached normal locomotion, and perhaps never reaching my previous level of athleticism (pedestrian as it may have been). I was so goddamn happy to be alive and out, though, that I couldn't bring myself to care too much about the temporary physical setbacks. I was content to stump around the house and yard getting incrementally stronger; content to simply revel in not being dead, or stuck with IVs, or strapped down and ventilated ... or so I thought.

One night I subsided into bed in my shell as usual, and after unstrapping and doing the careful back and forth to lever myself out of it, I quickly passed out. I dreamt, vividly, that I was on a long bike ride with Maury, Craig and some other folks. We were in the middle of riding home from a lakeside resort in Minnesota, and we had risen and left at dawn from our campsite in northern South Dakota. We stopped for breakfast at a McDonald's, of all places, and left our bicycles and gear at a wooden station constructed specifically for that purpose. Upon reaching the cash register, I realized I had left my wallet out with my gear. Amid the expected ribbing from my friends, I hurried out to get it. Time morphed in the way it does in dreams, and of a sudden I realized that Maury and Co. were back on their bikes (still laughing at Burbach, of course), and starting to ride away. Deciding in that instant to forgo breakfast, I started to jog towards my bicycle to catch up with them and then ... I was just running. Without effort or hindrance, I was running. Across the parking lot in the early sun,  through the damp grass and out onto the highway, I ate up the miles. Craig and the team were long gone, my bicycle forgotten, and I was sprinting, flying, non-stop to everywhere and nowhere. I ran until what seemed like early afternoon, when I slowed to a halt alone at the end of a little wooden footbridge spanning a little creek in central South Dakota. Again, the dream shifted. In a curious juxtaposition of consciousness, I stood among the trees by the creek, and simultaneously inhabited the tired broken body I'd left lying on the narrow bed back in the really real world. My dream body was whole, strong and filled to bursting with energy and the liberty of flight, fidgeting to run farther and faster. Almost instantly, though, I was plunged into wakefulness, my leg and back throbbing, and the pillow wet from unconscious tears. In myself, I am scornful of the pointless weakness of self-pity; but for a few minutes that morning, I was awash in mourning for remembered health and function. Reminding myself, though, that much worse things have happened to much nicer guys than me, I ultimately shoved the self-pity into the dark corner where it belongs, levered myself back into my shell and crutched out to start the day.

Fast forward 15 months, and I'm running in the real world. Just on the treadmill at the gym, but journey of a thousand miles, blah, blah, blah. I started three weeks ago with .20 mile intervals, walking in between. I've since increased my running interval to.65 miles, alternating with sets of anaerobic exercise. The pain is considerable, but the last year has found me in a long-term, committed relationship with that particular sensation. We're the proverbial old married couple, she and I, and I go about my business with her comforting voice ceaselessly muttering and criticizing in the background.

The running I do in real life is a clumsy, plodding exercise in penance. It's nothing like the coruscating flight of my dream. Except that it is. Somewhere beneath the thudding, uneven steps, beneath the drudgery, discomfort and the smell of hot self, there is a small core of concentrated and joyous intensity, not so unlike that effortless sprint across the landscape of South Dakota. Maybe it's the years of wrestling practice, or the rehabs after twice tearing my ACL, or maybe it's the aforementioned intimacy I've developed with my pain receptors, but I absolutely find exhilaration in struggle.

Anyway, I'm off to the gym to run.

much peace,
tjb

Creepy Twins

I was a little frightened of my sons when I was done.

much peace,
tjb

We Interrupt This Broadcast ...

... to bring you an update on a matter of great significance:

It's officially October, and the Royals are still playing ball!!!!!!!!!

Please pardon the nostalgia from a middle-aged, long-suffering Royals fan. My old man and my big brother Chris took me to Game 5 of the 1985 ALCS. I was 12, and it's one of the best memories of my childhood. Royals were down 3-1 in the series, had to win to stay in. Danny Jackson pitched a gem, and KC manufactured two small ball runs and held on.

That team was a bunch of fighters, and while I know better than to make any predictions, this 2014 squad is satisfying to watch for the same reason.

much peace,
tjb

Ebola Is Here

http://news.yahoo.com/dallas-er-sent-ebola-infected-patient-home-050718374.html

About 80 people (they think) have had direct contact with this guy.What's the CDC going to do when they find the next infection outside that web? Why in all the cold hells do we not have a travel ban from the affected countries?  I'm not really a conspiracy theorist, but one way or the other, we've been betrayed. Either those in power want the disease to spread here, or they are simply horribly incompetent and have not taken the necessary stringent measures to prevent it from doing so. Whichever, it's going to spread.

William has anxiously asked me multiple times lately if Ebola "could happen here." I have reassured him each time that no, it cannot. Apparently I'm a dirty liar, because it's absolutely happening here.

much peace,

tjb

The Holy Bearded Unicorn Says to Protect Pedophiles

The Catholic church does it again.

http://cnsnews.com/commentary/fr-frank-pavone/state-demands-la-priest-violate-confessional-or-go-jail

What the Holy Sacred Jesus Christ Almighty Uber-Priest writing this article deliberately leaves out is that the crime the church wants to keep hidden is the continuing sexual assault of a 12-year-old girl by a parishoner.

Here's the thing: I don't give the smallest fuck about your double secret supernatural lucky charms confessional that magically confers legal immunity to its participants. I really don't. I also could not possibly care less about the state of the retarded and imaginary "immortal souls" that you consider so much more important than the actual really real world violation and agony of a really real world 12-year-old child. That's the church, though, and religion in general. Their made-up superfriends club abstractions, and their loyalty to those brands, will ultimately and ALWAYS trump competing interests in the real world.

I hope both the piece of shit abuser and the characteristically enabling piece of shit priest (I know, redundant) both get their balls stuck in a bicycle chain before falling into fire ant mounds.

much peace (but not for wacky cult leaders)
tjb

OMG! UR Such a Silly Bitch!!!

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/09/01/woman-texting-impaled-buttocks/14918723/

We are a society comprised almost entirely of narcissistic teenage girls. We cannot for one moment be separated from the constant communication and affirmation we so desperately need.

When I see someone on their goddamn phone in traffic, I automatically (and accurately) think, "Oh look, a socially retarded teenage drama queen who can't go ten minutes without someone paying attention to her."
Seriously. It doesn't matter what age or gender you believe you are. If you're texting on the road, you are a narcissistic teenage girl.


much peace,
tjb

No Shit, Dick Tracy

Anyone who thought that the invasion of Iraq was going to turn out any differently than it is was a complete fucking moron, as I stated multiple times during the lead-up to and execution of this foreign policy abortion.

Invade, break the infrastructure, demolish the security and lose billions. Check.

For the folks who say we should stay until we "win." You're fucking retarded. Unless we were to A) Turn it into a parking lot or B) Stay there and rule it for 7 or 8 generations, there was never going to be any "winning." This was a big yowling ball of feral cats from the beginning.

As I stated 5 years ago:

Are we safer with 600,000 - 1 million Iraqis dead? I doubt it. After 9/11, this country reserved the right to remember and hate without stint or discretion. What about the Iraqi shopkeeper who saw his son blown in half by good old American know-how, or the 8-year-old who saw his parents murdered in an elective war? Don't the friends and relatives of the dead and maimed in Iraq and Gaza have the same perpetual right to rage and hatred that I would if my toddlers were murdered by another country's bombs, or is the horrible choking, desperate grief of middle-eastern non-christians and non-Jews somehow less real, their bereavement less keen, because American exceptionalism has designated their sacrifice acceptable?

Let's for a moment pretend that these actions have made us safer, rather than simply hardening another generation of anti-American sentiment. I still can't look another father in the eye and say, "your child shall be killed, blown apart, so that mine can maintain the lifestyle to which he is accustomed," or to another son, "Your father will be burned to death with white phosphorous so that my old man can retire without stress." The price is too great.

Self-congratulatory, preening fucks like W.F. Buckley will prate about the existential threat; neocons think it's our divine right to conquer the world. The world bank, the military-industrial complex, and all their economic hit men think only of profit. I just can't get that orphaned father out of my head. I know how I would feel if my boys were taken from me. There is no amount of bloodshed that would sate me, no salve would tame the violence. Our American attitude, though, doesn't recognize our murders as real people or real deaths, just acceptable statistics in pursuit of our "interests." I don't know, maybe we've killed enough people to make us more secure for a little while. I don't think attrition is a long-term fix, though, unless we're willing to implement a Final Solution and simply kill everybody whose interests run contrary to ours. Otherwise, it's only a matter of time before those we've brutalized gather enough strength and numbers to attack us again.

As Thomas McGrath said:

And now, you celebrated American jackasses:
You still want war?
Go let a hole in the head shed light on your darkling brain-
Remember Vietnam?

Go and be damned!
But don’t count on me for nothing you righteous
stupid sons of bitches !

much peace, for us anyway
tjb