so i talked to my dad while still laying in bed. i stayed up waaaay to late last night and as a result slept through the entire day. dads phonecall woke me up about a quarter to 6pm and he told me that mom was out of the operation and in the recovery room. she was having back surgery to fix some problems in her lower back that had been giving her chronic back pain for years, i am so happy for her if this worked. they basically fused some spinal vertabrae together in her lower back and added to hip braces on either side to give her more support. she will be out of commission for about 3 months and will begin therapy. i'm just glad she pulled through ok. my dad said that at one point they had to stand her up in the middle of the operation to see if she could support the hip braces. fucking crazy.
which leads me to my own back issues. i have had chronic back issues too, i guess that is a hereditary trait . in my case i have always centered all of my stress into my back and it has affected my posture over time. my grandpa had back problems too and always used to talk about looking like a question mark. ? . He used to say that a lot when i was a little boy and it stuck with me.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
overslept/surgery update
well my dad called me early this morning after i had fallen asleep from my youtube binge. he said that mom was being prepped and that she would be in operation shortly. i stayed in bed all day. i should say i slept all day. it is 6pm now and i was supposed to go to alumni tonight but i need to eat something and shower et al. i was invited to go to dc noodle afterwards but ive now backed out of those plans too. i think i just want to be alone right now and concentrate on sending good energy towards mom and the rest of my family.
ok getting out of bed now.
ok getting out of bed now.
you tuuube posts - severed heads
i can't sleep. i drank an americano before the meeting and then i g0t sucked into my netbook and my new optical drive and then i wound up on youtube. i found some clips that i wanted to post but not in facebook, this is part of the reason why i created this blog. i figure anyone who is reading this already has my attention so i'll post the more interesting clips here. first a few music videos from Severed Heads. i had never seen these clips before but now i cant stop watching them.. three of my favorites are below.
the devil has a mohawk.
this was made in 1987 and reminds me of hieronymous bosch. i love the piano melody that begins at the 2 minute mark and the way it coincides with the videos decent into an utter nightmare of visuals..
this video is hands down probably the strangest video i have ever seen. its beyond ridiculous and thats what i find fascinating about it- the tongue in cheek humor going on is sublime.
this was a video art piece played at several music festivals on a very large screen with a very large PA that was designed to barrage people with as much digital noise as possible, very pre-digital hardcore.
early electro pop from 1985, i love how it starts harshly filled with a distorted vocals and a buzzsaw bass line and then this ethereal keyboard melody swoops down and takes it skyward putting the hard and the soft in conflict.
the devil has a mohawk.
this was made in 1987 and reminds me of hieronymous bosch. i love the piano melody that begins at the 2 minute mark and the way it coincides with the videos decent into an utter nightmare of visuals..
this video is hands down probably the strangest video i have ever seen. its beyond ridiculous and thats what i find fascinating about it- the tongue in cheek humor going on is sublime.
this was a video art piece played at several music festivals on a very large screen with a very large PA that was designed to barrage people with as much digital noise as possible, very pre-digital hardcore.
early electro pop from 1985, i love how it starts harshly filled with a distorted vocals and a buzzsaw bass line and then this ethereal keyboard melody swoops down and takes it skyward putting the hard and the soft in conflict.
Monday, April 6, 2009
all about eve
so i bought an optical drive to go along with my asus netbook and i'm trying to figure out how to get the media manager to allow me to make mix cds in a more ordinary and less complicated way. the os i am using is linux, which reminds me of the apple os. i dont want to eat of the storage space of the netbook so im being careful of what i upload into the player. anyway...
i have two things going on right now.
my mom is having back surgery tomorrow and its just a reminder to me 0f how our bodies wear down over time. my parents are both in their early 60's, and while that is considered to be young, the reality is that eventually they will get older and more frail and then eventually leave this place.
i accept the fact that we all die and that they too will pass and i will grieve and have absolutely no choice in the matter. what bothers me the most is that i have a few major unresolved issues with her that we have just begun to discuss. they mostly revolve around my being gay and her religious conviction that homosexuality is wrong in Gods eyes (for the bible tells her so.) its taken me a decade to work through all of the intricacies of this inability to accept an aspect of my fundamental core of being. i think (or thought) that time had healed a lot of old wounds from earlier discussions that were very hurtful and frustrating. but there was still a scab left as i found out over thanksgiving. basically mom and i were watching tv and a reality program came on about drug addiction. she knows that i have battled addiction and depression since i was a teenager but we have never really talked about it in depth. well, we started to talk about and she was just happy to see that i was on the road to recovery and she was happy to support me in that endeavor. but when it came to my being gay, that struck a nerve with her and it something she told me, that she just could not support. she didn't say accept, she has known since i came out when i was 18. she even wrote me a letter a couple of years after my coming out that she had accepted that God had made me who i was and that she loved me, but she implored me to live a celibate lifestyle because it was the sin of engaging in gay sex which was the issue. well, the letter was given to me about 10 years ago and she again re-iterated a decade later her original position. this time she told me in a round-a-bout way that she could not accept a relationship between me and another man, especially if i were to "bring him home." Hearing her say this opened up something long dormant and i became angry but refrained from reacting to what she said. i wanted to really understand and have a dialogue with her and so we talked. i wasn't trying to convince her of anything but i was trying to help her understand that it was okay to let go of old ideas. she was not willing to do that and we kind of let it open. but that situation taught me a couple of things. one, she really is misguided and that i just need to let that go. the other thing that i learned was that i could allow myself to be angry with her and still love her- just for being my mom. i was able to reconcile that fact that my relationship with her was and never will be the same as it was when i was growing up. and in fact i am now a grown man with adult problems and she is an aging woman who is just trying to be true to her own conviction. and i respect that immensely, i can see where i got that trait from.
so tomorrow my mom is going into some pretty extensive surgery and i have to just be ok with h0w i feel, which is less trepidation than i thought. i do have the thought that something could go wrong and she wont pull through. it sounds morbid but its how i feel. am i ok to be in a place where i don't know exactly how i am going to feel? how scared am i going to be? what comfort will i have if the only sure security i ever had has left?
i am grounded in the fact that these surgeries happen everyday and are successful. i have to focus on what it is that SHE wants from this surgery and that is to no longer be in chronic pain. i hope the surgery achieves this and i hope that everything goes fine. either way, i will be ok.
and yes, i love her.
ok.. that was really long.
the other thing that happened today was that i waited on dana perino, the former white house spokeswoman for george w. bush. she was surprisingly nice and to be honest, all of the animosity i felt for her kind of dissipated as her meal went on. it was like, she was a human being like the rest of us, firm in her convictions no matter how wrong i think they are, and she just wanted something to eat.
i have two things going on right now.
my mom is having back surgery tomorrow and its just a reminder to me 0f how our bodies wear down over time. my parents are both in their early 60's, and while that is considered to be young, the reality is that eventually they will get older and more frail and then eventually leave this place.
i accept the fact that we all die and that they too will pass and i will grieve and have absolutely no choice in the matter. what bothers me the most is that i have a few major unresolved issues with her that we have just begun to discuss. they mostly revolve around my being gay and her religious conviction that homosexuality is wrong in Gods eyes (for the bible tells her so.) its taken me a decade to work through all of the intricacies of this inability to accept an aspect of my fundamental core of being. i think (or thought) that time had healed a lot of old wounds from earlier discussions that were very hurtful and frustrating. but there was still a scab left as i found out over thanksgiving. basically mom and i were watching tv and a reality program came on about drug addiction. she knows that i have battled addiction and depression since i was a teenager but we have never really talked about it in depth. well, we started to talk about and she was just happy to see that i was on the road to recovery and she was happy to support me in that endeavor. but when it came to my being gay, that struck a nerve with her and it something she told me, that she just could not support. she didn't say accept, she has known since i came out when i was 18. she even wrote me a letter a couple of years after my coming out that she had accepted that God had made me who i was and that she loved me, but she implored me to live a celibate lifestyle because it was the sin of engaging in gay sex which was the issue. well, the letter was given to me about 10 years ago and she again re-iterated a decade later her original position. this time she told me in a round-a-bout way that she could not accept a relationship between me and another man, especially if i were to "bring him home." Hearing her say this opened up something long dormant and i became angry but refrained from reacting to what she said. i wanted to really understand and have a dialogue with her and so we talked. i wasn't trying to convince her of anything but i was trying to help her understand that it was okay to let go of old ideas. she was not willing to do that and we kind of let it open. but that situation taught me a couple of things. one, she really is misguided and that i just need to let that go. the other thing that i learned was that i could allow myself to be angry with her and still love her- just for being my mom. i was able to reconcile that fact that my relationship with her was and never will be the same as it was when i was growing up. and in fact i am now a grown man with adult problems and she is an aging woman who is just trying to be true to her own conviction. and i respect that immensely, i can see where i got that trait from.
so tomorrow my mom is going into some pretty extensive surgery and i have to just be ok with h0w i feel, which is less trepidation than i thought. i do have the thought that something could go wrong and she wont pull through. it sounds morbid but its how i feel. am i ok to be in a place where i don't know exactly how i am going to feel? how scared am i going to be? what comfort will i have if the only sure security i ever had has left?
i am grounded in the fact that these surgeries happen everyday and are successful. i have to focus on what it is that SHE wants from this surgery and that is to no longer be in chronic pain. i hope the surgery achieves this and i hope that everything goes fine. either way, i will be ok.
and yes, i love her.
ok.. that was really long.
the other thing that happened today was that i waited on dana perino, the former white house spokeswoman for george w. bush. she was surprisingly nice and to be honest, all of the animosity i felt for her kind of dissipated as her meal went on. it was like, she was a human being like the rest of us, firm in her convictions no matter how wrong i think they are, and she just wanted something to eat.
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