February 2003 Archives

I began writing morning pages again after taking two weeks off. I miss the inner connection that falls away when I stop writing them. My handwriting has gotten so terrible that I can scarcely read it. Wonder what that’s all about.

We are still waiting for the biopsy results from Willi’s surgery. We’ve put him on a strict potatoes only diet to see if his inflamed bowel condition is being triggered by some sort of food allergy. So far so good since Monday. Still, he has had good days like this in the past and then out of the blue all hell breaks loose for no apparent reason. Of course he cannot live on potatoes alone, but this is just a test to see if he can tolerate any food for any length of time without having an attack.

There are a million things whirling through my mind. Is it possible to develop ADD at the age of forty-two? I need to have lunch with a friend.

And so a new day begins unwinding…

Contrary to what you might have heard in certain circles, I am now available for the singing of radio and television spots for large budgeted advertising champions, preferably based out of New York City. I wouldn’t reject Los Angeles, Chicago, or, not to mention…Toronto, but like I always say:

New York is where I’d rather stay
I get allergic smelling hay
I need to get a down payment for a penthouse view
Darling I love you but give me Madison Avenue

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

With all certainty I am capable of doing the job, really I am. I am clean cut, polite, and punctual especially when there are four to five digit sums involved. I have clocked many thousands of hours behind a studio microphone and am not in the least bit intimidated by its rather large phallic dimensions. My preference has always been for a microphone with girth, i.e. the Neumann U87. However I have been known to make due quite handsomely with the smaller, less cylindrical, yet equally potent AKG 414.

A nice little national car commercial would be fine. I am also not at all unenthusiastic about the prospect of singing about food or beverages since I find both of these contrivances to be rather handy. Despite the fact that I have abandoned the practice of drinking alcoholic beverages quite some time ago, my voice has been known for its capacity to turn happy-go-lucky beer drinkers into hardened beer guzzlers that simply don’t know when to call it a night.

Also up for consideration is the vigorous singing of commercials pertaining to breakfast cereals and fast foods chains, particularly the brands that were introduced at the turn of the century before last and carry with them the weight of history. Having once sung about Kellogg's Corn Flakes in all corners of the world, I feel that my voice is particularly well suited to the task of selling tiny gay flaky things. One must do what one knows best.

Most definitely up for consideration are such preferred products such as coffee, coffee being one of my primary food groups and nutritional supplements. I think I definitely am up to the task of warbling on enthusiastically with a distinct yet adroit sincerity that would carry with it the power to grind up even the most resistant oven-roasted coffee beans resulting in the brisk thrusting of them into nifty vacuum packed containers or aluminum foil bags.

Since I heartily enjoy the modern conveniences such as the telephone I must clearly state that I wouldn’t at all find it objectionable being paid rather hefty sums of money to sing the praises of any one of the huge telephone companies, even though their persistent and somewhat annoying marketing calls, usually targeted at my long distance telephone dollars, often leave me feeling frail and queasy particularly during weekday evenings after suppertime.

Being an American citizen, working in New York poses absolutely no barrier to entry and having recently gotten over my fear of exploding buildings and airline travel I could easily be available and ready to belt out the next big jingle in a mere matter of minutes if not hours.

You may think I jest but let me reassure you that where there is smoke there is sometimes fire and God didn’t make them their little green apples for nothin’. Now don’t you be tellin’ me I’d be mixin’ my metaphors honey child.

And so yet another day comes unhinged at the threshold.

I’ve momentarily lost my direction or my concept of what direction is. Define momentarily:

Thirty-seven to forty-two.

When I was younger, I always knew exactly what I wanted and what I didn’t want. Midlife has provided me with the "scintillation” of a deep and pervasive murkiness that runs through each and every area of my life; everything that was once clear and translucent is now infused and surrounded by a kind of demented murkiness.

It’s a feeding frenzy of murk. Mix it baby. Doubts are like piranha fish, the more you have the worse things get, at which point a person could wind up needing a cocktail or five. Since I don’t drink, none of this last part leads me any closer to where I’d rather stay; out of the murk, once and for all.

Now go to bed...tomorrow is another day.

I picked Willi up from the vet's after his procedure around 3:30 pm yesterday afternoon. He was awake and alive but that’s about it. He looked to me like he had been through an ordeal, his body language being heavy and lethargic. All afternoon and evening he continued to sit and stare off into space in an extremely unfocused manner; not himself at all. I hope that this is just the effects of the general anesthesia still lingering and not something more hideous. This morning he still seems extremely weak and unfocused. I will have to watch him very closely today to make sure he gets re-hydrated and starts to eat something again.

Stay tuned for the continuing saga of Mark & Willi’s “It’s A Dog’s Life”.

And so a new day begins…or at least tries to.

I wake at 3:55 am to the sounds of Willi's growling stomach. At 4:15 am he is wincing and vomiting. He seems to be getting sicker. Today he will undergo a scope and biopsy procedure which will hopefully give us a firm diagnosis for what is ailing the poor fella. I have had to fast him since 6 pm last night. After vomiting bile this morning he was thirsty but I could not allow him to drink, so he lay down on the mat where his water bowl is usually located and a wave of sorrow went through my body; my dear sweet pet is suffering and I haven’t been able to do one goddamned thing to alleviate his pain.

Hopefully todays procedure will lead us to a proper treatment that works.

And so a new day begins…

Today is open mic day. You can ask me a question or just tell me something...It's all up to you today. I'm just here to hand you the mic. Of course I might comment from time to time, but tell me what's on you mind. If you don't feel comfortable saying it out in the open, just drop me an email and I will most certainly write you back.

And so a new day begins...

It tastes like February-old icicles that have fallen from the roof corners outside my window. I am all hollowed out down to my own shell. I have a slight headache but feel the tiniest bit of coziness since I woke. I slept through the night because Willi was OK. I feel as sharp as a cucumber. Wait, don’t try cutting anything up with me just quite yet.

If I were rain I would be running swiftly down the curb to the nearest sewer; I would be swift but murky and picking up particles of ice; more punctured than punctual.

I have broken through something…sleep perhaps. There is a slight thaw, a nasty glimmer of hope which is completely uncalled for. No one knows why it is here. Go away, you are strange and I don’t have any spare sheets or pillowcases for you. Most of all...I don’t trust you.

Look… I just show up and let "whatever" fall from my brain. I never said I would do anything else. Sometimes it falls like this…to the side and over a bit; pendulous. This is what happens when my brain starts to break up boredom into its most fundamental pieces; it quite niftily starts to spin out tidbits and gizmos under its own volition. My hands are tied.

However, my feet are warm…what the heck my whole body is warm. I will take this to mean that I’ve moved to a new and exciting level, if not an entirely new neighborhood, and will not be spanked too hard if I behave. I have never “behaved” in my entire life. Why would I suddenly and out of the blue attempt to do something so utterly madcap and overly ambitious as “behaving myself”? It's unattractive and completely uncalled for. Come to think of it, I have never been spanked either. Maybe I should give myself a spanking at once.

“It’s getting earlier brighter” Stephen says to me through the wall, proof positive that I am not the only dyslexic lefthander in the house. Why…they are cheering riotously in the balconies for "Earlier, Brighter", but someone needs to go tell them it's over. Don't look at me.

Another day comes apart at the seams…

It snows again. Where is spring? My body and mind are aching to be refreshed by the smell of the lilacs. I need tulips. I need things to thaw out and things to sprout up. But we are still so far from what I need. The layers of old ice and snow are beginning to feel life threatening.

Since Willi has been sick I have had him with me more closely than usual. When he is well, he tends to be more social, staying at my mom’s house from time to time. When the weather is nice, other people offer to walk him; not so in the dead of winter. Our walks have become so automatic that we have fallen into the ugly habit of covering the exact same trail every time we go out. Boring!

I understand that one of your hounds is a bit queasy to the stomach as well. There had better not be terrorism involved.

And the days are equally as bland and blaaaaa. Cabin fever is killing me. I’m beginning to think that Dorothy Parker was right when she said, “There should be two kinds of people: Young people and dead people.” I could fall into the later category quite easily if anyone ever decides to take a pulse. Pulses are highly overrated, who needs ‘em? Apparently I still do or else I would trade mine in for a new piece of art. Please forgive me, for I am morose, in the truest sense of the word and would fully understand if you never returned to read this tripe.

And so a new day begins…

I wake up at god only knows what hour. I eventually fall back asleep and wake around 7:00 am. As I wake up the second time I go over the things on my mental todo list.

Today would have been my father’s 73rd birthday. It’s over two years now since he passed away and I miss him just as much as always. When we lose someone dear, it’s as if the missing of that person becomes our day to day experience. It never goes away; we learn to live with it on a daily basis until we have integrated the loss into our reality. The missing remains but the horrible pain of the loss subsides.

As I went looking through the family photos for a picture of my father, I realized just exactly how few photos were taken of him. He was the man behind the camera and since he was the one taking most of the photos he rarely shows up in them. It’s mostly my Mom, brother and I that appear. I found this rare photo of him from 1955 at Niagara Falls that must have been taken by my mother shortly after their arrival to Canada. He was 25 years old then, his youthful adult life stretching out ahead of him, the shimmering potential of the future. In the photo it looks as if he may have been instructing my mother in how to take the picture. It’s almost 50 years ago. I Love Lucy was the number one sitcom. Time flies. Everyone dead was young once. Cheers.

Happy Birthday Dad!

And so a new day begins…

I wake up at 3:45 am. This is no joke. It’s not something I decide to do for fun. Willi’s stomach flares up in the middle of the night and I spend the rest of it tossing and turning and listening mp3’s of Father Knows Best, the radio sitcom from the early 50’s. Think of me as refreshingly peculiar if nothing else.

I recently discovered old radio shows as an interest as well as an amazingly powerful sleep aid. In a world of widescreen, surround sound, and four dimensional everything, sometimes all I want is something simple that can help me fall asleep. What could be simpler than listening to an old radio show from the 30’s, 40’s or early 50’s? What could be more relaxing then that? You can close your eyes and just listen.

Because television was the runaway success that it was in the early 50’s, it tends to obliterate the popularity of radio, and all the content that was created before 1950, the year that television really caught on as a mass medium.

There are oodles of these old radio broadcasts available on the new groups in mp3 format…one in particular: alt.binaries.sounds.radio.oldtime.highspeed is just loaded with all kinds of goodies. Why not check it out sometime, and hear for yourself their relaxing, hypnotic, sedative quality. They actually leave something to the imagination which is a nice change.

And so a new day begins...

I wake up at 5:50 am. Willi had been perfectly normal since Monday evening until this morning at 5:50 am, at which point his stomach starts acting up again. The noises coming from his stomach are loud enough to wake me up out of a deep sleep. He stares at me in discomfort with that urgent look in his eyes. He’s nauseous and wants to go outside to eat some grass. I bundle up and we head out in the dark freezing cold. Within a few yards he is vomiting bile, his tiny body convulsing with each heave.

We are not having a good time.

We find a spot of long frozen grass and Willi eats a fair amount. I guess he knows what he’s doing. We don’t stay out for long because of the brutal cold. When we come back in he seems to be a bit more comfortable even though his stomach is still churning around. He falls back asleep again but I am wide awake. By 7:30 am he is up again vomiting in the backyard. Once the bile is all out of his system he starts to recover.

Willi April 1996

My life has become a dog’s life because my dog is as sick as a dog. Ssssh, I don’t want to hear any complaints about that last sentence. Four hours of sleep will make a person say strange things. I need a nap and it’s only 10 am. Yikes. And I promised myself that I would never again use the word "Yikes!" and I've just used it twice.

And so a new day begins…

My Valentine (Recorded February 13, 1998) mp3 Format

Stephen and I met over five years ago in the fall of 1997…we have been together ever since, mostly due to his courageous move to Toronto in the summer of 1999. Our first Valentine’s Day together was back in 1998. He still lived in Manhattan on the East Side at 48th Street near the UN, a block south of Stephen Sondheim’s place. Katherine Hepburn lived just a couple of doors down from Sondheim. We frequently walked by these places on our walks cross town and wondered about what Stephen's well known neighbors were up to.

I had flown down to be with him on Valentine’s Day. I came bearing the gift of a recording I had just made for the occasion. It was a song on a Jim Brickman album called My Valentine. I liked the song so much and thought it would be perfect if I recorded it just for Stephen on Valentine's Day. He liked it a lot and it always brings me back to this very happy time for us. I offer it here and now in the hope you will like it too. I dedicate it to those of you who still have romantic hearts.

I wake up at 5:55 am. Valentine’s Day. Willi and Stephen are sound asleep. I fell asleep early…10:30ish and therefore I wake up feeling like I got enough sleep. I go to the bathroom, weigh myself to make sure that I am still there, where ever there is, or at least in the ballpark, whatever that is. I head for the kitchen and brew up some decaf. I write morning pages to find out exactly how confused my mind is. Could be worse. It’s Friday and we are feeling pretty good about that now aren’t we.

I get dressed and take Willi for his morning walk. No vomiting this morning…perhaps the Pepcid he is on is helping him. On his walk he has a normal bowel movement and seems quite perky. Everything looks normal again…but this is probably too good to be true. Three days without any real trouble. Hmmm. I am crossing my fingers that whatever it is that has been upsetting him for weeks, perhaps is diminishing or healing. Hope burns eternal.

I drive Willi over to my mother’s house where he is spending the day…then off to work. Still I have not written or posted my Valentine’s Day entry.

At the office I encounter raised voices and a tension in the air that has to do with no one knowing how to reprogram the speed dial on the fax machine. Something must have been faxed out to the wrong number. Woops.

I detest fax machines. I don’t mind computers, but fax machines scare me. They remind me of the late 80’s and early 90’s and I have no talent for the strange and wacky technology of that time period. I was a singer/songwriter then let us not forget and fax machines were just not a part of my know-how. I am as allergic to them as my father was to computers.

It takes me ten minutes to figure out how to program the speed dial thingy, but not first before wanting to throw the entire contraption against the wall quite violently. Since I have fairly good impulse control I don’t do this, but in my mind the thing is out the window and down the street. The other people in the office are equally intimidated by the device only they have mastered the confused shoulder shrug maneuver mixed in with the both arms bent at the elbow to the shoulders, palms facing forward, this is most definitely not my job gesture.

It’s easier for me to learn speed dial programming than it is for me to teach lessons in overcoming learned helplessness programming. Either way I am cursing the inventor of the fax machine, couldn’t computers have come along a decade earlier than they did?

And so a new day begins…

I wake up at 6:15 am. Willi and Stephen are still fast asleep. I envy them. No matter what I do, I always fall asleep an hour after them, and wake up an hour before them. Then I realize, I am alone…we are all alone, no matter how many people and animals we have around us.

Willi got his x-rays taken yesterday: See-through Willi. It breaks my heart to leave him at the vets; I hope and pray that they are as kind as they seem. What if it’s just a front? What if those girls at my vet’s office are really nothing more than a bunch of Karla Homolkas in disguise? What sinister things am I subjecting my poor animal to? God, the damage that just one psychopath can do.

Willi’s vet throws up his see-through photo of Willi on the light box and shows me that there is essentially nothing wrong with him from what he can see on the x-ray. This is costing me hundreds and hundreds of dollars to find out what is not wrong with my dog. More and more it looks like Inflammatory Bowel Disease. So, the next step is to have him “scoped”. This involves a general anesthetic, sticking a camera and probe down his throat into his stomach and small intestine and taking biopsies. This procedure will undoubtedly cost more hundreds of dollars. None of this bathes me in relief as you can well imagine.

And so new day begins…

I wake up at 6:30 am. Willi has moved to the top of the bed and is snoring into my ear. Very interesting. He has an appointment with his vet this morning for x-rays. I need some valium. Does anyone have any valium? So…I am going to keep it short and if not entirely sweet.

The ice beneath my feet, the stinging wind against my face, the five layers of clothing when I walk Willi, the deadly cold all around me…it’s just too much. I want out…this is nuts. I am starting to resort to eating sweet things out of sheer fatigue.

The exhaustion I feel permeates me to the bone. Is this old age just slowly creeping up on me? Yesterday I noticed my vision was blurry in the bookstore. I was squinting at things because they were fuzzy all around the edges. What is that? Did I have a stroke or is this yet another attack of hypochondria?

And so a new day begins…

I wake at 6:30 am. I stare at the ceiling. Every stupid thought known to mankind enters pirouetting, curtsying and finally squatting and dumping little unpleasantries in the corners of my mind. The one thought that keeps coming up again and again is that I am just utterly exhausted. I have just slept seven hours, but for some odd reason this feels more like I spent the evening and early morning sifting through trash at the local dump in search of an Amex receipt. I feel exhausted and cranky. I don’t feel like doing one goddamned thing today.

Of course, as always, there are things that need my attention.

My mind and head ache. Fixing MovableType over the weekend did not exactly sprinkle little droplets of refreshment and enthusiasm all over me. Nor did Willi’s chronic illness, his middle of the night walks and vomiting manage to put a twinkle in my eye and a sprightly spring into my step. I hate to admit it…I feel sorry for the both of us, which I know is never an attractive quality. Hell, I feel sorry for you, for having to read this pooh- pooh concoction. If you have managed to do so this far…I will send you money.

Yesterday was the endless day from hell. It started at 4 am with Willi’s stomach gymnastics, and didn’t let up until the nice furnace repair guy and his cigarette breath left at 9:30 pm. After work we came home, on what seemed to be the coldest day of the year, to a house with no furnace. I don’t mean to say that someone broke in during the day and took it. What I mean to say is that it was not heating. Turns out the thermostat thought it might be amusing to shit the bed. I’m not saying there was shit in the bed, but what I am saying is that it was pretty damn darn cold in the house when we got home from work.

I called the furnace company and within a few hours everything was up and running again, this time with a new programmable thermostat that takes dictation and will rearrange your living room furniture every Friday evening like clockwork if you so prefer. I am wondering if it can scramble eggs, help to do something about pesky fibroid tumors or assist in the removal of life threatening political figures from power.

Can anyone help me?

Obviously I’m exhausted and the neurotransmitters responsible for normal everyday thought have joined the broken thermostat in the garbage bin where I am certain they are now secretly conspiring to over throw the natural order of things.

Speaking of things, a mind is an interesting thing; how it can go on for hundreds of words, spinning out one ridiculous strangeness after the next, where the end result is just a strange dim feeling that something, yes something is going every so slightly northeast, and perhaps a big old fat cat has taken up residency in the dog house. Why use only a few words when one can use a multitude of words to say precisely the same thing…only better?

And so a new day begins…

I wake at 4:05 am. The noises coming from Willi’s stomach wake me up. He stares at me, unable to get comfortable. I get up and get dressed, put on my warm parka and take him for a walk around the block.

Willi tries to eat frozen grass. Dogs often do this when their stomachs are upset. It’s instinctive. We are back in the house by 4:30 am. Still his stomach is growling… he vomits some bile. I feel stupid because I have not been able to help him. Numerous trips to the vet have only been a process of elimination; I now know four things it is definitely not. What I don’t know yet is what it is. And poor Willi is still getting sick in a predictable up and down pattern which plays itself out over a few days each time.

Thanks to those of you who sent emails in concern about him. I sometimes forget that you are out there reading this.

For those of you who were wondering why I didn’t post anything over the weekend, on Saturday I got adventurous and did some tweaking on my MovableType installation…to the point where I broke the damn thing. I then spend a good part of the weekend trying to fix it and then finally reinstalling it on the server. By Sunday afternoon, I had computer nausea, that sick headachy feeling one gets when one is an idiot and spends too much time staring at a computer screen. Just drive over me with a Mac truck. Please!

I am finally getting to the end of the Dorothy Parker biography I’ve been reading. A few more pages to go…she’s still alive, but just barely. Turns out that she was often treated for various illnesses at Flower Fifth Avenue Hospital in New York City, the same hospital where I was born. How strange is that? It’s a small world indeed. And I can’t help but feel a kinship with her because of her love of dogs and her depressive wit.

And so a new day begins…

I wake up at 6:45 am. I am usually the first to wake up…and it’s still dark inside and out. The daily grind is getting to me. The feeling that each day is turning into a carbon copy of the last; is it just February cabin fever I’ve got? If only something could make me laugh as I am just so utterly disgusted by it all.

If you don't have anything nice to say...don't say anything. Ya, ya, ya.

I find myself unable to write anything of any interest. I sit…I stare at the computer screen. I write something…delete…try again…delete. Almost done.

Watching television last night did nothing to restore my faith in humanity. The Michael Jackson interview on 20/20 was…well just plain scary. It was scary because of what it said about Michael Jackson, but even more disturbing, is to what extent it acted as a mirror of our modern times; our values, our fascinations. It was reality television on steroids; the real American idol…the very real outcome of having an American idol, for idolizing the young, the talented, the attractive. We build them up, and then as they grow older and more idiosyncratic and peculiar, we rejoice in blowing them to smithereens, out in front, all over the place. I felt pity for him and for our culture. We have lost not only every shred of innocence, but much worse, our dignity.

And so a new day begins…

Michael Jackson 20/20 ABC (RealVideo format)

20/20 featured a two hour long behind the scenes look at one of my generation’s most troubling creations of mass media stardom, Michael Jackson. His music is by this point so beside the point. What people think of when they hear the name Michael Jackson are words like, freak, weird, wacko, pedophile, plastic surgery, Neverland, fantasyland, and finally just plain old coocooland. All you have to do is look and listen for just one minute and the picture is complete.

Here it is ladies and gentlemen…take a good look at yourself in the mirror because this is our baby…our society, our values, our beliefs, our tastes in music, our racism, our obsession with surfaces and appearances, our greed for money, our youthful ignorance about things like teen idol worship. Here we go… the American dream live and well in skin pinching color. It makes me very sad, but then again it’s so un-American of me to feel pity for a super wealthy person. Isn’t everyone responsible for their own lives?

I wake up at 5:50 am. Decaf. Morning pages. Mind full of stuff. Rushing. Going no where quickly. Need to cook up a fresh batch of homemade dog food. Willi doesn’t have Addison’s Disease, the tests came back normal. Then what does he have? It’s a wild goose chase for a diagnosis. Each time we don’t find the cause of his problem I feel as is we are edging towards something more ominous.

The next thing to check for is inflammatory bowel disease and cancer. Well, doesn’t that just say it all. Why bother writing anything more. I’m done. I’m upset… and I am done.

And so a new day begins…

Google Search Image

I wake at 5:30 am. I get up shortly after that. Why fight it? My mind is revving again, tumbling around like wet clothes in a dryer. Take a pee…I seem to do this a lot these days. I’m either drinking more fluids or I’m just getting older; how about both. How about too much information.

Phil Spector, legendary record producer, most famous for changing the sound of popular music with his “Wall of Sound” was arrested Monday for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson. Phil’s arrest gives an entirely new meaning to the phrase “and the hits just keep on coming.” Apparently one hit too many Phil. How many more hits like this can the music industry take?

I wake up. It’s 6:04 am. The thought that I must take Willi to the vet this morning wakes me up. I tell myself I don’t have time to write morning pages and then I write them anyway.

I am finally exhausted by thoughts at 6:26 am; thoughts are what wake me up. I must be thinking all night long, working things through. Willi nearly falls from the bed at 4:35 am. He is fasting again and yesterday was not one of his good days. He refuses to eat and drink. I am checking for dehydration, but he seems to be alright that way. It’s everything else that is not good. He’s sluggish and sleeps all day and simply turns his nose up at food. All food…even things like steak.

Saturday, yesterday… I wake up, it’s 6:45 am. What is wrong with this picture? “The power keeps going on and off. All your computers in your office keep switching on and off…and Willi was out in the living room…I hope he didn’t do something out there.” Stephen says.