parlando

old post #4, 5 jul 96

Posted on February 8th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Memory, Old Posts.

(Answering "What is the best time you've ever had at a fireworks show?")

Eighteen years old, with my first girlfriend, sitting on a bluff on Capital Hill in Seattle overlooking Lake Washington. It was three days after we'd kissed for the first time, and eight days before she took my virginity; we were at some very nice place in between for most of the night. Some hours after the fireworks we dropped acid and waited for sunrise. In the very early slow light before dawn, holding each other in absolute infatuated blissful stillness and silence, an owl swept down into the valley beneath us, passing not two feet over our heads. Just remembering that moment makes goosebumps rise on my arms.

0 comments.

old post #3, 16 jan 01

Posted on February 8th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Badness, Movies, Old Posts.

My roommate has a cat, Milo. A neurotic cat, but until recently within normal cat neurosis territory. But my roommate has begun a relationship that has him outside the apartment a great deal more than previously, and unfortunately Milo turns out to be a Desperately Needy cat, starved for attention after mere minutes of solitude.

I am friendly to cats, but allergic. Petting is out of the question; I swell up, choke, go blind, die a dozen unpleasant deaths. Milo begs for love, and though I cannot touch him, I speak to him kindly, endeavor to make him understand that his problems are heard, that he is appreciated and loved and that someday his master will return and shower him with the affection to which he is so manifestly entitled.

No more. Yesterday, as I prepared to meet my sweetheart to see a movie, the phone rang. My roommate's phone was closest -- he was gone, naturally -- and as I answered it, Milo ran up behind me and bit me on the fucking leg. Hard enough to draw blood. I whacked him with the phone receiver -- I'm sorry, but he was out of line -- yelled at him, poured disinfectant on the wound, and yelled at him some more. Not to put too fine a point on it, I was fucking freaked out; blood running down my leg, wound swelling, cat running around howling. Not fun.

Then Velma & I went to see Shadow of the Vampire. It was good and creepy, but I'm seeing Nosferatu in the cat's fuzzy face now.

0 comments.

old post #2, 24 dec 00

Posted on February 7th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Old Posts.

I am housesitting for Brad and Deborah. They have fish and lizards: ornamental pets, the kind you can't really get empathetically connected to, but are fun to look at. Velma spent considerable time trying to figure out how fish think; she soon amended this question to whether fish think (conclusion: No).

The lizards require crickets. Brad and Deborah helpfully left a supply, so we were not obliged to hunt our own in the parks of New York (where I have never seen so much as a grasshopper). They were in a little plastic box, with a few torn up egg cartons and chopped potatoes. Crawling with crickets.

I had not given much though to extracting the crickets. It seemed straightforward enough. Ha. They had no interest in climbing up the little tube that had been provided for extracting them. Nor did any other simple method of just extracting three or four come to mind. We tried covering part of the opening and pulling out one of the egg carton bits, since the bugs seemed sedate. Ha again. They lurched to life, crawling and bounding about alarmingly. One made a desperate bid for freedom, leaping through the opening, barely missing my face, hitting the table and falling to the floor.

We had no insects in hand, but we had one on the loose. If I'd been a seven-year-old, I'd have caught it in my hands, but that didn't occur to me. The narrow tube was inadequate; the bug hopped away before the plastic prison could descend. I went to the kitchen to get a glass; when I returned, five seconds later, I couldn't see the cricket. "Where did it go?" I demanded of Velma. "I don't know," she said, "I lost it." "But I was only gone five seconds!" I cried in despair. We searched unenthusiastically and unsuccessfully.

Eventually we managed to extract a few hapless crickets and make the lizards happy. But there is one rebel, one rogue cricket skulking about the apartment, just waiting for the lights to go out; then we will listen for the sound of miniature ladders and grappling hooks, and the tiny cries of insect escape. Revolution!

0 comments.

old post #1, 26 sep 96

Posted on February 6th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Comedy, Old Posts.

[i'm going to post lots of old stuff, because i'm still learning to be me again.]

Hey, I've never introduced myself. I'm Scraps, but my true name is Lancelot St. Goodfellow, and I work for the New York Department of Public Spectacle as a cheese grater. In my spare time I throw pillows and conjugate verbs. Someday I hope to build a rope bridge to the future and walk across it on my elbows. I like fuzzy fruit and bald hamsters, and I hate people who are deaf or otherwise unable to pay attention to me. The sick ground chuck drops other the lazy fog. Selah!

0 comments.

bite

Posted on January 25th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Musicians.

Frank J Oteri: And in terms of training before you got exposed to jazz? Did you train in classical music at all?

Carla Bley: No, I didn't. I never studied anything.

Frank J Oteri: So you're completely self-taught!

Carla Bley: No, my father taught me until I was four, or five maybe, and then my mother tried and I bit her. I bit my mother at the age of five and they gave up on me. That was it. I never learned anything else.

0 comments.

the message

Posted on January 18th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff, Recovery.

Tomorrow it's the important doctor's appointment, with my neurologist. I've careful written down the message:

"So I tried Keppra another six weeks, with Gabapentin gradually tailing off until it was done. It’s better without Gabapentin, but the Keppra is still bad.

"It’s still, all the time, twenty-four hours a day, dazed, dull, sluggish, and a little bit stupid. I hate it, all the time. I can’t find the words. It’s been two months since the seizures; I was improving, but now I’m not – if anything, I have regressed -- and I am frustrated.

"I have a theory. I think Keppra is all right if the stroke didn’t affect the language part of the brain (or not much). Maybe the medication is making me dull and dazed, but theoretically it’s fine because my language is still fine.

"But it’s not fine; my language is very much affected. I need that part of the brain. I value that part, so much so that I can’t do without. Please, can we try something else?"

3 comments.

spelling

Posted on January 14th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Recovery.

Another: My spelling is still 100% good -- when I'm presented with the correct word. But my spelling function -- "spell it out" -- is horrible. In other words, if I get presented with five variants of a word -- say, "fortunately", "fortunetely", "fortunetelly", "edgar", and "fortunatelly" -- I will pick the right one every time. But if I'm asked to spell it out aloud, I will be dumb. And sometimes I can't spell even writing -- not speaking -- simply, I can't find the word; for instance, I can't think of the variant "fortunately" -- the right one -- and I'm helpless. Once I've found it, I know it.

It's really hard to explain, that one.

0 comments.

my mind, etc

Posted on January 14th, 2010 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Recovery.

Samuel Beckett, Rough for Theatre: "There croaking to the winter wind [rime with unkind], having lost his little mouth-organ."

I literally can't parse "rime with unkind". I understand perfectly the sense of it, but my mind skips, every time I try to sound it out, the winter wind rhyming with unkind.

addendum: It's not Irish. It's not the words.

I understand perfectly how "wind" rhymes with "blind" and "mind". But my hearing mind doesn't understand it; it's broken.

It's weird.

1 comment.

function words

Posted on December 29th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Stuff, Recovery.

Today my head speech therapy guy, Luis -- it's between semesters, there is nobody who is a student and therefore usually speaks to me, so it's up to Luis (don't get me wrong, he's very busy, and I'm a free -- Medicaid -- therapy case) -- anyway, Luis said the neurologists and speech doctors in charge of me had a meeting. They were worried that I had regressed -- which, of course, I had, since the seizures -- and they wanted to keep me pointing forward, so I am -- probably -- going off the maddening Keppra, and going on something else. (Unfortunately, Dr Benjamin, my head neurologist, was not there.)

We talked about homework; specifically, we talked about the homework that was going to do any good to me. I asked about function words, because those are words that were particular problems for me. Unfortunately, he said there were no homework -- things? jobs? this is how I write, casting about for words -- he said, well, my mind is ahead, even though I can't grasp it. (And I can't, today.)

0 comments.

completions

Posted on December 27th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Stuff, Recovery.

I went to speech therapy today, and she felt confident of my sentence completion skills that she sent me home with homework. Last week I was numb; I was just staring at the paper. So today I was writing; still can't write like two months ago -- before the seizure -- but slowly coming back. Especially humor; grade-school humor, but still.

I'll show you some. It's mixed with humor -- not wit, that's coming, I hope -- and, well, despair and anger. (This is what Velma has to put up with.) The all-caps is the part I'm completing:

2. I DON'T LIKE cell phones BECAUSE they're difficult to hear.

3. THE TROUBLE WITH POLITICS IS, well, nothing. Politics is compromise; you can't necessarily get what you want, but you get something, if you participate. Unless you're talking about corrupt politics; to many, corrupt politics are the only politics. I think that's a copout.

4. YOU LOOK LIKE a patient woman.

6. SHE CAME LATE BECAUSE her hair fell out, and she had to glue it back on.

7. I WISH I had my language back. Also, I wish I had just one more hit single.

8. IT UPSETS ME TO have to write eighth grade sentences; and that I know I have to.

9. FLOWERS ARE funny. Particularly daisies; I don't know why.

2 comments.

intellectually exhausted

Posted on December 20th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff, Movies, Recovery.

One of the changes in my life is movies. Reading is now very hard for me; I can read, but it's ten times as laborious -- still -- and it's exhausting. But movies is easier. So I've begun, late in my life, teaching myself the classics. One of my lists is Roger Ebert's 4-star movies. So far, I have watched The Thief Of Baghdad, In a Lonely Place, 12 Angry Men, and The 400 Blows.

I watched The 400 Blows yesterday. And I discovered another dismaying thing: if it is not English, I have to expend translation time -- ten times as hard, basically -- trying to keep up, flickering my eyes up and down, everything watching, not comfortable, not lost in the movie. By the time it's ending, I'm again exhausted. The 400 Blows is really good, but I've going to have to watch it again, tomorrow, because I was literally lost for much of it.

The ending shot was powerful, though.

2 comments.

walking

Posted on December 13th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff, Recovery.

I have a sore left (good) leg. That's because I left the apartment alone yesterday good and mad -- both of us were mad -- and walked, walked, walked. Do you know the distance between lower Park Slope and the Verrazano Narrows bridge? I walked it there and back. There was fine; back was grim, and getting grimmer as I approached home. Velma met me about a quarter mile away, and I stumbled and staggered across the finish line. When I was healthy, I walked often, and far. So I took a grim satisfaction that I could do it, even though I took about six hours.

Today Velma and I are better. She's off to sing, wearing our derby hat. I'm preparing dinner. I'm making chicken hearts, slow cooked, with Indian jalfrezi sauce, red onions, green pea and lentil sprouts, and a mixture of wild and white rice. The only thing was hard was getting the jar of sauce open; that took five minutes.

My language is better: I mean it's better even in twenty-four hours. Maybe Dr Benjamin (my neurologist) is right about Keppra. Well, good. I still feel it, like a blanket around my head, numbing; but the words are forming, and the keyboard is not attacking me anymore.

Time composed: twenty-five minutes.

2 comments.

recovery slipped

Posted on December 8th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff, Recovery.

Three weeks and four days my precarious recovery slipped, wobbled, and spiraled down, and I'm still slowly coming back. I'd been having a rough day; crying, depression, I don't know what. Sometimes it's hard. Late afternoon I entered the living room, and sat down to watch tv. I was tired, and I laid down. Suddenly I felt strange; maybe five seconds I felt weird, and I felt -- maybe -- my leg started to get cramped. And I felt numb, and I couldn't move. Then I felt better; except I couldn't speak.

Velma was looking pale, though. I wanted to speak to her, but I couldn't. I felt bemused. Suddenly -- again -- the apartment was full of people, EMT people, five of them. I couldn't understand them, mostly. I started to panic. Why? It's just five to ten seconds! They loaded me on a stretcher, and I began to cry. Going to the hospital, again! And I got mad. Speech slowly returned. But I wouldn't talk to the EMT people, or (mostly) Velma. I wasn't rational.

I arrived at the hospital. I was in and out. I remember Howard and Helen were there, but I don't remember them arriving. I lay down, and I turned, and then again I felt strange and again my leg started to cramp. Howard said loudly something.... And then it was three or four days past, upstairs. Apparently I had loudly threatened to kill myself. Apparently I had calmly told Velma I didn't love her anymore; that's hard, but is harder for Velma. Apparently I had two seizures, about three minutes; when you experience something as five seconds but in fact it actually is three minutes, it's, well, weird.

Anyway, I'm back, slowly, again. I'm home, after six days. Two weeks of Lexipro was hard, but I finally got off that stuff. Now I'm still on Keppra, which makes me numb and sleepy and queasy and I can't sleep -- yes, I can simultaneously can't sleep and am sleepy -- but my neurologist thinks it's messing up with Gabapentin, so I'm going to pull off the Gabapentin slowly, about six weeks, then check.

So yeah, the recovery slipped. But my comeback is back.

7 comments.

issues

Posted on November 6th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Badness, Stuff.

I got yelled at by a turning trucker, for walking with the light but too slow. So I stopped in front of him, yelled at him, brandished my cane, told him I was disabled, etc. And he yelled even more. Eventually I moved on.

Boy, I blew up. I was walking fine, in a okay mood, then out of the blue this irritant came up, and I felt myself get instantly very mad; and I felt myself shake, even before I turned and yelled.

I think I have issues.

7 comments.

a somewhat funny homework assignment

Posted on November 1st, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Comedy, Recovery.

(The last three weeks have been a steep curve of learning; I want to write down some of it.) This homework assignment is to describe a children's drawing, a simple drawing of a birthday party. And my therapist, Alexandra, told me to make a little story also (because she seems to have got the idea that I am promising).

"It's a birthday party. The boy with the big grin in the center is probably the celebrator.* The boys to either side have (presumably) presents for him. The cake in front of the celebrator has nine candles, which either means he's nine years old, or his parents screwed up. There are plates in front of his friends, but none in front of the birthday boy. Maybe he's supposed to give a slice to each of them, and than eat the rest of it by himself.

"But it doesn't matter; the missing plate is far from the birthday boy's thoughts. (Let's call him Ralph.) He is grinning -- do you notice that the other two are not? -- not in laughter; he is grinning because the plan he has cultivated, the plan he has spent the last year, well, planning, is coming to fruition. For his right hand is reaching, grasping for the big knife; and he is going to kill the two, or at least maim them.

"And yet. The right one of the boys -- let's call him Ralph, too -- is concentrating on Ralph the Killer's (or Maimer's) face. And do you know? his hands, both of them, are under the table. Maybe he is reaching for a knife too; it could be, because we can't see under the table. Maybe he's reaching for a gun! Maybe he's reaching for a knife and a gun! One thing that is for sure: we can't know until we move a minute past . . . the birthday party."

*(Originally I used the word "celebrant", but I looked it up, and the definition was "the priest officiating at the Eucharist," so no.)

5 comments.

about novelty socks

Posted on October 23rd, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff, Cartoons.

"Wacky is humor without the teeth."

            --Cat and Girl

0 comments.

a writer who is down my damaged path

Posted on October 23rd, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Reading Classics, Writers.

I realized yesterday that my damaged reading strengths now are right down Samuel Beckett's path. I tested it with some Beckett at home, and I was right. He tends to be short, and mordantly funny, and his voice -- especially -- is vivid, like a voice speaking to me, and -- especially especially -- his voice frequently falls into the incantatory. My damaged language reading falls naturally into the incantatory, only most of the time the material is not: a false incantation, and I have to start (the sentence, the paragraph, the section) over. Beckett's writing is a true incantation; he's therefore easy (relatively) to read now.

I'll always wanted to embark on a Beckett bender. I think it's time. I'm excited. Really!

5 comments.

hailstones in parts of austria kill 90 percent of wild game

Posted on October 21st, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Badness, Stuff.

from the Telegraph:

"Hunting has been banned in parts of Austria after freak storms with tennis ball-sized hailstones killed up to 90 per cent of the wild game population.

"Hundreds of deer were discovered either dead or so badly injured they had to be put down by wildlife experts.

"In the country's rural Salzburg province, 90 percent of pheasants and 80 percent of hares were killed in the hail storms.

"Sepp Eder, the hunting chief, said : 'Animals sought shelter in farms, in fields of grain but the hail was so heavy it smashed right into them. It may take five years for animal numbers to recover, if they ever do so.'

"Farmers are believed to have suffered more than £60 million in damages to crops and buildings."

via Ed Ward at the Well

0 comments.

fortune cookies talk back, number whatever

Posted on October 21st, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Words, Comedy, Oracles.

Yesterday a got a fortune cookie that said, "Come back later. I am sleeping. (Yes, fortune cookies need their sleep, too.)"

I love the first part. The second, parenthetical part, not so much. It's trying too hard, over-selling the joke.

But it's trying. It's fortune cookies like that that keep me reading them; one out of thirty, seems like these days.

5 comments.

spooky

Posted on October 12th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs, Live Music.

I did not know that Johnny Cash and Joni Mitchell sang a duet of "Long Black Veil", in 1969, for the debut program of Johnny Cash's TV show.

from The Hits Just Keep On Comin'

1 comment.

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