So, One Day Sober

Nobody was going to believe that my arm had split into two separate, but still attached pieces. Luckily I just then came upon this mirror, which allowed me to document it!

On "So"-ers

It is the sure mark of an "academic" person if he/she prefaces the answer to almost everything with the word "so."

Right: I continue to search for kangaroo meat on the deep web, while dining upon bison meat, in moderation.

All I can think of are those arrogant Europeans shooting into herds through the windows of rail cars taking them to California, perhaps.

The Book That Just "Appeared"

So-ers, I call them, and they exhibit the most unconscious behavior, in the Eckhart Tolle, sense of being unconscious and on autopilot just reading the words out of where they reside in the brain, ready for regurgitation.

I first noticed this after I had gotten my first radio in about 15 years.

The last radio was in Jacksonville, Florida, where I listened to Jim Rome and Dan Patrick's sports shows.

I put on the NPR station and some person was being interviewed and answered every question ala: "What was it like moving to New York?"

"So, it was an adventure and..."

"What do you usually eat for breakfast?"

"So, I have a few favorites that I like, and..." type of thing.

I think it is my grandfather's spirit that is guiding me through this rough time; this going on 24 hours without drinking.

My grandfather on my mother's side used to do jigsaw puzzles. He was always working on 1,200 piece ones, or larger.

I can remember, as a kid, when we would visit, I would always try to place at least one piece in the puzzle. But, I was clueless and probably not aware enough of how he had organized the pieces, and was probably trying to fit a piece of the water from the dark end of a pond into the bark of an oak tree, or something, and he knew this.

But, I can remember actually giving up on some 1,000 piece puzzles that I had tried, maybe when I was about 16.

I now know that, if you do keep working on the thing, even if you are only snapping in one piece every 15 minutes, you will eventually put the whole puzzle together. I hadn't the patience, at 16, I guess.

Nor did I for the Mel Bay Grade 3 book, that I am revisiting; in an effort to hopefully jazz up the ol' songs, rather than try to get past them with: "Yeah, I can play this, kinda."

My goal wasn't to make the songs in the book sound good; I had already written them off as being either old fogy music, or stuff that, if you played it "perfectly" it would make it sound like you had a hillbilly over, and he brought his guitar.

So, my grandfather's spirit is guiding me using the jigsaw puzzle method to help me select, say, which books to read, and study, etc. He is on the other side, working on the cosmic puzzle and cannot communicate verbally due to limitations in heaven's broadband, so, after I work on the puzzle for a while, I then begin to see the similar colors all around me, which draws me into the present moment; and from there, a path emerges...

Of course, about 20 feet along it, it forks, with a bottle of beer marking one way, and Harold meowing and beckoning from a distance, down the other prone of the fork; in the darkness, so I can only see his eyes glowing orange...

I went to the Shell to get kratom and didn't get an Andy Gator double bock 8% alcohol job, while there.

I thought about it.

Every day I go in there and traipse over to the beer cave and emerge from it with any one of the craft beers they sell there in hand.

This has probably become an expectation of the guy and girl who work behind the counter there, I thought. It would probably throw them off if I didn't get a beer, I thought, too. People enjoy the comfort zones afforded by old familiar faces who can be counted on to do the old familiar things that endear them to them (unless they ever become roommates, whereupon those would be the very same things that would breed contempt between you two, but I digress).

It would be a sign that things weren't normal at all if I didn't get at least a Holly Roller IPA beer, I thought. It would stress them, of course it would. What's wrong; he didn't get his usual beer..." they would think. It would place a burden on them. I really should get maybe a Red Stripe in the 20 ounce bottle, I figured.

But, I just didn't. I was going to mix some of the newly bought "red maeng da" kratom into a Monster ginger flavored energy drink, and then I was going to walk all the way down Banks Street and past the folks who sell crack at a certain spot; and I won't be well into an 8% alcohol beer, because I won't have it; and so the heavyset girl won't be able to initiate any intercourse with me, using the unfamiliar looking beer can as an inroad.

There would be no "Oh, what that, you drinkin,' I can try some? They comin' out wit some really weird beers now; I never tried that one." And then there would be no displaying to me a fat 20 dollar crack rock the size of a pea, after I had started to feel Andy the Gator start pulling me down and spinning me around underwater.

Besides, I immediately saw Bobby headed towards me on the other side of the road from the "feel like the king of the universe for 20 minutes then rue the fact that God created you for the next 5 hours, unless you still have more, then the next 8 hours, maybe" people.

He was walking to meet me with a small bag of pot that he was trying to sell in order to raise money for a transition into some apartment that he described as being "right by the French Quarter."

Bobby has some pretty decent pension fund type money and/or insurance of some kind, by dint of having worked in the lucrative field of climbing towers and changing light bulbs, or perhaps installing cellphone transmitters. Combined with the fact that he is a veteran, and knows how to work that, he never seems to be at a loss for a place to reside.

He had to get out of Sacred Heart because of his belief that it was the people that live here (outside of myself and a select handful of others) whom he "couldn't be around." I never would have looked at things that way, I told him.

Apparently, they are the types that will show up at his door and hand him a pipe already loaded with a hit of crack; and Bobby would crack. It would work like a charm -Bobby would be pulling his wallet out in short order while asking whomever it was that showed up, how long it would take him to be back with "a forty." And, that worthy thought himself truly powerless over these people and so, moved out about 2 months ago, now.

I tried the: "Wherever you go, there you are." thing on him, but he wasn't buying it. Funny how I really think that I would be too scared to climb to the top of one of those cellphone towers, yet Bobby did it every day. But he is afraid of the boogie men...

But, Back To Former Caseworker Tim...

I was in the office of Tim, who was my "caseworker" at the time (I guess overseeing me and monitoring me for signs that I was taking to apartment life and wasn't a threat to just up and leave one day and go back to my piece of cardboard near the casino, where tobacco is abundant and abandoned drinks abound, rather than sitting out here in no-man's-land without even a beer; a circumstance that had arisen with more than one other Sacred Heart resident in the past; who had decided that they were more comfortable under the neon lights than in their paid for apartment) and was pointing out how I had noticed a new to me breed of people whom I was guessing were products of academia and had in common the habit of prefacing answers with "so."

It hadn't occurred to me that Tim, my caseworker, was quite a finished product of academia himself.

Left: Harold is an envoy from another dimension, possibly in cahoots with the Hare Krishna's, but not necessarily, but, in his universe, he is transfixed by the Blessed Mother, and keeps his sight upon Her. This can only be determined, though, by using a mirror, such as I have for this photo, which allows one to see everything.

Oh, Yeah, So, Tim...

He picked up the phone to call a lady in Georgia, who was listed in the contacts under "mom" on a cellphone that I had found laying by the trolley tracks. I was enlisting Tim's help in trying to return the phone to the guy.

The lady answered and probably said "hello," and Tim -I kid you not- said: "So, my name is Tim Cullen, and I'm calling from New Orleans, because someone I know found a cellphone, and...etc.."

So, Tim is a so-er, and he "so"-ed not 3 minutes after I had talked his ear off about how annoyed I was by the apparent collection of individuals, who do so (excuse the pun).

If you were to ask me what I thought of Tim, I would have to say:

"So, Tim is a pretty resourceful guy, and...etc."

I'm not judging the guy, but it is written: As you so, so shall you reap!

(I didn't quote the previous because I added my own exclamation, thus rendering it a paraphrasing of the famous quote).

And, it begs the question of what other facets of critical theory and/or any of the other progressive liberal socialistic hogswash is Tim, and his ilk unconsciously abiding by, and promulgating upon unsuspecting case studies?

"So, a lot," I imagine.