City of Legends

Oddly enough, professionally and personally I am doing well…just feeling unmotivated to blog.

Elric and Dante both leave this month for college…I, personally, will be escorting Elric to the University of Hawaii at Hilo for orientation.  Poor kid, trapped for 4 years in paradise.

Dante is gearing up for Old Dominion University, he is majoring in Math with a minor in Physics.  He is giddy over getting into a true academic environment.

My relationship with the Sunday Girl remains strong, if complicated…in time I will tell you the tale and you will go "Huh?"

The delay in final release of the last book ( Selected Poems and Passions: 2004-2011 ) seem to be resolved, and it should ship in the next few weeks…

Today my father turns 87.  He is in good health and I am happy is is strong and well and in my life.  I am blessed.  He is a good man.

As I write I am sitting here with my headphone son, bombarding my soul with the most gut-wrenching songs I know.  Not to punish myself, but to test the fibers.  In case you have been living in a hermetically-sealed mason jaw on Funk & Wagnall’s back porch for the last several weeks, I gave my heart.  Vegas oddsmakers are disappointed, as they had me as a 3:2 to never say "I love you" to a woman again.  I love it when I confound my critics.  I think I’ve made a career of it, and a legacy.  Always bet on red.

No, people, I will stop giving my heart permanently when I am dead.  And maybe not even then, I have hope of an afterlife.  I may fall and get bloodied, but I am resolute.  I have every hope this will not be necessary to test, again, this one, this "Sunday Girl" is extraordinary. 

But I am sitting here listening to the likes of Bush’s "Glycerine", Art Garfunkle’s "All I Know" and Neil Young’s prophetic "Heart of Gold".  Glutton for punishment?  Nah, just sparring with my soul.  My last two significant relationships bloodied me pretty badly.  I have to get tough, strong, fast and resilient.  I don’t plan to fall or fail, or to see this one slip away and crumble to dust, but that, in the end is an exercise of her free will and beyond my ethical boundaries to control.  Yes, I have shown an ability to influence people with my words, but to usurp free will?  No!

I have updated my Amomancer blog with more of the White Sunday works…I am considering a totem shift (yes, I know I foreswore the totems during the Aubergine era, but we all saw how well that went).  I am considering (furtive glances to the side) changing her totem from "The Sunday Girl" or "White Sunday" to…Apokalypsis.  There’s a couple of very valid reasons to do so.  I’m thinking about it.  Suggestions?  Ideas?  Bribes?

The other day my son, Elric, expressed grief over a friend he knew, solely from online, whom he had been told was dying from leukemia.  Part of me sought to comfort him, part of me knew he had to cope with his own feelings on his own terms and part of me was, frankly, skeptical.

I think I am a long way from a cynic, but over the years I have encountered more than a few people who, out of malice or insensitivity to the impact they had on other people, made the internet a web of lies.  I recall the young woman everyone knew in the old Writers Club at AOL, full of life and energy and dying of cancer, who so swept everyone up in her story that a major author donated an account to her, several published authors dedicated works to her and for whom one kind soul gathered recipes from fellow writers to put together a cookbook in her honor.

Then, one day, she admitted to me that she was not a 19 year old cancer patient, but a mid-thirties housewife who was working through some childhood issues by taking on the persona and it had "gotten way from her".  I don’t believe she went into the charade maliciously, but perhaps insensitive and ignorant of the impact it would have on others.  I counseled her to come clean.  She did, and the backlash of rage and even hatred against her was monumental.  I do not believe I have encountered her, online or otherwise, since then (but you never know).

I have had real friends, real loved ones, sicken and die, or die suddenly, flowers too soon taken from the garden.  If my childhood friend, Michelle, had not been killed in a tragic car accident in her mid-teens, I almost certainly would not have taken her name for my daughter’s middle name.  And who knows, maybe we would have one day been more than friends.  Maybe, in a lower drama worldview I might have never turned to poetry to express myself.

Flowers too soon taken from the garden.  My older brother’s fiancee, Carole, who died just weeks before she graduated high school, months before their wedding, in a car crash.  My uncle Francis, who died a decade before I was born, on a battlefield in Europe in World War II.  I have been told the telegram telling his family of his death arrived during his son’s 9th birthday party.

And for every life ended too soon, others pass into shadow and become the walking dead, tainted by hatred and pain, by the twisting of our souls and hearts in the hands of fate and others.  There are days I envy those who give up feeling only that which sustains them, the anger that burns like coals of a poisonous tree.

I do not know, and indeed, Elric does not know, if the online friend is dead or dying, if they ever really existed, or if they are either an exercise in self-expression or a malicious attack by a dark heart or even a predator.  He and I may very well never know.  If the story is not true, I have to feel a prick of anger at the person who would feign such drama and bring hurt to my son, but there will always be the potential for veils and falsehoods in any relationship.

Nevertheless I would never counsel him to doubt and would hope that I myself would never fall to such cynicism as to believe automatically that people are anything other than what they express themselves to be, in the real world or virtual spheres.

Last night my son, Elric, was brought before me by his mother who pulled back his long, Hugh Grant-ish floppy hair to reveal an odd patch where it looks like someone shaved or cut very short about the front 1/2 to 3/4 inch at the hairline.  The fact his hair flops forward had hidden this slash-and-burn zone, which I estimate to have been so ravaged about a month ago.

"Did you cut your hair," his mother demanded.

"I don’t know," was his response.

Remember the Bill Cosby routine where his son got a reverse Mohawk and plead ignorance about when or how it happened?  Dead-on re-enactment.  I laughed it off.  Whether he had been futzing around with his new electric shaver and the lawnmower man took it over, or space aliens had decided to skip the anal probe owing to his flatulence, or whatever, I figured we’d never get a straight answer.

Reminded me of me when, in high school, I broke up my unibrow with a safety razor.  BIC, as I recall.  And the width of the razor was such that my eyebrows looked like I was prepping for a drag queen makeup contest.  My mom noticed them and asked if I had been shaving my eyebrows.  I mumbled something that passed for a denial and continued on my way.  They grew back, and I believe all pictures of me from that era have met an unpleasant, fiery death.

I have to admit I have more patience with and empathy for my sons than my ex-wife does.  She was never a teen-age boy, didn’t even have any brothers.  My sons, the twins, confound her. Their hormones take them places she never dreamt of in her maddest imagination.

And suddenly I find myself living in a Bill Cosby sketch re-enactment.

Let me start on an up note by wishing my Father, and all Fathers everywhere, a joyous and fulfilling Fathers’ Day.

Dad, for better or for worse, you had a great hand in steering me to what and where I am, and I am most grateful.

On a down note, by now you may have seen the video or pictures of "Neda", the young woman killed (just one of many) in the election protests in Iran.  I wrote a poem of and for her, which I posted to the Amomancer blog.  If you wish to share it with others, be my guest.  Her Father, no doubt, is in more pain than I hope to even imagine in my own life, but her sacrifice serves purpose and I hope he feels, in time, great pride in her.

elegy for Neda

I am spending way too much time inside my own head, but that’s one of the joys (?) of having a son who is in that philosophical-existential-angst phase where he doesn’t want to know if a hammer falls, but why it falls and what purpose does it serve in an entropy-laden universe on a planet that won’t even still be around in a few billion years and where there is strife, war, disease, famine, genocide and Spencer Pratt.

But it helps to reflect on my own path, sometimes seeing in his thoughts and words moments that I myself endured, sometimes seeing new things that cast new illumination on old experiences and allows me to think again about things that may not have gotten fair shake.

Everything from the nature of God to the nature of truth to why people believe what is in their best interest over what is apparent, all is in for a go.  He (Elric) is planning to take Philosophy next semester in high school (along with Gourmet Cooking, which I tell him he is only taking to meet girls).  I sometimes marvel at his insights and wonder if I was that evolved at his age (I was considered pretty mature as a teenager, even if I was prone to the occasional lapse of reason (usually because of a pretty girl)…come to think of it, I haven’t changed that much, at least not to my own perceptions.  Greyer, thicker and with a few well-earned lines, but there are times when I can feel myself as a 17 year old boy.  I actually find that troubling as I was always lead to believe that there were levels of maturity beyond that, or is it all facade for everyone?)

I don’t know.  I want to know.  I need to know (for the next time that topic comes around and Elric looks to me for wisdom, or at least a good joke).

I’ve already explained to him my views on life, death, God, love, war, religion (not the same thing as God), politics and proper dating ettiquette.  I hope I have instilled in him the knowledge that people who treat you badly are generally those who have a mistaken impression, and that he should be careful to avoid blaming people for their own ignorance in matters concerning him, or anything else for that matter. 

It’s tough, as my value system and his mother’s are different, coming from different backgrounds and religious views, and I have no desire to create a false conflict just to "win".  Her beliefs are fine, just different, in as my favourite food is chicken livers, and her’s is chocolate.  It is good that we are different, all of us, otherwise it would be a world we would swiftly define as grey, drab, same, boring, redundant.

I’m trying to teach him how to stay calm in the face of adversity, to think strategically when possible, but tactically when required.  I want him to understand that no matter what you do, there is someone out there who will think you are an idiot for doing it.  That they take the time to criticize you just means they think you are an important enough person to criticize.  There are others who will think you a hero.  those are the people who don’t know you very well.  There are few real heroes left.

I tell him it is impossible to lose my love.  I may not agree with him or even like him in a given moment, owing to something he thinks, says or does, but the love is unconditional.  If it isn’t, it isn’t love.  And also, that I am not the final arbiter of what is good and bad, right and wrong.  He has to kinda feel that one out for himself.  I can tell him what my experiences have been, and I don’t hold back on that.  And maybe, maybe a bit of what I am not necessarily am but of what I would like to be, maybe that will find its way into his tapestry.

I’d like to think so.

Yep, Peri has a birthday today.  Much love, my daughter.

There are those who believe that Autism is a handicap, a disease brought on by vaccines, a natural evolutionary progression in the human genome, the result of flouride in drinking water, a variation in the brain that can be dealt with via proper environmental adjustments (including eliminating gluten from one’s diet), and/or a direct result of sonograms.

I don’t know which, if any, of these answers the questions.  I do believe it is not one issue, but several, just as (for instance) cancer is not caused by one thing and does not manifest itself just one way.

My son, Dante, in whom I am well pleased, has been diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder, most often referred to as PDD:NOS (Pervasive Development Disorder:  Not Otherwise Specified).  He thinks differently than your average person.  He feels things differently.  His response to emotional stimulus can be intense or none at all.  He has problems reading tones of voice and body language and facial expressions.  However, he is 15 and doing college level mathematics and is being actively recruited by dozens of high-end colleges from coast to coast.  In past years he would’ve just been considered a nerd or a geek, like both his mother and father were, and that would be the end of it.  But there is a greater understanding and perhaps an opportunity for Dante and others like him to have greater choice in their worldview and wiring.

Years ago, those who had these attributes would either find a way to blend into society or eventually be removed from it. I wonder how many potential Einsteins and Hawkings ended up in mental health maintenance facilities, their variant way of experiencing the world forcing them out of it?

He and I joke that he’s a space alien.  It’s a good working metaphor that he, I, and his fraternal twin brother can have fun with.  He’s wired a little differently that us normal humans, that makes him sometimes hard to understand or interferes in his ability to understand, but it also opens up a whole new layer of awareness if you try and see the world through his eyes.   I believe it is that one out of every 166 children born today have one of the Autism Spectrum Disorders.  If that figure has been consistent, just under reported, that means there are close to 2 million people with Autism in the United States today.

More than the number of people who live in West Virginia.

We need research to help find better ways to help those who are at the most debilitating points in the spectrum.  Dante is lucky.  He’s in a very good school system and has family that loves him and adapts to him while still keeping the pressure on to socialize and stay involved in the world (oh, and he’s a level 80 Human Paladin on World of Warcraft).  Many are not so lucky.  Some come from households where there are multiple siblings with Autism.

I read today an article on CNN about actress Didi Conn and her and her son’s struggles with PDDNOS.  The picture shows a young man with an earnest smile.  He looks a lot like a darker-haired version of Dante.

I know young people with Autism who call themselves "Autists" and take pride in their unique way of viewing and dealing with the world, often expressing it through their creativity.  Some applaud their sense of identity, some think it is wrong to embrace, I personally think that if it makes them happier and helps them deal with their unique challenges, so much the better.  And there are far, far worse peer groups to be a part of.

I love my son, completely and without reservation.  I embrace the fact that, while there was a time I was considered gifted in mathematics, he makes me look pale by comparison, and he’s only begun to shine.  I consider him remarkable.

Happy World Autism Day, Dante, and everyone.

Weird week?  Yeah.  Weird week.  Everyone I usually talk to is off on various tangents.  The people I usually don’t have a lot of time with are filling in the gaps, some aggressively.  To whit, in the last 48 hours:

I have had three different women confess that they love me.  None of whom I’d have suspected before.

I had a lengthy discussion with a Government networking engineer on the virtue of Po Boy sandwiches.

I have written dozens of fragments of poems.  Not full length pieces, just phrases and metaphors, like I am shaking the crumbs out of the Oreo bag (which is, in and of itself, a great image.

Reminded several friends to wish a happy birthday to an old friend I am out of touch with (but cautioned them not to tell them it was me who reminded them).

Helped my son, Dante, build a 4-generation family tree, filling in some interesting elements along the way.  For instance, my maternal Grandfather was 39 years older than my maternal Grandmother (the one who is now 97 and recently broke her hip).  And I, my father, and his father were all born between August 1st and August 18th, must be something about the month of November and DeVault boys named William (note, had they not been a month premature, my twin sons would’ve been born in August, as well…).

Laid down a screeching guitar track for my next CD, to accompany some cathartic poetry I have recently produced.  Be afraid.  The cats are being…circumspect.

All in all, interesting times.  At least, to me.  And since it is my life, that’s what counts.

Those who have heard of the situation with my Grandmother have been asking after her health.  I am happy to report that she weathered the surgery for her fractured hip well (always a concern at age 97) and is resting comfortably.

If all goes well I plan to go visit her very soon, as I miss her and there was a time, not sure if it is still so, that I was her favourite.  That was a long time ago.  But, for the iron-willed woman who pluck the darning-needle from the palm of my hand, staunched the blood of my first nosebleed and the time I took two rusty nails into my skull, I owe her so much.

See you next weekend, Grandma.  Be strong.  And quit arguing with the doctors.

You own’t see it on here.  Nope.  Too many "Aha!" moments would be born in that.  Too many rumours laid to rest or confirmed.

But I started today on a project to build my new screen saver/background.  A collage, if you will, of every person I have a photo of who has had an impact in my life.  My mother, my father.  My sibs.  My nephews and nieces.  My kids.  My ex-wives.  And muses,  I have photos of nearly all of them.  Old friends.  Current friends.  Hundreds of people.

Smiles, frowns and angry scowls.  Lips I have kissed.  Eyes I have stared at in rapture as their possessor slept beside me.  Lovers, liars, dreamers and the lost. 

Some I regret to say will not be there.  Efficient censoring of elements of my past by those who came later, some by direct action, some by the hand of nature.  That pains me, but it also reminds me that my past, my life, belongs but to me.  I am enjoying this, immensely.

Oh, yeah, by the way, Happy Valentine’s Day.  I’ve already said it to the four who wished it to me with intent, and those who either did it out of habit or courtesy or friendship, or I don;t yet know what their wicked, wicked schemes for me are in the coming months.

I can hardly wait.