The Bloody Doors Off

So I’m goin’ down this street
And I’m tryin’ not to smile
‘Cause the street is where I’m goin’
And the curb is at the side
By the sewer
Where the rain goes down

Like this girl I once knew
‘Cause the sewer is so hollow
And the yell
Could last forever

Like the night my girl went away
Gone off in a world filled with stuff
Lights start changin’
And there’s wires in the air
And the asphalt man
Is all around me

And I look down
And my shoes are so far away from me, man
I can’t believe it

I got a real indication
Of a laugh comin’ on
I got a real indication
Of a laugh comin’ on

The Thought Gang, A Real Indication

“‘Cut-to’ – when players doing a scene refer to a particular moment (from the past, future, etc.), a player comes onstage and announces “Cut to: that moment” and we see the moment.“

It’s a fun improv game.

A moment ago, I was singing softly to myself. Oddly, a Doris Day song.

“I’m forever blowing bubbles.”

CUT TO: ‘BUBBLES’.

Popped into my head. And the resulting image.

(You went there too.)

Made me laugh.

And I realized.

I haven’t had a serious laugh in a while.

I’ve found things amusing.

And minor tickles of the funny bone.

But nothing bone rattling.

And that, friends, ain’t right.

I need to find the funny again.

Ophelia was a bride of God
A novice Carmelite
In sister cells the cloister bells
Tolled on her wedding night

Ophelia was the rebel girl
A blue stocking suffragette
Who remedied society
Between her cigarettes

Ophelia, Natalie Merchant

This song’s been in my head for the past hour.

It’s interfering with the joyful experience of eating a bowl of Fruit Loops.

My brain can’t decide if this is a writing prompt for a new short play. Or just another trip down memory lane, Revisit my religious upbringing.

Hi. My name’s Paul. (Hi Paul.) I’m a recovering Catholic.

There was a time I believed one man could be three people.

That the wafer I was offered at communion was soylent green.

(I was a kid. No one bothered to explain it to me until I started attending Sunday School on Saturdays.)

For my first communion — it’s like being ‘made’ if the mafia was Catholicism — I wore a beige polyester suit. (I can’t remember what I had for dinner last night, but this is clear as crystal?) There was a photograph of me standing in our backyard.

Oh man. I just remembered the slide projector we had back when I was a kid. I wonder who has the slides. Maybe Larry? I’d love to get them digitized someday so I can store them in the cloud.

We backed onto a park. It was amazing. There were two baseball diamonds, a row of trees that made sure people in the park couldn’t see in directly to our backyards. When we played hide and seek, you could hop the fence between houses but you couldn’t use Lustead Park.

On the right side was the Allen’s. On the other side. The Daigles.

Couldn’t remember their names. Had to call my brother Kevin.

He remembered the Daigles, Marlene and Vince, the latter of whom was the Deacon at our church, St. Rose of Lima Parish. He was pretty influential in the community.

I had a crush on his youngest daughter. (Neither Kevin nor I can remember her name.)

They were a good family. Whose father helped to excommunicate my father from the church after his affair and subsequent divorce.

So that was strike one against Catholicism.

I’m not gonna bother with the rest.

Chalk it up to ideological differences.

Huh.

Blog post it is.

Won’t rule out the possibility of another idea branching out of it.

Oh hey.

The music stopped.

Well, I’ve walked these streets
In a spectacle of wealth and poverty
In the diamond markets the scarlet welcome carpet
That they just rolled out for me
And I’ve walked these streets
In the madhouse asylum they can be
Where a wild-eyed misfit prophet
On a traffic island stopped and he raved of saving me

Carnival, Natalie Merchant

Holy hell.

I made it through the entire day without the top plate slipping.

This is huge.

This is the highlight of my day.

I upgraded my phone. Hilarity ensued.

Technology and I have an… understanding.

I don’t try to hack the system, and there’ll be only one fuck up on installation.

I have the receipts.

Metaphorically.

This is what my blog has become.

Word salad.

I noticed yesterday that someone had read a post I’d written six months ago. I was curious, so I went and read it.

That was a very personal post.

But I felt good knowing it was shared.

And maybe made them think.

‘Cuz gods know, this post ain’t gonna achieve that.

I craved chocolate pudding.

There was none.

There was, however, strawberry yogourt.

So I ate it.

My taste buds kept asking where the chocolate was.

The interloper was spoiling everything.

I wasn’t expecting such a visceral reaction from a body part.

This train of thought never left the station, did it?

Oh sure.

Now a blog post title pops into my head.

Time is an abstract.

What does that mean?

Einstein knew.

Not me.

I spent most of yesterday thinking it was Saturday.

It was, in fact, Friday. All day.

And I have no idea what today is.

I’ve become unstuck in time.

If only that meant I could go back and fix certain mistakes.

But. No. I can’t.

The butterfly effect.

Change one thing, it sets off a chain of dominoes.

Brand new timeline.

But what if I’ve already done just that?

What if. I’m a variant.

I’m about to make a Star Trek reference. Feel free to skip ahead.

The Reference.

Paramount rebooted the original Star Trek franchise in 2009. Same characters, but one event happens differently (because of time travel, duh) and a new branch (the Kelvin timeline) is formed. The 1960s show is still canon. It happened. But this is a parallel universe, existing side-by-side.

Kirk and Spock still become best friends. McCoy constantly complains about what career he doesn’t have.

People fated to meet, no matter the universe.

I wrote a character like that, along with my one of my best friends K. (They prefer anonymity.) We wrote in an online RPG for several years. Theirs was an original character created specifically for the game, and mine was a character from the television shows. (That’s your only clue.) K and I actually wrote a scene that played out in multiple realities between our protagonists. (One of our best pieces.)

If You Skipped Ahead

What’s wrong with you? I tried to explain so I didn’t have to write this again.

Just. Just go back and read it.

Okay. Done? Good.

So the question is, what if I’m a variant. What if this life branched off from the prime universe because I went back in time — because I’m unstuck, remember? — and changed something insignificant?

Like, what if I went back and found the gold-plated money clip with the profile of Bob ‘Slope Nose’ Hope that the comedian passed to my grandfather who gave it to me, because he didn’t give autographs but didn’t want to disappoint a new generation of fan? I treasured the damn thing and kept it in my desk drawer but one day, poof!, it was gone.

What if making sure it never got lost, altered the trajectory of my life?

I’d never know.

Because this is my reality.

And despite the hardships I’ve faced in my life.

The obstacles I’ve had to climb.

The humiliations I’ve faced.

Where I am right now.

This life.

This is the reality I choose.

Marlo and Coltrane are my prime universe.

She ate the cookies.

I didn’t know I wanted a cookie until the specific craving hit.

But they were gone.

I don’t blame her. I would’ve eaten all the cookies yesterday if I hadn’t stopped myself.

So my impulse control is showing a little improvement.

I managed to tamp down a minor compulsion to pack last night, by just doing my pill box and saying “that’s enough”. (I’m heading out of town for an overnight trip to see family.)

And it’s my crazyversary. Yet I am nonplussed.

I am, however, gaseous.

You don’t wanna be around me when I pass gas.

I don’t see how any of this is relevant.

This entire post is fluff.

I’ll probably leave it out of the first collection.

And the previous post would have more heft if I’d gotten the date right.

The anniversary is.

Tomorrow.

Today is September 23^rd. Not the 24^th.

Doesn’t change anything.

I’m still pretty unfazed.

Which, thankfully, frees up more space for me to deal with October 5^th.

You know what this blog needs? A way to search the archives without having to scroll for 15 minutes.

I say this because I am 99.99999% certain that today is the 8^th anniversary of my breakdown.

Just consulted the calendar. It was today.

Tuesday, September 24, 2013.

And. I’m not so out of joint about it this year.

It only hit me as hard as it did because I’d initially thought it was next month, and swallowed hard when I caught the mistake.

That’s.

That’s kinda huge.

I mean.

Life isn’t perfect. I’m not pulling in a decent income. Resources get strained. You look for ways to cut expenses. That puts significant stress on us all. And given the date, well, I was afraid I was gonna spiral.

Nope. Not gonna happen.

I’m not saying the age of panic attacks and depressive episodes is over.

But I managed to deal with this particular anniversary.