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How Bad Can It Kill Me?
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Image by High Desert Rider
www.messersmith.name/wordpress/2010/12/19/how-bad-can-it-…
I’ve been holed up in the house for about three days. Today I opened the bedroom curtains for the first time. It was sunny outside. I think that I know what sent me into this latest deep depression. I’ll tell a little about it later. I’ve been having some face-to-face with a friend who has dealt with this kind of uncontrollable emotional paralysis in her own life. It’s comforting to have someone to talk to that understands from first hand experience.

However, I’m not here to blab on about distress. I’m in the mood for a bit of humour. Let’s see if I can pull it off. It’s time to laugh a bit.

A week or so I was talking to someone about something difficult I had to accomplish and I was trying to make it sound light-hearted. I had intended to say, "How bad can it hurt me?" It came out, somewhat more ominously, "How bad can it kill me?" I took a mental note of that and proceeded to bore my friend with the details of my plan to conquer this horrible thing which was an everyday problem for many people, but made me feel as if I were a passenger on the maiden voyage of the Titanic. When his eyes glassed over I relented. Later, I began to think about my Freudian slip.

I certainly don’t recommend fooling around with fate and getting yourself in such a pickle as the one in which I’m presently fermenting. Nobody is stupid enough to bring such things upon himself. Nevertheless, I must admit that there is an upside. Regardless if it is true or not, there is a certain freedom in feeling that I have nothing to lose. Of course, I know that it is not true, but knowing is not feeling, knowing is not accepting. I have many things going for me. I’m healthy, if putting on a little too much weight. I’m reasonably sane and able to take care of myself day by day, though my bed only occasionally gets made. I have a job which I can still perform well enough for the time being and I’ll improve as I get better. I have a nice house to live in, though I do rattle around in it like a cracked marble. I have friends to annoy. All in all, I’m likely better off than maybe eighty percent of the population of the planet.

I admit that I can’t do a post without images. I’m sure that this stems from the fear that what I’m writing is so abominably rotten that nobody could possibly read it without becoming nauseous. If I throw in a few pictures, it might possibly be seen as a redeeming value. Here is the rather unusual sight of three Solitary Corals (Fungia fugites) cuddled up together:

Let me get back to what is passing for a train of thought tonight. As I was saying, perceiving a current state of life as being unsustainable over the long run and being not so nihilistic as to believe that there is no hope that it might get better is the starting point. So, it’s pretty bad, but it could get better. Now add that what has happened is the worst thing possible that could have happened. Yes, it could have happened in a worse way, but there is nothing on the list that could possibly top it. And the list is exhaustive. Okay, throw into the equation that even if more bad things pop up, they can’t make me much worse than I am now. My money all disappears – hey, money is not security. What good is it doing me now? I lose my job – well, that would be tough, but it would just force me into a change. The list goes on.

Nothing that I can think of really threatens me. This seems to create some kind of weird super-power. Call me Sticks-and-Stones-Can-Break-My-Bones-But-Nothing-Can-Really-Hurt-Me-Man. No, that’s too long a name for a super-hero.

Ah, now I remember what set off my hiding-under-the-covers period – the second coffin-building incident in less than two weeks. I won’t go into the details. It suffices to say that it was another time of grieving:

It does strike me that I look terribly angry in that shot. I was going for "resigned". It came out much differently. By the time I came into the office to discover that it needed to be built, a friend had already been recruited, so at least neither of us had to face the job alone. I am getting rather good at knocking together a coffin. I don’t plan to take it up professionally, but one never knows.

Feeling this freedom of relative invulnerability, however, it not a safe thing. It can make one reckless. I find myself thinking outrageous thoughts about what I might conceivably do. I fantasise. I make astonishingly stupid plans. I catch myself dreaming of selling everything and scuttling off to Bali or Rio and living off my photography and writing. Then I’m brought up short by the realisation that I’ve found no way to live off it yet and the fact that I might starve trying to is not an improvement on the present situation. Not a bit.

No, I’m better off now staying here and doing what I was sent here to do. That’s where my security lies now. In some ways that’s a hard pill to swallow, but that is only because I’m not exactly ecstatic about life at the moment.

This horrible thing, looking for all the world like "The Small Intestine from Outer Space" is a Prickly Sea Cucumber:

It’s not a great picture of one. Possibly you can see the hideous frilly arms that wave around engulfing whatever seems edible. I’ll have to try feeding a banana to one.

Yes, fantasies sustain me these days. I’ve always been an exceptionally good daydreamer. Walter Mitty has nothing on me. I’ve dreamed up several schemes lately, none of which have proved, upon the most cursory consideration, to be remotely feasible. Most of the difficulty lies in where, I might go. Except for Papua New Guinea and the USA, any place I might choose to go would present considerable difficulty. You must have permanent residency to work in almost any country worth living in. That is a high hurdle.

I had a passing fancy for Costa Rica until I began to look at the residency problem. I’m not sure I’ll live long enough to jump through all of the hoops. The same goes for Canada, which I would like to be able to think of as my final "home" when I’m so broken down that I need to crawl into a hole and wait for the end. I’d probably have to do it as an illegal immigrant. Wouldn’t that be an interesting way to end up? I’d have to start a new journal and make it anonymous.

I met a friend at the Madang Lodge and Restaurant last Friday evening for some light conversation. I noticed that the big storyboard on the back wall had been decorated for the Christmas season:

I got this storyboard along with four others about the same size while on a trip to the Sepik River quite a few years ago. They were among the largest I have seen. I don’t know how much they would be worth now – probably quite a bit, as they are very hard to come by now. I have two of them about the same size hanging in my house.

Much of the future is too fuzzy for me to think about with any clarity. I wish I had something like this:

Yeah, a big brain – that’s the ticket. I need a huge Platygyra lamellina.

Then again, I probably spend far too much time pondering the future. When I consider that, I feel silly, but I’ve always been that way. Yeah, a thinker about the future and silly. I admit to both. It’s painfully obvious that the future is the thing over which I have the least control. How delusional it was to believe otherwise. It was all planned out . . .

Look what all that planning got me. Best simply to plan to brush one’s teeth in the morning. If that works out, then begin to plan what to have for lunch. Anything beyond that is getting risky.

Bart Simpson’s Hair – Why I’m Talking to Myself
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Image by High Desert Rider
www.messersmith.name/wordpress/2010/11/18/bart-simpsons-h…
Now that I have all of these pictures loaded onto my WordPress page, I am wondering how to write something that makes some kind of sense. In cases such as this my usual ploy is to abandon any hope of writing anything which pleases me and put the job off until tomorrow. However, I have a deadline. It’s 8PM and I want to be ready to drink some kava an hour before I’d like to sleep. It worked the last two nights. I got more sleep than I have for a long time and I felt great in the morning. I’m going to write about kava soon. So, since I can’t put it off, I’ll write nonsense. It probably fits the subject matter better anyway.

As the title implies, the subject is twofold. Here is Bart Simpson’s Hair:

Okay, does that give you some idea of where we are going with this? Fasten your seat belts.

I’m going to the kitchen now to get some cookies . . . okay, I’m back. Hmmmmm . . . delicious. The other subject, which I made you think has something to do with Bart Simpson’s hair but it doesn’t, is Why I’m Talking to Myself.

I never used to do that – talk to myself – at least not much. I’d let slip, "Idiot!" or "You old fool." or something similarly self- deprecating, but I had no serious conversations. Even now, my solo exchanges are usually not directed to me, but since there is nobody else around (I try not to do this when others might be observing.) one might be prone to suspect that my brain is doing a little recursive boogaloo. I don’t know if this is healthy or not, but it is making me feel better.

So, who do I talk to?

Not far from Bart’s hair I found this disgusting, encrusting sponge trying to strangle a branch of black coral:

See, I’m going to do that to you. I’ll go along as if I have something interesting to say and when I sense you nodding off, I’ll throw a bean bag at you. The image above is trying to connect up some wires in my brain between it and Sponge Bob Squarepants. Okay, time for another cookie. Hey, I need some milk.

Mostly I talk to two entities. I probably spend the most time conversing with Eunie. She was always a good listener. I ask her for advice. Then I think about what she would tell me if she were sitting next to me or we were having a walk through the woods. The surprising thing is that what I hear in my head, or rather what I make up from the million memories of how she was, seems very real to me. It can’t be so far off from what she would have said. Quite often it makes me laugh.

Tonight I had a ham sandwich. The ham had been in the freezer for I don’t know how many months. I got it out of the freezer a week or so ago. It didn’t look bad, but I can’t smell it, of course. I’m constantly concerned that I will poison myself. I quit thinking about suicide about a month ago, mainly because I couldn’t stand the thought of the colossal mess it would leave behind for my friends to clean up. So, since that prospect is off the table, I’ve gone back to a less hair-raising and reckless existence. I actually don’t want to die now. Something interesting might happen. I call that progress. I also had ten-day-old steamed broccoli which had nothing obvious growing on it. I don’t know why I feel compelled to tell you what I’m eating – cookies, ham sandwiches, broccoli. I’ve been doing it for some time now.

Here is some whip coral at Magic Passage:

No, I’m not going to explain why it’s called whip coral. I don’t feel pedantic tonight. In fact, I don’t feel much of anything. That’s funny. I haven’t had any kava yet. It has a strange calming effect which my pleasant Dr. Mackerel told me about. I told him no Prozac, so he said to try kava. I’m going to do this without major drugs. As I said, I’ll get to that later. It’ll be a hoot!

Talking to Eunie is fun. I close my eyes and see that surreal half-smile which said, "I’m watching you, you crazy guy." Man, I loved that smile. I carry it on my shoulder.

Often, though – about a hundred times a day, I need to unload on or seek counsel with someone with more clout. Eunie is my gentle advisor. When I need the heavy artillery, I talk to God. I talk out loud, like I do with Eunie.

It’s much more difficult for me to imagine what God is saying back. Obviously, I don’t hear anything. I’m not that far gone. I also have to admit that I don’t know as much about God as I do Eunie. The truth is that you never know what God is up to. I do trust that it’s all going to work out in the end, but man, in the meantime you have to be ready to catch some fast curve balls. I was never any good at baseball. After teams were chosen, I was always the one guy left standing there staring at my toes sticking out of the end of my sneakers.

I do seem to be getting some answers lately. The big questions remain mysteries, but some of the little ones are falling into place. So, I’m calling these productive conversations. There are fewer swords hanging over my head. I’m not afraid to look in my mailbox any more. Part of that is because I can’t imagine what could happen that has not already happened. There’s a certain comfort in knowing that the only things left to lose are things that really don’t matter that much. It’s tremendously liberating. Money – EHHH! There will always be enough. One simply has to adjust one’s expectations. Property – MEH! I don’t have any (Or at least I soon will not – that house is GOING, one way or another!) All of the rest of the stuff that I have accumulated – PFFFT! I can carry everything I need in a back pack and a small camera case. Free! Free at last!

What brought that on? Hey, my kitchen is full of ants. I’m too cheap to buy bug spray any more. That’s off the shopping list. Beside, they don’t eat much – only what I have dropped or slopped. There are a couple of dead ones floating in my milk. At least I hope they are dead. If they are not, they are in for quite a ride.

Does this look like a giant corkscrew to you?

I guess I mostly talk to myself because I am so used to having someone around to talk to and I just can’t stop because she’s not here now. I’ve noticed that I am much more talkative than I used to be when friends are around. I hope that is not a bad trend. I have seen that flick of the eyes to another which says, "When is he going to shut up?" I’m on the lookout for it.

This is the model which was used for The Blob  in the original movie starring Steve McQueen:

It’s about a metre wide. They had to scale it up and make it mobile for the movie. Inert blobs aren’t very scary and they get real hungry. This one is quite immobile.

I don’t anticipate finding any other conversation partners for my lonely quiet times when I’m feeling chatty. Who else would there be, Elvis? John Belushi? Jack Kerouac?

No, not them. If I talked to anyone else it would be absent friends, the living kind. There are so many who I would love to spend an evening with in quiet discourse.

Speaking of friends, I’m going to take advantage of you and sneak in a couple of very amusing images sent to me by Alison Raynor of Toogoolawah in Queensland. Here is what she wrote to me:
I’ve been on the road a fair bit in the last couple of days and this 6ft carpet snake (a common constricting python) crossed our path yesterday. We stopped for a look and he stopped to geek my camera… such a pretty snake, you should see the size of their mouths and fangs though……EEEEK! This one would be able to swallow an animal or bird heaps bigger than its own body weight and size:

Okay, Ali. How close are you going to get to this thing?

Close enough for THIS!

Okay, I’m impressed.

Today, I spent a fair amount of time getting lawns mowed. No, I didn’t mow the lawns. It’s Gosel’s job to mow the lawns. However somebody has to haul his lawnmower around and get him to the grass which needs cutting. That’s what I did today. Exciting, eh? Here is Gosel mowing a lawn:

I sat in there my blazing hot brand-new Nissan Navarra twin-cab utility truck. I didn’t particularly want to buy a new car, but Eunie wanted one. Her old red truck was getting rusty and she didn’t like that. Anyway, I’m glad now that I have it. It’s like money in the bank, not that money in the bank is any guarantee of security. And, I probably have a car which will serve me for the rest of my life. Hey, my dog Sheba has a good chance of outlasting me. I’m not planting any more trees either. Like many other things which I am discovering, there is a certain comfort here.

I got bored reading Hollywood Crows  by Joseph Wambaugh, so I had a nice, long conversation with Eunie.

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