The Cracked Blade

I appologize from the begining for the distasteful reference to the wizard of oz, it is one of the creaper book series that i ever read as a kid (and the second movie is still among those movies that i hate to watch…too similar to nightmares that i have) anyways, after a week long escape from reality, aka writing papers and generally working my ass off, i am oming upon this wonderful holiday season where we celebrate the conquering of this nation, Thanksgiving (ps…for those out there who hate the truth of the matter, sorry but i’m not responsible for the truth, i just prefer it over lies). Anyways, i do love thanksgiving, it is one of my favorite holidays, where else do you get to sit down with your family and consume a large ammount of food prior to stealing all the desserts from the adult table and sit at the kids table hording it (ok, yes i still sit at the kids table, but so do most of my cousins who are older than me and have kids themselves…and the youngest who sits at the kids table is my baby brother, who is 23)(my cousin’s kids get sucked up into sitting with at the adult table, even if they don’t want too…my aunts and uncles are trying to resist me and my cousins corrupting their grandkids (my second cousins)). Tis the season where the fine art of stealing desserts from the table to sneak back to kids table has become more of an art than decorating grandmaws christmas tree after the meal (which is a sad little tree now, which disappointed all of us last year…so grandmaw got a bigger one this year) the sad part about the dessert stealing is that we don’t even have to be sneaky anylonger, all we have to really do is send in a distraction (ie…me ussually), and then one of my brothers and one of my cousins walked in and takes two desserts each…amd every time we get yelled at but don’t care;-) Looking forward to good times coming up this week, relaxing and goofing off between working on huge projects.

back to life, at least for a little bit, this last week kicked my ass up and down the block, i was not a happy camper when finished, and i have a few more projects to work on. The biggest and most pressing is a paper which i am writing over infanticide in edinburgh from 1713-1721…if there has ever been a reason to understand why a woman should have the right to choose how to control their body, this would be the example. I won’t go into the debate over abortion rights, but seeing how these women were treated by men because they had no choices (or men controled the choices of women’s bodies) within society to go to is down right frightening; no one can tell me that it won’t happen again because of modern laws and religious beliefs beacuse of moral standards because edinburgh supposively had them also and i have at least half a dozen broadsides on the execution of these women because of this religious and lawful center of civilization. If i get enough support, i might publish the paper to the blog when i am finished unless i am able to get it published into a journal somewhere, where i would be sure to leave a link to the journal so others can find it. As a man, i have no right to decide a woman’s right to her body, and no matter what my beliefs might be about what she does, it is still her body to make decisions about…which is why i believe a woman should have a right to choose. please don’t use this blog as an angry forum to bash me because of what i believe is a choice, if something came up regarding my own gender’s reproductive rights or something to do to our bodies which some might think immoral, then i will fight for myself and my choices, but on the same note i fall into the beleif that woman can make the same decisions regarding their own bodies and that i cannot choose for them, only give them a choice. and no, i don’t think i am wishy-washy on the topic as some of my hardline friends are, i just have no right to tell others what to do. Willing to give advice, yes, tell someone what to do, not anymore.

well i better pretend that i am doing something productive today, back to grading again, but hopefully i can write again today when i get home or to post a few things that i have written in the past.

I spent this entire weekend for the most part doing homework, something that I am loath to do, but due to the insane schedule that I have I have little recourse on the matter. It is either do or die, and I am doing. I finally put down the book and am thinking about heading to bed for the night, before midnight even, mostly cause if I read anymore my head will probably explode from the building headache. I spent yesterday reading about ancient history (which was a treat for me, I really enjoyed reading about early greek civilization for the first time in about 4 years), and then I read a few good articles in several journals. Ok, so it doesn’t sound like it was exciting, and I can’t lie that I wasn’t bored at times, but really, it is interesting overall. Today was a different matter, I spent my day reading about how american historiography complaining about how american history isn’t the center of the universe…a strange thought when you concider that of the about 10,000 years of known knowledge about history, the US is only in existance for the last 200+ years….hmmmm….go figure…(notice the dripping sarcasm, just i’ve read 300 pages today over this). I was hoping to get more done on a huge paper that I need a rough draft over for friday this weekend, but I just ran out of time and will-power, I just can’t focus anylonger tonight. I have a minor (or relatively minor) frustration at what this is all getting me, just a thought playing out in the back of my head, but worrysome at this point of the night none the less. I’ve been told by other grad students that it is natural right now to feel this in the first semester, that I just have to hold on till the end, but still it is a lonely road I’m walking.

Well I just got over being sick myself, and I am feeling great going into what should be a long weekend of reading, writing, and general history stuff. last night my fever culminated in over 100 degrees of bweing miserable, not only did i feel tired, I felt drained. Well after a good nights sleep which started fairly early, I woke up at noon today in sweat soaked sheets feeling so much better. The wierdest part of breaking the fever are the fever dreams associated with getting better, all I can say is that it is strange. In my dreams that I remember, it was a mixture of early-preceltic irish fighting against nazis in a sort of foggy place, but everyone was armed with swords and arrows, and the nazi were hiding in wooden towers which we could push over. Even wierder is that we were all speaking either german (which i heard some growing up from dad) and gaelic (which if i ever get time again i need to restart learning), but in all it was just a wierd dream.

In other news, I did get my glasses finally, and although they aren’t too bad, I still have alot of mixed feelings about them. I ended up getting 2 pairs of normal glasses (I’m wearing my back up pair now, my regular pair is still being constructed in a lab somewhere in chicago…they are the armored plated super glasses). I also got myself a pair of sunglasses that look exactly like my old pair of sunglasses, they are a little heavier than what I am used to, but are fun. The biggest complaint that I have right now about my is in the weight, i’m just not used to it, and even though they are featherwieghts, they are still a little thick. oh well, the curse of being blind. well back to reading, so I will write soon.

Ok, if you read my previous post, then you will understand where I am coming from. Anyways, this isn’t a real post for the day, I still have a packed office hour to go to today, and then my appointment, so it should be fun. Well off to lunch and then campus.

Ok, so it isn’t as bad as it sounds…i’m not going to die or be enslaved farther than I have already become in grad school. Nope, I am about to do something that I swore up and down in highschool that I would never do again if I could avoid it…I am willingly going back to glasses. Seriously…they are a plague upon mankind, although a few of my friends and younger siblings who will remain nameless are praising the god(s) that I have come to my senses and will be hiding my face behind those lenses again. For those of you who don’t know, I do wear contacts, very expensive contacts which are created to solve two problems…I’m as blind as a bat without them (although I’m really good at functioning without them, say outdoors, but driving would be an exercise in premeditated suicide because I couldn’t see the lines or the other cars or even my own speedometer…and the other problem is that I have a very harsh stigmatism (not to be confused with stigmata, and if you get that joke you might have stuck around a few catholics too long;-) ) and I notice the farther I get into this semester, the less I want to read because it hurts so much after a while. It was the end of my sophemore year of highschool when I first got contacts, and they were a godsend. I’ve been wearing glasses since kindergarten, but I probably could have used them earlier in life but my parents just didn’t notice because I always was up close building with blocks or reading or coloring…something that I didn’t have to see far away to do. Yeah the TV was blurry, but I really didn’t care because I could ussually quote what my favorite VHS tape was saying anyways (by the way, I was brought up on a nice combination of Mary Poppins, Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones, and Starwars…and of those 4, Mary poppins always creaped me out the most as a kid). I still remember my first pair of glasses…they were the thickest and ugliest brown imaginable, made of plastic with plastic lenses. I hated them even then, they pitched my nose (which still isn’t that big compaired to the long german noses the rest of my family has), they felt like lead on my face and tired me out to wear them, and I so got laughed at. Well as all good parents do, through the years they kept trying to one-up how ugly my glasses could be until I had the choice about what I wanted. I still remember the pair I had that had rose colored lenses with a red frame. I liked red growing up, but really, seeing everything in a tint of red wasn’t cool and if I wasn’t the tallest kid in my class at the time I would have been beat up. That was one pair I was proud to lose at the bottom of a lake:) I realize that I was really lucky to get glasses growing up…but my disdain for them still exists. Unfortunately, I think I am hurting my eyes by still wearing my contacts, and I want to take no chances with my eye sight. I was blind once for about 15 minutes because I let my blood sugar get way too low, so I have a new found respect for my eyes and what they do. And I know a few of my friends will be saddened that I will have to hide my eyes a bit (some reason they like my blue/grey/green eyes). I will see tomorrow how I feel about getting glasses after I do finally get them…and if anyone wants to talk sense into me before I commit this most horrific of crimes, let me know, ok:)

Once again I find myself sitting in the dark, wondering about the meaning of life while going through old memories. Funny thing is that I found my old journal today, one that I owed through what I thought were good times only to turn into lies later. Reading through it, I remember things that I have forgotten, mostlikely for a good reason, but the inquisitive fool I am, I read it anyways, damn the consequences. These memories of mine…how can i describe them without sounding so jaded; they are of life and of love, of the lies waiting to happen and the crushing of my soul. I would cry, but the tears long ago dried for these events, my mind more or less glued back together after it was shattered repeatedly in such a short time. I mockingly can call these events as character building, but that isn’t totally correct, because events such as those can take so much out of you. Recently a friend of mine in her blog brought up a question of why it is so hard to let people get close to you, and i do know why all too well, all painfully well. You don’t want to risk getting hurt again, of finding your heart once again broken. Yes, I guess that events such as having my heart broken by the one person who was to love me for the rest of my life, who I was going to love for the rest of my life, changed me. It built character all right…if you believe in those sorts of things. I am a different man than what I was almost 3 years ago, most people I run into that haven’t seen me in a few years note how much I have changed. Quite a few I have disturbed by how much I changed.

Thinking back to this summer I had the fortune to attend one of my best friends from high schools wedding, she was getting married to the man of her dreams, her own computer geek. I still smile on the day, and outside of the close to 2 hour catholic wedding which I wasn’t used to anymore (yes, if you all must know I was catholic at one time…but that is another tale in itself), I truely enjoyed myself. I saw so many people there that day that I hadn’t seen in so long, it was disconcerting to say the least, no-0ne was quite sure how to approach me or even if it really was me or some phantom or ghoul wearing my changed face. A few of my old friends and I hadn’t left on the best of terms either, making it more than strange with me standing there in my best greys. And of all the wierd, crazy, even morbid things they asked me was, “So how are you doing and what have you been up to?” Thinking still, that was such a loaded question, unintentionally loaded, and in no way out to hurt me, but it made me pause to think. What is it these last 8 years since highschool have I done? I hadn’t realized it had been so long since then, since I have hung out with my friends. I’ve done so much in the last 8 years, how do I explain what it is that I have experienced in so few words in less than an hour or two? But in that moment I blurted out “not too much,” because even if I explained it all in detail they wouldn’t believe half of what I told them. Summing up a life to someone who was once a friend and now a stranger in 3 little words. They all knew I was lying, they had heard rumors, mostly from the bride about how my life had been up to then, but the last 3 years has been a mystery even to her. The one thing that I had kept up from back then was that I lived up to the meaning of my name, a watchful spirit. I was the ever present ghost that always showed up when least expected, but I was always welcomed but never noticed when gone. Still the trusted confidant, the listener, the one with the answers to lifes hardest problems; but different. I was asked if I was alright by a few, no-one sure how to handle me. All I could do was smile because what right did I have to shatter that day’s celebration of love?

I look upon the scarred leather cover of my journal and think, what right did I have in all of this? I still occasionally run to people that I have never met and know me for my past actions. Fame or infamy, once I would have thought that each was a great thing, but have learned since they are just a path on which we travel. I found a brief statement near the end of my journal reminding me not to forget what lies at the end of the rainbow…what treasure awaits me. The legend goes that when you follow a rainbow until it ends, then at the end of that rainbow you will find a leprachaun who will give you his treasure, a pot of gold. But that is too literal of an explaination of the legend, too narrowminded of a statement. I believe that the legend is a metaphor about life itself…about how to live that life to the fullest. The path to the end of the rainbow has its ups and downs, challenges and successes, and there is a treasure at the end of the rainbow,life, for everyone. But that treasure is rarely gold, nor silver, or even diamonds; it is something far more precious than what it can buy for you…but that treasure is never the same for everyone. We could stumble across tens, if not hundreds, of treasures every day, but we wouldn’t recognize them because they are not meant for us. No, the path to the end of the rainbow is the journey in life we take, our experiences that help us recongnize what treasure lies at the end of the rainbow. Looking to my journal, I realize that my journey has been a long and twisted one, but it is far from over. Looking back to all the pain and suffering, the good times and the bad, that I have gone through in the last decade, I would not change a single page of it no matter how hard it has been nor twisted the path. I may now be jaded, changed from the youth I once was, idealistic and a good scout, only now I have grown to realize the prices that come with such acts and am willing to pay those prices. Someday I hope to discover what is at the end of my rainbow…

Oh yeah, on a fun note…happy b-day to me and horrah that there are no elections on my b-day this year:)

Well sitting here in the darkness of my appartment watching the minutes count down towards midnight is a strange feeling. Most of my old friends, and me included at times, would still be at the bar counting down the seconds until my birthday hits at midnight, without a care in the world. God I sometimes miss the self-delusions of youth. I guess that growing up and finally taking hold of the responsibility for my life has that effect on people, it had a huge effect on myself. I am very much a kid and troublemaker at heart, I still love a good joke and sitting down with friends and talking, but now the simple things in life such as having a beer with those you care about or even just seeing their faces light up in surpise and joy seem heavenly. I guess that is one of the greatest things about sitting alone in the dark, you can realize what the important things are in your life because you are no longer distracted by the world around you. With soft music in the background and the gentle motion of my kitten as he sleeps on my feet, it can bring things into focus on a level which is difficult to obtain outside of meditating for hours or spending the same time spent on a punching bag. The dark of the night does wonderous things for my perspective on life, and how it draws everything I do into crystal clarity right before I concieve of falling asleep, only to be forgotten in the halls of slumber before I awake the next day. I could force myself to stay awake, refuse to sleep lest the night steal away my life, but I remember those 4 summers at camp where I did that for 2 and a half months at a time. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, but sometimes at a price you don’t understand at the time and often unwilling to pay later. Sleeping just enough so not to go insane is not a way to live, I don’t recommend it one bit. But all of those nights staring at the bright stars in that tapastry of black silk in the sky, talking philosophy until our throats burned dry of ideas only to be refreshed by realizations of life, that was what the ancients ment when they said the gods drank their ambrosia. It is life and death rolled up in a small little package and all you have to do is to just taste it with the tip of your tongue and no more…and after that knowledge you are given that slight taste and banished from Eden or Utopia or Heaven, and you are told that you cannot come back. The taste will drive you insane, but there is nothing that you can do about it, just to live with the fact that now you know what it tastes like and all you can do is to attempt to recreate that taste through other means. It is like the man in the cave, until he steps out of the cave he knows nothing of bright colors outside of the dark, nothing of smells of flowers and trees and grass, or of the feel of falling rain hitting your cheek on a warm spring day; after that you cannot tell that man that he has to return to the cave for the rest of his life…that there will drive him insane. Knowledge can do that to a person, so can love, or hate, or greed, or valor…once tasted you can never escape it again. Sitting here in my apartment with no-one to call, to talk to, to escape with…I am now the man in the cave, aren’t I. I could talk with Trouble, but from experence that means he will just play “rub my body against your face till you shut up”, or that I will get the reputation of being the “crazy cat-man who lives in apartment 123″. Definately don’t want to be the “crazy cat-man”…I may be slightly crazy, but I can blame that on life:) I’ve tried to recreate those moments though of perfect clarity…of when I thought I knew what was going on with life until I fall asleep again…but the superfical ways that I have tried to do this have failed. I’ve taken philosophy classes thinking that we might actually talk about philosophy…but sorely mistaken as each class turned into a debate between democrates and republicans because the instructor doesn’t care he isn’t leading the class in concepts such as ethics, or religeon, or even life (god forbid a class thinking and discussing that topic). Each passing year it gets more difficult sometimes to find those people to talk to about life, about how it is and isn’t or is it (chew on that idea for a while…I intended to write it that way). You can take the high road, and I will take the low road, and maybe we can find somewhere in the middle to go.
Thinking back on today I spent it doing trivial things leading up to not much occuring today. I spent my morning after I woke up sitting in Red Barn waiting to get my tire fixed due to a teenager deciding that it was his right to try and force a collision that I was in no mood for yesterday. There were no injuries, not bloody crash or flaming vehicles crashing out of control…but I had a tire rim pay the ultimate price yesterday to avoid those outcomes. Nothing so much bothers me about it more than just having to be told that the tire, although it will work for now, will eventually have to have all of it replaced without any sort of simple sorry for the inconvienence. Heck, even a wave and a thumbs up or down would have been appreciated. But I did get to spend an hour of my day yesterday doing something that I love to do, just stand in the rain and enjoy the feeling of it hitting my face. And I discovered where in my car my spare tire is hidden and the rediculously small jack that they ship with it (i’m asking for a large one for christmas). Getting all dirty and slimey was fun, doing things with your hands and solving problems, that can be fun when your not in a rush. I even had a fantastic doughnut and coffee while I waited for AA to send a truck to help me out (when you break down, break down in the parking lot of a good doughnut place with hot coffee…not a bad way to wait). And after I got on my way, I was able to drop off some of my infamous coffee cake to a good friend of mine to help brighten up her day even more:) She has one of the best smiles ever and it is great to see it:) Today after the fun with the tire, I was able to get some laundry done, attend my office hours and catch up on some archaeological mags that I have had stacked up waiting to be read for a month, made a fantastic pot of chili that I will regret come bedtime (note to self…habanaro is a privilage and not a right…and i shouldn’t abuse that right when i put it into my bowl of chili without cheese), and I cleaned most of my kitchen up (minus just wiping down everything with disinfectent and hand mopping the floor…i hate cheap white tiles that just soak up dirt), watched King Arthur and National Treasure (Arthur was fun, and National Treasure was so silly it was fun), and read for class tomorrow morning. Thinking of that unholy time, I should be getting to bed, I have to be awake in 6 hours or so (better not be the so) and make sure i’m awake incase the doc needs to send someone to meet with his 930 again.