Friends

Posts about my friends.

One More Layer Peeled Away

Tchad

Today I finished packing up the books from Greg’s apartment and the Metafilter Book Exchange.

The tally was 362 softcover books that ranged from fiction to self-help, from computer programming to Buddhism and mystical Gnosticism.

The woman at the Books to Women in Prison offices seemed really excited by them!  I think that they usually get things that are a little more mundane and this helped round out what they have to send out.

There are another 188 hardcover books that are going to be donated to the Unique Thrift store down the street – the funds that Unique collects are used to help disabled Veterans.

As it is, I had a hard afternoon with it.  I got everything together and took them over in grocery bags and realized that one more layer of this estate process is peeled away.

 

Carthago delenda est

Tchad

I am avoiding the media today.

Ten years ago I was working at Jo-Ann Fabrics trying to get the Fall quarter visuals up to standard.  I had been up with my team all night setting and re-setting pumpkins and ghosts on the sales floor and decided I needed to put my head down for a bit.  Michelle came in about 8 in the morning (Chicago Time) telling me that a plane had hit the World Trade Center in New York.

I thought she was joking, told her it wasn’t funny what she was trying to do, and tried to put my head back down in my office.  She came over and bonked me on the head and told me to come into the break-room to look and see for myself.

{If I have the time and inclination, I’ll add the entry from my journal that day.}

I first started to study Classical Greek and Latin to counter my fundamentalist family members.  I wanted a way to talk about things that are important to them without debating their theology.  I WILL debate their theology when it is important that I make my point, but don’t make a habit of it.

What I didn’t realize was that studying Latin and Greek would give me as much political and historical insight as it has.  All of the sudden I start developing informed opinions based on historical sources instead of “Oh, it seems to me…” without knowing exactly why it seemed this way or that.

And that brings me to my early-morning September 11th musings as I avoid news feeds, newspapers, and get ready for my Sunday classes.

When the buildings collapsed I had this vague feeling of doom and gloom.  It wasn’t just that the buildings fell and the horror of what was going on in New York.  It was a sense of political dread.  It was like looking into a volcano. The nice thing is that the Patriot Act and its decommissioning of the Constitution didn’t surprise me.  The invasion of Afghanistan and  Iraq seemed like a foregone conclusion.

Enter: Carthage.

Except that George Bush is certainly NO Cato. You can see that in the streets of Kabul and Baghdad.  So either we are in some parallel First Punic War and are going to be pushed to the limit and see history out to the Third or we are floundering and poking Carthage in the eye ruining our reputations internationally.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthago_delenda_est

Of course, this needs to be developed more, and I barely have the slightest idea what I’m talking about, but I really think there is something to it.

Greg, Greg, Greg…

Tchad

Now that everything is starting to settle down from Greg’s death, I’m going to start posting my journal entries from the time I found out he was in the hospital (that entry is already up – I posted it the day I found out, as I had just finished coding the blogs) to the week after his memorial service a couple of weeks later.

None of it is earth-shattering, but it may be interesting to you if you have never had to be with someone at the end of their lives and then deal with the arrangements afterward.

I will be back-dating the stuff so that you can read it in sequence with a note or two about when I actually posted it instead of posting it on the day it is actually put up.  I thought about it and think that it will give you a better sense of what was really going on.

 

You Can Blame Or Try To Understand

Tchad

But at the end of the day, you have to find a way to PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER.

I was having an email conversation with my friend Mitch the other day.  He said that, in his opinion, one cannot blame their parents or anyone else for things going wrong in their lives after the age of 30.  It is hard, but I think he is right.  You can try to understand it, but there comes a point when you have to just deal with things and not blame, blame, blame.

It is harder than you think.

I have to find the time and energy to get this together.  There is a lot I need to do and if I wallow in my own pain it both magnifies it and negates the pleasurable things that are going on in my life and takes so much of the energy that could be channeled into the positive (or at least productively neutral) things.

This is a real problem.

I have noticed recently that my general tone is getting more and more negative and that needs to stop.

It is one thing to point out where there are problems, but when you dwell on them instead of trying to solve them you are in trouble.  I am getting to the point where I am in trouble.

Classes have started this week, and with them underway, things need to be changing.  They need to be changing fast and they need to be changing thoroughly.  I am giving myself FOUR MONTHS to turn this boat around.

So starting today, I am sitting down and coming up with an outline for the next four months.  There is no reason for this to be this way.  No reason whatsoever.

Stay tuned and/or come along for the ride.

We will see what happens.

Yes, Well, We are VERY Classy

Tchad

I have a friend who has strange ideas about what impresses people.

He grew up soul-crushingly poor. To this day it haunts him.  He carries it with him in everything he does. He thinks that everyone is trying to take his money away from him and undervaluing what he produces.

I was helping him organize some digital images on a USB drive the other day and as we were creating folders and getting things together I saw that he had a number of pictures of $100 bills strewn across the table in his gallery.  I asked him where they got filed and he said “résumé”.  I asked him why résumé and he said: “I print these out and take them in with me when I am interviewing for a commission [he is a fine artist] so I can show them and let them know that they can’t cheat me. I make money.”

I was shocked that someone would do this.

It goes against every single business theory I have.  I asked him if maybe he understood that he may not be getting the commissions he deserves because he was putting people off.  He didn’t understand what I meant.  To him the idea that someone would show up with those kinds of pictures meant business; where to me it would mean it is the last time they would EVER hear from me.

This surprised him.

I explained that those with money don’t really want to see huge displays of it.  That someone commissioning a work from him would be really disgusted by those pictures.

Me: “It speaks of a lack of class!  To me it says ‘I have no grace or elegance’, ‘I am the farthest thing from refined you will see!’, and ‘I don’t know how to behave in social situations’.”

Him: “Um, Tchad, since you are giving me a lecture about class, refinement, and grace… I wasn’t going to say anything… but you have a big booger hanging out of your nose… I can’t let you go on and on about dignity while you have something hanging out of your nose.”

Me: “…”

Him: “I’m sorry.  You were saying?”

So that is it.  I still think that it is classless behavior on his part to take those photos to an interview… something glass houses… something something stones…

 

 

Don’t roll your eyes, Don’t roll your eyes, Don’t roll your eyes…

Tchad

A few years ago I stumbled on a series of Anthony Robbins’ self-help cds at the thrift store.  I guess whoever bought them gave them away when they moved into their Castle on the beach in St. Croix.

Anthony Robbins

You can roll your eyes, but it does help some of us.

In all seriousness, I was grasping at straws when I found them.  I was (am) skeptical about self-help. I have a parent who turned to them (not Robbins, but others in the “rage therapy” vein) and I blame them for a lot of my late childhood issues.

But I was struggling.  It was 2005-06. I had no support, was essentially bankrupt, and had just spent the better part of the past year taking care of an alcoholic friend who manipulated me into one of the most soul-sucking friendships of all time.

I was desperate.

So I bought them and started listening.  I wasn’t doing it right. I was coming from an “I’ll show all of you assholes what I can do” instead of “Here I go! Watch me explore and develop my world!”.  It turns out that anger CAN drive you. The caveat is that it can only get you so far. In my case, I got up to 180 Lbs (in a good way), built an almost 3,000 square foot workspace from scratch, dated, traveled, and wrote a lot. Once you have grown and matured a little, it cools a bit and then you have to decide what to do with all of the emotion that you invested in these things that it created.  It taints the creation a bit.*  Others may not see it, but it does.

I’ve gotten better since then, but have gone back to those cds.  Friends make fun of me, and that is totally ok, but there are those of us who have no emotional tools to work with.  I am not a child abuse victim, have never been sexually abused, and enjoy what most people would consider to be a good helping of first-world racial privilege.  I can do just about anything.  I can make you an evening gown (or suit), tell you the best way to grow Paw-Paw trees, cure leather & hides, conjugate (some) Latin verbs, tell you the finer points of the NEC code as they relate to Chicago, make GREAT sutures (don’t ask how I know, please), and (poorly) code html.  I grew up with parents who told me that I “could do ANYTHING!” which meant that I could do anything with that little tidbit of motivation as long as it meant that I got married, became a doctor, and had millions of babies.

A lot of the breadth of my interests were mocked as silly.  Latin, especially.

So anyway:  I have picked up the Robbins series again and am listening to it with a more neutral ear.  My friend is dead, I have no romantic relationships, and I am running a business I never planned on having but enjoy more than most people enjoy their jobs.  I am in a good place to re-develop where I am going.  I can’t change who I am but I CAN change how I look at things and what is important to me.  Isn’t some of it ridiculous?  Yes, yes, it is.

And yet: One hour every morning is now going to be going back to the personal development basics.  To give myself the tools I wasn’t given and redirect a bit.  Kind of like adult braces: You are always going to have to wear that damned retainer because the bone is already formed.  You have to get over the anger and resentment that your parents didn’t take care of it when they should have and just move on.

* You should also know that if you connect it to music as inspiration, you will never be able to listen to those songs again.  And some of them are good. But nope – all you remember is the anger behind them and how that felt.  It is especially problematic if the person is dead or you really really liked the songs.

 

R.I.P. Homie, R.I.P.

Tchad

One of the dogs up at Getaway Farms died today.

Homer on a Stroll

Homer was one of those good old mixed breed 14 year old dogs that every farm needs.

This Summer Cyndi decided was going to be the “Summer of Homie”.  She didn’t put any restrictions on him and let him do his thing.  Luckily he went before the cold set in and the ground froze solid.  It sounds morbid, but you have to think about these kinds of things when you are in zone 4.

RIP Homer.

 

 

I Am… SUPERMAN!

Tchad

I have a Superpower.  I don’t talk about it much in the city because I don’t get to use it very much in town.

But it really is a Superpower.

I have no dermatological response to this:

Poison Oak

Nah-Nah-Na-Na-Nah

That, my friends, is Poison Oak and Poison Ivy. Plants I am not allergic to.  It may not seem like much to brag about, but when you are in the woods with people who are allergic to it (and most people are, I have found) you may as well be bullet-proof and trying to catch rounds coming from the end of a 357.  The reactions you get are the same.

So while anyone with me cowers and covers and runs from anything vaguely vine-y with three to five leaves, I am swinging from vines that would make them turn into oozing pustules of despair and regret.

Chiggers, on the other hand, are my kryptonite.

I’ve… Been Working On The Railroad…

Tchad

Pretty soon the website for Rural Pursuits will be up and running, but in the meantime, I am helping my friend’s sister around her place.

Getaway farms is a great place that Greg’s sister runs by herself.  Try managing 15 acres, 7 horses, a huge barn and a track and see how far behind you get.

One of the jobs we tackled yesterday was getting old railroad ties up and out of the ground in a corner of the yard that used to be garden and grading it back into lawn.

Hauling Railroad Ties

There were 15 of these damn things!

Here is the thing:  When you tell me there is work to be done, I turn into a Real German®.  Not the happy lederhosen wearing beer drinking German that you see at the Bierstube, but a hardcore task master that stays on task and WILL complete the job.
We were laughing together as we dug out chinese elms and maple trees.  There was a little whining halfway through, but we powered through.  At one point, she was ready to give up and go eat.  I said: “Let’s finish this and then we can eat.  Let’s power through.  We get no comfort until the work is DONE!”  To which she replied: “OK! OK!  I know what happens to us Poles when we get under the thumb of a German!”

So the day went well – we worked in really humid windless conditions, changing clothes 2x because we couldn’t stay cool or dry, but we. got. it. done.

Needless to say, I don’t normally look like this after a day of work:

After pulling railroad ties for 7 hours.

Done.

 

 

Gaul Reiten V. Riding Gauls

Tchad

As I was riding today, I remembered part of an old WWII era joke I heard one of the old men at the VFW tell.

I always understood the German for horse as Pferd.  I was doing something online and came across Gaul as an alternative.
And all of the sudden the half-remembered punchline of this forgotten joke made sense.  It had to do with riding a Gaul (Frenchie) as if she were a Gaul (horse).

And there you have it.  A joke I don’t really remember that I just figured out after a 20 year comic pause.

 

 

Reite Das Pferd /Nicht/ Das Pferd Wird Von Mir Geritten

Tchad

I rode again today for the first time in a while…

Here we go!

My horse was Kayla, a chestnut Quarter Horse with (what seemed like) an even disposition.  Even until we got out on the track, that is.  She was pulling me this way and that and then started cantering to the barn.

View to the North as I got dragged along the track.

View to the North as I got dragged along the track.

We eventually came to an understanding, but not before a couple of scares.  Once we began to understand each other, we really had a nice time.

Riding in the practice field.

Riding in the practice field.

Like Cyndi was saying: Horses just want a leader.  The herd mentality is strong and they need that direction.  If they don’t get it, they assume it for themselves.

Out of the Gate!

Out of the Gate!

So we rode for a while in the heat and it was really nice.

A lot of the time I will talk to myself in a kind of broken piginy German.  In this case, I kept repeating “Reite Das Pferd! Nichts Das Pferd Wird Von Mir Geritten!”  A real German would laugh at that, I think… They would rather see something like: “Gerittente Pferd” or something, but whatever.  I use the word Tagleuchter too, so what do you want?

I know what you want.  You want more pictures from Getaway Farms.

Well, here you go:

 

 

Just FYI For Your Next Trip To Wisconsin

Tchad

These people can DRINK.

I mean they DRINK.

For real.  I grew up with rabid teetotalers on one side and just as rabid alcoholics on the other* and have NEVER seen this much booze consumed.

So prep your liver before you come, cause they start early and run late.

*Why yes, extended family gatherings were very interesting, thank you.

Like being punched in the stomach…

Tchad

I wrote before that this kind of full-body grief is like being punched in the stomach.

You know what else is like being punched in the stomach?

Love.

The record producer and his wife across the hall from the workroom have a little girl, Elizabeth.

Baby wrangling

This was nice.

Wow.

Besides being just about the best baby EVER, I find myself being super protective of her.  She just turned one in April and has been walking and trying to talk for a while.  So I walk her around the neighborhood and help out when I can.

So she is starting to get into things here and there and today I helped Mary, her mother, clean a cut on her finger from a pair of scissors.  Elizabeth wasn’t happy about it, but she stood still while I talked to her and cleaned it out and put a bandage on it.  She still wasn’t thrilled, but stopped fussing and met my eye solidly the entire time.  When we were done and she smiled and started dancing.

My little heart just sang.

It is odd to feel so strongly about a child who isn’t yours, but there you go: It takes a village and all that…

Here is a pic of us when I was best man at her parents’ wedding:

Tchad and Elizabeth

Now this, THIS will brighten your day!

They came over and got me (I had been in pretty bad shape for a while – you can see my face and how beat up it was from all of the crying and emotional stress lately) and I was best man and head-baby-wrangler for the afternoon.

Wow.  You have to remember what makes your life really sing sometimes.

Snap. Snap. Snap.

Tchad

Hundreds of pictures.  Hundreds.

Not even 30% of the way through the tables of stuff from Greg’s and am getting tired.

I really want to get everything except the antique glassware, books, albums, and cds done tonight.

If I can get those listed, then I can list the rest of the things over the course of the next two days.

Aiming to have the whole workroom empty by 6 July.  A tall order, but I think it can work.

The nice thing about this much mindless focus is that it really takes you out of yourself.  It is the one thing I liked about a corporate job – you are called on just to do.  Format, template, rules, just do. Do. Do. Do.  So this kind of thing is not making me tear up like something that forces my creative side.

OK.  If you want to look at the mess I am in, check out my Ebay profile.

No crying today.  THAT, my friends, is a very good thing.

 

And Then There is This One Ray That Shines Down…

Tchad

And you bask in the cliché of it and realize…

Sometimes things are going along and then something happens out of the blue that completely changes your tone for a while.

It happened to me today.  I was re-hashing all of my (very) first-world worries with a student* who dropped by for a bit and then my email pings and I get this:

Hi there!

I LOVE everything I’m seeing about your life. If I were  in Chicago, I would be taking your classes! And I drool over the  culture you’ve created in your workroom.

I know the years in  between are overflowing with joys and sorrows that make us who we are  today. But I look at pics of your workroom and I am transported back to  that slow moving train from Italy, walking through tunnels of  hydrangeas, and a place and time where critical thinking and classic  theoretical exploration were encouraged. And I miss it.

I’m  starting my European job search because it’s time to get out of the  desert. My brain dries up a little more with every passing year.  THANK  YOU for keeping me focused! Please keep the blogs and pics coming.

Macht’s Gut!

Erin

I kept re-reading that first line again and again.

“I LOVE everything I see about your life…”

“I LOVE everything I see about your life…”

“I LOVE everything I see about your life…”

Let me copy that again…

“I LOVE everything I see about your life…”

Because really, I haven’t been loving my life.

In fact, there has been very little about it lately that gives me any joy at all.

Erin and I went to college together and then spent time in Switzerland at Franklin College in Lugano. We have lost touch (almost) completely over the years, but she saw the class blog I just revived and felt compelled to send that note. And what a difference it made in my day.

And that did it. I have been able to create this thing – with my own hands – and make it work. Sometimes it hasn’t been pretty, but there is something to this.

Something real. Something outside of our ridiculous consumerist culture. Something that makes a difference. Something that teaches people and makes them think!

AND I DID IT.

MYSELF**

And it was hard and I suffered and had setbacks and thought I would lose it and that it didn’t matter.*** But it does and was really good to hear.

* Who is turning out to be a friend – who knew?
** Not really, but it is a nice illusion when you are trying to pump yourself up.
*** To get the proper cadence of that sentence going through my mind you should really read it:

“AnditwashardandIsufferedandhadsetbacks
(and inhale)
andthoughtIwouldloseitandthatitdidn’tmatter.”

It seems like it has been a million damn years.

Tchad

What was I doing last time I wrote?

I had just gotten the call from my friend Greg’s sister.  He was in the hospital again and I was pissed.

Well, I’ve changed my tune now, that’s for sure.

See, March 6th started me on a terrible roller coaster.  I wasn’t in a great place to begin with. I have been like a schizophrenic drunk with vertigo on some horrible amusement ride.  Does that color it properly?  Yes, I believe it does.

So for a while I will write about lessons and how life kind of smacks you around a little sometimes.  I have a friend who would say: “Be more Stoic!”.  What he means is: “take it like a man”.  He doesn’t realize that if one is really being stoical he would fall on his sword tout suite.

My little ride has almost cost me a business, has worn me down to nubs I have never been worn to, and yet has still given me a couple of cherries.

Remember: It is not all bad.

Until it is.

Throughout the Summer I am going to be posting about some pretty personal stuff.  Don’t be too hard on me.  I am trying to live my life in the open and help folks out.  Don’t read it if you don’t like it.

So stay tuned and read me rant.  Hopefully I can make you laugh or think.

Or cry. Sometimes all three.

 

 

 

At some point everyone should learn this balance:

Tchad

It is something I’ve never been able to master.  This need to do and be (whatever) balanced with the need to care for others and make things right.  I am either running around trying to fix things, being the martyr that no one asked me to be or I am working on my projects for months on end.  Alone.

It is hard being a Secular Mother Theresa and/or a Spiritual Howard Roark.  I don’t advise it.

I found out this afternoon that a very good friend of mine is in the hospital (again) and will probably not make it through.  He is 61. This is the same friend I nursed from the beginning to end of his last hospitalization four+ years ago.

I couldn’t do it then, but did.  It almost killed me, but I did it.  I ended his extended hospitalization and rehabilitation for 4-6 months and dropped everything.  I almost lost everything as well.

When he started drinking again it made me sever ties.  I couldn’t cope.

And now this.  Some part of me, the younger more maternal part, says that I could have stopped this.  It tells me that just giving enough will fix things.  But I think emotional energy works like scientific energy:  It cannot be created or destroyed – it just changes form.

The last time it drained everything I had emotionally, financially, and physically.  I am still feeling the effects all these years later.  And yet I sit here thinking, thinking, thinking.

He never changed his condo admittance papers, so off I go tonight to find his will and business papers for his sister.  I am the only one allowed in the building unattended without a power of attorney.

It reminds me of a story of a distant cousin…

He worked out West for a widow as a ranch hand.  This would have been 30+ years ago.
She was a hopeless alcoholic, and as such was too much for him to deal with.  He tried, but it got to a point where he just had to go.

As he was leaving, she said: “You may have lost your loyalty, but I WON’T lose mine!”

He thought “sure, whatever” and cut out.

Fast forward 10 years.  He gets a notice.  He finds out that she has died and left him everything.  Every single thing.

Not that I am interested in my friend Greg’s things but there is some part of me that wants some kind of grand movie ending like that.  Some part of me that wants to show off how, even though he never stopped drinking, never straightened out his act, never did any of the things I thought he would when he essentially got a second shot at life…  that… I don’t know.  Validation? Vindication? Admiration?  What?

Then the hyper-rational side of me kicks in.  It has been my dominant side for the past few years.  It tells me that this has all (all of it!) been a lot of effort invested in someone to whom I am not related and with whom I don’t have  a romantic connection.  A LOT OF EFFORT.

Sigh.

So I’ll go to his condo after class tonight and find the appropriate papers.  I’ll think about where I want to go from here.  I haven’t been there in two years, so it will be hard to do it, but I will.

 

And in keeping with the theme of the blog…

Tchad

I named the blog what I did because I seem to always be surrounded by conspiracy theorists.
This may be some kind of sample error, or it may be that my sense of the crazy is heightened from growing up with them. In any case, they are steel to my magnet.

If there is someone in the room who subscribes to any number of crackpot theories (they would balk at calling them theories) they engage me in conversation, and then before I know it *BAM* “Of course that was before the Masons and Oprah started stealing all of my ideas.”

Some of these people have ended up being good friends, but I have learned not to poke the bear in the cage as far as this stuff goes.  So Oprah and why your business aren’t going well are conversationally off-limits.

I do, however, like this image and may as well throw it up while I am fixing the images on the site and getting everything in order.

stay asleep gif

Stay asleep.