Thursday, April 4, 2013

Chapter 96 - April 2, 2013

I'm going to name this blog, "Angry Butterflies." I'll explain more later.

Hi everybody. Welcome to another week. Oh man, I'll tell you, each day is distinctly different from the other. Talk about going rail to rail in emotions. Just the other day, let's put it this way, if I think about a kitten in a field full of butterflies and flowers, I'll be a big mush and cry. And then, I think, who the fuck put a kitten in a big field like that, and what's with the butterflies? I get real angry. My emotions are all over the place. I guess it's another sign my body is waking up. Every morning I wake up, I open my eyes, look out the window, I say good morning to my little one, and then I'm thankful I'm still here. And then I think about what therapy I have to do today.

Therapy, that reminds me. You know, I was in the rehab hospital like what? 3 times, in total over a year? They work you real hard there. Every hour of the day you're doing something. It's hard but you have to continue. What I'm saying is, you gotta keep going. I've been working hard now at home for about 3 years, but you know what? It pays off. Just today, some friends stopped by. Mind you, I haven't seen them in about a month, but they remarked I've gotten so much better. You know, living the way I do, I don't see advances, but they noticed. The other thing that happened this week is I got what they call a junk wheelchair. It's a generic, all purpose wheelchair. In other words, it's not custom made to you, but I use it all the time. It builds up my core strength which is very important. I've been practicing the chair-lift. It's a chair that goes up the stairs on a rail. It's a fun ride for my little one as well. The other thing I do every hour is I try and stand. It's good for the body to get vertical any chance you get. I stand for as long as I can, like ten minutes or so. It's frustrating. You know, I watch my friends do things like build fires and do the dishes and do the housework. all I can do is just sit there and breathe. Hell, I can hardly raise a towel to my face. It's frustrating because mentally I'm all there, I'm just stuck in this body. I don't know if I told you earlier, but, you know, I had a bad vein on my brain stem. The vein was a slow bleed, so basically, it affected me physically. I do other things whenever I can, like, make bread with my assistant. I draw and paint with my father. I supervise cooking dinner with my mother. You know, like I said before, any small chore becomes therapy. Hell, life is therapy.

OK, I'm gonna have just a little bitch session here. You know what really pisses me off? Before this event, I was playing guitar all my life. I picked up one of my many guitars the other day, and it was like an Olympic event just to strum it. I gotta learn guitar all over again. Hell, it took me 30 years to get halfway decent, and now I gotta start all over again. That really pisses me off. Uh oh, here comes the kitten in the field again. Here we go. All right, I'll cool my jets. It's just an observation. OK, let's tell some fashion stories.

I'm starting to run out of stories to tell you. Can you believe it? I don't know which category I'm going to dip into. Adventure? Romance? Oh wait, there wasn't much of that. Um, let's see, Travel? I'll ask my friend here... My friend here wants to talk about adventure... Which type of an adventure. My friend here wants to talk about my grandfather's ranch in Australia. Well, what comes to mind is this: When I pulled up to the ranch for the first time, this really strange couple came up to our car. They were the caretakers. They said to me, "Oy mate, here put these on. They should fit you." They were boots that went up to my knees. I said to the woman, "What's with the boots?" and she said, "Well, there's lots of macadamia nuts here and the nuts attract the rats and the snakes are attracted to the rats." Use your imagination. Well, I got out in the field and there were bloody snakes everywhere. Not little tiny snakes you find in like Santa Barbara hills, but big vipers. There were a few pythons here and there. It was quite the farm. The old woman told me a story. She went out into the field once to do some work. Anyway, she leaned over to pick up a stick and a viper struck her in the chest. If you don't have anti-venom, you've got about 15 minutes. Well, she made her way back to the house. She sat down on the porch to die. Half an hour went by and she was still alive. She thought to her self, I should be dead by now. She reached into her shirt and she pulled out a pack of cigarettes the snake struck. Imagine that, she was saved by a pack of cigarettes.

It was fun going there as kid. Hell, at night, it was so noisy. Everything seemed to be eating everything else. 

You know, I always loved Australia. If you guys get a chance to go don't pass it up. It's an amazing place. I really miss it. Imagine this, it's like the same size as the United States, but there's only the population of the greater Metro New York area. Imagine making everyone in the United States leave and just sprinkle the population of New York around the Australian coast. That's what it's like. Or at least that's what it was like when I was there. Either way, it's a great place. I kind of got sidetracked there. Sorry. I was talking about fashion stories. I'll tell one and then we'll call it a day.

Let's talk about fashion romance stories. Oh, yeah, I forgot. I don't kiss and tell.

Oh, I'll tell a story about a great hair dresser I worked with. He was shooting with a client that was very conservative. She didn't like the hair. He came up to her and he said, "What? She looks gorgeous. I'm a fucking good hairdresser. I know what I'm doing. She looks great. She looks sexy. She looks like she just got fucked." I thought, well, there goes that client. She took a step back, looked at the model, looked at him, looked at the girl again. There was an awkward moment of silence and she said, "You know what, she does look sexy. I'm gonna go with it." And that was that.

Well, on that story, I'm gonna say goodbye. You know after telling that story, it reminded me of a few others, but I'm gonna save them for you. I'll talk to you next week. Love, B. Nice

My friend here will include some paintings I did around Easter. We opened up the front room and I found a suitcase full of old journals too. Good stuff. Talk to you next week.

2 comments:

  1. hi brian, i had lunch with bugs, pasha and lissie szepzy yesterday (and normie buckley happened to walk in as well...) and we all drank a toast to you. it's been two years since i came to visit you at garrison, but thinking about you everyday - in a strictly 'non-brokeback' kind of way :-). keep getting stronger! douglas

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