It sounds like my dog is having a nightmare. He’s in deep sleep and making sort of a whimpering sound. And now I’m starting whimper. There was a rabies scare at his doggy daycare center and at first I thought he may have been infected. And that I might then get infected. But now that so many days have passed, my rabies fears have subsided–and both my dog and I find ourselves whimpering more than usual.
According to AI:
whimpering by itself is not a reliable sign of rabies in either dogs or humans.
In humans, whimpering or crying is not considered a symptom of rabies.
I’m having hearing issues. I mean, robotic hearing issues. My “AI-powered” hearing aids started randomly turning on and off. Since I also have attention or lack of attention issues, I wonder if this is another situation where the AI is tapping into my brain and turning on and off in sync with my attention span. I guess that is possible.
And then there’s my shoulder issues that are also related to my attention issues. I’m not sure if I mentioned this or not (you can tell me if I did) … what was I saying? Oh yeah. I was walking on walkway alongside my apartment building. Looking at my phone at the same time (probably a dating site), when I stumbled upon a buckle in the pavement, breaking the fall with my right arm and shoulder. Resulting in what the MRI called a ‘massive’ rotator cuff tear. Which was really dumb because now I will probably need surgery, possibly even a shoulder replacement.
One by one, parts of my body are being replaced. Hip, shoulder, neck, so far. Perhaps this will lead to immortality since my entire body might be replaced by indestructible materials. Problem is, I only have savings for maybe 2-3 years of living, tops. I would call this a dilemma.
I’m in LA. Perpetual rain for the past 5 days. On the eve of 2026.
It’s 2026 and I am still waiting for my life to begin. Maybe that could be my New Year’s resolution:
Begin your life.
I’m not sure how it would start.
Maybe it would be akin to walking into a movie theater, 30 minutes late. And the movie has a very complicated plot line you can never quite catch up to before it ends.
And then you walk out of the theater in a befuddled daze.
And you can’t remember where you parked.
You can’t even remember whether you drove or not. Because if you did drive, you should not have. Because your vehicle registration expired over a month ago. Sometime back in 2025.
atrophied. that’s me. that’s me as a writer. as a creator. it’s so apparent to everyone who is me. there’s no hiding it.
I had this fleeing, but not fleeting idea to put together a compilation of writing to publish as a book, some of this writing which I can’t even recall ever writing. or which I would rather not recall ever writing. some of which should never have seen the light of day or night. how did my pride in it morph into finding it repellent?
I must find a way to recalibrate my consciousness. Somehow.
I must offer my sincere apologies to anyone who endures reading this.
At the risk of sounding clichéd, which is a huge huge risk for someone like me, I am struggling to keep track of all of the things I have forgotten. I have not only forgotten what I was going to type, but I have forgotten how to type. I don’t even think about typing anymore. It feels like a lost art.
When I look back on the days when my typing was at it’s best, when I was in a typing groove, when I was even pretty well known for my typing skills, when I was even a much sought after typist, it feels like another person. Maybe someone I’ve never even met. I wonder if that person would even like me. Who knows?
It’s really funny (not ha-ha funny) how the presence of certain people on a bus can be so absorbing. Like certain people want the attention of all of the uncertain people on the bus. Maybe they are more lonely than I. I am tempted to ask them, but that would only reinforce their need for attention. So my not telling them about my loneliness or anything else I might be feeling or thinking is probably good for them. My not saying anything might be sort of a gift.
What happened? What brought me here? Did someone give me tenure? I never even submitted a portfolio. So strange
I am walking in some sort of shell. The roar of traffic patterns. So comforting. The most comforting roar imaginable. Other than the sea.
I don’t really think I deserve tenure. The Review Committee must have been asleep. Or on mushrooms. But didn’t deserve it.
Mediocrity has caught up with me and there’s no hiding it. Except from the Review Committee. I no longer care what I won’t become, but that doesn’t lead me to accept what I am.
So what does one do in this state of mediocrity. Settle? The thought of settling makes me cringe. But it’s my unsettledness that brought me here. So strange.
I guess I have to stick around and at least find my way to a place of compromised comfort. that is more borderline settling than settling. I guess it’s more of a place to float.
And what could be better than floating? In the sea. Exchanging pleasantries with the waves in the aquamarine sea.
Something is reflecting the dim light. It might be the waves. It might be. the thing I became while I wasn’t floating. The light is dimming, but the bulb still has some life in it.
Shame almost annihilated everything in its path. It dug a deep deep hole and I almost fell into it. But I managed to sidestep it. I should be proud of this. I AM proud of this.
I gathered myself to stare the smokey vehicles otherwise known as the clouds.
Each cloud has a story to tell. One cloud speaks obtusely. Something about the transgressions it committed in the coachhouse of the lord. Or at least that’s what it sounded like. I could be wrong.
Another cloud speaks of yearning for someone or something intangible. I think the cloud mentioned the name Shonaugh, but I may have misheard. Maybe that’s just the name I wanted it to hear.
I shouldn’t be listening in. It’s not my place.
The must think of me as a shadow person. Not quite invisible enough to completely disappear.
I like to think of myself as the kind of person who always keeps their promises in spite of all evidence to the contrary. I cannot think of a single promise I have ever kept in my entire life. Not to you. Not to me. Not to anyone. The kinds of promises I make are not tethered to anything material or immaterial. I would not even consider them to be promises. Maybe they are intentions, but if they are intentions, I had no intention of making them. They were unintended intentions that never blossomed into promises. That does not mean I am an ingenuous person. Or is it a disingenuous person? Hmmm. I’m not sure which is which. Maybe if I neither ingenuous or disingenuous, maybe this means I am not anything. And if I am not anything, is there any value, any worth to any of my promises?
I found this unpublished post in my Drafts folder on WordPress.
My ghost surprised me with a Valentine’s Day text today. I do not really know what to make of it. I could have responded with something like “Wait, aren’t you supposed to be ghost? I thought that ghosts were above this sort of thing.”
Maybe there should there should be a separate Ghost Valentine’s Day. Which could be observed by the ghosts and the ghosted. I would send my ghost an empty heart shaped box of chocolates.
Or perhaps a dozen dead roses.
Picked from a dozen dead forests.
But I wish I knew what this was all about. Her brief reappearance. It was almost as if she knew that she had almost vanished from my consciousness. And perhaps she needed some sort of validation that she still existed.
Or perhaps I was just one of many recipients in a mass text to her “menagerie of men” as she was mentioned. First I thought it was needlessly cruel of her to mention… letting me know that I am not as special as I thought. But eventually I came around to thinking that it would have been needlessly cruel of her to not inform me of my non-specialness.
It was something that I needed to hear.
And it made total sense why I would then be ghosted. It was not as if I was not forewarned.
Walking Orfeo (Orfie) around the neighborhood reminds me of how strange people can be. Were they always this strange? Are they getting stranger? Am I getting stranger? Could I be any more strange? Maybe I am only a stranger to myself. Maybe not. But that’s not the point I was trying to make.
I just forgot the point I was trying to make.
When I walk Orfie ….
Some dog walking humans I encounter every day avoid eye contact or acknowledgement of my presence, even when I say hi. That makes me feel strange
Some dog walking humans give me dirty looks because when their dogs see Orfie, their dogs get very excited and it looks like the humans are having difficulty controlling them. So I guess it is my fault for inciting their dogs, even when we are across the street. And I guess it is my fault that their dogs were not trained or socialized. Very strange.
We encountered one such human today. We were on the same sidewalk, about 50 feet apart. And I was just going to continue walking past her, but she stopped in her tracks with her collie, blocking the sidewalk. She looked incredulous. It was like a standoff. She just stood there glaring at us, her little collie or whatever it was barking hysterically. It was like a standoff. I yelled out, “My dog is very friendly.” She continued to stand there glaring, blocking the sidewalk with her hysterical collie (or whatever it was). When I realized she was not going to move, I yelled out again, “My dog is friendly … and you are not!” And then we walked in the other direction.
You can see from the photo how mean and aggressive Orfie appears.
And then once in a while, a dog walking human will say hi or stop to ask if our dogs can say hi to each other. Which is nice.
Ant then there is sometimes a mixture. The friendliest dog walking neighbor has a dog named Archie. For some reason, Archie hates Orfie and the neighbor and I can’t have a conversation because Archie is pulling hard on the leash and would probably attack Orfie were he not on a leash.
When I got Orfie, one year ago, I thought having a dog would be a great way to meet my neighbors and instill a sense of community that is lacking. I guess I was too idealistic or delusional … So strange that we have made more enemies than friends.
I was at a doctor’s appointment. The office was not really an office but more like front counter at a dry cleaner. My doctor was a short and very cheerful Asian woman. She was telling me that the results of my tests (whatever they were) were all normal and I was in good health. And then she added, I did test positive for cancer. But, she added it was nothing to worry about.
There was another doctor, male caucasian, working beside her behind the front counter. She showed him a page of paper which was a printout with the results of my tests. He shook his head and I read his body language as a sign that things were not looking good. Which he confirmed by letting me know that things were not looking good. He confirmed it was cancer, but it was strange because it was a rare form of cancer usually only found in ostriches, dogs, and other animals. He showed me some sort of chart with images of the animals. Kind of like an encyclopedia of animals for children.
I can’t recall what the prognosis was. But afterwards, I got in my car and started crying. My head on the steering wheel.
Sitting at Collectivo, trying not to listen to the guy at the table across from me, blathering away on his cell phone. Loudly. My irritated glance is not enough to get through to him. There’s a certain shamelessness to a person who is not self-conscious about being the only person in crowded public space, blathering loudly on his phone. It makes me wonder how he was raised. Maybe the way he was raised was better than the way I was raised. I arose from my raising with an indelible sense of shame that I can shake every now and then, but which is always there, below the surface, waiting for me.
Not that I want to be that guy. The cell phone guy. Or his ilk. But I could probably benefit from a touch of their shamelessness.
That is but one of the ways I was raised that did not bode well for my future. One among many. There are other ways in which I was not raised.
I was not raised to write this sentence.
I was not raised to have a sharp analytical mind in spite of surface appearances.
I was not raised to overcome doubt.
I was not raised to overcome aging.
I was not raised with a shred of confidence.
I was not raised to be fearless or courageous.
I was not raised to fight back, to defend myself.
I was not raised to be liberated from all of my shortcomings.
I was not raised to be completely liberated from my past.
I was not raised to start conversations.
I was not raised to articulate complete sentences.
It’s March 6, 2024. And there are too many things that should have happened by now. So many things. Beyond my ability to count. I would not know where or how to begin.
But I hope it’s not too late.
I guess if I had to pick one theme for this blog over the years, that would be the one.
Or maybe the theme of trying to find a theme.
Maybe if I spent less time trying to find a theme, a new theme would emerge. And the days would be pass by less recognizably.
Have you ever tried out a persona that wasn’t exactly you, but that you thought would make you a cooler you? And then it turned out that the persona was not as cool as you thought it would be. But you were trapped in it. And you couldn’t shed it. but you refused to cave in and accept that this persona that wasn’t exactly you had become you or you had became it. But maybe it wasn’t. you. Maybe this you was just a set of habits. a closed set of patterns. predictable patterns. that’s all it was.
But the nice thing about habits is that with a little behavioral modification, any habit can be broken.
But where does one begin? the persona originated from somewhere. but where did the other one go? The one before it.
that’s the real question.
Perhaps I should be more specific. That’s one of my bad habits. Vagueness. Lack of specificity because I’m not very good at describing abstraction. I mean, I can do abstract. But describing what I mean is another story.
It was a cold night in February sometime late in the 20th century. I was performing in a show at the local performance art cabaret. Standing in the back of the space. Even further back than the bar, right in front of the cigarette machine. I think that is what they called them back then. You know, vending machines for cigarettes. Everybody smoked except me.
I think it was a Tuesday. Even though I knew most of the audience and the participating artists and many of them were considered to be friends at that time … maybe I didn’t feel cool enough to be there. You know, as the only non-smoker. It may have been around 10:20pm. That was the moment I decided to adopt that other persona. The only way to counter feeling like an outsider amongst outsiders was to be more of an outsider than they were.
Which was not the best idea because that’s when the door closed. And I couldn’t get back inside. And it was freezing out there. Outside. And it was even more freezing because I was outside of being outside. I was in a place where no one could find me. Even though they were inches away. They didn’t realize I had abandoned the persona who was standing in front of the cigarette machine, and not smoking.
That may have been the problem. You see nobody noticed this new persona. That is, nobody even noticed there was a new persona. The only one who noticed was the old persona. I guess people just assumed that the old persona and the new one were one and the same. But they couldn’t have been more different.
It was not too long after that the old persona began to resent the new persona. It was like the new persona had stolen the old persona’s identity. Nobody could have conceived of such a thing as identity theft back then. But that’s what it was. A primordial form of identity theft.
It’s been difficult to write of late because of this odor permeating my writing space. It’s a gassy odor. Much like a fart. Actually, it IS a fart, but fortunately it is not my own. It is not of me. It is not from me. It’s from this creature now inhabiting my apartment. But I cannot blame him. Because even though he has an exceptional sense of smell, he seems oblivious to this particular smell. He might be the only 1 who is oblivious to it.
I am trying out a new strategy to deal with this. Which is to write my way out of it. If that is what it takes to get myself back to writing, I can call this a blessing. I say ‘thank you’ to my roommate and ‘bless you, too.’
It’s so strange that I now have this roommate and I am surprised about how chatty I’ve become since his arrival. I choose not to accept that he does not understand what I am chatting about. Although he appears to be confused most of the time.
To which I say, better to be confused than to be certain when there is absolutely nothing that is certain. I am learning that more and more each day. I will continue to learn that until someone trains me not to.
The Lost Pedestrian 