Category Archives: Non-fiction

Non-fiction

Delivery Chronicles

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All I think about is work, which must make me a workaholic. I used to have an imagination doing deliveries. Those times were traumatic. I wasn’t making much money (not that I am now either), and I drove all day and night through Los Angeles, with a two-hour break in between, which in some years I devoted to meditation and writing. Sometimes the dispatchers would send me downtown to pick up nine-hundred-dollar food deliveries and deliver them to one of the companies in the skyscrapers. I get a panic attack just remembering. If you’ve ever been to downtown Los Angeles, you would recall the one-way streets of Figueroa, Hope, and Grand, and how, if you missed the address, you would have to start all over again.

I went through panic attacks on the road.

One time, I’d come home at around 9:30 p.m. from another shift and smoked a bowl of potent weed and took a shot of whiskey when I was smoking every day. My dispatcher, who was also my boss, sent an order to my phone for a sushi restaurant. The order was huge, and the tip was over fifty dollars, and I was already high, so I panicked. I couldn’t tell him I couldn’t drive there. It was the end of the shift, and the other drivers had gone home. I could’ve gotten in trouble if I rejected the order, and I couldn’t tell him I was stoned, so I decided to drive to the sushi restaurant. A cop could’ve pulled me over and tested me for drugs. Now that they can do that somehow, I would’ve been fucked.

I made it there okay and entered the restaurant high as hell. My eyes must’ve looked like two fireball candies. I was paranoid. It felt as if the customers were looking at me. I was so high, and I had to stand in there and wait for them to make the sushi rolls, and the restaurant was filled to capacity on a Friday night. Did I mention it was raining? There was nowhere to sit and try to relax, so I stood near the sushi bar for about twenty minutes and waited for them to finish the job. When they did, I grabbed the sushi bags and got the hell out of there. (Actually, I used bags of my own. The restaurant owners were too cheap to afford plastic bags. Anyway, I bagged everything and left.)

It was a dangerous trip up Laurel Canyon to a house in the hills on a stormy night, where the road curved like a sidewinder, and I had to be careful turning and looking out for cars speeding down the opposite lane to my left with their bright white headlights making me temporarily blind. Somehow I dropped the food off safely to the customer who’d ordered sushi that late at night and drove back down the winding road.

I forgot how I got home, which usually happened when I was high. I was the character from the movie Memento who forgot everything with no short-term memory, so he had to write everything he’d experienced to recall what happened. That was me on weed. I don’t smoke it now, but my memory is evasive. I forget a thought from a minute or so ago, so I sit and try to recollect it. Some of them are important, so I should probably write them down as well, but I never carry a notepad, and my phone is too complicated to sort through. By the time I get to the note app, I forget what notes I was supposed to take.

So that was one story of when I was doing deliveries in Los Angeles. I’ll write a book someday on my experiences doing that job, just not now. I’m not ready. I’m working on other stuff. Sometime in the future, like with my month in rehab and the hospital in Pasadena, I’ll get to it. Unlike those nightmares I lived through as a delivery driver, I took notes at rehab every day and kept them in my closet somewhere, and I’ll take them out in a few years.

Non-fiction

On Friday the Thirteenth

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I had the chance yesterday to write about the celebrated movie franchise Friday the 13th, but it slipped my mind. This blog isn’t all about inner turmoil. Sometimes it’s about praise, and I give it to Jason Vorhees and some of the greatest slasher films ever made. Who could deny their resonance?

I discovered the third film on HBO, the first of the series I saw in the eighties when Jason Vorhees chased a bunch of teenagers through the woods in Crystal Lake. He ran after a pretty girl with his machete, I believe, and her boyfriend jumped in his way. Jason squeezed his head until his eyeballs popped out. At that point, I was hooked at about eight years old. It probably scarred me for life, and now I’m suffering from childhood trauma, but I can’t deny the impact it has left on me.

Don’t get me wrong. If I’m channel surfing and one of the movies is playing, I’ll most likely skip over it now that I’m older. But I must admit its power over me when I was young. HBO used to show all the sequels. I loved seeing Jason wearing his hockey mask. But before he wore it, he covered his face with what looked like a potato sack in the first two films. He looked ridiculous. By the third film, he found a hockey mask. Don’t ask me where one be lying in Crystal Lake. Maybe there was a hockey rink nearby that I didn’t know of, and a hockey team played there like the Crystal Lake Beavers or something. Nevertheless, he took it and ditched the potato sack to murder teenagers, camp counselors, and drifters.

The fourth film starred the renowned Corey Feldman of Goonies fame. Why he chose to act in it is anyone’s guess. I don’t remember Jack shit from the film except Jason drowning from being chained to a motorboat, I think. Don’t take my word for it because, like I said, the childhood trauma from watching those films has made me repress memories.

This led to the fifth film where not even Jason Vorhees was the killer. A paramedic was. It’s a mystery why the auteur of that specific sequel made that decision. But Part Five had some of the greatest kills. I judge Friday the 13th movies by that. And who could argue against Jason cutting someone’s eyes out with a weed whacker and popping a guy’s skull against a tree with a belt?

In the sixth film, Jason comes back to life somehow after drowning in the lake in the fourth film. The writers must’ve run out of ideas by then to make him supernatural after however many times Jason was resurrected in the lake. The only scene I think I remember from that film was a dude who got stabbed to death in a Port-a-Potty. What a disgraceful way to go.

And then things got really ridiculous in the seventh installment, when Jason went head-to-head against a teenage girl with telekinetic powers. Her mind could hurl objects at someone. Somehow she murdered Jason in the end with her ability.

I stopped watching those sequels by the eighth one. I think it was Jason Takes Manhattan. Oh boy. How did Jason get there? I think Crystal Lake might be somewhere in New Jersey if I’m not mistaken. West Virginia would make more sense. Either way, Jason had to have traveled to Manhattan through some form of transportation other than by foot, which would’ve been a long journey. I can’t imagine him standing on the side of the highway, jutting his thumb out for a ride as a hitchhiker. And I certainly wouldn’t imagine a driver picking him up when he sees the hockey mask and the machete. Jason could’ve also taken the bus with many other passengers. It would be the same situation. What bus driver would allow Mr. Vorhees onboard? And where would Jason find the coins to insert into the coin machine at the front of said bus? Who would sit next to him?

The ninth sequel was called Jason Goes to Hell, which sounds even more absurd than him going to Manhattan because now Jason, I assume, faces off with Satan. My money is on Satan. Maybe someday I’ll follow my curiosity if it’s burning enough.

And finally, the tenth film is Jason X, the worst of all. I caught glimpses of that film as I was surfing by. And yes, Jason was on a spaceship. Don’t ask me how. He snuck onboard and cut a guy’s body in half. That was all I saw.

So those are the Friday the 13th movies. I believe I’ve described enough. But as a bonus, I must bring up the movie Freddy Vs. Jason, where Mr. Vorhees challenges the horror movie icon Freddy Krueger. For those readers who are unfamiliar with him, Freddy was burned alive on Elm Street in some unknown town and came back to life in teenagers’ dreams. Don’t ask why teenagers are so targeted for murder. They’re the prey in most horror films. Anyway, Jason and Freddy square off, which means Jason has to go to sleep, right? I don’t know about you, but I can’t picture Jason counting sheep. What does he do? Does he retire for the day after slashing a bunch of horny teenagers and lie back on his cot near the lake with his mask still on? “Yep yep, another long day of decapitations, and I’m bushed. Time to get some shut-eye.” We must all just assume Jason is awake around the clock. I do.

But those are my opinions on this movie franchise. Friday the thirteenth comes around rarely like an eclipse. When it’s here, I gotta mention some of the greatest films of my youth.

Non-fiction

Untied

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I feel better on this Friday morning after surviving another painful week. This felt like a long one, full of stress and anxiety. My medical bill showed up in my inbox last night, and I wasn’t prepared for the cost. For the first time, a hospital had sent it to my email. I opened it to read VIEW MY BILL, and after I clicked on the link, my vision blurred when I saw the total. Over eight hundred dollars for my visit. The actual total was over fourteen hundred dollars, but my pathetic insurance covered only five hundred something after I’d waited to see a doctor for over two hours on a Monday night in a crowded room with a numb left hand. The doctor didn’t even touch me. Shouldn’t she have at least felt my hand for that much money? The nurses didn’t hook me up to anything. They didn’t use any equipment. She just diagnosed me as having ulnar nerve entrapment and referred me to a specialist who never called me back after a month.

The medical world today is broken. Doctors must be greedy. How else can I explain the cost of seeing one? This doesn’t include my trip to urgent care, where the doctor at least held my hand and asked if I felt anything.

I told him, “Yes, a little.”

“This could be a mini stroke,” he said. “I suggest you go to the hospital and get x-rays.”

…Only for the doctor at the hospital to roll her eyes and say he was wrong. Don’t I get a discount of some sort? And what does my insurance think to where they decide to cover only five hundred dollars of the bill?

I don’t have it as bad as my father. He broke his tooth from chewing on peanuts. Now he has been missing one since last November. He went to the dentist the same week, and the dentist told him he would have to wait for a new one. Where’s the tooth coming from? Singapore? Do they have to ship the new tooth by FedEx?

It’s now September of the next year, and the tooth still hasn’t arrived. The dentist will call him when he’s ready to apply it, and my father will have to pay over ten thousand dollars: the price of a used car. To believe he has gone this long without a tooth is nearly impossible. I would think it’s a medical emergency to miss one because people have to chew their food. And I could only imagine the pain my father was suffering after the tooth fell out. But he seems to be doing fine now without it.

Anyway, like I said, we have to value our health first and foremost, which is why it’s the most expensive cost of all. We work just to pay our medical bills, at least for me who doesn’t make enough already. I’ll have to pay for the bill with my credit card and fall deeper into debt after paying a speeding ticket which I’ll take blame for. My credit card was in such good shape a few months ago. Maybe I should’ve never taken myself to urgent care and left my hand alone. Thank God I can feel it again, and maybe it’s a blessing that the hand specialist will never call me.

Non-fiction

A Dream Job

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I went for a walk and kept my head down to stare at my phone like a lot of people do these days. Google likes to follow my habits. It knows which websites I’ve visited. So the app sends me suggestions on what to read. Well, I found an article from a business journal about someone who’d applied for over twenty-two hundred jobs in the United States. He still hadn’t landed one. Wow. In the teaser, you could call it, it said the person was thinking about giving up the search. How depressing. What a hopeless feeling it brings. The teaser went on to describe the man as having served in the Navy with a handful of tech jobs he’d included on his resume. I scrolled down the page with my thumb to read the article, and as soon as I did, a pop-up appeared with subscription options. So if I wanted to read further, I would have to agree to be swamped by emails every day by this journal. No thanks. I get enough junk as it is. So much for reading it.

But what I read had bothered me for the rest of the night. Over twenty-two hundred jobs. Think about that. If he were to apply for one job a day, the search would’ve gone on for over six years. And maybe that was how long it had taken him so far. I might give up too.

So who’s to blame for a person as qualified as him to be unemployed? He could be overqualified for many jobs. After reading briefly about his experience, it was enough to know about him that he was surely competent. What hope does it give those of us who don’t have his qualifications? I’ve been applying here and there once a week for close to five months, and no one has considered me for an interview. It doesn’t help that I don’t know what I want to do for a regular jobby job. You know. Something I don’t want to do but have to do because it’s sustainable, and the company offers benefits as opposed to something I want to do which has no safety net. I’m walking along a razor, fighting against globalization, artificial intelligence, lack of skills, specialized jobs, recession, staff reductions, increased expectations from companies, and geography. All of this leads to burnout, or how I felt after what I saw in that article. I’m better off ignorant.

Non-fiction

Thumbs

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I type on this WordPress page and the letters are like insects. I squint my eyes to see them. It differs from Microsoft Word, where they soar on the page. Where’s the naturalness of writing here? Sometimes I ask the AI assistant what it thinks of my post, and it tells me to write advice on how to cope with a malady such as stress or anxiety or depression, as if I’m a self-help columnist, which I’m not. And I love it when it says the work needs cohesion and focus. Whatever. Who has time? I can bet after I finish this, the same will happen. AI lacks the brains to realize I have ADHD and some things I can’t do, even on Adderall. It also tells me to write a conclusion to these posts, but I suck at that. I never have a conclusion. I just write until the shit ends.

There’s no time. I missed the debate between Trump and Harris, but I thought I heard there wouldn’t be a moderator. I saw a picture of them going to shake hands, which surprised me. I didn’t think they would dare touch each other because of how much hatred there is. Maybe not as much. I also heard they would mute their mics when the other person debated. I can’t believe in a matter of months one of them will become president. And then what? What does either of them stand for? Just as long as they don’t screw this country up, and both of them could do that.

What happened to presidents? They’ve all had their flaws, although I wasn’t living to experience Roosevelt. He was the first president to appear on television at the World’s Fair, but his “Fireside Chats” were on radio. How did the American public perceive him when he was on just that medium? Imagine if these nominees didn’t have a television or social media to communicate through. Would people hate them as much? Or have those mediums made people dislike them even more than if they were just on the radio?

My father told me he used to listen to the Dodgers on the radio when he was a boy in the 1950s, and it was like listening to a bedtime story versus their appearance on television. You may liken it to Roosevelt’s voice as opposed to the sight of him, or it couldn’t have made much of a difference at all. Television does influence people in its own way, and not for the better. Don’t get me started with social media, which should die, period. It looks like it’s here to stay. I can’t think of another medium that’ll take over. Then again, I never foresaw the birth of Twitter or Facebook or Instagram or TikTok. It worries me what will come next

Non-fiction

What the Hell?

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I got up around five in the morning. My alarm went off at 4:30 a.m. It was a spooky jingle, although it wasn’t intended to be. But any jingle at that hour would sound that way. It would’ve been preferable to sleep in, but that isn’t my wiring. I’ve been a light sleeper for as long as I’ve known myself.

I take showers with a candle lit in my bathroom, but my lighter ran out of fluid, so there was no candle this morning before the sun came out. I had to take a shower in almost total darkness.

I sat outside on the curb after my shower. It was still dark. I wore my headphones and listened to my music. I forgot what songs were playing. My music is usually on shuffle, which doesn’t always work. I’ve noticed on any day the app likes to play different songs from the same artist close together. For instance, if a Soundgarden song comes on, another Soundgarden song will come on about three songs later. The same will happen for any other artist. It doesn’t bother me too much. Just makes me wonder why it’s called shuffle if it has a pattern.

Anyway, when I was sitting on the curb, my iPhone rang. It scared me. Who the hell would be calling me at 5:30 in the morning? The call was from Seattle. They’d called twice. The first call had gone straight to my voicemail, but they called again. This time, it rang. I waited for the ringing to end and to hear a voicemail. I was afraid to find out who it was. It was nineteen seconds long. I couldn’t make out where a lady with a thick accent was calling from. Her voice was muffled. Somehow I could hear what she’d said about my email. So whoever it was had sent me an email about my delivery. But what delivery so early in the morning? Who the hell would deliver a package at that time? I checked my email but didn’t find anything. But I checked my other email and saw it was from Amazon. The courier couldn’t get inside my building. The funny thing was I sat in front of my apartment and never noticed one of those large, awkward Amazon vans. I guess you could call them vans. I’m not sure what type of vehicle it is. But that’s not important. What is important is why Amazon would choose to have their couriers deliver any package so early, especially my colon cleansing pills. Don’t get me wrong. I need them, but not that badly. I still have a few pills left to take before the new bottle arrives. I’m not sure what I would do without them to keep things going. The email said, SORRY WE MISSED YOU. WE WILL TRY ANOTHER TIME. Let them try. Like I said, I wasn’t that desperate.

So I walked on to the coffee shop and made it there about ten minutes later. I grabbed my coffee and eggs and wrote longhand for almost a half hour. Now I sit on the patio during sunrise and write this blog thing. My browser said I have six compromised passwords from a data breach from five months ago. Shit. Now I have to change a bunch of passwords. Lucky me. I don’t know how long that message had been there. Those hackers have a full-time job hacking people’s accounts. I can’t keep up with them. There was a data breach last week involving my social, but I learned almost everyone’s social was exposed in the breach. What am I going to do?

Non-fiction

Humdrum

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The sun is at the center of rising in front of the patio. I sit ahead of a man who keeps coughing. It’s yet another Monday with four more days to go. I haven’t eaten so much as yesterday. It was a lazy weekend full of TV and junk food, which is how weekends will be throughout the next season and the season after. I’ll have to adjust.

I paid my speeding ticket and have to take traffic school to avoid points on my record, so my insurance won’t blast me. It’s eighty-five degrees already, and it’s still dark. The heat will only get worse. When will it start getting cool? There was an excessive heat warning yesterday when I was watching football, with a warning of a thunderstorm and flash flood. So I wonder which one it is. It can’t be both. It wouldn’t have made sense.

Anyway, I miss the days of yore, when this coffee shop didn’t have strict rules, when there was plenty of seating. Times have changed for the worse.

The shithead manager works this morning. He served me eggs without sriracha.

So I asked him, “Excuse me. Can I get some sriracha?”

“You know you can order it through the mobile app.”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Oh, I must not have seen it.”

Yeah. Suck it, douche bag.

Not only have they taken away the tables, but they’ve also taken away the black forks and replaced them with cheaper white forks. The one I was using cracked in half when I cut my eggs. This company is sliding downhill. Whoever the CEO is is fucking things up and making it another fast food enterprise instead of something greater. More sooner than later, they won’t allow me to hang out and use WiFI. It’ll just be another service industry business working through mobile ordering like a pizza delivery company, where I order something, pick it up, and take the food with me out of there. I used to be able to do anything within the walls of the law, but those days have been long gone for well over a decade.

It makes me frustrated enough to chew on a canker sore in my mouth. It happened last week when I bit down on my lip when I was chewing on a taco. Now it won’t heal and go away. It’s something of a problem. Otherwise, what can I say?

A blind man tries to cross the street with his cane at the intersection. He searches for something, perhaps the button for the crosswalk. He has found it, and now he crosses the street. I’ve wondered about crosswalk buttons and why they exist. Why must a pedestrian have to press one of those things when the crosswalk light should turn on automatically? Does the stoplight have to recognize someone crossing the street? That isn’t the way it should be. The blind man has found a bench to sit on, but he must’ve changed his mind because, again, he’s crossing the street.

I watched football and tennis for most of yesterday. There were surprising upsets and not-so-surprising victories. My parents nodded off in their chairs or on the couch while I watched TV from nine in the morning to nine at night. In the afternoon, I watched Yannik Sinner beat Taylor Fritz in three sets to win the US Open title. It wasn’t much of a match. Sinner showed exactly why he was the number-one ranked player in the world. And then I watched more football while I listened to the Steelers post-game show with my headphones. We ate pizza for lunch, and I ordered tacos and a burrito for dinner at around half past six.

Now today I must work. Bummer. I’m taking a week off at the end of September and can’t wait. One employee on my team has quit his job. He must’ve found another one at another company. Good for him. He got away clean. Or maybe he quit and doesn’t have a job. Either way I envy him. He announced his departure at the last team meeting:

“Friday is my last day, haha.”

And no one acknowledged him and said goodbye. I figure it would’ve been the same reaction to anyone else who announced their resignation from the company, which is how it goes these days. How many others will burn out and quit by October or November? September will run by quickly before I know it. The training wheels are off. And next month will come when I’ll hve to meet quota expectations and turnaround times and all the fun stuff of this job. How will I succeed?

It’s getting hotter out here, and I think I’ll go back inside before I start roasting like a rotisserie chicken rotating under a heat lamp.

A bee keeps harassing me out here. Why do they do that? Am I some sort of bee magnet? Is it the way I smell? The way I dress? Why do I attract bees? I look like a weirdo running around the patio, swatting at this bee chasing me because I don’t want to get stung of course. I’ve never been stung by a bee, lucky for me, but my father has. He went jogging one morning and almost swallowed one. It stung him on the tongue. I’ve been afraid of bees ever since that happened. They’re one of many things I fear.

Non-fiction

A Bear Playing a Keytar

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I’ve waited several months for this day, and I can’t believe it’s finally here. Football season has begun. Goodbye to the summer. I wish it well, and may it never come back again. I hate it. There’s nothing to look forward to anymore. I feel that way, and I’ll keep feeling that way from here on out. Let the fall take over and winter to follow. I can’t wait for the cold to arrive.

I’m sitting in a coffee shop, softly gazing out a window at parked cars and other cars drifting down Adams Street in La Quinta. I want to sit here for days, even when the table is wobbly. I hate wobbly tables and chairs. They drive me nuts. It’s like a squeaky wheel on a shopping cart. It won’t stop, and it’s broken. Minor disturbances in my life, like ringing in my ears.

I’m going to sit all day and watch football with my parents before I drive back home and prepare for work tomorrow. I wish I didn’t have to work, but I’m taking a week off at the end of September, which I look forward to at least. Whatever I do doesn’t matter as long as I’m away from work and the nightmares that come with it since it has taken over my life.

I went shopping yesterday at Nordstrom Rack and bought two T-shirts and two pairs of shorts. The shorts were two colors: blue and gray, while the shirts were blue and yellow. The yellow one has a drawing of a bear with sunglasses on as he plays a keytar. The keytar was popular in the eighties when rock band players used them. I believe bands like Cheap Trick. I’m not positive, but they’re the first band that comes to mind. Either way, the shirt made me smile, which was the reason I chose it. I’m wearing it right now. I was anxious to wear it today as soon as I woke up.

After shopping, I went with my parents to a restaurant named Pacifica, where I ate a cheeseburger. The place is known for its seafood, but I don’t like it very much. It doesn’t get me excited. Don’t get me wrong. I like lobster and some crab when it’s cooked right, along with shrimp and maybe scallops if I’m in the right mood, but I’ve never been hankering for a plate of fish. It just doesn’t excite me too much. But my parents chose it after we couldn’t get a table at Tommy Bahama’s for another half hour. I knew it would happen because at that restaurant it’s always the case. We didn’t want to wait that long.

Pacifica was booked, too, so they made us sit in the bar, where the tables were slim. We could barely fit our napkins and utensils. We also sat next to a couple of old drunk ladies cackling between dialogues. One of them ate the biggest plate of steak and mashed potatoes I’d seen in a while. They shared the hugest strawberry shortcake while we waited for our orders.

Our waitress had nothing of a personality. I had a hard time choosing something to eat, not because the menu was crappy but because I was torn between the Wagyu burger and the fish and chips. I’m a burger connoisseur, so my policy is to go with the burger if I have to decide. The soda was flat while I waited. They’re always that way at a restaurant with a bar. For some reason, the sodas are always flat from the nozzle as opposed to fast food joints, where the sodas always fizz, and I never complain. The Wagyu burger made it to my top ten list of burgers of all time. The Wagyu was cooked just perfectly with gruyere cheese on top. Chefs across the world should include gruyere on burgers more often. I never thought it would be such a delectable combination.

“This place gets an A,” I told my parents. My only beef (pardon the pun) with the burger was there was too much lettuce, which was no big deal because all I had to do was pull some of it out. And the tomato was mushy. I like my tomatoes tender but just hard enough to eliminate the mushiness.

After dinner, we capped the night off with ice cream at Handel’s in Indio. My parents ordered a pint of ice cream each. Mom chose mint chip, while Dad, along with me, chose the peanut butter chocolate brownie. Except I drank a milkshake. It was going to be peanut butter ice cream alone for me, but Handel’s had decided to discontinue it, maybe because it wasn’t ordered enough.

“Most people order the basic chocolate, strawberry, or vanilla,” my father said.

And maybe he was right. People are bland and don’t take enough chances. Ice cream could be a perfect example. Kids love ice cream, but they’re never daring enough to eat a flavor like peanut butter, and I love peanut butter anything. If peanut butter were a soda flavor, I would go with that over Coca-Cola. I’m sure it would be nice.

Non-fiction

A Flat Earth?

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Disclaimer: These ideas are purely fictional and are not based on scientific evidence, nor are they meant to spread misinformation. They’re hypotheticals from the writer’s imagination. It’s important for the reader to research actual scientific evidence about the subject matter and form his/her/their own conclusions.

I question the argument as to where the earth is flat. Flat earth theorists believe government agencies have fooled the public into believing the earth is a sphere. Suppose it is a spherical shape. Wouldn’t I constantly lose my balance when I walk as opposed to if the earth was flat? When explorers navigate–or in conventional scientific terms–circumnavigate the earth, what if instead of circling it, they’re actually coasting along because the earth is a massive conveyor belt or a film strip constantly rolling? So when an airplane or any aircraft travels across the earth, what if it reaches its starting point eventually as the massive conveyor belt rolls?

What if none of us are actually moving but stepping on the perpetually rolling flat earth? Think about it the next time you pedal your feet along a treadmill at the gym and how it rotates. What if that’s what happens when you run or walk? What if the earth is moving but you’re not?

And take a look at the flatness of the horizon. Do you see a curve? People can see it from the sky when they gaze out the window of a commercial airplane. Photographs from space clearly show the earth is round. But how does water remain without dripping off like it would on a peach? Gravity? What if the earth isn’t a magnet, as we’ve been taught since grade school? Water stays on flat surfaces, not round surfaces. Wouldn’t the water fall right off and drop into space above us and beneath us? Can you balance yourself on a yoga ball?

Time zones have been created because the earth is round. But what if we all shared the same time, except easterners wanted to stay ahead of the westerners when it comes to information?

What if the sun and moon roll with the conveyor belt because they’re connected? What if we experience night and day as the earth, sun, and moon loop beneath and above us all?

This is speculation of course as I eat a breakfast sandwich with not enough bacon.

Non-fiction

Sober Life

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I watched the football game last night, the first one of the season between the Chiefs and the Ravens. In between plays, I was reading comments on social media. Some of them were disturbingly humorous. Others were downright shocking. Some of the posts were actual stories–objective news if one can believe.

One of them was about a Ugandan woman who ran in the Olympics whose boyfriend set her on fire. She eventually died. I don’t know how soon but what an awful way to die. Not that I wonder as much as what kind of sick individual would murder another human being in the manner he did? It makes me want to crawl into bed and not go outside. And some of the comments were about as disgusting as the act itself.

I read other threads, mostly about the game when it was on. I switched between the football game and the women’s semifinal of the US Open, where sixth seed Jessica Pegula played the unseeded Karolina Muchova. It enthralled me more than the football game. I’ve heard other people say football players are the most athletic people in professional sports, but I don’t know. I’ve watched enough tennis for the past two weeks to convince myself these players might be better conditioned. Maybe it’s my eyes. Anyway, Jessica Pegula won the match in three sets to advance to the finals after being down 6-1 in the first set. Quite a comeback!

Then I switched to the football game. The Chiefs were leading 27-17 at one point, and the Ravens closed the gap to 27-20 with under two minutes left. Lamar Jackson is nimble on his feet but still can’t chuck the ball accurately. I won’t rank him as one of the elite quarterbacks. He ended up losing the game for the Ravens after overthrowing his tight end in the back of the endzone. The tight end couldn’t keep his feet in bounds.

I read a post about sobriety. The person who wrote it said he’d been sober for a year, and in that time, no changes in health, no lost weight, and less joy in life. As discouraging as it sounded, he was honest. I’ve been sober for six years, and I can’t say my health has dramatically improved, nor have I lost much weight if any weight at all. As for joy, yes, drinking once brought me the luxury of meeting people and having fun with them at bars or at parties. But now those times have left, and they’re missed. Nothing has really changed for the better except the absence of hangovers. Of course those I don’t miss. But that’s the one benefit. It’s depressing to admit.

Oh, and I’ve saved money, a lot. I used to live paycheck to paycheck, but I still would live paycheck to paycheck if not for my benefactor. My job pays me below the level of poverty. It’s criminal given the inundation of work they’ve dumped onto me. Besides the point, I can’t say my life has improved at all. The only difference is I’ve lost one of my joys and a life of being somewhat social. Other people in the thread agreed: life is boring without alcohol. Others counterpointed with the subject of spirituality. I’ve felt nothing spiritual during my departure. Everyone is different. No one can force their higher power onto me. It begins inside.

So what shall I do? Go back to drinking? Maybe in moderation if I can control myself–the kicker. My doctor would get upset, so would my family. They’re the police. I have to take a mountain of medication each day, and alcohol doesn’t mix with the pills. I’m stuck with useless prescriptions. Who the hell said Adderall even works? I still can’t focus on even the lightest task. Maybe someday my brain will finally heal, maybe in four years when a decade has passed.

I do applaud the ones who’ve found a more joyful life in sobriety. They know the secret, the rest of us don’t. I do also encourage alcoholics and addicts to attend AA meetings. Even if twelve-step doesn’t work for them, at least they’re going out and meeting people.