I feel the weight of it all

Is being a child chaos for everyone?  It was for me.  I attribute that to my parents lack of interest in child rearing by the time I came around .
It tried hard not to replicate that in my parenting.  To have some sense of order, routine, consistency, food always available, and a requisite bowl of cereal before bed.  We made sure that the boys were always warm, comfortable, and of course stylish.  I bought more socks then they would ever need, just to guarantee there would always s be a pair.
And, for all of that, it was still crazy, because we are products of our childhood.  No way around some of the hardship of neurosis, anxiety and ocd.  You can only quash some of the things some of the time.   I’ll hopefully have grandchildren so I can work on the rest of it.

I knew I'd find you

I’m reading Jack London’s John Barleycorn, and it has transported me.  Not away, not to a different location, but to the sub level of thinking that only a few contemporary authors have enabled me, with their fiction, to find commonality and mutual understanding.
They are;
Jack London
Charles Bukowski
Sherwood Anderson
Jack Kerouac
Virginia Woolf and
Henry Roth
I don’t seem to have the patience for much storytelling with all that is real.  But, if I am going to read it, these are the ones that cause me to  pause,  look off into the middle-distance, and  bring me to wonder. 
Now, that all could be because of my A.D.D. and not some notion that my time is so very valuable, and that’s why I don’t read much fiction.  But, I have found that from a very young age, the writers that could give me a glimpse of the internal dynamic,  that aren’t pedantic, but are reaching for a simple truth , provide me with a feeling that is both rare and dear.

Beauty queen style

The place that I get my hair cut is a school.  I had passed it dozens of times, never realizing that the public could utilize the services.  A colleague shared with me her and her daughters’ experiences there a few years ago, and the rest is history, free facials and hand massages, $15.00 haircuts, sign me up.
The one issue is that after a year you lose your  most favorite stylist because they graduate, so it’s important not to get too attached.
The other difficult part, is that If you are me, you watch the dynamic and drama that unfolds between the students, educators, and the various interactions that easily remind one of a soap opera set in a beauty school, ripe with shunning, intrigue and various goings on that I can watch but can’t hear because there are so many hair dryers drying.

My mountain top

I’m not going to write about Lou Reed.
I went to California on a very short visit to see my parents, and my sister and her family.
Here is what I learned.  That I am too old to make quick trips that cross time zones.
I came back feeling like I had mono, which I did about 26 years ago, right around this time. Something I don’t like to dwell on because It was an awful time, both in illness and general life experiences.
Jacob, and Eve and I went, this was her first time on an airplane, and to the west coast.  That was lovely, to be able to see  the world of Los Angeles and all of it’s light and dark, with new eyes.  It was actually helpful, in that I’ve had a hard time there in the past.  Not so this trip. 
There is so much there.  It’s endless, and that I think is the kernel that I’ve not been able to easily define before. 
That, because of the enormity and availability of everything, I feel lost in the numbers, invisible, though in some strange way, more of myself then most places.  It’s a complicated endeavor, visiting the folks and their territory.  But each time, I feel a little more at ease, and a little more of me.