My blood pressure, which was out of control at 180/60 last week, causing me to experience extreme dizziness, was 153/87, after a short bike ride from work to the pharmacy, where the blood pressure machine sits. My head has quit spinning. I dropped 2 1/2 pounds, this week, to 263. I think that somebody needs to put me on the cover of some magazine as the poster boy for something. There was actually someone sitting at the blood pressure machine, tonight, when I got to the pharmacy, and for him, one reading was not enough; he kept pushing the start button, and sat there waiting, with a dumb look on his face for his next result. I think that he finally got wind of the fact that the free service had another customer waiting, and he quickly removed himself, and disappeared into the night. Why do pharmacies provide these free blood testing devices? There must be big money in blood pressure lowering medication. Thank you, Lord, so very much for letting me see The New Day, breath the air of a new day. Please guide me, Lord, in thought word, and action. Thy will be done, not mine. Thy will be done, not mine. Please keep me off off drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, Lord. Amen. Amen. Amen. When I woke, this morning, these lyrics by Jackson Browne from his song, “The Pretender,” were on my mind: I’m going to be a happy idiot And struggle for the legal tender Where the ads take aim and lay their claim To the heart and the soul of the spender And believe in whatever may lie In those things that money can buy Thought true love could have been a contender Are you there? Say a prayer for the pretender Who started out so young and strong Only to surrender I guess this is because I am working now, and I am always torn, between working, and being an artist: a poet, a memoirist, a writer. It is nice to have money, but it is also nice to have the free time to pursue my art. K Secret: In order to not eat mayonnaise, I have to not buy it, not bring it into the house, not put it in the refrigerator. I once bled from my penis for three weeks as the result of falling through a ceiling, and I was so out of it with the booze, and all that I didn’t go to the hospital as soon as I should have. I lived with all that red blood spilling into my blue jeans when I didn’t have to. My urethra was torn. They put a tube inside my penis, attached to a bag, into which I pissed for weeks, so that the tear inside me could heal. I had climbed into the attice of an apartment that I was living in to see if I could turn the gas on, because it was cold out, and I was freezing, and had no money to pay the gas man, because I was drinking all my money. I stepped onto the ceiling tiles thinking that they were solid floor, and landed full on onto my private parts. I lived alone. I wonder, now, how, and how long it took me to unattach my penis, and balls, from that bloody 2 x 4? In the drunken, drugged, broke fog that I was living in, I didn’t seek help for weeks. Finally, scared that my cock was still bleeding, I called a cab, and went to Grady. You can say shit things about Grady, if you like,but I have always had great experiences there. I’m not sure what triggered my remembrance of this ordeal, but I hope that you don’t mind that I shared it with you. Life is not all happy cats, dogs, and turtles, my friends. Riding my bike back from Yoga class, tonight, I felt ecstatic. I had almost blown the class off in favor of more sleep, but decided, instead, to drink the large cup of coffee that I am nos supposed to drink so close to class, and head on in to the studio. The ecstasy that I felt was not the rush that a bi-polar person gets during their upswing manic phases; it was a happy ecstatic; an I am at peace with the world ecstatic. For an hour, and a half, I had not worried about whether I was a Democrat, a Republican, or a Liberal. I had not worried about any of the world’s problems, nor had I tried to solve them. I had not worried about my problems, and the funny thing is that the more I take Yoga, the more my personal problems go away. A young lady who I work with said, “Who’s brush is this?” and I said, “If it is purple it is mine.” (It fell out of my bag).The young lady then began to brush my pony tail right there in the office with my brush. When she was done, she said, “Nice brush. Nice pony tail,” and went back to her desk. I just read an article about how folks in Tennessee are scared that they are not going to get their social security checks next month. It is not just Tennessee that will be affected, it is all the states in The United States of America. I talk to people on the phone, every night, who are SCARED about losing their Social Security checks. Wealthy Republican “Tea Party” Congressmen, and women, do not live with this fear: they have millions in the bank, and seem to not care about those living on a fixed Social Security income. Are there NO Republicans on Social Security? I just went for a very pleasant hour long walk with the dogs. It felt real good to be walking in seventy something, and not ninety something degree weather. I saw some folk playing Frisbee Football. It looks like an interesting game. Mo, Dylan, and I walked on the path that is next to the pond. We saw some ducks. Quack. Quack.
