Don’t you wanna go for a ride, Just keep your hands inside And make the most out of life

This is all I can take, this is how a heart breaks.

It’s strong and passionate and I don’t connect with it in anyway. It’s not that I don’t know about heartbreak. I’ve made plenty of mistakes and errors along the way and seen my share. I just don’t relate to this song, but I love it.

Paranoid people could read something into it, as they tend to do. Must be tough to live life looking for the negatives in everything that’s going on. Worse is that I don’t think it’s an intentional seeking of negatives. It’s simple a default position to gravitate in a specific direction. I work with a collection of these people. I don’t begin to understand how they get there, but it’s always difficult to see someone else’s perspective.
Not from their perspective as we do. But to see their perspective.

So we arrived here with this song and this post for two reasons. Firstly I started organising my music collection again today. I do a little at a time, so I won’t ever look back and realise I spent 3 days doing it.  And secondly because someone I know separated from his partner.
I have no idea how he feels about it, we barely speak anymore, and certainly not from a personal perspective. So I can only assume there’s a measured pain. It reminded me of those gone and lost.
Of the changed perspectives, most of them my own.

I’ve always had the idea that you shouldn’t be friends with someone just because you’ve known them for a long time. Adding old high school friends to facebook makes little sense for the most part. If we haven’t held a conversation for the last 10 years, why would we now?

The opposing point being, why shouldn’t we have one just because we haven’t for the last 10 years.

Do we evaluate all interactions and friendships independently or as a measure against one another. Or an arbitrary standard decided long in advance without rhyme or reason to it. As many things in life are done, simply because that’s the way they are done.

Who else is missing and gone, and is everyone I am no longer spending time with or on really gone? Or do we not measure it.

There are a lot of people who I’ve spoken to and spent time with who I don’t see as much anymore.

Family and friends, old colleagues, friends met on the internet, friends from here who moved overseas before I met them and their blog, friends who I met on the internet and moved overseas after I found them.

I do miss them. There are many people I think of and speak to. I occasionally write notes. As some people say to write angry letters to vent things and to destroy them. I occasionally write letters. Type some words up in my head, drop a few keypresses into notepad and then delete it.
If the sentiment weighs in for those moments of anger and excitement, then surely solitude and remembering someone is just as valid.

I am thinking of you, I hope you are well.
Maybe we’ll catch up soon.
And to one of you, everything hurts a little less over time. Think of the positives.

T

Through the looking glass..

Fear is a strange creature. As a child we fear the things we do not understand. What is in the dark, how will this taste.
As we get older some of us deal with a phobia type fear, like a fear of 8 legged monsters. It’s not a fear of anything they will do, a fear response simply generated from their existence.

And then we have fear of the known. Fear of consequences, of reprisal, of rejection, of death.

I woke on a Monday morning with pain in my leg, this was nothing amazing, I’d had a sore leg for weeks. But after forcing my way upright through gritted teeth, this wasn’t the right leg. This was the other leg, and it hurt to touch, not just to walk on.
I took this new development and saw the doctor. His prognosis was a bemused look and asking me to stand. Then he looked closer, he pushed, prodded, twisted. But none of it generated pain, lateral pressure, and physical touch caused an immeasurable pain.
I’ve gritted my teeth with a collapsed eye (and later stitches pulled from the same eye), I’ve held my chin high and dragged my bike home with a wrist broken in 4 places, but this was unbearable, a most excruciating pain I have never felt before.

I was rushed off for scans and tests, some digital machine and a high intensity ultrasound. If there is ever anything I don’t need it’s a physical contact based scan when the weight of a sheet hurts. Tears rolled from my eyes as a seemingly uncaring professional pressed harder and harder into my leg. And as I approached the point of breaking, he stopped. Results were conclusive, there was a substantial blood clot in my leg, more than one.

There was little course of action from where it was positioned but to wait for my body to fix it. I was advised more than once, that I still needed to be very realistic about this, the risk if this clot became loose and entered a deep vein would be enormous. Pulmonary embelism was the least of the consequences. I was on a strict watch for over a week to ensure my lungs remained functional and my heart beating.

A week of stress, fear, pain and anguish. The realisation of mortality is heavy handed. It’s something we ignore, or in my case accept.
I’ve always been accepting of an eventual demise, I am a logical creature of science and understand the sequence of events. But I never expected to deal with the possibility early. It was terrifying and worrying, I was awake when I should be asleep and unfocused when I should be awake.

Due to rest, deliberate stretching and medication to keep my blood moving loosely I have shown a remarkable recovery. Contact pain is all but gone, liquid retention in tissue has reduced, I can bend, move and apply pressure on my leg.
All evidence supports a successful correctionn of this unfortunate event. But I am tired, and need rest. More rest.

So presumably the pressure is gone and I can focus on other things. Liv, getting a new fish. Turning 30 years old.

I obviously haven’t done that one before.
Let’s see if I can pull it off.

At least I know this ring of immortality works.

The loss of a friend.

Tonight I lost my fish. About 5 minutes ago. He began to float upside down and not breathe so well.
This has happened before, about 6 weeks ago, but he recovered, or so I thought.
Today was too much for Galileo.

I gave him some shelled peas to help his stomach and changed a small portion of his water for fresh water (with Stability in it) and cleaned his filter.
I can only assume he was sick, I am going to blame the food he switched to recently, he hasn’t been the same since. And apparently was not ok with it.

I will miss you my friend.
not just a fish, a friend. We moved, we saw things, we decided things and we made changes. People came and went (including your sister Juliet).
I wish you at peace wherever you are.

Good night Galileo.

Tim