Tag: needs-a-disclaimer

  • Gag Reflex

    Regarding the “injustice inherent in the system”, there is much hyperbole from students who ache to be involved in something more than the contrived lives of reality television.  Few of them have experienced any real injustice that has not been instigated by themselves, e.g. by spitting in the face of a 9-5 cop with no more culpability in the state of the state than a 9-5 cashier.  Not that such an act is “wrong” per se.  It’s a … naturalemotional … response.  Rather, it’s playing a role in this damned stage-play we call life.

    Unkempt but attractive youth holding a sign painted with an Intarwebs slogan are “good”.

    Oldish father-figure scowling mustachioed men in a uniform are “evil”.

    So, you’re playing your parts.  Anonymous is playing its part, but they’re still just kids.  Angry kids.  Well-intentioned kids.  But … kids.

    We’re all kids.  We’ve not felt the pleasure and pain of adulthood.  We’re denied that today.  We don’t work until we marry then work until we die.  We no longer follow the simple cycle of a century ago.  We’re a society of leisure– even those of us whose muscles or minds are tired to exhaustion when the school– when the work day ends.

    I’m not a black man beaten over the head for drinking water two meters south of where I was designated to do so.

    I’m not a slave who fought from the arena to the gates of Rome– to days of death hanging on the Appian Way.

    … and I’m sure as fuck no Guy Fawkes.

    But, really, what did any of them accomplish?

    Was anything learned from the lessons they taught?  V For Vendetta is a rousing good film– inspiring while one suspends their disbelief in the redemption of mankind.  But how does it end?  A crowd removing their masks under fireworks over Tchaikovsky.  What is the next scene, the one that plays out under the upbeat roar of The Rolling Stones during the end credits?

    1. They are, all of them, gunned down.  The media covers it up.
    2. They back down, and go home, and replace Fawkes with their usual masks.

    Nobody wins.

    No more than when Fawkes was hanged and posthumously drawn-and-quartered.  Indeed– the only lesson learned was that we are to OBEY.

    I’m not a hero.

    I’m not a martyr.

    I’m a father.

    The state took my daughters from me, at the ridiculously flimsy request of their mother.

    There was no violence.

    Anyone with an order of “protection” against him is assumed to be a wife-beater or child-molester by all but those who’ve had an order of “protection” against them.

    I don’t have the will to write much more.  Suffice it to say that the state is corrupt.  The “state” as in the government, and the “state” as in the current condition we, humanity, find ourselves inhabiting.

    I am not a hero.

    I am not a martyr.

    I am a father.

    I have felt the sting of the whip of the state.

    If you ever feel that same blunt, draining “sting”, then, perhaps, you will understand why “terrorists” do what they do.

    Where there is no law, or when the law is unjust, one has no recourse to the law, and ones only recourse is, by definition– lawless.

    I am advocating no such thing, because, as I have said…

    It would make no difference.

    The true criminals, the truly evil, are those who bring more lives into this world.

    Man cannot be “good” on a global scale, and men cannot survive on a local scale.

    We are doomed as a species.

    Not to die, but to act our parts in a play as poorly executed as the dream of a drunkard.

    Ah, I’d forgotten the title.  If I were to be any more explicit in this post, I would be arrested.

    That is not an exaggeration.

    I’ve spoke “wrong”  before (in a drunken post to Facebook) and my “wife”, the “mother” of my children, initiated an unfortunate series of events that had me committed to the local snake pit– emerging just late enough to miss the trial at the end of the initial seven-day order of “protection” against me, causing me to miss my chance to contest it, causing (by my wife stating that I “blew off” the appearance) the 9-to-5 judge to consider me as not caring whether or not I see my daughters again, and causing me to be kept from my daughters (save for two hours a week at $50) for over a year now.

    I was put in jail for leaving flowers at her door– an incredibly stupid gesture of appreciation for her allowing the privilege of my paying to see my daughters.

    Daughters who need their father.

    She’s hurting them more than she is me.  And, even by my barely-emotional standards, she’s hurting me a goddamned lot.  So, she must be downright torturing our beautiful girls by keeping them from their father.  Yet, she is, titularly, legally, the “mother”, and, to the state, it is the mother that decides the fate of “her” children.

    That’s enough.

    Whenever any of us loses against the justice that isn’t, we all lose.

    My daughters have lost.

    I’ve lost.

    We’ve all lost.

    Game over.

    You see, “justice” is a fairy tale, a fiction– the mirror of the monster tales told to control children.

    Justice, it is a fable.

    A fiction, as purposefully unreal as the loving protector “God”.

    It does not exist.

    If you are to have any justice,

    you must make it yourself,

    and necessarily die.

     

  • Bullets For the Curious

    No time right now for a detailed update, so here’s a few of the highlights since my last major life update back near November of 2012.

    0x01: Met a wonderful woman at work.  She wore a poncho one day.  I said, “It’s impossible to be unhappy wearing a poncho.”  It’s a Mighty Boosh reference.   Next day she left an orange juice bottle on my desk wearing a little poncho.  We are still together, despite my sometimes difficult personality.  She’s the best female I’ve ever had in my life, with the exception of the one who brought me into the world and the ones I brought here.

    0x02: Started “vaping”, as per the penultimate (as of this writing) “Digital/Analog Freaky Smoke” entry.  I’ve got 90% lung capacity now. Pretty good for smoking raw zware tobacco for two decades.  No more wheezing at the end of a long exhalation, and no more of that stench you only notice when you stop smoking.

    0x03: Shaved my head.  Kept the goatee and mustache.  Without facial hair, a man ain’t a man.  A bald man without facial hair is demoted all the way to a baby.  Grew the hair back.  Shaved it again, and the current HEAD is bald with beard.

    0x04: Contact with the girls has continued at $50 a week for a two-hour supervised visit.  I contend that the $200 would be better spent directly on the children who want free access to their father.  My opinions do not matter to anyone who makes decisions about my participation in my family.  Namely: lawyers, this police state of ours, and a woman apparently scorned.

    0x05: Continue to see Dr Gandalf.  In March we were both surprised to realize it had been a year since my involuntary hospitalization at the Erie County Medical Centre.  We’ve made a lot of progress.  I’ve made a lot of progress, mostly credited to my new special lady friend.  Needless to say, grieving the loss of ones family is “difficult” — even if that loss is (mostly) figurative.  Maybe worse in this case, since my daughters aren’t “gone” from the world, but simply being kept from me.  They’re not silent in their graves– they live and cry and need their father, yet are restricted to a few hours a month of closely supervised visits that preclude so much as a whisper between us.

    0x06: My oldest daughter turns ten soon.  I’ve missed over a year of the last years of her childhood.  Girl?  She’ll be a woman soon.

    Orders of protection are generally classified as either “stay-away” or “refrain-from”.  The former specifies that a party (the “respondent”) avoid all contact with another party (the “petitioner”) and perhaps other associated parties, such as children under the petitioner’s care.   The latter simply requires the respondent to refrain from some specific behavior.

    If the petitioner is in a state of desperation or urgency (e.g. being contacted by an exish-spouse with undue frequency and in states of inebriation and/or otherwise being a nuisance),  s/he may not know or (understandably) care to learn the difference between these two types of orders.  S/he may ask that the respondent be denied any communication with or access to his or herself and their children.  S/he may have felt this was his or her only recourse, and, if s/he is a “she”, the petition will likely be stamped by a “family” court judge without consideration and “he” will be denied his right to be an active and available father.

    The more you know...
    The more you know…

    If such a bureaucratic miscalculation is made, the petitioner may request that the order be vacated by the  issuing judge of the original or a subsequently amended version of the order.

    If the petitioner still fears some manner of harassment from the respondent, s/he may request the aforementioned “refrain-from” order which, if granted, would result in the arrest of the respondent for contempt of court should s/he “misbehave”.  In cases that do not involve violence, a “refrain-from” order is logically the best and fairest choice.   And, from the perspective of the petitioner, it puts even greater pressure on the respondent to modify his or her behavior, as s/he is still allowed to communicate with the petitioner, but if the petitioner construes any such communication as harassing or otherwise in violation of the order, s/he may call the authorities and have the respondent immediately arrested.

    In the author’s opinion, such risk is worth being allowed access to his or her children.

    Furthermore, assuming those children are in no danger from the respondent and were not exposed to the alleged harassment, a single-party refrain-from order is a more fair and just recourse for a petitioner who may have a legitimate reason to limit their communication and feels compelled to seek legal intervention in the matter.

    0x07: I’m on Wellbutrin ER 300mg/day, Adderall ER 60mg/day, Klonopin 0.5mg/6h as needed, and some residual Provigil.  The Provigil (presumably in conjunction w/the Adderall) gives me the anxiety somethin’ fierce, so it’s rarely used.

    0x08: The divorce continues to crawl along.  An agreement was made that if a professional evaluated me as suitable for unsupervised visitation, it would be done.  The evaluation was made.  It hasn’t been done.  The next court date is in a week.  It will probably be postponed.  Again.

    0x09: Complicating the divorce issues, my place of work shut down last month.  I immediately notified my lawyer of this.  I promptly applied for state assistance, and for a modification of the support order.  Because speaking with the mother of my children would mean my going to jail, I was unable to freely communicate regarding any issues of financial needs.  My modification petition was a blunt request for a “suspension”, since NYS unemployment insurance (“UI”) would barely cover my rent and bare essentials– not counting food as an essential.

    0x0A: Got a job about two weeks later, mostly thanks to a good friend from the old place.  Received a total of one UI check for about $300.  Attended the scheduled support modification hearing after filling out another dozen pages of financial details.  Opposing counsel requested it be rolled into the matrimonial proceedings.  I don’t know what my obligations are now.  My communications with anyone in this debacle has been unreliable, sporadic, downright refused, punished with jail time, costly, necessarily vague, rarely understood or fully addressed– it’s been shite, o my brothers.

    That just about brings y’all up to date.  I suppose I didn’t have to put it in bullet-list form, but I didn’t want to change the title.

    The past year and a half has been, mostly, some kind of a special Hell.   A relationship with a woman triggered it, and a relationship with a better woman has helped turn things around.   In any case, I’m a better man than I was last year.

    If we can’t say, every day, that we’re better than the other-self behind us in the clone-queue of our life, then we might as well be dead.

     

     

  • The Final Cut

    Through the fish-eyed lens of tear-stained eyes, I can barely define the shape of this moment in time.

    And far from flying high in clear blue skies, I’m spiraling down to the hole in the ground where I hide.

    If you negotiate the mine-fields of my mind …

    … and if you beat the dogs and cheat the cold electronic eye …

    … and if you make it past the shotguns in the hall?

    Dial the combination.

    Open the priest-hole.

    And, if I’m in, I’ll tell ya.

    There’s a kid who had a big hallucination — making love to girls in magazines.

    He wonders if you’re sleeping with your new-found faith.  Could anybody love him … or is it just a crazy dream?

    And … if I showed you my dark side, would you still hold me tonight?

    And … if I opened my heart to you — and showed you my weak side — what would you do?

    […]

    Would you take the children away, and leave me alone?

    Would you smile in re-assurance as you whispered down the phone?

    Would you send me packing …

    … or would you take me home?

    I thought I oughta bare my naked feelings.

    I thought I oughta tear the curtain down.

    I held the blade in trembling hands, prepared to make it, but —

    Just then the phone rang.

    I never had the nerve to make the final cut.

    I’m going to bed now, calm and cool.  This is not a cry for help.  It’s just the only song to which I know all the lyrics by heart, and which I sing pitch-perfectly every seventh-or-so time I go out to smoke, and which probably annoys the hell out of my neighbors and the happy couples engaging in clandestine nocturnal carnal rendezvouz in the park.

    Do not call the cops.  Do not have their standard issues kicking in my door.  Let me relax, where maniacs don’t blow holes in sad men by remote control.

    Where everyone has recourse to the law.

    And no-one takes the children anymore.

    No-one takes the children anymore.