Happy Thanksgiving

It's been a tough year for me, personally, and for the world, in general.  I've lost two of the women who had been among the most important relationships of my life, to their own hand, in 2019.  But, I still have a lot that I'm thankful for.

I'm most thankful for Octavia, my girlfriend.  She's everything to me.  To paraphrase Cormac McCarthy, "She's my warrant."

I'm thankful to live in a universe where I was able to start to build a new life after losing everything.  I'm thankful for my apartment, my car, my job, for the food on my table.  I'm thankful for the many breaks the universe has tossed my way.

I'm thankful for my family, even though so many of them hate my guts.  I'm thankful for the few friendships I've been able to maintain for decades.

I'm thankful for music, especially 70s progressive rock music, it has been there for me since 1980 (when I discovered the genre).

I'm thankful for having had the opportunity to travel the world, including Canada, Mexico, the Bahamas, Jamaica, England, France, Italy, Greece, Spain, and most of the states east of the Mississippi.

I'm thankful that I'm in a place in my life where I can write again.  I'm thankful to you for reading.  Thank you.

Today

Today, I'm off (as I had to work open to close to cover for a coworker) and I'm playing the second-guessing game.  I've always thought I was so fucking smart, that I knew what people thought, what they would do, how they would react to my actions, and I was almost always wrong.  It has cost me so much.  I've also had this ridiculous code of honor that comics, superhero cartoons and old books taught me, that I thought I was right to stick to.  Sometimes, I've held fast to promises, to my code, and it has hurt people.  I'll be forever beating myself up about Lizzy.  What I should have done, what I could have done differently.  I sometimes wish I could Aston-Kutcher-Butterfly-Effect myself back to periods in my life, and try to fix my mistakes.  Today there is a pervasive sense of quiet sadness, of over-arching failure in my personal affairs which is echoed in the world at large with failing institutions falling prey the forces to fascism and nihilism.  This is the worst timeline.

Elizabeth

Got some very sad news yesterday.  My longtime readers will remember Liz, my ex wife (Elizabeth Anne Henry Hignutt).  I am sorry to report that she took her own life on Monday night or early Tuesday morning, hence I shaw always, "remember, remember, the 5th of November."   We had split in late 2014, and divorced in early 2016.  She had always had mental health issues, but in 2014, she took herself off her medications and things began to go downhill for her.

When we met, in was in November 1990, and she was trying out for my rock band, Mystic Spyder.  She got the job as singer.  We had a lot of good times together.  We saw the world together.  We stood by each other for a lot longer than people thought we would.  We raised two cats together, Nox and Jasper.  We took care of my dad together.

Elizabeth loved music.  So much.  Her favorite band was Yes when I met her, and she always had a soft spot for them.  Later, she discovered Muse and many other bands, but Jon Anderson and Yes always ruled supreme.  She loved action movies.  She loved Keanu Reeves.

I'm pretty crushed by this news.  It's been a tough year.  My sister took her own life back in January.  Now, both my family members with mental illness issues have cashed out in 2019.  The world is a bleak place.  It's a little colder.  A lot sadder.  With less music.

I feel like a failed her.  Like I failed every body I've ever cared about.  That seems to be what I do.

Sorry to be so personal today.  It's a sad day.  I miss the person she was.  I always hoped for a happy ending for her.  She had such a tragic story with her mother dying when Liz was only 11.  She sent a few texts saying goodbye to a few people.  She told them that no one would stop her from seeing her mom again.  They are now reunited.

Fuck this planet of sorrow and pain.  Shit sucks.

Des Vu

Quote:time is sweeping past you, right where you sit.
But once in a while you look up,
and actually feel the inertia,
and watch as the present turns into a memory
-as if some future you is already looking back on it.

Dès Vu.

...
You are two people still separated by an ocean of time,
Part of you bursting to talk about what you saw,
Part of you longing to tell you what it means.

https://www.seeker.com/des-vu-the-awaren...74534.html

Some of the most powerful moments of my life have this quality about them. This trans temporal awareness, when I tapped into the feelings of future me's memories of the events as they happened. It was almost always little moments, usually alone, when I was caught up in a this feeling...that I would remember that moment, that I was in the future remembering it, even then.

Sometimes, I wonder, if these odd moments of my future consciousness visiting my past mind somehow or other, changed things for me, in a sort of minor Ashton Kutchner Butterfly Effect way.

Have you ever felt this?

I'm a lot like Jill

It's Tuesday so that means there are New Chapters up at The Confessions of a Supervillain novel blog.  Jill is a lot like me.

confessionsofasupervillain.blogspot.com

Let me tell you a little bit about my roommate, Jill.  She was once, just a couple of years ago, rich.  Ran the family business, did quite well for herself.  She took care of her dad with dementia, 24/7, worked, did it all.  Then, she lost it all.  Her dad went into an assisted-living home, they took the house she lived in, and the business she worked at, to pay for it all.  She tried to start over; and attempted to build a trans refuge colony in the South of France.  People shit themselves, funding fell through, real estate issues, immigration issues, a bout of pneumonia, and the next thing you know, she was back in the states, spending the few days before eviction at her dad’s house, trying to figure something out.  She took the one offer from Jackie for her to come to Albany.  They had a new apartment now; Jill had a decent enough job as an assistant manager at an auto parts store.  Sometimes, I would zip into her job and hyper-sonically put parts away for her.  Once, when I was pissed at her, I put the parts back on the carts, forcing her to put them away again.  What can I say?  Sometimes, I’m a dick.

Jill was also a science fiction novelist, whose star looked promising at first, but whose bad publishing luck, with a measure of bad agents, soured her on the whole deal.  Before that she was the lead guitarist in a modestly successful rock band, which she quit to transition.  She is pretty cool, and a fun person to talk too.  She really has helped me get a handle on some of this time travel stuff.  So has Jackie, and we’ll get to her as well in upcoming chapters.