Click images for desktop size: "Are You Ready?" by Illona Rastopovich Way to many of you like to ask me: "With all you've been through, with all you're going through; how can you still smile and enjoy this life?"
There's only one thing I can say to that: With all that I've been through and all that I'm going through I wonder how you can't smile and enjoy this life.
It was a bad day because the pain was terrifying today, my left side went completely numb for a couple of hours, and the vision went blurry in my left eye.
It was a good day as I got lots of fun emails and my puppy was near perfect in every way.
My puppy and I wrestled, fought, told each other jokes. My puppy went and tried to play with my neighbor's puppy. She makes my heart sing to the point where you know that pain is such a small thing and worry is just a diversion set up to keep us from enjoying ourselves.
Even I wonder why sometimes I feel so good about life.
I miss people. I miss the family and friends who've died and the others who have just drifted away. I sometimes even miss the people who worked to try and make me miserable: the deceivers, the false friends, the schemers, the real losers.
I love too many things to be miserable anymore. I love too many people to ever feel lonely, even when I feel all alone.
I like stories. Almost all stories but mainly I like the stories people tell you face to face.
I think I only go out with people to hear them tell me their stories. I find them enchanting, revealing and sometimes shocking and wonderful.
When I go out with people I never go out to movies, seldom even plays. I don't understand sitting in the dark with someone watching someone else . . . it seems so distant. Like people telling me how they like family nights when the family sits around and watches TV.
I like to go to dinner and art galleries. I used to love seeing the work of Duane Hansen.
Hansen made these incredible life sized statues of people out of fiber glass, like bondo for car repairs, and then he painted them so that they almost seemed to breathe.
They weren't commissions. He didn't do celebrities. He was an artist and he created people. When his works were masterpieces his statues would stare at you and tell you their stories.
I saw one piece called "The Butcher". This piece is of an overweight man wearing a tank top t-shirt, a blooded butcher's apron and jeans. His cleaver is stuck in his back pocket like a wallet. The butcher is sitting on the ground; he is drawing his knees up to his chest and he is crying so hard his face his distorted as his hands make meaningless gestures in the air.
Another old timer stands against the gallery wall, smoking a cigarette and staring through the spectators.
To me this is high art because as you circle these sculptures it is impossible not to hear the statues tell you their stories. When you come back to them later they tell you yet another story.
I went with a woman and asked her what she thought. She said that all that bondo and rubbing; "This Hansen guy could have made a fortune repairing dents in cars". She's still my friend to this day.
I went with another woman and her response was, "Why doesn't he make statues of someone interesting." Her? We never had a second date.

Click images for desktop size: "Au Bistro" by Jean BeraudIf I went out a second time with someone I'd always ask them to pick the restaurant or the place.
Even if I didn't like the place they selected I enjoyed thinking about why they would want to bring me here. Then I would ask them.
I loved the stories that they told. Some times of past joys they'd had wherever we were, sometimes of love that grew and withered.
I loved most that wherever they selected it had a special meaning to them. Because it had a meaning to them the places became special to me too.
the world is too big and beautiful to see with only one set of eyes. there is too much beautiful music to hear it with only your ears. There are too many real emotions in this life to feel them all by yourself.
It's why I trust people so much, even when there is no reason to trust them. It's trite but the untrustworthy need our hope and trust the most.
We're all people and we all have stories.
Clive Barker wrote sardonically: "We are all books of blood. Wherever we're opened we're red."
We're all books, we're all stories.

My health seems to be a wreck today. I'll recover. I have a dog who has told me so.