how's your german....

lately i've been doing more correspondence the old fashioned way. by hand. using a fountain pen.

there's something in the process of writing that seems to get lost when you sit in front of a computer. almost as if a part of your brain shuts down - or perhaps you use a different part.

but i digress. as part of this choice to "unplug" i've looked into envelope and letter folding (www.ghh.com/elf) as well as using sealing wax and seals.

in my travels of late, i ran into a fairly unique wax seal. from nazi germany, world war two era. very cool, but i'm having trouble translating.

so.... how's your german?


(Salzwedel was pretty easy to figure out - it's a town that's been around since about 800-1112 AD or so.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salzwedel
• http://www.salzwedel.de/

life at home...

my son is three. picture this. he accidentally swallows extra air while drinking his milk. belches. puts two and two together. practises a couple of times. gets the technique. he's taught himself to swallow air and belch at will, and he's got it down pat. still practising on technique, but he's pretty much there.

having graduated to becoming "a man", we opt to start the next phase.....

here are the two phrases we're working on with him. i'll let you choose which you're rather hear:

• gimme some sugar, baby (bruce campbell - army of darkness)
• it's good to be the king (mel brooks - history of the world, part 1)
  

bringer of sunshine and happiness...

excerpts:

august 2, 2001

i have my doubts. i used to have a clear vision of where i was, who i was, and where i was going. more and more, life intruded. weighed me down. clouded my vision. now i wonder lost in a fog. unable to dream any longer. imprisoned. my new weapons bitterness and sarcasm. reduced to using these to ensure survival. chaining myself down, even as i struggle to rise above.

august 8, 2001

is it, i wonder, a bad thing to walk about, with angry rants filling my head and consuming me? maybe it's because i deal with stress better than confrontation, and i'm beginning to see i don't actually deal with stress all that well.

do i actually care at this point? honest answer.... no, not really.

august 16, 2001

i was not always like this. once, long ago, i was like you. a doer, a thinker, a dreamer. as to what occurred to alter my path to destiny, i am unsure. i look back, ponder, wonder, and i see only that my past is shrouded in the mists of time. somewhere in that dense, murky fog lay the answers.

to find them seems an impossible task, yet i must. for now it is the only thing left that can alter my current path. all that is left to save my life, and end this miserable existence.

the person revealed....

i've been somewhat lost for a while. turns out as i randomly hit old journal entries that it has been more than a while. i've been lost pretty much forever.

what makes me tick? here's an old entry. verbatim.

July 10, 2001

gilbert

colton james morris

07.02.91 - 12.17.91

sec J blk 38

ten years. so hard to believe, that it's been 10 years already. so much time has passed, yet here i am still searching for myself. still lost. frustrated, unsure, frightened. what have i accomplished? or changed?

i sit here, in this melancholy place, and feel the presence of grief and sadness filter through the stillness. light wind blows through, breeze rustling the grass and the toy wind catchers. this section, reserved for newborns and small children is almost heart wrenching.

and what do i feel? a little sadness, but no one should be forced to live with such overwhelming disabilities. melancholy? a touch, for he was the son i never really knew. what i do feel, is a sense of grief for the tragedy, and a sense of irony.

and perhaps it is the feelings, the other feelings i harbour in relation to this event that are the ones that don't allow me to get beyond this point.

i have a sense of guilt for feeling them. for they are the ones others dictate i should not feel. anger. betrayed. frustration. rage. but why should they not have a place? they would had the child lived.

anger at myself, for letting myself be manipulated, for not making a stand as i should have. that was my worst mistake. not fighting for my own rights.

anger over my treatment. someone else deciding i should have the right to know, and then deciding i was no longer allowed to visit my own child. frustration that the rest of my family was allowed, but i was being manipulated out of revenge and pettiness.

rage for being told to stay away from the funeral. rage at myself for doing it.

and now? perhaps it was better, not knowing him well. closure? i think finally come when i last saw misty, and met her two kids. that was when i realized she had never moved on, never changed as a person. that she owned the problems, not i.

the judgements made over my actions coloured, overshadowed by their prejudices.

my guilt lay, lies still, in not standing up for myself. i know, but somehow have not yet learned fully, that the cost is infinitely higher than the consequences of taking a stand could ever be.

perhaps, that is what this lesson was all about. to finally come to terms with the fact that i do have the right. that i need to take a stand. and that i don't own anyone's problems unless i choose to. and that it's ok to choose not to.

after 10 years, perhaps i have finally brought this to a close. i feel a sense of peace about it now, and a sense of pity. the feeling of anger over it has lifted. and now, there is a little sadness, a little tragedy, and a sense of finality and closure.

it's not something i believe can ever be forgotten. nor should it. but i think it will now stop haunting.

happy 10^th birthday colton. i am sorry life was so short and painful for you. forgiving myself will bring us both a better measure of peace. you will not be forgotten.

two totally unrelated things....

barney.

oh. my. god. (in the voice and style of janice on friends.) that is some kind of awful. i have just had my first experience with an episode of the big purple dinosaur. it explains why they are now extinct.

besides, i don't trust the bastard. he never blinks. although he obviously has earned enough pimping in hollywood to have his teeth capped.

a vision of wonder

imagine that perfect arc. as it rises, in a perfect parabolic curve. glinting and flashing in the sun as it reaches it's apogee, and then begins to descend, 9.8 metres squared, accelerating toward the ground and culminating in an explosion. an eruption of glass, plastic and electronic parts. the blackberry lies in fragments, in a crater of its own creation.

this perfect vision brought to you by the average day at work.

imagine: dealing with management. trying to explain "why". the cost of replacing said blackberry.

this perfect moment in time, ruined.