Brain Rot

I'm not being dramatic.  Well. . . if you are asking.  But these antibiotics have done something to my brain.  I keep having slight hallucinations.  I have a difficult time concentrating.  There are other, less questionable reactions, too.  I'm tired.  I don't want to eat.  But the brain thing. . . I looked it up.  It is one of the possible side effects of the drug, a contraindication.  The drug insert doesn't say whether your brain goes back to normal after taking the drug.  But man. . . I'm out of it, so if the past two entrees don't make sense or seem to have a randomness to them, you can expect much the same today.  

"The mind is a terrible thing to waste."

"The mind is a terrible thing."  

But even in my retarded mental state, one thing is very clear to me.  Trump MUST be tested for tertiary syphilis, and the results of that test must be made public.  The disease has clearly entered his brain as it did King Henry III or King Charles V.  We are living with the remnants of barely coherent Lunatic in Chief.  

I hope that goes viral and becomes a public outcry.  

"Test Trump! Test Trump! Test Trump!"

I don't even like horses.  I never wanted one.  I've ridden them on occasion, but I always feel guilty sitting on the poor thing's back.  And they know it.  They don't do what I want them to do.  They try to brush me off at every fence post and tree.  I can't remember ever wanting to be a cowboy.  

But today is the Kentucky Derby, and I never miss it.  Weird, right?  Well, it is only because my father liked it.  I don't know why, but he did.  Since his death ever so long ago, I've watched the race raising my glass in a toast to him, and I've learned to appreciate the competitive heart of the beasts.  

But you know, they train chickens to play tic-tac-toe and bears to walk on balls and donkeys to jump off diving platforms, so. . . . 

Horse racing is cruel, they say.  I agree.  It is like most professional sports.  Athletes train a lifetime through injuries and pain just to kiss the golden bowl.  But the American Public, and the Global Public, too, hold them up as heroes and listen to what they have to say about everything from social issues to politics.  Hell, they've even elected that Alabama Moron, Tommy Turbeville, to the U.S. Senate, and that guy is one more knock on the noggin away from shitting his pants and drooling in public.  

All by way of saying, I'll watch the Derby today.  I bet on the Derby once.  Just once.  When the series "Luck" was showing on HBO, I found out that the female jockey on the show was based on a woman who was riding in that year's Derby, so that is where I put my money.  I went big--$10.  

She didn't win, place, or show.  I was down a drink at the bar.  

I've watched the Derby from some pretty spectacular bars, too.  But that's a story already told.  

Now I'm going to make some of my "friends" happy.  If not happy, at least satisfied, justified. . . I don't know.  I've eschewed a normal, middle-class lifestyle.  Or maybe it eschewed me.  I was married, and I have helped raise a child, so maybe what I've said about marriages and parenting is colored by that.  For all of you who I have irritated, all of you who have felt angry about my castigations, this will give you a bit of a chubby.  

I'm having a hard time being alone right now.  I don't mean in a social sense.  It is difficult being sick and trying to take care of yourself by yourself alone as you age.  One wants a gentle hand on the head and a soft, reassuring voice.  Rather, I have the sound of my own whining and the creaking of the old house.  When the monsters of thought emerge, there is nobody to distract from them.  

"Oh, yea, man. . . you always touted your independence.  You were a real Existential Hero.  So shut the fuck up.  He-he."

That is actually a facsimile of something said to me once by a friend.  He has his own problems now, but he has a wife to mitigate the suffering.  

I know there will be a vicious delight from some who surround me, but regardless, we all get it in the end.  

"If we got what we deserved, we'd all die of starvation."

Probably.  

But I once had a marvelous studio in town, an atelier.  

"I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills."

If you don't know the quote, you probably shouldn't be here.  But stay anyway.  I don't want to be alone.  

Two more days of oral antibiotics, then a visit to the surgeon.  It has been just over a week.  It seems months.  I've missed everything.  Before I went into the hospital, the weather was beautiful and Country Club College was thriving.  When I got out, school was over for the year and the weather was sultry.  The coming and going of the College kids marks the seasons.  Now comes the long, brutal summer.  

That's all I got.  That and some more music.  I try to listen to music before bed now so that I might have better dreams, organic stuff, not synth and techno nor heavy electric shit but stuff made of harmonies and wood.  And there is sooo much out there.  It amazes me how much of it is so good.  

Don't skip this.  Don't cheat yourself.  Look and see what people can do! Why aren't there clubs like this everywhere?  Crazy.