Splendid Cadaver

What would life be without the hated chore, and the sinking feeling,  and the waiting? If it were all success and glory,  would I still sometimes see sun through leaves and think, “that right there makes it all worth it”? Next subject: A Sudden Change

My wife is fire and I am water. I will explain. During the summer of 2003 while my wife and I were preparing for our public wedding, we took an afternoon to speak to a reporter and cameraman from the local television station. We had arrived at my wife’s hometown in Liaoning Province located an hour away from the city of Dandong and a river separating China from North Korea. The city was small enough that a wedding between an American and a local girl claimed a spot on the evening news and the pages of the local newspaper. This television reporter asked us about our Shēngxiào (生肖), translated commonly in English as the Chinese Zodiac, a common staple of Chinese small talk.  The Chinese Shēngxiào have 12 birth year animals that include rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog and pig. My wife, born in 1977 is a snake. I born in 1972 am a rat. Allegedly, the snake and the rat are not the best of matches. The reporter said in Chinese “You are a rat and she

Literally last night's dream I got it into my head that I needed to buy a slate-blue-cloth-bound set of "classic" books. The first one was The Prince by Machiavelli, and I both questioned and was defensive of my sudden desire to own that particular book, which I didn't actually want to read but felt obligated to because it was in the set (I pointed out to myself that reading it might help me understand a type of person I have difficulty understanding). I never did know what the other books in the set were, and what, other than the beautiful binding and the impulse to be grown up with matching books on my shelf, made me so want to buy them. Maybe the approach of Christmas and the associated inventory-taking of things I might want people to give me? Most uncomfortably on-the-nose message from my subconscious I was in the back of a van, lurching down the road as vans do (I have significant real-life childhood experience riding in the back of a van, and the sensation

Fire and water were the main players in two events in my life, one of which, according to a Real Mental Health Professional, had a major impact on my mental health (if I sound skeptical, more on this later), and one of which felt much more traumatic than it sounds on paper. Fire I'm not sure how old I was, but this event is surely among my earlier memories. It probably comes after the memories of being held upside down and "walked" along the ceiling by my dad, since it entailed a lengthy recovery period for him during which he would not have been doing anything of the sort [which begs the question of why I remember so vividly those interactions with him and then nothing at all from the recovery period except stories of how he was fed ice cream in the hospital]. To be arbitrary, let's say I was three years old. I was messing around in a little-kid way in the living room, doing little-kid stuff, when a ruckus burst out outside. I don't remember screams,

I can't always tell the difference between real and imagined threats. In other words I have a heightened fight or flight reaction, or acute stress response if you want to be clinical, and my reaction is usually to fight or scream loudly. No one is sure exactly why but doctors suggested that during my mom's pregnancy was stressful and this triggered epigenetic switches to enhance genetic anxiety that would otherwise be within the normal range. For example, the first time I took a shower I got some water in my eyes and I felt like I was dying and totally freaked out. Whereas when my little brother Carl got water in his eyes for the first time, it was uncomfortable but once it was wiped out no big deal. It gets really bad if I'm tired and hungry. And I hate sleeping. I mean, it's not that I hate to sleep, I actually really like to sleeping, especially having funny or crazy dreams, but I hate going to sleep. It's so boring! There's always something mor

I've never been the writer, or the type of reader that leads to being the writer. That was my sister and in our social hierarchy there was only room for one writer. So I never wrote. I thought I couldn't write, so I never wrote. And when I did have to write a school assignment I wrote with my eyes closed as fast as possible right before a deadline hit. That was my formal writing style all through undergrad yet somehow there were a few professors who thought I wrote well and would give me feedback that reflected that feeling. I figured they were wrong or I was tricking them in some way. But when I got to grad school I tried a little bit. Like, I would reread a paper and make changes before turning it in. And somehow that got me through grad school. Now, like, 85 percent of my job is writing and I've started working at writing better. It helps that I work with people who aren't good at writing and don't try so that the most minimalist of effort on my part makes me l