Random musings on (craft) beers

Writers like their drink. Ain’t that integral to the craft?

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There’s shame in being 60 and living with roommates — because you have to. Because finances, rent, local wages, job opportunities or lack thereof so dictate.

I am so ashamed, so deeply ashamed, of my life and what it has become, I can hardly breathe.

This isn’t how I envisioned my life at 60. Not that I envisioned it any particular way. I didn’t.

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Along the way of some truly terrible years (mostly starting in 2008-09 with Evildoer Obama’s takeover), I lost.

Just. Lost.

Can you ever get back the light, get back to Light, after Darkness, despair, desperation, destruction?

Don’t know.

Want to say yes. But I’d be lying. “Don’t know” is the honest answer.

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In a down mood all of a sudden. Is it the cloudy gray skies so reminiscent of the Pacific Northwest that nearly cost me my life?

Likely. Very likely.

I can’t breathe in the Gray.

I ought not post when I’m this down.

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Few if anyone reads this blog anyways. Enhances isolation. Feeds the Gray.

On the flip side, few if anyone reads this blog anyway. So I can write whatever the fuck I want and no one cares.

And isn’t that the backhanded gift of Isolation?

You’re not seen. Not heard. No one cares.

So doesn’t matter what you do, say, write. No one cares.

This I learned: in my family of origin.  Okay, mainly from she who gave me life.

Why the FUCK must we have mothers?!?!

 

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He’s Little. He’s Loud. He’s a Liar.

I’ve encountered all variety of people.

From human angels to murderers and much between, I’ve engaged with a wide array of remarkable and memorable characters in my 60 years (and growing).

But a pathological liar was not on the list — not that I’m aware of — until recently.

Joe’s a regular Costco customer and a daily visitor at the food samplings, according to the food-demo gals.

He’s a short, middle-aged New York Jew. He has dark bushy thinning unkept hair, thick-framed spectacles and the self-centered, aggressive, know-it-all brashness characteristic of New Yorkers.

Joe enjoys a sport.

The sport of telling lies.

Fantastical lies that have no footing in reality. Lies that are easily disproved — if one takes the time to play detective and do the legwork.

Stationed at their stainless-steel rolling carts, Costco demo gals are a captive audience. A confined audience.

The type of audience perhaps that would satisfy a pathological liar.

I was made aware of Joe’s Policy of Lying last year when he told food-demo gal Maria that there’d been a big accident that morning. Some 7 cars on a major 2-lane thoroughfare, the sole road through the area.

When asked for details, Maria could provide none, saying only that she’d heard the news from Joe.

Inquisitive intelligent minds need to know — ‘specially when the news is that big, that impactful. So with Maria nearby, I investigated.

I googled it. I’m a superb, thorough researcher.

I checked the local paper online for late-breaking news and updates.

I called the police.

I checked the state’s Department of Transportation, which posts incidences, closures, etc.

Same result each effort. Zip. Zero. Nada. Not a shred of evidence about an accident.

My suspicions about Joe’s credibility soared.

As they did about Maria’s intelligence — for despite all evidence to the contrary — FROM AUTHORITIES WHO’D KNOW ABOUT ANY MULTIVEHICLE ACCIDENT — Maria persisted in believing Joe.

I can’t do stupid. That’s when I ended friendly ties with her.

And saw Joe for who he is. A fibber.

A man who makes sport of telling lies, some outrageous — like the massive accident — others simple — like an inch of snow has just fallen or it’s raining — when it’s bone dry and clear.

It’s no skin off my teeth, his lying.

Plus I’m not easily scammed — not by a long shot! I’m proud to write that in my 60 years, I’ve never had the wool pulled over my eyes, though once someone came close.

I’ve disproved Joe’s lies numerous times. He doesn’t care. Clearly he’s about grandiosity, not skillfully covering his tracks, which makes him a pathetic liar, or a lazy one, or both.

Whatever.

It’s not for me I’m concerned when he circulates his lies.  It’s the others, the food-demo gals, the Costco customers.

They believe him. Why shouldn’t they? On the outside, he appears normal.

They see a frequent Costco customer and daily visitor at the food demos.

They a man named Joe. They see a middle-aged, short, loud New York Jew with dark-rimmed spectacles and a proclivity for proclaiming.

They don’t see the pathological liar. The man with an incessant and probably compulsive need to devise and circulate fibs.

This is frightening.

More frightening, however, is how he tells them. Completely straight-faced. Dead serious. Not a quiver in the voice or twitch in the eye.

He proclaims his falsehoods as matter-of-factly as you reciting your address for a tax form at the workplace.

Joe’s dangerous — not as much for the content of his lies but his believability.

But he doesn’t fool me. He can’t.

He’s been found out. Spirit and karma will take care of it.

Now that he’s found out, if I’m chatting with a food-demo gal and Joe appears, he’ll vomit some lie about how it’s raining or snowing or whatever.

He’s a waste of my time and I waste no time leaving immediately.

However, like a cat with a mouse, I may play it differently next time he proclaims a lie for us all.

Saaaaay, he announces it’s raining.

“Rain?!” I exclaim.

“Why, that’s hardly rain! That’s a monsoon! Watch out for the cats ‘n’ poodles!”

Just to see what a liar does when given a spoonful of his own medicine. His own psychotic pathetic poison.

His response, one can’t predict.

But this much is certain: You can play in humor. Make light of a darkness — a darkness that is not yours and is not yours to fix.

That, my personal lifelong lesson, continues …

 

 

 

May Day. When it was real.

I remember May Day when it was real. Before technology. Before smartphones. Before emails, texts and all cyberspace deliveries without warmth, heart or time invested by the sender.

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It wasn’t happy.

In fact, it was rife with abuse, rejection, abandonment, the toxic war zone that is my childhood.

Perhaps this is why I cling to fond memories, holding fast and dearly to remind myself it wasn’t all bad all of the time.

One memory pokes its head through the hard dry soil May 1 of every year.

We lived on a hill, my original family of four, with some 15 neighbors. The half acre demanded heavy toil and slave labor; rather, to be fair, was my father’s demand.

But that’s another post.

The acreage included large sloping hillsides of weeds, snails, ivy and geraniums  in red, pink and yellow (if memory serves).

Flowers-wise, my mother tended to a small rectangle of rosebushes at the side of the house. Roses were few; don’t even recall any plucked from the scraggly bushes ever in the house!

Geraniums, however, we had in spades.

Every May Day, my mother clipped geraniums from the yard. That is, I presume they were geraniums given a dearth of roses and other flowers.

From white paper and tape, she fashioned cones. Into each she placed a small bouquet of flowers.

Simple. Nothing fancy, elaborate or over the top.

Then my younger sister (by two years) and I delivered the May Day bouquets to the neighbors on the hill.

I don’t recall how we delivered bouquets to those who weren’t at home. Did the cones have strings or paper handles for knobs? Or did we simply lay them aside the door? Or bring them back?

Those who were home expressed surprise and delight at their deliveries.

May Day is a day when my mother shined.

In the Darkness, harshness, squelching and violence that was the home, it was on May 1 that her thoughtfulness, sentimentality, eye for color, love of flowers and whimsy shined.

Truly.

I’m glad she expressed those. For me.

Above all, I’m glad for her.

May Day is a day she was able to express herself, to be free and childlike, creating beauties, simply.

And isn’t it the simplest that touch us the most, that we remember the most?

For these traits, I remember well and thank you, mom (there on the other side).

Happy May Day.

These are for you.

Happy May Day