From a Fellow Psoriasis sufferer
After
nine years of flares and subsiding well...
no one spares me comments.
LOL
and I could care less anymore of the vanity of it.
It hurts when I cant move my joints
when I leave my scales everywhere
when people stare and comment
but the one thing that just slays me is
that when I itch so much and cant make it stop
and I truly want to die.
I can cope with the ignorance of those around me
and losing my once attractive looks...
because actually I always thought that people were much more attractive
inside than on the surface
but on those days when I cant stop the itch
and I cant work and sleep
I just truly want to die.
This must be one of the least understood and undertreated diseases there
is.
I have scratched to bleeding,
been unable to walk for the foot psoriasis,
removed myself from others for the sheer embarrassment of showing my body
and I could easily live with all of that
but karma?
none of us could deserve
any
karma which dictated that the largest organ in the human body would drive
us to such distraction
that our only thought was how to survive the next moment or two.
I dont wish this disease on my worst enemy
yet my only enemy now is my skin.
There is no karma in this.
This is something that we are so damn close to finding a cure to....
I
think of karma as the few minutes per week when I dont want to die for
the itching.
LOL
my karma is sitting in a vinegar bath knowing that I have a few moments
of intense calm before it all starts up again.
PINK MOON AND RAINBOWS
Moonlit
waters, flaxen hair.
Distant Sirens, pungent air.
Nervous musings, lyric laughter.
Echoes calling, ever after.
Opiate
inspired verses,
Punctuating muffled curses.
Stanzas praising Mary Jane,
Drinking whisky, smoke cocaine.
Coy
smiles on angelic faces,
Firefiys dance the music chases.
Voice to make the spirit soar,
Alas to come again no more.
I'm sure a native Montrealer of the same age won't be suffering from this, but I've suddenly figured out where this strange subliminal feeling of claustrophobia comes from!
Montreal actually gets smaller over the winter months!
The roads are narrower, the car parks are smaller (and the lines are invisible so that doesn't help either), the footpaths (sidewalks) are indistinct and access to most places is limited.
Of course, due to the great white blanket that surrounds, cocoons, isolates and strangles us all.
On our little Rue Hortie there is a wall of snow and ice two metres tall on either side, punctuated occaisionally by driveways or snowtent entrances. which breaks down the warm feeling of community so familiar in the summer months. From ground level only the roofs are visible.
A brief walk around our block turns into a two hour epic of struggling into snow gear (so we are doubly cocooned from the real world), struggling over snowbanks, struggling to keep our footing on ice-slick roads, struggling not to get buried in salty slush as vehicles pass us on the main road. And today was only minus ten! Balmy in comparison to past weeks.
But then I have an image of the Native Americans living in this same environment not three hundred years ago. No central heating, no electricity et al and I shiver to my very soul. Not unlike the Ice Storm two years ago, I am reminded by those residents who were here than. So let's just forget the silk thermals, the windproof breathable parka and the four-season sleeping bag, and the petrol generator. Sure. Whatever. There are tramps (hobos) and beggars on the streets here, too. Today!
As a Canadian oil company is wont to remind us 'You have to live here to get it!'. Never a truer word!
And minds get narrower too. The usual courtesies of everyday life are replaced with 'vorfahrt' (only the Germans could come up with a noun meaning 'go firstness'). The natural friction of placing 2.5 million people 30% closer to each other generates its own emotional energy.
The emotional energy of three people in one particular house seems to have reached a boiling point today!
Todays word is incensed.
I-N-C-E-N-S-E-D
Not, I hasten to add, anything to do with that guilty smell (hey, my wife's catholic, give me a break!).
I felt incensed because this morning I was given a prima face case of MIGHT IS RIGHT by a sixteen-wheeler.
I don't, now, feel incensed about the loss of a two buck blind spot mirror.
I don't feel incensed about nearly burying my van in a snowbank.
I don't feel incensed that he didn't stop.
I feel incensed that the bastard didn't total every panel on my left side, so that I could bring all the power of the due process to bear, and make the guy (or gal, of course) pay through the nose.
Of course the real basis for my mood is that I am totally impotent to do anything about it. Smashing the van into the back of the truck would have been cutting off my nose to spite my face, but, momentarily, that's what I felt like doing. Because there was no confrontation there is no closure. Because I didn't chase the driver halfway across Mnntreal so that I could tell him what I thought of his selfish action, does that make me a coward? I don't think so.
But I can't get the image of a young Chinese standing in front of a line of tanks out of my head.
Slainte.
How do you protect yourself from all the crap?
Cybercrap, I mean!
Years back (long before spam was even a formalised concept) I made the fatal mistake of posting to those collaborative fora known as newsgroups. First as a newbie, and then, as experience and maturity grew, as a bit of an (dare I say it?) expert. My fame and ego soared on even wider wings, but iittle did I realise then that my vanity and generosity (what a pompous git!) would have such a profound and long-lasting cost to my own little corner on the information superfootpath (yes, it was a looooong time ago).
But the archives of the datastreams come back to bite us all in the arse.
Curse
thee DejaNews.
May
Your Hard Drives Crash,
May Your Router Tables Fall Unto Garbled Bytes,
And Your Packets Wander Aimlessly in the Endless IP Hell of the Backbone.
One little Perl hack later and all of our addresses are naked for all
the world to see, and distributed the world over at US$50 per million
('guaranteed all verified and 100% duplicate free'. Just try collecting
on that one, friends!!). Given the free availablity and absurdly reasonable
cost of such inestimable resources, and the hyperbolic distribution of
the thousands of 'get-rich-quick-by-doing-bugger-all', and MLM
(pyramid selling) scams, I'm frankly surprised that I don't receive
more cybercrap than I do already.
Vanity, vanity. All is vanity.
So you set up all the false accounts you can, and add endless filters to your incoming folder and still the crap gets through!!
Mind you, perhaps the upside of it all is that I can't remember the last time someone phoned to ask (out of the goodness of their hearts!) if I had enough life insurance!!
Slainte.
"May misfortune follow you the rest of your life, but never catch up."
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
I've become a victim!
(Of course, that's shite!)
I just got sucked in by the media Ideal for an hour or so, (The stereotypical supermodel, and the Gillette hunk with six-pack abs, Isn't it insideous!!) that says that my love for my wife has to be judged by the value (monetary, of course!) of the gift which I purchase for her for Valentines day.
It is, perhaps, trite to say that, once the realisation dawned upon me, that I just asked Chris what she wanted for a gift and her painful reposte was merely "Nothing! I didn't buy you anything. Was I supposed to?". Why is it that women just have a shortcut to the right thing to say?
Eeeerrrrmmmm!
So it's merely eight bucks a throw for long-stem red roses, and four bucks a hit for Belgian Truffles, when a mere three weeks ago, due to a guilt trip satisfaction scenario which I'd rather not go into right now, it was less than half what I would have to pay now.
And I'm counting the cost! So who is the victim?
You make the call.
Slainte.
Given the fact that there's only seven weeks to go before the birth of my second child, would it be inelegant to say that I'm as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs?
Cliché, Cliché perhaps.
A father less than confident about his abilities to raise (who am I kidding! Help to raise) a child in uncertain times?
When were the times certain?
Admittedly there is less chance that he succumbs to a debilitating or lethal diease. There is less chance that he reaches his majority only to die in a pointless conflict. And the chances that he will become an entreé for a wild animal are definately negligible in the extreme.
But he will be growing up in a world where stress management is an issue for elementary education. Where the effects of genetically engineered foodstuffs are unknown. Where infomation overload is dealt with (or not) by teenagers, and schoolyard disagreements are resolved with handguns.
Freedom and Civilisation (whatever that means?) come at a cost, or so we are told.
Does that cost include the legacy which we are passing onto our children?
The stereotypical supermodel, and the Gillette hunk with six-pack abs being prostituted as the role models for the Millenia. The materialistic hedonism typified by the rush for .com wealth.
What's wrong with a wealth of talents, a wealth of compassion, a wealth of family and friends.
Or is the Future just dollars and no sense?
I said that I was nervous, however, not terrified. I do believe that there is fundamental GOOD in everyone. I (try to) forgive people their mistakes and their ignorance. Given the breathtaking beauty in even the mundane we must be doing something right (God, I do hope so).
So, here's to you Fergus. A life starting out as a blank page (with some underlying colour and form if we've done our jobs right). Your brother hasn't turned out too bad so far, so there is hope for us all.
Slainte
go saol agat,
Bean ar do mhian agat.
Leanbh gach blian agat,
is solas na bhflaitheas tareis antsail seo agat.
"Health
for life to you,
A wife of your choice to you,
Land without rent to you,
A child every year to you,
And the light of heaven after this world for you."
- Traditional Gaelic Blessing
