"Jump-Start" by Richard F. Yates (Holy Fool)

15 Feb. 2022

[My biggest obstacles to concentration…]

Sitting on the floor next to the heater with the laptop on my lap. (Weird place for it!) One of the big, orange bully cats is trying his damnedest to push the laptop off of me so he can sit where it currently resides. I swear, at times, that the monsters were sent (we have three very needy cats) to STOP me from getting anything done. (You should have seen the heroic efforts required to keep the dang things off the paintings I was working on a few weeks ago. They were determined to get covered in acrylics!)

Karl is the most egregious offender. If I sit down, he is there trying to wipe his snotty, wet nose on my and cover my clothing in orange hair. But how does any of this concern YOU? (It goes some way to explaining why my thought processes are so entirely shallow and scattered. If I type one word, then have to stop and wipe cat snot off my arm, it’s difficult to immediately snap back to whatever thought I had before the nose wiping occurred. It’s “Harrison Bergeron” 101!) My head is not my own…

The heater that I am sitting near is meant to help with my back, which has been all cattywampus of late. I don’t know what set it off, exactly, but a few days ago I suddenly found it very difficult to get up from a sitting position, and since then sleeping and sitting and walking and moving and not-moving have been difficult. (As I was typing that last sentence, the damn cat was scratching my foot in a “please pay attention to me” gesture. I’ve come to the conclusion that I am the monster for ignoring the beast’s emotional needs. But a writer who can’t get any writing done is a sad thing!)

Pain and medication and doctor visits and solitude and ghost shows and old “new age” books and new “UFO texts and sugar and interrupted sleep and more pain and some artz and music and comics and… (That reminds me: I have a prescription to pick up! Gotta keep that anxiety in order, so my heart doesn’t explode! It’s interesting to me that the thing that freaks me out the MOST is medical shit! I can watch monster movies all day long (and often DO) but the idea of going in for a check-up terrifies me to the point of panic…) But the heater seems to be helping. Maybe it’s just a placebo but thank BOB for the placebo effect! When one considers that pain is a subjective experience based on perception, then a curative measure that the sufferer believes is helping IS helping ease the experience of the pain, even if the underlying cause isn’t in any way addressed by the placebo. In my case, my entire family-line suffers from bad backs: Grandma Lucy, Uncle Randy, my mom did, Aunt Teresa…and me. We live hard!

Mariah will be home for lunch in a little more than an hour. Meanwhile, I’m typing. It’s nice. I wrote in my journal just yesterday that I needed to do something to kick-start my brain… Let me grab it… Here’s a direct quote: “I need to shake my brains up, a bit. I’ve been in input mode. Synthesis would be nice, but my head needs a jump-start!” (Meanwhile, Karl is helping by chewing on the power chord for the computer.)

[My current journal. The cover was created by my older daughter using her sublimation printer from a couple of my older drawings… Thanks Frankie!]

I was looking through my journal a bit yesterday. I just kind of GUSH when I’m writing in a journal or diary or notebook, without a plan and often without bothering to make any sense, but I have written a few interesting things, lately. Here is a partial transcript of a dream that I tried to capture a few days ago:

“I dreamed weird last night. Back in the Florida Street house. A man was living in the crawlspace in the attic, and I had a super-natural knife (with two blades coming out of one handle) that was being pulled, like a magnet, towards the attic area where the man supposedly was. Meanwhile, I was in the basement where a bunch of cats were running around, including Gitsy, who I petted a few times. (Even in the dream, I remembered that she was dead.)

“There was also a sad little kitten, all malformed with, like, a part of a paw growing out of the back of its head – and also some serious wounds. I remember thinking in the dream that it was probably a ghost kitten that had died from its injuries – but for some reason, it was in the basement at Florida Street mewing and wanting attention.

“I woke up before I confronted the man in the crawlspace with the weird knife.”

And that’s how I dream. Pretty interesting stuff, if you ask me… Here’s another bit that I wrote a few days ago, this time (I think) it was an idea for an article or blog post:

“How the digital age is introducing a new DARK AGE… Suppose that information is infinite (in a practical sense), and that humans ARE finite. In addition, few people are capable of (or interested in) judging the “TRUTH VALUE” of any individual statement…

“The SLOSHING of fiction and (intentional or not) misinformation onto people’s interests. It’s a situation that can overwhelm ‘REALITY.’

“That’s where we are now – outside of objective reality… I wonder if we need to advocate for a ‘new pragmatism.’ A way to navigate the post – ‘Truth’ world and stay SAFE and SANE.”

I guess my brain IS working a little, from time to time, even if I’m not as sharp as I used to be before all the meds…

My older daughter and granddaughter stopped by for a quick visit. (Frank says she wanted to see if my back is getting better. Yeah, it seems to be!) They’re coming over for take ‘n’ bake pizza this evening. (We are all vaxxed, by the way, aside from the baby, who is only two and not yet able to get a Covid shot.)

But what does any of this have to do with ghosts and conspiracies and alternate dimensions? Nothing… Nothing whatever… (That’s a thousand words, already. Not likely that many people are going to read this far, anyway, so I’ll cut it here!)

Thanks for stopping by!

---Richard F. Yates
(Primitive Thoughtician and Holy Fool)

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