Homeopape

A high school friend of mine died suddenly earlier this year and today is his birthday.  He would have been 41 just like me and he was taken from all of us way too soon.

My fondest memory with Doug is sunning in the grass outside Shedd Aquarium with a few others on the Eighth grade field tip to Chicago because we were way too cool to go in.  We listened to music on our walkmans and laid in the grass with skinny jeans, wrestlers’ shoes with no socks and t-shirts, sunbathing fully clothed and occasionally talking to each other.  Doug’s love of music along with the rest of the group I socialized with influenced what I still listen to today and what I will be still be listening to when I too pass away.  I don’t think he cared what was cool or popular, just what he liked and he dressed as he liked.  Being cool isn’t dressing in the same clothes or listening to the same music or thinking the same thoughts as everyone else.  Being cool is doing what you feel deep down in your heart so that you are true to yourself.  This lesson from him took me several years to realize and I’ve always lived by it since.  Do what you feel is right and not what everyone else does.

I haven’t seen or talked to him in several years now and I deeply regret it.  When you don’t see or talk with someone regularly, it’s easy to forget that they are gone.  And today it struck me that I wouldn’t see him again in my lifetime.  Happy Birthday Doug.

I was really floored by a story I read yesterday in “Willful Creatures” by Aimee Bender (one of my new favorite author discoveries).  The story was titled “Debbieland” and it has so many layers and changes in what is really happening in the story and what it is actually about.  It’s a fascinating, experimental and original story that should be necessary reading in all creative writing courses, English courses, actually for everyone.  “Debbieland” is also the first story that I remember where the main character is identified as “we”.

If I said anymore I would give too much away.  It’s a story that you read and don’t ever forget.

Story Notes:

Mashed up peanut butter noses drying under a chocolate moon raining stinking moonlight upon the planets of the solar system waking in the dawn still stinking of dreamsleep strutting showingoff his bulbous belly fat pregnant with antici…pation atomic meat dreams wet pulsating in the neon glow of gas station light on a deserted street deadend of night waiting waiting waiting.

Pieces of moonplanets fell onto a blighted sunplanet glowing with participation of the newlyborn Internet mined into the surface of the livingplanet Earth amazed at the speed of deathprogress bringing scythes of coldsteelhorror entropy in the long hot night of eternity’s branding death death death.

Why the end of livingbreathingfeelingbeing? Why not entropy devolution instead of colddark death in the long night of madness? Moving moving moving towards the end of something like digestion defecation. A mess of eternity’s toys left after a great mad playing, left to death destruction at the end of all things.

http://bloomington.craigslist.org/rnr/2420803449.html
Now Located: http://www.homeopape.com/files/Banksy_10_(2420803449).html

Michael Fisher
06/04/2011

I can still remember the last time I saw my mom before she died in a sterile cold whitegreen hospital without relatives around her. Just nurses to care for her as she died. I remember that an exception was made that my sister and I and my dad could go see her at the same time because minors weren’t allowed in the hospital room.

I didn’t know that this was the last time I was going to see her and I didn’t know that she was dying. There was a conspiracy of my dad and mom to keep that from me sister and me. We walked into the room, the two beds, the other one was empty or the patient was gone (asked to leave?) or there was a curtain. The memory is blurry here. My mother was sitting on her bed on our left as we came into the room. We each hugged her and she talked to us and I think my sister gave her s picture or card she’d made. Or my mom gave us something that she’d written or a card. Her hair was gone and there was a swimmers cap on her head and she’d lost weight. But I didn’t know she was dying. The conspiracy of silence.

I can/can’t imagine how hard it was for her to say goodbye to us knowing that it was the last time she would she us. Tears come to my eyes imagining it; if I had to tell my daughter goodbye for the last time. How sad I would be not to see her talk to her play with her again. How scared I would be of dying. How much I would be sick to my stomach from the chemotherapy or how much I would be in pain from the cancer eating me from the inside.

Over the years I think about this scene a lot. It comes to my mind and I feel sad that I won’t see my mother again. I only go t to know her as a child. I never knew her never will know her when I was an adult and would get to know her personality get to talk to her about her beliefs, her thoughts, her feelings. I miss the mother that I never had and I miss the mother who died when I was a child. I miss her as a child would. I still cry when I spend time thinking about her. I’ve never gotten over her death. Not really. Ever.

I don’t know if I ever will.

It’s not the same as someone dying when you are an adult and you miss them. I ache for the missing role archetype energy position of a mother that I never had growing into a teenager and an adult. I’m not the same person I would be if my mother hadn’t died when I was young and I want to be that person.

http://indianapolis.craigslist.org/mis/2408752055.html
Now Located: http://www.homeopape.com/files/Banksy_8_(2408752055).html

Michael Fisher
05/24/2011

I am afraid to walk, to exercise because I have been in pain for so long and trying to mask the pain to have it leave temporarily when I first wake up in the morning only to have it return later like an old bastard friend that you don’t want to see or talk to any more. I hate the my pain. I can’t imagine how I felt before the pain started almost two years ago.

I went for a short walk the other day by myself to start to exercise and my sciatica came back, my pain that first started in high school when I ran cross country and complained to my coach and my dad and other team mates of a pain in my hip or butt that prevents me from running faster. When I started to run I loved it. But when the pain came I grew to hate it, the pain and the running. I felt that no one believed me or took it seriously that I was in pain, that I was hurting and had a medical condition that needed treating. The only solution I found was to quit.

I have been bothered by my sciatica off and on for the rest of my life not knowing truly what it was until the pain started in my left shoulder and arm and had an operation to fix it. The research I did about chronic pain and spinal surgery and explained the pain that I have been feeling in my hipbutt that no one took seriously. Sometimes I feel that no one takes seriously the pain I have in my shoulder and arm, that I should get over it, that I should take less drugs, that I need to stop hating the pain and change my relationship to it, that I should stop trying to obliterate it and learn to live with it, that it’s never going to go away like my asthma.

Sometimes I try to imagine what it would be like to be pain free and I get scared of leaving behind the medications. What pain are they also treating that I’m denying to myself, but I’m afraid to feel?

http://indianapolis.craigslist.org/com/2408743964.html
Now Located: http://www.homeopape.com/files/Banksy_6_(2408743964).html

Michael Fisher
05/15/2011

Just like cities, subdivisions are living things that grow get sick die or recover. In a dying subdivision there are empty houses with stickers on window and worn For Sale signs in the yard that have become part of the landscape. They are the cancer the sickness of the organism. Others are empty with overgrown lawns no For Sale sign like they have given up on life. Desperate For Rent signs on some. Houses with immaculate lawns fight in the disease next to houses that haven’t been cared for in months. A half burned down house in a vain attempt to burn out the cancer still half burnt as a monumentwarning to others contemplating the same cure. Forgotten flowers side by side with dandelions clover. Unkempt landscaping that needs combed like the beard of a man who has given up in the despair of depression. Loveless forlorn like an ancient abandoned houses you see in the centermiddle of a farmers field waiting for the final act of destruction to end their pain.

http://indianapolis.craigslist.org/reb/2391197001.html
Now Located: http://www.homeopape.com/files/Banksy_5_(2391197001).html

Michael Fisher
05/19/2011

Amy, I don’t know why the memory of when I heard about your suicide is still so so vivid after almost thirty years. I was on a school bus on the way to school on a country road when the fields went on for miles with the occasional clump of trees and graveyards. On the radio that played for everyone to listen to I heard that you had committed suicide in your dorm at Ball State in a bath tub by slitting your wrists. I felt so sad that you had come to a point in your life where you felt that it wasn’t worth trying anymore. I wanted to be your friend, your boyfriend and to take care of you and make you happy so that you didn’t want to die. Really I really hardly knew you, you were the friend of my babysitter who visited my house a few times and we visited your house. I remember sitting in your living room with you sitting on the floor by the TV, the Rod Stewart video “Infatuation” playing. You were so happy. I wanted so bad to be your boyfriend then. You were so cute with your curly blond hair tight against your head. I knew it was silly; I was too young. But I still wanted it to be true. Other memories of you are fuzzy now and I try to hold onto what I can so that you can still be alive in my memory.

I have driven by the house you and your family lived in a few times and I think your family has moved since you died. I wanted to talk to my old babysitter about you when you died but I never got the courage to at least tell her I’m sorry. I heard from somewhere or imagined that you felt guilty about her suicide, that you’d had a falling out and stopped being her friend before she died. I’ve always thought that something must have been really wrong with Amy’s mental health that caused her to alienate her friends and then commit suicide but I’m sure that I don’t know the whole or even a small portion of the story, the facts. I have created a story in my mind to fill in the gaps and the questions I had. Amy, I miss you and I would have done anything to prevent you from committing suicide. You’re a bright star burning brightly for such a short time and it’s a waste that it couldn’t have burnt longer, brighter. I hope to meet you again someday and talk to you and get to know you and understand what happened. And that’s all I want. To get to know you.

http://muncie.craigslist.org/mis/2408646304.html
Now Located: http://www.homeopape.com/files/Banksy_4_(2408646304).html

Michael Fisher
05/14/2011

The Banksy Tapes were inspired by several things hitting my brain at the same time:

1. street art and Banksy (http://www.banksy.co.uk/)
2. an article I stumbled across: Anonymous Craigslist Letter to Dead Girlfriend — Kleenex Required
3. the desire need to write again

The title comes from obviously the street artist and a cd called The Faust Tapes which is an album consisting org several smaller tracks that aren’t fully developed songs pieced together into one cd.

They are all numbered and sometimes a story is developed out of them so there may be missing numbers in the sequence. It will take longer to develop the story so it will be posted later out of sequence and possibly separately. I haven’t decided yet about it. The piece starts out as a small writing exercise to sharpen my skills, to practice and to help motivate me to write because the length is short. I have gotten behind on posting these to the blog so there is a bit of a backlog.

The Bansky part of the idea was to post these in a public Internet spot for users to view there and not only on my blog. I started out using Craigslist to display them and I’m not sure what the plan is going forward. I will include a link to the post if it is still live or a link to the post when it was live.

I am embarrassed that I haven’t followed through with more blog posting. I got stuck on how I should post the older complete fiction stories. I’m going to start with my newest set of writing and pull the other stuff in later.

I also have been unemployed and have devoting time to look for a new job plus some other significant person business has taken up the rest of my time, leave very little time to write or blog. Be patient and we’ll see how it goes from here.

I have been working on moving my blog to WordPress because there were issues trying to connect to the old database where all my content is. I had been thinking about moving to WordPress for awhile now because of my unhappiness with the old software (BlogEngine.NET) which became time consuming to make code changes in and there wasn’t much support for it and some features weren’t there. I intended to use a .NET blog engine so that I could code pages to extend, change or write new things but I never found the time so I thought I should just go with the best and the proven engine, WordPress.

Please forgive a lot of the look and design of the blog. I’ve not found another theme yet to use. And I used Go Daddy’s “”free site”" which I didn’t know would come with the Go Daddy ad on the top of every page. Once I get this rolling I’ll put much more content in here and change the theme.