CHRONIC PAIN- WYATT EARP

aloha,
i feel like used food, again.

CHRONIC PAIN
i have chronic pain which changes everything.i have been in chronic pain MOST OF MY LIFE, the only thing that changes is the intensity.
i rarely have GOOD DAYS, one day this year (i think) i had nearly two hours of NON PAIN,nothing hurt anywhere! maybe my nerves were all exhausted???
i lay there and savored the moment (as Buddha taught us) until it ended.i am on two or three Chronic Pain listservs but if they're not WHINING about this or that they show a doglike devotion to DOCTORS AS GOD or remind me of long forgotten aches.

how do i cope?
chocolate,violent or bizarre TV,writing,local sightseeing,internet porn, weirdness,meditation and 'being in the moment'.anything that gets me Outside the Pain.despite the classes and the lessons and years of practice,sometimes when i empty my mind PAIN RUSHS IN! oh my.

DOC & ME
can i tell you a recent discovery?
when i was a child and coping with one lung and potentially fatal asthma attacks i needed a hero when my father died.i had Batman and Sherlock Holmes but i need a real person-not Hannibal,not Alexander the Great but Doc Holliday (sp?) of OK Corral fame.Doc was a mild mannered Baltimore dentist who was given a death senntece due to TB and went West where he lived every moment until he died in bed.his last words are reportedly "This is funny."-the dying in bed part.
one of the uses of the cowboy bandana was the so called Handkerchief Fight,usually in a bar one cowboy would hold out his bandana and the crazy opponent would take the other end then start shooting, guns were not terribly accurate in those days but at that range somebody usually died.( Tombstone with Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer is the most historically accurate, the Kevin Costner version is stupid trash) anyway for years i tried to live like Doc even Zen Buddhism (which i discovered in LA after repeated viewings of Seven Samurai) was a perfect fit for this Accept Death philosophy but i found this made me a sociopath magnet,i haven't even mentioned Golden Boy at a hotel where i worked who was one of the rare few to realize that i saw thru the BS and respected that.he was later arrested for massive cocaine sales from another hotel.this was after he was caught and fired for being in the Big Boss' office with drugs and two naked hookers one night wen the BB came back unexpectedly from the Opera.i smirked at the news.

anyway, one day i had an epiphany.i was NOT DOC BUT WYATT,the normal gunfighter who died of old age in San Francisco while happily married and who is buried in Colma (nr Daly City)-see/rent Tombstone for details.it changed nothing except my perception of events.

PAIN & LOSS
chronic pain has made me patient and less dangerous,despite the abusive mindset and events of growing up in the ghetto.one of my best friends as a child had his dad move the family from Harlem to Long Island,where he and his sister became heroin addicts.there was something on NPR recently talking aout the absurd rate of failure among ghetto youth.my cohort in the projects and at school sacrificed their futures in Viet Nam (hoping for a way out) or to the heroin habits they brought home with them-which my mother wrote to me in ghastly detail."Remember Bobby Atkins in 10B,he died-" my mother's letters were Bad Juju,i used to put them on a bookcase until i was strong enough to read them.
say of the 50 or so kids i hung with one is a cop and i am in California and most of the others are dead by now.when Korak The Killer's buddy John D.(Viet Combat Vets) created the moveable Wall (authorized Nam war memorial mobile replica) i stood there perplexed at a visit in the San Jose Rose Garden.
i only knew everybody by their nicknames not their real names or even last names.it was heartbreaking and i cried for them.
basta y basta.

in other news,
my Ex who is a big fan of this blog has requested her Nom de Blog be GriZelda.granted,my Ex GriZelda.
sounds like i married a tattooed witch from Wicked or something huh?
thanks to her, G Man,Z man,unmaid,Paul and Doug for their encouragement.
semper gumby
mega