CHRONIC PAIN....

'PAIN IS..GOD'S WAY OF TELLING YOU THAT YOU'RE NOT DEAD..YET!"
rough paraphrase from GEORGE CARLIN

aloha 2u,
i am on Facebook only becuz our kids regard e-mail as soooo last century,like me.
our friend THOMAS EQUALITY LEVITT is also on FB and a week or so back turned me on to the CHRONIC PAIN FORUM on FB,sigh.

so i have been thinking about Chronic Pain more than usual, which is usually a lot,so today while waiting to see my new kidney doc i was mentally reviewing what i know about Chronic Pain, now i know that SUBSTANCE P, how original, is one of the elements involved in Pain and your body becomes hypersensitive to it after prolonged exposure.
i know that Chronic Pain effects both personality and mood,usually for the worse. watching Dr.House on tv reminds me of this...maybe too much?
so exactly how long have i been in pain?

by now you know i have terabytes of organic memory so...my first clear memory is listening to my parents loudly fucking while i was imprisoned in my crib nearby. maybe 9 or 10 months old, before we moved to the projects.i vaguely remember trying to pet a rat thinking it was a cat,Mother intervened...so this was maybe 1948 when we moved into the Lincoln Projects, which had just opened in the middle of Harlem,are you taking notes Z Man?

contrary to popular opinion i was a rather quiet child,a late bloomer and slow to speak. the pediatrician said i was alert and inquisitive and not to worry, but my Mother did anyway.one afternoon i was playing with my dolls and Lone Ranger action figure,underneath the coffee table in our living room, while my Mother was ironing in the bedroom doorway nearby. i clearly recall standing up and walking to the bedroom and pointing at the light fixture..SEE LIGHT! sez i,not a question. stunned my Mother looked up and replied YES BABY, I SEE THE LIGHT. satisfied with her response i went back to my toys.

i watched a lot of tv, we might have been one of the first families to get one on our floor...SHARI LEWIS,PINKIE LEE,HOWDY DOODY, SKY KING, MY FRIEND FLICKA, BOZO THE CLOWN,BETTY BOOP & MAX FLEISCHER CARTOONS.its all kinda blurry until i got my first professional porrtait,a beaky Jewish guy with bad breath and long nose hairs put me atop the same coffee table.i was in a white short sleeve shirt and scratchy corduroy short pants with white sox and Buster Brown shoes ( i recall the photo and the event itself)..i was maybe three?
anyway i didn't like this guy or the too bright lights and keep kept demanding then weedling that i SMILE!
i didn't, the unsmiling pictures were in my Mother's treasure trove until my worthless ex Herpes Donar half -brother ruined them by his inaction.HUGE SIGH...

i often tell peeps that i was reading comix by age five but this can't be true, you see i had measles around age five which is when i started wearing glasses as nobody told my then young Mother that bright sunlight and tv were bad for measles juveniles SIGH. good healthcare was at a premium in Harlem for decades...
so between the photo session at three and getting fitted for glasses at five i have crystal clear memories of my Mother weeping outside my oxygen tent, one of the rare times i saw her weeping out of fear and sadness BUT NOT ANGER. i also have clear memories of reading comix inside the tent, Disney books,LIL GOLDEN BOOKS and when i devoured those BATMAN & SUPERMAN..Mother read to me at bedtime before this and i guess i picked it up as she explained the sounds et al...

so between three and five i had really bad pneumonia and was hospsitalized, the nurses told both my parents if i got it again i'd probably die, maybe she thot i couldn't hear them inside the tent or they thot i was sleeping, anyway i was out of hospital care about a WEEK OR TWO AND THAT'S WHEN I SAW MY mOTHER CRYING.( just ignore the caps ok?) so i didn't die but i had ASTHMA until puberty and spend many a nite being rushed to various ERs around Harlem, did not realize until recently that ASTHMA ATTACKS CAN BE FATAL! Mother used a common folk remedy of Vicks VapoRub with sugar and Chrsitian Bros Brandy when i had really bad congestion, if that didn't work then it was a taxi to the ER again.so amidst all this i went to pre -school in the Projects, in one of the short buildings basements, the projects came in two sizes 14 storys and 6 storys tall.liked the coloring well enuff but the alphabet drills were boring.

i remember on sundays, when my Dad wasn't drunk we'd got out and get a bag of newspapers, literally six or seven including many that have gone under now..THE DAILY NEWS,DAILY MIRROR,NY POST, NY TIMES, WORLD TELEGRAM & SUN, THE HERALD TRIBUNE.i thot everybody did this,silly me. then my DAD would make waffles, prepare breakfast in bed for Mother and make Sunday Dinner. later we'd listen to gospel music and church music on the two black radio stations and i'd drw pictures from the comic pages, or attempt to, on the wrapping paper the clean shirts came in,later Mother got me scratch pads from the new Woolworths and often complained about me going thru them so fast...

i have class photos of me in grades one thru JHS, i am wearing glasses and i was bored out of my mind. who were these Dick & Jane mooks and where was Batman and The Joker?  when you have Asthma it feels like you are suffocating in your own phlegm,becuz you are...so my lungs hurt everyday from about four until i expanded my lung capacity via martial arts around 12.wonder exactly how much PAIN changed me over a lifetime?if you've ever seen a DIRTY HARRY film you know the kinda guy i was, headstrong cynical sarcastic and unforgiving,i burned out on friends easily..still do.
IT IS NOTHING SHORT OF A MIRACLE THAT SOUL MATE AND I ARE STILL TOGETHER AFTER ALL THESE YEARS! (caps intentional this time)

THIS IS not THE KIND OF LIFE I WOULD RECOMMEND TO ANYONE UNLESS YOU ARE strong willed AND WANT TO HAVE A cLEAR cONSCIENCE, lsd HELPED MY FIND MY TRUE pATH..THAT AND TAXI-DRIVING...maybe i guess the pain helped too, i dunno.

BTW went from six foot four and a half, on my draft card recently unearthed, to six feet even after a ditzy older blonde in a Buick T- boned the tiny Corvair i was riding in, was 21 in the summer of 1968 and two months in Los Angeles. WELCOME TO L.A. BAM!

and now,
back to our regularly scheduled misery...
namaste
mega