Pittapatta

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In the past I've written that I don't listen to recorded music anymore, and in general that's true. I deliberately don't listen to recorded music, but I don't avoid going to places where it will be at in order to avoid exposing myself to it at any cost. I'm not against recorded music for anybody who likes listening.

Many people seem to listen to other people's music because they have none of their own music to record or play live or to amuse themselves when they're alone. I play, sing, and compose my own music. Mostly always alone. Often in real time. I make it up as I go along, but for a specific reason. I don't wanna spend my own life trying to be somebody else or practice singing other people songs using another person's voice.

Maybe that's why I spend so much time alone. I need time alone in order to imitate and mimic who I-think-I-am-is as a model, and I don't look in a mirror to do it. It's actually difficult for me to claim I do model myself for imitating and making myself into who I think I am is. When I reflect on what I've done it's always about a while back, and I'm not that any more.

Singing has always been my favorite was to express myself musically. I always know where I am with myself in the midst of singing. Not composed songs from the past, but directing what is emerging from my body in real time when I am is doing it. I'm doing it now as I write, and there is a reason for it.

When I sing the vowels it takes some time to place the sound from my vocal cords in the place in my head where I can observe the ongoing vibration as it happens. This morning I'm doing it in order to hear the beat of my heart as a sort of stethoscope.

Not long after I take the prescription drugs and over-the-counter supplements I shove joyously into my gaping maw I get a hollow feeling in my chest and a irregular vibration that makes me wonder if my heart beat is fibrillating. It kind of scares me a little, but the rest of my body keeps on keeping on as if nothing is irregular. So, I start humming at a low frequency, and then slow it down until my heartbeat interferes with the sound production. In that way, I can hear the regularity of my real heartbeat... thump, thump, thump,,.. and that calms me down.

Sometime I have two heartbeats. One slow and sonorous, and the other more pittapatta. Something about the pills I take cause some sort of arrhythmic swing that brings my attention to it, mostly by the way it interferes with my regular breathing. Then, I start to consciously regulate my breath and listen for the deep regular beat via the chanting method I described above, and eventually the regular order of things falls into place.

Last Saturday my brother came over in the afternoon and asked me if I wanted to go walking. We usually do this at night, but since his wife was outta town to go listen to some Dali Lama oriented people lecture on Buddhism, he suggested we do our walk early. That was fine with me, and I took time to put on my hiking boots, and off we went.

There was still some snow on the path we usually take that hid out in the shadow the pine trees because it still had the ice on top of it. I slipped on the ice and fell flat of my back with my head taking a hard blow and a light concussion. I struggled to get up, but was totally disoriented, and my brother had to catch me under my arms to keep me from falling again.

He seemed quite worried about me because my language wasn't making any sense to him, but after he had helped me stay on my feet for another hundred yards or so I demanded he let go of me so I could wobble a little. I felt as though I could get my bearings with the hands-on help he offered. He let go, and I was able to straighten up and proceed, but not as if nothing had happened.

We walk a circle that passes both our houses at some point, and when we got near my house I decided to go inside. My brother described for me what happened, but I had no memory of what either of us said after I slipped and fell. When I got home I wanted to take a nap in the hope that might clarify my thoughts about, but I had heard that when you have a concussion you shouldn't sleep for a while, and so I just let myself go into a contemplative coma for a while without actually losing consciousness.

After a couple of hours I returned to the world of the living with a humongous desire for chocolate. I walked around a little to see if I was still dizzy, I wasn't, so I drove to the store and bought some chocolate-covered peanuts, and they made me feel much better, at least physically.

Late that night my brother came over and we walked nearly four miles and that was pleasing to me as an indicator that I was at least physically okay. Mentally, I seem to blurt things out in a hurried fashion, as if to get what I have to say out of my mouth before I forgot what I meant to say.

The weather outside requires only one word from my lexicon to express fully how it strikes me. Dank. Sure, it's cloudy, and not really cold temperature-wise, but the humidity penetrates the denim jeans I'm wearing and causes the chilly temperatures to cling to my body as if looking for a place to hide inside my right pant leg.

Slipping on the ice and falling flat on my back reminds me of falling out of a chinaberry tree when I was around ten years old. What was similar was the fact that both times I landed flat on my back, and my head took a severe blow. It was probably more damaging when that limb broke and I hit the ground from 8-10 feet up. Boom! Time seemed suspended for a while. I thought I was dead. Something probably did die, both falls.

My brother described what happened after I slipped and fell. Slipping and falling was apparently the last events that made sense to me for a good long while. Even right now I don't remember what he told me I did. Either that or I don't want to write about it. He said I acted nuttier than usual and thought to call for an ambulance, but I wouldn't let him.

Why would I wanna be saved? I'm an old person. I've watched a lotta people die that I was emotionally invested in. Either that or they might as well be dead. I'm dead to them. There are a number of people who might be tickled to death if I passed on. Hell, I'd be tickled to death if I passed on. Why would I wanna live in unpleasant circumstances for an interminable length of time when it just pissed people off to have to care for me?

In all good conscience, how could I allow that happen? Do you think I have no dignity or respect for the significant others in my life such that I would selfishly refuse to die in some timely fashion?

True, they abandoned me to my hateful self and traveled a long way to feel safe in order to perch like ghouls in the skeletal remains of the tree of life and wait for me to croak. The least I can do is accommodate them by not waiting until they're too old and to worn out by life to display a modicum of false mourning for the photo ops. '-)

I can see in my imagination the response my first wife might trot out upon finally hearing of my demise. Her big wide eyes might fly open in studied appreciation, then deliberately turn upward in total adoration to thank God for answering her prayer. "Gone at last! Gone at last! Great God Almighty! He is gone at last."

Imagination is all I have left of this woman, if she's still alive. When I do see her in my mind's eye she is always the lovely young woman I tricked into marrying me. If God was fair to women he would have made my unworthiness more apparent to innocent young girls.

I did see her once when she was in her late forties or early fifties, I think, and her peaches and cream, translucent white skin, had burst into a network of tiny star-like wrinkles. As they should have, not to be mourned. She looked great even as an older woman.

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