fff #7 - home coming

“Good morning, this is Cheri” I said.

“Cheri, what’s your location?” he said.

“I’m just coming out of the canyon.” I said grimacing, “Hi Jimmy, how are you this morning?”

“Get that look off your face, I can feel that look.” he said.

“You know how much I hate to bother you so early and all, but Sal wants you to go by Louis’ to see if he’s home.” he said. “He didn’t come in last night and Sal’s getting pissed.

“Why can’t someone else go this time?” I questioned, “I’m on the other side of town and I’m late for a nail appointment.”

“You gotta go cause Sal said so!” Jimmy said in that surly voice he uses when he is irritated. “Sal knows that Louis trusts you enough to let you in.” calming a bit, “Sal wants you find out if he’s holding out on him.”

“I’ll only do it if you give me a shadow and a couple of days off.” I said reluctantly as if I had room to negotiate, “this is a two person job, Jimmy.”

As he was hanging up the phone he murmured; “Just get over there, will ya?”

On the ride across town I began to ponder;

“I’m becoming wary of this family life. I only wanted to do a couple of small jobs to get a new car and other objects that I wanted. Didn’t need them, wanted them. That kind of thinking is what got me where I am now. It beats sitting at a desk all day working on a job that takes half a year. These jobs I do now last usually only a couple of minutes. Destroying all in one heartbeat what it has taken them all their lives to create. I would guess all those that met their fate with me probably had it coming. Why else would they send me if that wasn’t the case?”

“apparently I will be going in solo again, those bastards!” I thought as I drove around louis’ driveway. I hiked up my skirt to put my nickel plated friend in the band of my stocking. The new heated mother of pearl grips I bought for her keep her from cooling my thigh. I adjusted my skirt and got out of the car. Louis was waiting for me behind a pillar near the front door.

“Fancy getting a visit from you, Cheri, and so early in the day too.” Louis said with a smirk.

“If I had the choice you would have remained alone this morning.” I said offering him my hand.

We went into the house to the drawing room to continue our conversation.

“Shall I assume Sal sent you to visit me?” he asked; “because when you come for a social visit you usually call ahead.”

“Jimmy asked me for Sal to come visit you and ask if you were clear and when you were coming in.” I explained.

“I decided I wasn’t coming in, last night, and every last night of my life.” He said as if it was a choice.

“Louis don’t you think you should talk to Sal before you go making decisions on your own?” I coaxed; “you know how Sal likes to know what’s going on with his family. You know how he gets when you go out and you don’t come back in.”

“Shit-he’s getting nervous, where’s my shadow? I never should have come in alone” I thought.

Louis just stood there stoically behind his marble desk.

“Why don’t we just take a ride over to see Sal?” I pushed, “we’ll just tell him you were ill.”

Louis pulled a revolver out of his desk drawer and pointed it at me from across the desk.

“I’m not going anywhere” he asserted as the sun’s reflection on the barrel blinded me.

My phone began to ring and he motioned for me to answer it.

“It’s probably Sal.” He said.

Somehow retaining my composure, I put the phone to my ear and the only word the voice on the phone said was:

“Duck.”

I immediately fell to the floor as if my body suddenly had no skeleton. I heard a pane in the window behind me shatter as if it were a hundred miles away. I secured my nickel plated savior out of my stocking and peered out the window to see if I could find my shadow. She gave me the all clear from the roof of the pool house, and I went around the desk to check on Louis.

“I don’t care if I was here when he got it, but I’m glad I didn’t have to do it this time.” I thought; “ugh, and with these nails.”

fff #6 - Of Scourge(s)

Of Scourge(s)

I’m not sure why I didn’t notice it sooner. I had been told by others that it eventually becomes personal. “What is that supposed to mean?” It didn’t matter how many times I had heard it, I wasn’t able then to grasp the ultimate meaning of what they tried to tell me.

I assume that I was in denial at first, after all who wants to acknowledge head-on the coming of the end of it all? I mean it took me until the third one to recognize it wasn’t just coincidence, as if the blinders I was wearing were able to render the pachyderm standing by the window invisible. It took a while afterwards to get over the false feeling of consolation, of being hoodwinked, that it was pink instead of white. While battling for victory over the third one, I had much time to contemplate the technicalities of fate. In the end it was just a diversion of the mind exquisitely protracted by the sickness to keep me from addressing the underlying affliction.

Some lessons were hard learned, and who would have guessed that breeding was the one thing that would remain as the only advantageous function? If I remember correctly, it was during the ill conceived pregnancy ban around the time of the first one that I suffered a serious lapse of judgment. I was so attached to worldly things, a candy apple red jag to be more specific, when they began offering big beans for ovaries. It stung when the fuel stopped flowing, a useless pile of steel rubber and glass couldn’t even begin to make me whole again. Anyway I can’t imagine it would help my case to carry another doomed life in my belly, in any case it would just slow me down. Is it being materialistic to want a child? Try not to… Functional footwear would have been a worthwhile investment, or at least flatter shoes would have been best. To think I used to get upset when I stepped on a piece of gum on the sidewalk, now I can’t walk two meters without having a skull cave in under the metallic pressure of my stiletto. Although they are far from ideal, they have served in their purpose on occasion.

This business of the end sure does force one into a mode of extreme flexibility to enable rapid radical adaptation to the presented circumstances. Intuition is and always will be the greatest attribute of the greatest survivors. Following one’s instinctual impulses most of the time makes the narrow difference in either achieving a bittersweet victory or becoming like the rest that just couldn’t cut it. After witnessing such things that would make the average person go stark raving mad, I took lots of concentration just to not think about the carnal imagery, much less to be able clear the mind. I was taught early on that having an empty head is the best cerebral state to enable one to receive and purely interpret the impulse. Only then can one’s response be swiftly formulated and executed.

Communication amongst the survivors has become a harrowing ordeal ever since they figured out that thought energy concentration was a factor in the intensity. The sledge hammer of irony crushed the collective spirit when we found that exactly what we need are united masses, but get more than three people together and you may as well be standing beside the cold stone slab that proudly holds your name inscribed. True, it had become easier to keep separation limits in order, since we were in ever decreasing numbers. I have not yet been able to come by the information about how many were still about making trouble for inevitable void. Would it really help if I knew?

I was lucky to come by the information before all this that metaphysics was the groove. It was a bit of work, but I am tending to think that the practice has carried me this far. Imagine the disappointment in the fidels when the ancient texts of monotheism were proved beyond a doubt to be the insidious joke of a well educated roman scholar called the “panther”. There’s nothing like getting the berber pulled right out from under your feet to take the aggression out of fighting. They seemed to perish simultaneously as if they were all in the same fold. That was the fifth one, I think, try not to… The spontaneous loss of life in numbers made for a messy time indeed. They thought they had the copyright on Armageddon, fools, really.

It doesn’t seem to matter how much I suppress them, there are still the infantile queries that always seem to bubble to the surface at the absolute worst time. It is as if their buoyancy was infused by the briny aftertaste of the deep dread often accompanied by the proximity of the void. We came to call “it” the void for lack of adequate reliable data, and the rigormortified witnesses tend toward silence on the matter. No one is even sure if there is an end or how close you come at any given time. I have found it is best not to trifle myself with such useless thought, and it is better to keep moving. But it leaves me never totally. Which brings me round to the beginning.

It was the eighth deadly scourge, yes, indeed the eighth. I didn’t need that lull in between after the seventh, thanks. Let’s just move it right along, no it can’t be, that’s what those bastards meant? I imagined it would be something out of my nightmares, since they have free reign over it all it seems. C’mon… This one is going to be a cinch. How difficult can it be to spend an indefinite amount of time with a version of myself sitting across from me at the table? She is very inquisitive, how did they get my mind that empty? Maybe that intellectual copyright did prove fruitful? I have been trying for years without significant result. I am slowly realizing that every childhood story and every anecdote increases her knowledge of me, and consequently herself, or me? I feel like a cloud emptying my precious moisture onto her thirsty palate, with every gust I diminish ever further while she only grows stronger, furtively pressing on with the pestilent inquisition. I can no longer discern my smoke like core from her freshly ascertained charm. Try not to…

*************************

I really enjoyed writing this one. Just let it carry me where it wanted to go. Think it may be too raw to post, but I don’t have sufficient time left to come back to it. I feel like I have removed that creative obstruction. Now on to sewing and making dinner.

TAG-02-03

I guess I should try to write something today. Since I am falling apart quickly it seems. The surgery went well yesterday. The surgeon came for his rounds late in the afternoon with the interns. I had thought after surgery that he had not done any work on my urethra because I didn’t find the belly catheter, but rather just the normal urethral one. Seeing that type of catheter I assumed he didn’t decide to work on it, but when he came for his rounds, he mentioned that he had shortened the urethra and reduced the swell bulb somewhat, and decided to try to use the urethral catheter with the disadvantage being extra bleeding.

I awoke in the recovery room at 9:50 am with an IV in my arm and a catheter in my urethra. They nurses in the recovery asked me if I had any pain, I replied yes, and immediately was administered pain medicine through the IV. I felt nice and relaxed, like I was floating. I was doing well without any nausea or any other complications, except for a bit of pressure in my bladder. I had been in surgery for an hour and a half roughly. This time they were relatively careful about the bandages that they used on my very sensitive skin. The anesthesiologist said afterwards that I needed a bit more than normal to keep me under, although I don’t remember a thing about it. He was a very nice man with good bedside manner and handsome to boot.

I find it weird that when the surgeon goes through on his rounds he tends to speak with his interns and not directly to me the patient, except to ask if I had any pain. When he started to discuss with the interns about what he had done with my genitals, I asked for his confirmation that he had shortened my urethra. He also told me that he did the mons pubis plastic and in the end, removed almost no tissue from my labia. He said that he had stretched them, distributing them evenly between top and bottom and therefore not needing to remove anything. I am anxious to see what he has done. I think I was a bit open at the bottom more than normal, and I wonder if it was from when I stupidly decided to climb stairs here in the hospital and ripped a stitch or two. I was hoping to see it today, but I still have a little bit of residual bleeding, I assume coming from the urethra. The doc said that was the price to pay for not having the belly catheter. I will see if it was worth it or not. I remember the belly catheter was no fun.

I slept most of the afternoon off and on because of the lasting effects of the anesthesia and the pain medication. It was so easy to drift in and out of sleep. I was supposed to get the normal lunch, but the nurse went to check to see if I was allowed to eat and probably got sidetracked and *poof* I went hungry. I slept a lot so I didn’t notice so much, until I awoke and the rest of my roommates were eating their dinner. I almost lost it, but then the nurse came and asked me if I wanted to eat dinner, to which I replied “affirmative”. They also still had my lunch somewhere and I had them heat it up and bring it to me. I ate both in one sitting.

Sleeping was not so easy and I drifted in and out. When I awoke I began to cry for no discernable reason. Day 3. I ate breakfast and felt a bit better and then checked email and read a bit. I started watching the film coralline and then my friend and work colleague Helmut came to visit with me. He brought me diverse fruits and juice and snacks. He stayed for a few hours which helped elevate my mood quite a bit. The whole time I had been also chatting and video calling with my sisters and the nun0 with skype.

TAG-01

I began my stay in the hospital today. The first day for a planned operation is really boring. They just poke about your person and stick various needles in your flesh. I am again in a room with three other women. I tried to reserve a double room ahead of time, but they are so full that I am not able to get into a double right away. Somehow I doubt I will be here long enough until a double opens up. I am with two younger and one older woman. One of the younger ones has been puking all day long, and bitching about the docs constantly. She has finally fallen asleep and I hope she stays that way all night. I am trying to pass the time by chatting on skype with the nun0. I have internet access this time, so I am hoping to be able to blog as much as possible to make this ordeal go by as quickly as possible. I went through hell last time I was here, so I know what to expect and I hope with this knowledge it will be a bit easier this time. Internet access is free, but I have to go to the front desk every 24 hours to renew it. After surgery I am not sure how long it will take before I am on my feet again, so I may have to wait until Saturday to surface again online.

So on to nuts and bolts…if you don’t want to read the gory details, this is your last chance to tune out.

Some surgeons prefer a one step surgery, and others prefer to perform a two step procedure. Obviously in the one step procedure they re-arrange everything on one shot. With the two step, the first is more or less to “rough it in” which means to re-arrange the pieces leaving as much tissue as possible as reserve should complications occur. The second step is usually optional, often performed like in my case to make the neo-vagina look more aesthetically correct. I will be having a mons pubis plastic, labia majora reduction, and possibly having the urethra shortened. The mons pubis plastic will create the “venus mound” and also provide the clitoral hood to protect the ever so sensitive clitoris. As it is now my labia just form two vertical ridges of flesh without coming together at all above the clitoris. The labia majora are long enough to cover it most of the time, but they are long enough to make it look like I have given birth to four or five children. Hence the labia mjora reduction procedure. The labia minora and majora are formed using the scrotal tissue, since it is relatively the same as labial tissue. They leave them extra long to facilitate skin grafting should some of the vaginal tissue die off post operative. I was lucky to have no problems with healing. The shortening of the urethra will be decided during the surgery tomorrow morning. If it was a purely aesthetic problem, I would leave it as it is, but if it grows more I stand the chance of it peeking out of my shortened labia and therefore rubbing on my panties. And also when I am sexually aroused the tissue around it swells quite a bit and it looks like the stump of my penis coming out. It was a bit disturbing at first, but I am used to it now, after all it is a part of me. If I was with a male partner they would probably find it really disturbing, but otherwise since I don’t produce mucous there, there really is no other physical indication that I am aroused. That was really the only advantageous part of having it in the first place.

I was reading in my charts today the text description of my first surgery. The surgeon wrote that the bulb of spongiosum tissue at the base of my former member formerly known as my penis was abnormally large. They also found that my prostate is abnormally small. Funny my body is.

So now, a year later almost to the day, I am back here in the Markus Krankenhaus in Frankfurt-Ginnheim. Tomorrow’s surgery should be a cake walk compared to the first surgery. Having to stay immobile for five days really drove me nuts. Plus I was having withdrawals from nicotine and they wouldn’t administer my hormones either. I was really fucked at one point. I feel kind of bad about being such a baby last time. I am hoping things will go much better, since I am better prepared. Although I have no one here to help me this time, nun0 really held me together last time, I have lots of things to keep me occupied. I have lots of films on my laptop, lots of magazines, a couple of books, and sketching materials for designing some outfits. I was hoping to have internet access so that I can copy some pics from various pattern websites and make design boards with paint shop. I also have my external HD with me so that I can try to start sorting and editing my many scribblings that never made it on my blog. I have written so much that I have just kept for myself. Its time they see the light of day. I think I will have a chamomile tea and start watching a movie.

throw back

gotta get back to posting. it has been too long. these thoughts have for some time now been bouncing around inside my cranium. it's time to let them flow again. my mind and body have gone through some radical changes in the last couple of years. i rarely go back and read what i wrote several years ago. my life is thankfully much different now and i am relatively happy, despite the world falling apart all around us. i have successfully changed my blind consumption into aware consumption. i make an effort to eliminate all chemicals from my nutritional intake, and also limit my medication intake to only the hormones. i don't even take aspirin anymore, unless it is something seriously painful.

i don't watch tv here in germany so i don't know if it is the same, but i was disturbed by the prescription drug adverts in the states because of their somtimes graphic nature and the high frequency of airtime. for some of my family the television is as it was explained to me, background noise. tv wasn't forced on me when i was there, but two huge widescreens running all the time certainly gets and holds your attention easily. the nun kept having to draw my attention away from it. i became aware of it's power. and it becomes super disturbing to me to be bombarded with incessant adverts for medications. on my visit this particular theme took on a whole new dimension that needs to be reckoned with.

my theory about the onslaught of cancer is that the decisions that were made, i'm not sure when, to start putting certain additives in our food to benfit our health are actually partially what is killing us. the industrial farming and it's processed foods, the medications for every ailment, literally; are what is killing us. it was difiicult to find just plain bottled water in the fridge, since it was filled with cans of soda and modified water to make it better of course. why drink plain water when u can get a burst of energy with modified water. i purposely didn't punctuate that sentence with a question mark. air fresheners were another problem that i had. it disturbed me to be continually dosed with some sort of air sanitizer. the dispensers were in almost every living space. by the way my beer was in the fridge just to be fair. but seriously, it seems clear to me now that i can probably reduce my risk of cancer by eliminating chemicals as much as possible from my environment and diet. i need to quit smoking too. i understand that every drag is a many pages list of chemicals. i need desperately to stop it. it is an insidious addiction.

it seems so normal to me now to question, or at least think about and be aware, of what i buy. i like it when i can see something telling where a product was produced. partly based on the location, i make a decision on whether or not to buy it. it is disturbing to think about where things come from these days and i think most choose not to recognize it. it is a lot easier that way. i have decided to try to save myself from a manufactured death. you can decide for yourself. i have made my decision, and to me there isn't any other way.

fff #3 spatter

They never could get that right those two. Time and time again I tell them,”you’re standin’too close!” Do they listen? No, not on your last breath would they listen. It’s like they go into some kind of weird twin trance when they get that close. I ceased my accompaniment with those two long ago. I couldn’t bear to watch the certain destruction of such fine clothing. I often wonder why I picked those two, of all the others with great potential that were ripe for the picking. I tend to think it was because they share their mother’s charm. Their mother was always a doll, really classy and through it all never losing her composure, to never be less than a lady. I figured any kid of hers gotta be good. And loyal always. Those two are the most accurate I have ever employed. Their creativity sometimes in fulfilling a job is simply inspiring. Never in my day could I conceive of such improvisation. I think these days one, or two as it may be, must remain flexible to anticipate changes in routines, and to be able to communicate it in real time is certainly an advantage over what I had to contend with. Back then we had to rely on good old intuition and keeping your eyes peeled. Shadowing took a lot more skill and effort and much of the success was directly proportionate to the amount of finesse applied to the given task. I have seen some jobs that were at their end like a work of art, hell it was fine art in it’s own context I suppose. Poetic even sometimes. Nowadays there are even streaming video feeds from a pen in your shirt pocket. The technological advances almost make it like shooting fish in a barrel. And with the two of them on the spot, there is always an extra set of eyes on the look out for trouble. And with their clothes I honestly think they do it on purpose as if they have become bored with their chanel dresses that run me two grand every time. It is a bit of a shame about with their total disregard for couture. Ah, but the precision.

slacker

My lack of posting demonstrates my disinterest in ever becoming a serious writer. I just went looking back over the past two years' posts for the month of June. This same weekend last year I passed my 5th Kyu test in Aïkido. Tomorrow I will participate in a two hour seminar from 10 to 12 and then immediately following will be the testing again. I participated in the seminar today for two hours, the whole time spent sweating uncontrollably due to the humidity and the lingering effects of the cold I had this week. I had planned on being tested today, but it didn't happen because there were so many people from Mainz and elsewhere that wanted to test also.

The Sensei gives priority to the people that come from a distance so that they don't have to come back again tomorrow. I think after all was said and done, three of us from the dojo have to wait until tomorrow, out of about 20 that were tested. I was really impressed with the proficiency of the 1st Kyu's. At that level you have to know all of the techniques for every attack. I hope to become that good someday as well. I saw a lot of techniques in their performance that I had only seen in sessions on Sunday and wednesday evenings last summer.

I used to practice six days a week back then. I decided after my srs that I would be happy practicing three times a week. Although three days seemed to be enough, I noticed in practicing intensively in preparation for the test that I wasn't quite in the shape that I need to be in. I am going with my gf to the south of France for a week of Aïkido in late July. I want to be in top shape when I go there to practice. I have been thinking about how my body felt a year ago, and luckily it has greatly improved in flexibility and endurance. I remember having to sleep on my back with pillows under my knees to keep them bent because that was the position that was the least painful. I think that I had to do that the friday evening before the saturday testing so that I could sleep for the pain. I remember thinking that I overdid it and wouldn't make it to test. I don't have knee pain anymore, but I have been damaging my feet alot.

The problem with the feet is an ancient one, and I have finally decided to treat them myself. I have always had flat feet and in the past few years I have developed an occaisional burning pain in the third and fourth toes on my left foot. I went a little bit overboard with the high heels without any kind of forefoot padding. That led to an inflammation of the very same nerve that was causing the pain in my toes. The condition is Morton's Neuroma and was very painful at its worst. It feels a bit like walking over a long round stone under the ball of the foot.

I miss being able to wear my many pairs of heels. That is partly what drove me to search out the options for corrective insoles. I have been wearing them every day for two weeks and the difference is clear. The pain from the neuroma is almost gone and I think that if I can find the right padding, I can try wearing the heels again. But I am glad that my foot is healing on its own without the need for any medication or surgery. The old way of dealing with my condition was to remove the nerve surgically. I guess they do that in the teeth as well, but I can't imagine giving up feeling in two toes. I need to find the balance of footwear that enables my feet to stay healthy.

I have been practicing lots of Aïkido techniques that are performed in an upright kneeling position. This is obviously hard on the knees and the toes. I was able to maneuver better in the colder months of the year becasue my feet tended to be dryer and not "stick" to the mat. I wonder if I could try some powder or wear open footwear before parctice. I think though that with the amount that I sweat I will not find anything that will keep them dry. Part of the problem could be that my legs are just worn out from too much practice. I always try to knuckle down and make it through the suwari waza tecniques. There are a couple of people that I practice with that I feel like I am able to flow better with. I think in a couple of years that I will achieve the reveered hakama level, but that is just a milestone on the longer road to harmony with nature. I hope to be still practicing when I am old and gray.

Oh yeah the aquanun is coming to stay with me for the month of July! YaaaaaaaaaY! <3