General Sherman, Brazilian waxing, and Settling Down - getting ready to drink take two

“I remember awakening one morning and finding everything smeared with the color of forgotten love.”
– Charles Bukowski

I’m talking to my friends about getting plastered this weekend (check out this post to see what I’m talking bout), I’m asking  and trying to ascertain, how fucked up I am going to get, should I put bail money aside, should I take the day Monday? Bring a first aid kit, alert my car service friends. It seems that now I am the wildest of the bunch, the former two wild men in line before me have calmed down considerably.  Plus not all the old posse could make it, and there will be new guys there related to the bride.

Ain’t this some sad shit ?!?! Although central booking sucks, I cannot give my uncensored marital advise or share much about the stages of marriage behind the scenes in front of the brides family….. I had a host of foul hand gestures prepared. (Never married legally but had a domestic partner situation for 7-8 years we separated amiably).

It’s weird to have been settled down before when everyone was out and on the prowl and now be free when everyone is tied down. What is it like being single, no kids, drug and disease free, still liking long walks on beaches littered with hypodermic needles, flagrantly used condoms and flotsam from a variety of Pacific Rimmed earthquakes at 30 versus 20 something ?- Uhm I’m more careful where I step figuratively and literally though I still remain quite the romantic as you can see from the imagery of that scene.

After I got out my relationship I wanted to lay waste to snatch-dom (I have no idea the right word that corresponds to the sub-population of single females in the world that I can get along with) like General Sherman did Georgia.

He served as a General in the Union Army during the American Civil War. He was an outstanding military strategist  and the first modern day general.

But what I like about him was his complete destruction of the the places he fought. Total destruction to break the psychological ability of the confederate states to wage war. It was called the  “scorched earth” policies, or as I like to call it ” Brazilian Bikini waxing policies”.

<tangent> BTW normally ‘red’ and ‘inflamed’ generally are the symptoms of infection or inflammation, I think the increasing rates of sexless marriages are because of the  increased popularity of waxing. After  enough waxing, I imagine it’s numb enough and feels the same as punching 9lbs of ground meat in an 8 lbs bag – cold, unusually form fitting, and a bit greasy. </tangent> [That was totally inappropriate nasty and leaves a bad image in my mind].

Luckily before I departed on my mission, my training as a Christian gentleman and all those years of Catholic schooling came back, and I relinquished those plans. Well not really, basically deep down inside underneath the sordid commentary, I am an environmentalist. I chose inaction and inertia – ironically a disease most plants suffer from. No matter how loud the chainsaw or the lawn mower they never move.

No Locomotion

“The street to my left was backed up with traffic and I watched the people waiting patiently in the cars. There was almost always a man and a woman, staring straight ahead, not talking. It was, finally, for everyone, a matter of waiting. You waited and you waited – for the hospital, the doctor, the plumber, the madhouse, the jail, papa death himself. First the signal was red,then the signal was green. The citizens of he world ate food and watched T.V. and worried about their jobs or their lack of same, while they waited.”

That quote reminds me of plants. In the realm of biology one of the seven qualities of living things is movement, locomotion. There is an inner and outer locomotion: the ability of moving substances from one part of their body to another and of course flying walking or putz’ing around.

I always wonder how much are we really living, we move around definitely physically but I wonder looking at things in our hearts are ever stirred to do something more than wait for the promise of things to come?

And usually when you start asking yourself these questions and the other more serious one’s that come with it, it starts to be apparent that it is time to settle, well perhaps once again for me.

*** The damage done by Sherman was almost entirely limited to the destruction of property. Though exact figures are not available, the loss of civilian life appears to have been very small. Consuming supplies, wrecking infrastructure, and undermining morale were Sherman’s stated goals, and several of his Southern contemporaries noted this and commented on it. He is still a controversial figure.

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