White houses showing iridescent blue fangs of frozen water that linger long
into the bleakness of a frosty January dusk,
that sets upon my windowpane ‘dead on arrival’
This bleak and frigid season chills me to the inner core,
the brittle bones,
the essence of my iced heart that’s adamantly out of touch with the emotional temperature of the season.

White, snow, mountains, drifts, deep thoughts of Fahrenheit and Celsius,
the twin sons of different mothers,
make the world a colder place depending on the shifting of the wind . . .

. . . chill, skid, the crunching of metal, slide, scrape, snowblow in an effort to jumpstart
an anti-freezing world that has no gloves anymore,
a world that has no answers, too many questions and one too many December’s
on a calendar that never freezes, is never late on a bill and continues on,
damn the frozen torpedoes and the godforsaken overpaid weatherman

White houses sport melting teeth of ice, dripping endlessly into the foundations of
a winter that was, that seemingly had no ending, no rhyme, no reason, no porpoise.
Flipper.
Flipping this middle finger.
Enough already.
Flip this world upside down to Spring, for Christ’s sake.
Sometime soon, and . . .
Make the white houses finally go away.

~m

It has been a crazy few months around here (hence, the reposts)
and I am still
desperately trying to get caught up and back to square #42.
By the time I reach ‘Square #1‘  it might be the name of a new high fiber breakfast cereal
that enables you to ‘pass’ wicker furniture out your keester like soft butter.
That said, thanks to all that have continued to stop by.
I have come to a turning point here at Smoke & Mirrors and can’t quite figure
out how to navigate the current seas. (hence, the current rambling post)

My original intention was for this place to be a ‘cyberpad’ to collect my many thoughts and
emotions as I watched both of my parents battle Alzheimer’s.
It was just that and so much more, truth be told.
I am still estimating the casualties physically and emotionally but have temporarily closed the door.
I will re-open said door at some point but for now it’s off limits as I’m still too close to it.
The Alzheimer monster is never far away though as it currently sinks its sharp teeth
into the life of my father-in-law.
This time things feel different if only because I know exactly what to expect.
It doesn’t make it any easier to watch the scenario play out but I’ve learned where
to store the emotional carnage.
I still fully expect to have the occasional  ‘son of a bitch, I hate this disease’ day but this time at least
I’ll be prepared.
Maybe even overqualified, IMHO.

I am still sorting out in my head the three weeks we spent with Maureen and Mark.
I have no idea where to even start;
“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents–
except at occasional intervals,
when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets . . . “
Nope.
That would never do.
Check out the Wordle at the top of this post.
It is a very good rendition of not only my current state of mind but of three most incredible weeks of my life.
And it may explain just how crazy things have been around here.
Pamela and I now have our eyes solidly set on a 2 week vacation next July.
My boss gave me a thumbs up today on an extended sojourn to Australia so the planning can now begin.
As far as the blog is concerned, for now I’ll just play it by ear.
Lord knows as a musician I’m used to that . . .

I StumbledUpon a short article one night that stopped me in my tracks.
It was titled, “If your blog disappeared, who would miss it?”
I thought about the question for a good long time and came to the conclusion that, yeah,
there are many people that would miss it.
I do hope I’m right.
I am no egomaniac but I do feel that some folks would, yours truly being one.
I’ve been blogging now for almost five years with no foreseeable end in sight.
It’s been the reaction to my words and thoughts that’s kept me going strong for 5, to be honest.
Some comments I’ve received are seemingly deeper than the posts I’ve written.
It would seem that I’m fishing for compliments here, but I am definitely not.
I have 5 questions for anyone kind enough to take the time to answer them.
I appreciate your honesty and feedback.

1. What is it that makes you visit me again?
2. What do you not like about Smoke and Mirrors? (be honest)
3. What would you like to see more of (or less of) in the future?
4. Would you like to see something different?
5. What is your favorite post and why? (longtime readers only)

There are more questions that I have but I don’t want to keep you here forever
(a little white lie, methinks)
I made this post relatively short to give you a few moments to comment.
I thank all of you dearly in advance.

You know you’re getting out there when the only reason you know it’s Monday
is because there’s an NFL game on tonight.
My Tweet this morning was telling to say the very least:
“I’ve officially lost track of where the week ends and where the new one begins.”
Everything seems just so helter-skelter these days and Monday only serves to exacerbate the issue.
For instance; last Monday night, a train I occasionally ride home was dispatched and routed improperly.
Long story short, the outbound train was traveling on the same track as the inbound train.
Never a good thing with that inertia thing and all.
Both were going @ 30-40 MPH.
The phrase ‘as subtle as a train wreck’ springs to mind.
There would have been some serious carnage, folks.
Mucho carnagio, muchachos.
Thank God the situation was recognized and thank God it was rectified.
Still makes me wonder, what if?
Some assflap person was not on their game that day and many people could have paid the ultimate train fare.
The MBTA would have loved that, too.
The money grubbing bastards.
Sad, huh?
It was a small revelation of sorts for me.
A ‘holy-crap-I’m-still-alive kinda thing’  because I rode a different train that night.
( a 25 minute delay, medical emergency . . .  sheesh)
Even the automated train announcements were strange today.
It’s a woman’s voice that tells you what stop is coming up.
The voice sounds like June Cleever from ‘Leave it to Beaver’.
I’m tired but I am definitely not kidding.

“Beave? Wally? The next stop is Framingham. Get ready Beaver!”

(the sampled voice even mispronounces the approaching town’s name as well which adds to my Monday weirdness.
It should sound like ‘Fray-ming-ham’ but the voice says ‘Fram-ing-ham’ God help us all.)

Steve, the conductor, walked by and said to me, “Oh, man . . .  Mondays.”
Oh, man, he is absolutely right.

There is a speck of truth to this Hemingway quote for yours truly.
I’m thinking for everyone else as well.
I do love my sleep and the thought of turning off the invisible faucet still dripping with the miscommunications and shortfalls of the day now past me.
Maybe it’s no surprise that tomorrow is only accessible by passing through
the mysterious and stygian gates of slumber.
The world of all things nocturnal has always held a strange fascination for me.
I’ve found that when I write a fair amount of memoir during the day, my dreamworld is filled with
many things, some good and some not so good.
I searched the net and found some incredible facts regarding sleep . . .

*The record for the longest period without sleep is 18 days, 21 hours, 40 minutes during a rocking chair marathon. The record holder reported hallucinations, paranoia, blurred vision, slurred speech and memory and concentration lapses.

* It’s impossible to tell if someone is really awake without close medical supervision. People can take cat naps with their eyes open without even being aware of it.

* Anything less than five minutes to fall asleep at night means you’re sleep deprived. The ideal is between 10 and 15 minutes, meaning you’re still tired enough to sleep deeply, but not so exhausted you feel sleepy by day.

* A new baby typically results in 400-750 hours lost sleep for parents in the first year

* One of the best predictors of insomnia later in life is the development of bad habits from having sleep disturbed by young children.

* The continuous brain recordings that led to the discovery of REM (rapid eye-movement) sleep were not done until 1953, partly because the scientists involved were concerned about wasting paper.

* REM sleep occurs in bursts totalling about 2 hours a night, usually beginning about 90 minutes after falling asleep.

* Dreams, once thought to occur only during REM sleep, also occur (but to a lesser extent) in non-REM sleep phases. It’s possible there may not be a single moment of our sleep when we are actually dreamless.

* REM dreams are characterised by bizarre plots, but non-REM dreams are repetitive and thought-like, with little imagery – obsessively returning to a suspicion you left your mobile phone somewhere, for example.

* Certain types of eye movements during REM sleep correspond to specific movements in dreams, suggesting at least part of the dreaming process is analagous to watching a film

* No-one knows for sure if other species dream but some do have sleep cycles similar to humans.

* Elephants sleep standing up during non-REM sleep, but lie down for REM sleep.

* Some scientists believe we dream to fix experiences in long-term memory, that is, we dream about things worth remembering. Others reckon we dream about things worth forgetting – to eliminate overlapping memories that would otherwise clog up our brains.

* Dreams may not serve any purpose at all but be merely a meaningless byproduct of two evolutionary adaptations – sleep and consciousness.

* REM sleep may help developing brains mature. Premature babies have 75 per cent REM sleep, 10 per cent more than full-term bubs. Similarly, a newborn kitten puppy rat or hampster experiences only REM sleep, while a newborn guinea pig (which is much more developed at birth) has almost no REM sleep at all.

* Scientists have not been able to explain a 1998 study showing a bright light shone on the backs of human knees can reset the brain’s sleep-wake clock.

* British Ministry of Defence researchers have been able to reset soldiers’ body clocks so they can go without sleep for up to 36 hrs. Tiny optical fibres embedded in special spectacles project a ring of bright white light (with a spectrum identical to a sunrise) around the edge of soldiers’ retinas, fooling them into thinking they have just woken up. The system was first used on US pilots during the bombing of Kosovo.

* Seventeen hours of sustained wakefulness leads to a decrease in performance equivalent to a blood alcohol-level of 0.05%.

* The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska, the Challenger space shuttle disaster and the Chernobyl nuclear accident have all been attributed to human errors in which sleep-deprivation played a role.

* Exposure to noise at night can suppress immune function even if the sleeper does not wake. Unfamiliar noise, and noise during the first and last two hours of sleep, has the greatest disruptive effect on the sleep cycle.

* The “natural alarm clock” which enables some people to wake up more or less when they want to is caused by a burst of the stress hormone adrenocorticotropin. Researchers say this reflects an unconscious anticipation of the stress of waking up.

* Some sleeping tablets, such as barbiturates suppress REM sleep, which can be harmful over a long period.

* In insomnia following bereavement, sleeping pills can disrupt grieving.

* Tiny luminous rays from a digital alarm clock can be enough to disrupt the sleep cycle even if you do not fully wake. The light turns off a “neural switch” in the brain, causing levels of a key sleep chemical to decline within minutes.

* To drop off we must cool off; body temperature and the brain’s sleep-wake cycle are closely linked. That’s why hot summer nights can cause a restless sleep. The blood flow mechanism that transfers core body heat to the skin works best between 18 and 30 degrees. But later in life, the comfort zone shrinks to between 23 and 25 degrees – one reason why older people have more sleep disorders.

* A night on the grog will help you get to sleep but it will be a light slumber and you won’t dream much.

* After five nights of partial sleep deprivation, three drinks will have the same effect on your body as six would when you’ve slept enough.

* Humans sleep on average around three hours less than other primates like chimps, rhesus monkeys, squirrel monkeys and baboons, all of whom sleep for 10 hours.

* Ducks at risk of attack by predators are able to balance the need for sleep and survival, keeping one half of the brain awake while the other slips into sleep mode.

* Ten per cent of snorers have sleep apnoea, a disorder which causes sufferers to stop breathing up to 300 times a night and significantly increases the risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke.

* Snoring occurs only in non-REM sleep

* Teenagers need as much sleep as small children (about 10 hrs) while those over 65 need the least of all (about six hours). For the average adult aged 25-55, eight hours is considered optimal

* Some studies suggest women need up to an hour’s extra sleep a night compared to men, and not getting it may be one reason women are much more susceptible to depression than men.

* Feeling tired can feel normal after a short time. Those deliberately deprived of sleep for research initially noticed greatly the effects on their alertness, mood and physical performance, but the awareness dropped off after the first few days.

* Diaries from the pre-electric-light-globe Victorian era show adults slept nine to 10 hours a night with periods of rest changing with the seasons in line with sunrise and sunsets.

* Most of what we know about sleep we’ve learned in the past 25 years.

* As a group, 18 to 24 year-olds deprived of sleep suffer more from impaired performance than older adults.

* Experts say one of the most alluring sleep distractions is the 24-hour accessibility of the internet.

* The extra-hour of sleep received when clocks are put back at the start of daylight in Canada has been found to coincide with a fall in the number of road accidents.

Think I’ll go and sleep for a while.
This list made me very tired . . .

“Come to the edge.”
“We can’t, we are afraid.”

“Come to the edge.”
“We can’t, we will fall.”

“Come to the edge.”

And they came.
And He pushed them.

And they flew.

~G. Apollinaire

Graduation ’09 is done and dusted but the torrential rain of emotions put Pamela and I through the proverbial ringer.
As we both sat outside the other night mesmerized by the roaring firepit she quietly said,
“Things are changing again.”
When things change, a subtle discomfort settles in.
For as happy and proud as we were for Sarah, we also share her sense of trepidation, a subject not many people talk about.
But it’s there in every single family attending a graduation.
After the ceremony we had an old fashioned BBQ back at the house with burgers, hot dogs and salads galore.
There was laughter and music, beer and cigars, goodbyes and tears when roommates and friends had to leave.
Later that day, Pamela, myself and the girls went to move the remainder of Sarah’s belongings from her room and let her say goodbye to her college high atop Mt. Saint James.
As I waited by my truck for Sarah to come out of her dorm for the last time,
I looked around at the ivy-covered buildings that had occasionally surrounded me over the past 4 years.
My own sadness at saying goodbye leaving the comfort of this place surprised me.
Thank God for sunglasses.
It was quiet in the car on the way home with everyone lost in their own thoughts.
I thought about a large Monarch butterfly I’d seen in the air that morning as I listened to the list of graduates being read.
It flew gracefully down towards the moving sea of black mortarboards below disappearing amidst the caps and gowns; almost like it was going home.
For Sarah, another class has already started as of tonight.
She must want stronger wings . . .

If you can start the day without caffeine;
If you can get going without pep pills;
If you can always be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains;
If you can resist complaining and boring people with your troubles;
If you can eat the same food every day and be grateful for it;
If you can understand when your loved ones are too busy to give you any time;
If you can forgive a friend’s lack of consideration;
If you can overlook it when those you love take it out on you when,
through no fault of your own, something goes wrong;
If you can take criticism and blame without resentment;
If you can ignore a friend’s limited education and never correct him;
If you can resist treating a rich friend better than a poor friend;
If you can face the world without lies and deceit;
If you can conquer tension without medical help;
If you can relax without liquor;
If you can sleep without the aid of drugs;
If you can honestly say that deep in your heart you have no prejudice
against creed or color, religion or politics; then, my friend, you are
almost as good as your dog.

I close my eyes
trying to dream of something better than this
anything true, a slightly bruised honesty would do
Maybe it’s because nothing feels safe anymore

So I close my eyes
and dream of distant Norwegian lilies
of beautiful and colourful things, the slumbering truths of my past
Although nights of black rain are making it so hard to sleep

But I close my eyes
And dream of opening them to the tragedy of a bleeding truth;
that life is never quite what it appears to be
to these sad and sleepy eyes of mine
And that innocence can only be found caught between the teeth of angels . . .

Only my wife can say to me, (as she did tonight)
“When are you going to write something on the blog?
There’s been nothing of substance lately. Where’s the writing?”
I hate when she’s right. Write. Right.
I have a few things cued up in need of definite editing so please check back on Monday.
Thank God I have someone to give me some much needed toughlove, huh?
Not everyone is as lucky.

We have our bad times, those days filled with
gray and bruised thunderheads ready to burst with raindrops of frustration.
It’s in getting through the inevitable storms; riding the dark waves of our lives
to the safety of some waiting harbour that we realize the sun can still shine, just for us.
It takes a real strength to weather it all.
And we are that strong.
The stuff we’re made of is ultimately all that’s really needed to see us through to the other side.
And we will get there.
Although we can’t control the winds, we can carefully move the sails that will someday guide us home.
We have to hold on, just the 2 of us, if only for the three tender and beautiful hearts
we’ve been so blessed to receive in this life.
Everything will be alright.
So for now, just hold my hand
and don’t be afraid
to feel that at the end of the longest day, that the moon and stars are shining, just for us.