C I P R I A N I

Where do I start?

It’s been quite a long while since I’ve been in this space. There are scattered notes on my Desk software…

In some cases single words regarding possible topics for discussion, some portions of a couple essays saved. This fragment:

– My goal was to have 100 essays completed by the end of last year.

As a result of Stephen Colbert’s premiere, I found myself trying a CBS all access subscription and I wound up killing time watching Family Ties and commercials for Netflix and YouTube…

Blah, blah, blah, basically, I had come to the conclusion that television had changed. Not a particularly groundbreaking notion – and yet personally there was a “time machine” aspect of that process and I felt a little like Rip Van Winkle. I continued:

My viewing habits have changed dramatically since I’ve had children. There is something dreamlike about seeing Colbert on “Network TV” and watching commercials for shit I don’t need and will never use like Red Apple Ale. And yet by “cutting the cord” and ditching DirecTV, I’m probably paying more – but what I’m still not doing is watching NBC. Which I wasn’t really doing for quite some time…

Ironically, that was over a year ago and since then, This is Us premiered on NBC and now it’s currently the only network show I’m watching.

That fragment was from a long time ago judging by the reference to The Late Show with Stephen Colbert reference.

Here’s another bit I was working on from April 1st, 2016:

In Doubt I Trust

I am puzzled by the lack of curiosity of a portion of the American electorate. There is a kneejerk reaction to slivers of events. Panic, passion, and urgency and yet there is a colossal lack of investigation.

We are tied in knots by this modern grapevine the internet and some us fail to even check if what “they heard” or what “they said” is true.

There are actually sites all over the internet as easy to find as the trash – FactCheck.org, Snopes – where one can simply search if something is true…

Then I stopped. And fifteen days later, my father died.

It’s now been almost a year since my father passed away – April 15th, 2016, a month from now to be exact – and I’ll mourn his passing for the rest of my life.

After my grandfather, my dad’s dad passed away, I noticed occasionally my father would drift for a few moments. Dad would get a sort of blank stare in his eyes. Stop for a second, kind of like the old hard drive was locking up for a few moments, then he’d go back to whatever he was doing. I’m doing that same thing myself because I’m thinking about my dad and I think he was probably doing the same thing.

It’s downright eerie how many conversations that we had prior to his death along the lines of mortality – “when I’m gone” – etc. I was never in denial that my father would die at some point, I just never thought it was going to be so fucking soon.

I might be a little morbid. I don’t dress in black all the time and brood often – at least I don’t think, but I have contemplated death since as long as I can remember and the last time I spoke to my dad, the thought did go through my mind that it might, in fact, be the last time. But because I’m morbid to a degree, I consider that with everyone I talk to. And yet, even though the thought went through my mind, I didn’t actually believe it.

Or maybe I knew. Maybe he knew. Any sort of foreknowledge, or the illusion thereof, might make this kind of thing easier to handle. I don’t know.

I don’t know.

The last thing my dad and I talked about was Donald Trump. And every time that guy tweets, I desperately want to pick up the phone and continue the conversation with my father.

I have dreams about my dad. In almost every one of them, he doesn’t know, believe or realize he’s dead. One dream I had, he actually faked his own death with an elaborate Escape From Alcatraz  paper mache dummy. It occurs to me only now that that fragment of the figment derived from my father being a huge Clint Eastwood fan.

Dreams are truly amazing. What are dreams anyway? What is this stuff all around us? Where do we go from here? Really? Beyond the sea, Beyond the sky, return to dust, happily ever after?

I don’t know.

I love my dad. I miss my dad.

Where do I go from here?

There are things that we keep to ourselves. There are things I keep to myself. I’m certain my dad did the same. I knew my dad, but I wonder how well. I wonder only because I know myself and in the same way, I only know now what my dad was thinking when he drifted off, I feel as if there was much more that I’ll never know – and yet, I feel I know him better now than I ever did when he was alive. How is that? Why is that?

I don’t know.

My great uncle Pat, whom my father looked up to enormously, used to say “Sometimes people don’t know that they don’t know.” I don’t know if Pat ever graduated high school, but there’s more truth in those eight words than in some volumes, but I’m leveling with you:

I don’t know.

I don’t know.

I don’t know where I’m a-gonna go when the volcano blows.

While I don’t know, a lot of shit is starting to make a lot more sense – even the stuff that doesn’t make much sense.

How is that possible?

I don’t know.

But it gives me hope.