And I don’t know where to start or what to even say. Maybe like dancing, I’ll ask her to lead and we can burn up an hour or so.

… on a motorcycle. As I look back, I think I did it more than I just realized. Cool!

Racing! There are those who run up front. The fearless. And then there’s the slow saps in the back. The me’s.

Through the experience I learned something important. It didn’t matter if you were running first and second, or. first last and second last… by God you were racing and all you had on your mind was to be the inch or more in front of the other guy. You were racing, every sense, every muscle was either doing something or tensed in fright. All you had in you was working to its fullest. Maybe some parts, just a little more.

It didn’t matter if you were doing 150 or 110. The other guys skills were your match. It was pure adrenaline and it was good. No, it was a spectacular Rush!!

I need a very long and salty sea kayak experience F…ing soon. I need the rush, the danger. I need the fright. I need the oneness of me to race. I may win or come in last. Mother Nature may send me into my last wave. I don’t care as the result would have been worth it! I raced myself, I gave it my absolute best. And one of me won.

Sorry Marty. You’re failing

… in a glum sounding voice, has taught me that some things you read, could have only been written by someone that had experienced it. Something that even with the wildest imagination, couldn’t have expressed it so eloquently and accurately without having lived it. Keep going Marty, you’re onto/into something deep.

A. A. Milne, who penned Winnie the Pooh wrote something I just came across. I’m just a little horrified though of the thought that someone who wrote something so beautiful, suffered the evils of depression, isolation, de-socializing. Escaping into loneliness and often a quite frightening unknown.

edit: It’s thought that Mr. Milne suffered PTSD from the first World War. Go figure! God damn wars!

I think he did though and if my feelings are correct, he was masterful at taking pure evil, and turning it into empathy and compassion for so many well beyond his years.

edit: I’m wise enough to know I have a Wife, two Sons, a very dear Family and collection of wonderful Friends outside my mental ‘stick house’ there for me and I am so very grateful for you all. I’m wealthy beyond imagination in what means the absolute most to me. But for now anyway, I’m just a donkey under a lean to. Wishing others understood my thoughts but afraid they might. Just asking for understanding, not agreement or sympathy. Thank you all for stopping by and sticking around.

No more, no less!

Please read! Please?
It occurred to Pooh and Piglet that they hadn’t heard from Eeyore for several days, so they put on their hats and coats and trotted across the Hundred Acre Wood to Eeyore’s stick house. Inside the house was Eeyore.
“Hello Eeyore,” said Pooh.
“Hello Pooh. Hello Piglet,” said Eeyore, in a Glum Sounding Voice.
“We just thought we’d check in on you,” said Piglet, “because we hadn’t heard from you, and so we wanted to know if you were okay.”
Eeyore was silent for a moment. “Am I okay?” he asked, eventually. “Well, I don’t know, to be honest. Are any of us really okay? That’s what I ask myself. All I can tell you, Pooh and Piglet, is that right now I feel really rather Sad, and Alone, and Not Much Fun To Be Around At All. Which is why I haven’t bothered you. Because you wouldn’t want to waste your time hanging out with someone who is Sad, and Alone, and Not Much Fun To Be Around At All, would you now.”
Pooh looked at Piglet, and Piglet looked at Pooh, and they both sat down, one on either side of Eeyore in his stick house.
Eeyore looked at them in surprise. “What are you doing?”
“We’re sitting here with you,” said Pooh, “because we are your friends. And true friends don’t care if someone is feeling Sad, or Alone, or Not Much Fun To Be Around At All. True friends are there for you anyway. And so here we are.”
“Oh,” said Eeyore. “Oh.” And the three of them sat there in silence, and while Pooh and Piglet said nothing at all; somehow, almost imperceptibly, Eeyore started to feel a very tiny little bit better.
Because Pooh and Piglet were There.
No more; no less.

Warning ahead. Marty decided this would be unedited and the thoughts, words, BS, are being fueled with possibly a more than appropriate amount of Bourbon and nicotine. In his defense though are the following. 1. A drunk mind, speaks sober thoughts. 2. No great adventure started with a glass of milk.

I have to bug out for a bit! I won’t be able to take Bulleit as he’d hate the experience and I’d be endangering him. I’m loading up the van with the most minimal of requirements and hooking up my favorite kayak. We’ll be off just as soon as possible to points unknown. Hopefully several points. I’ve crawled and walked into too many rabbit holes to count. I figured it was time to paddle into a few. I need to push myself harder than I ever have. I need questions answered, problems solved. Peace found!

I simply need to go out, to get in. To come back a better, simpler and wiser person. Here’s to being the teacher and student. Don’t muck it up bud. Pay attention.

If it were an Olympic Sport. I’d have several Gold Medals. But I don’t give a damn about gold and any ‘medal’ is meaningless to me. Not to mention how much I dislike competition unless I’m also the competitor.

Many are destination people, others are the journey type.

For the destination folks. Please don’t tell me what its like. I’ll be there soon enough. But I’ll arrive to tell you countless stories of what you missed prior to arrival. ‘The trip’ you see, the journey was never a repeat of the same as the destination so obviously is.

Neither are wrong, neither were right. We all arrived at the same destination it would appear.

Forget what I wrote below. It seems a few days ago I had written something nearly identical. The pics new though and I’ll leave the text up to show all and myself what a dip shit I am. = )

As an analogy…
A guy’s flying a plane and for no fault of his own, multiple failures occur. He’s flying the plane the best he can under the circumstances though. He finds the best place to put it down with minimal loss of the souls on board. He didn’t communicate that well because he was just trying to keep the damn thing in the air and land as smoothly as possible.
He made mistakes. Not all made it out of the crash but he did everything he thought was right. At a time of extreme stress that he knew was potentially catastrophic for all, for everything. His heart though, was in the right place. At all times!
Aviate, Navigate, Communicate.
Perfection is always desirable, not always attainable.

Why is life such a difficult thing to understand? And why is a true understanding of life, such a difficult concept for myself to grasp?

… to write but this mind of mine can’t store it long enough for me to type it.

This week has been a disaster. A few mental meltdowns that combined have been nearly crippling physically. I’m living in a world that is simply too complicated for me. Enough of reality.

I had a pretty relaxing time with Bulleit today at the end of the road looking at the river and Mom. We left probably an hour prior to sunset but we arrived at 1pm-ish so some quality time was spent with a pretty tremendous view. I think Bulleit may have needed it as much as I as he didn’t seem to mind sitting in the shade with a cool breeze blowing. I read some Hemingway and dined on a few Pop tarts. The good stuff don’t you know.

Well here starts the part where I seem to have forgotten much of what I wanted to write about. I wish this wouldn’t always happen. /

Marty, you really need to get your act together.

If you can’t love yourself, how could you love another? Speaking from experience here, that first sentence/question is total bullshit! I’m married. I have been for closer to a half century than any other measure of time. I love my wife far more than she will ever know. The vows spoken by me weren’t some verbally choreographed line I just nodded to and said yes to without deep thought and an even deeper meaning. They were far more than that. Far more than a promise in some religious ceremony.

I’ve crawled into hell and back more than once for her and the 2 sons she brought into this world and I’d do it again without question. But in some of those journeys, there were things, thoughts, events, obstacles for lack of other words that needed to be overcome. I did what I thought needed to be done at the time. Things that only I will ever know.

I did what I had to do. I did what I thought at the time, was the right thing to do. I flew the damn plane! Mistakes? Yes. I made a few and some soul’s were lost but it landed with each of those souls/’decisions’ lost weighing heavily on me! All were not lost though! Was I perfect in everything I did? Sadly not, but I tried so very hard to do what I knew deep inside, was for the good of the many, and what was right. I’m more than willing to take the blame a hundred more times before I give the stick to another though. I simply did the best that I knew to do, at the time I did it.

I never promised perfection to anyone but I should have expected more from myself looking back. I’d never ask for sympathy and I’m not begging for understanding. I’m simply laying down the thoughts for my previous actions.

Maybe next time, I’ll just stay on the ground. Maybe next time I may love myself and be satisfied with my inaction from the new vantage point… but I doubt it.

The takeaway from it all. I’m no God damn Angel. And flying? It sucks to the Nth degree. More so when you’re the pilot. No more flying for me!