The Sea is a Salty One

 My son was just here, and I'm still trying to put my life back together. I've been so sick that my head feels like this vista from Copey de Dota from before the fire took out the ancient wooden church. See the clouds drifting down among the buildings? That's my head right now. The armpit infection has morphed into a down the arm infection. Too many antibiotics and doctors poking the infected bits. I've put an end to that because I believe they've made it worse by the constantly draining and scraping. Don't ever get an infection here because instead of being told to use hot compresses and antibiotics it's all scraping and prodding. Enough about that boring health shit. Part and parcel of having an immune system illness. I was so sorry to see my son leave for home a few days before Christmas. I miss him so much, and our just hanging around the house. He did go hiking three times with Jim. One day I felt especially grumble-y about it because they hiked Rincon ...

  Mentally I'm back at this place. Been an unusually usually weird time! What follows is a crazy tale of when para-social relationships go beyond haywire. Ah, the old Trans Allegheny Lunatic Asylum! It's a very weird experience having the lowly barnacle on the bottom of the boat level of internet notoriety. I'm not as noted as the "Horky-Porky Kid" but thanks to my ten years writing and editing a daily column at a media site I have the glimmer of the very extremely worm's belly low, shudder, gasp, fame. What that means is that para-social relationships can sometimes be tricky to navigate even now. For many years folks reached out to me in private messaging to talk about their trauma surrounding the issues of spiritual abuse and recovery. Very difficult conversations to have. Eventually some just took it way too far and I started to feel like a nursemaid to nincompoops, an unpaid therapist substitute when it was obvious real serious mental health sessions neede...

  I woke up this am thinking about writing about foibles and follies of the media. An industry that I was part of for ten years that has turned deeply toxic. But I realized after seeing the blog posts of a few people I know, and many I don’t about moving here thinking it’s going to be a piece of cake, and slamming up against their own ignorance I figured it was time to explain things. It’s not that cake and eating it too, for some it turns out to be a urinal cake, an old sodden urinal cake. Look, I don’t want to discourage anyone from pursuing their dreams. I just ask you do some basic research about the place, what to expect, how things happen here before you show up with stars in your eyes imagining it to be just like your luxurious tropical vacation. Moving here is not for the faint of heart, and knowing what you are up against can make for a much better experience. We were lucky, our research paid off, we did many things right, but we also flubbed up a few times a...