I don't often say these things. . . (but today I will)

I don't often put a lot of personal stuff on this blog, because no one reads my posts anyway except random people from New Zealand who leave comments 12 years after I posted them. I am exhausted and frazzled and worn out after a second bout of having to wait on my husband hand and foot (literally, feed him and take his shoes off for him) after relatively minor surgery, and he will be having another round of it soon. 

What is hurtful is the lack of acknowledgement of what I am doing. I quite literally have to take his temperature, help him to the bathroom, badger him to take his meds, get past his crankiness when he needs to eat, etc. etc. I went through all this during his first hospitalization, when the whole family hopped to and saw that his every need was met. It simply amazed me how everyone came together to serve him, which was far from the case when I used to be hospitalized. 

Then I was left completely on my own, no visitors (and as usual, sending a card or flowers to acknowledge the misery I was going through made as much sense to everyone as sending me a dead carp. It just wasn't done - everyone knew that!) Even discussing it was off the table and not to be spoken of. Had it been ME on that operating table, the family response would not have been the same at all. This I know for a fact. But my illnesses weren't counted as real anyway, as I just should have pulled up my socks and carried on. Which I did, with little or no help to crawl out of a black pit of annihilating depression. And for reasons that I will never understand, I nearly lost the right to visit my  grandchildren because of the nature of my illness. 

So here is what I, the schmuck who has always been blown off by practically everyone, but especially my nearest and dearest, wrote to hand to him. Haven't done it yet, but I'm on the verge. If everything I do for him is neither needed nor wanted, what on earth has my life been all about? 51 years together should amount to more than that.

If you don't eat, even when you are NOT hungry, you will not get better. If I prepare a plate for you of nutritious food that you might like, which takes time and energy, you can at least keep it beside you for later and not wave me off with a look of dismissal. Please try to be a little bit grateful, even if you don't like or want what I am offering.

I am doing everything I can to help you get better, but I am getting near the end of it. It's all very well to tell me "just stop", but that's not what I signed on for. It's not in my nature NOT to want to look after you. You should know by now that I am a nurturer, and I do not feel it would be fair to you to just stop. But it is wearing me down when I see the lack of appreciation.

I walked a long time in heat and discomfort and pain today, BECAUSE I wanted to get things you might like, things that are easy to eat while lying down, and some things to make an actual meal which we have not had since Monday. And then you said there had been no need for me to go to the store anyway. Which meant, "You shouldn't have bothered." So what I did was completely devalued and blown off as unnecessary and unwanted. 

I do these things because I CARE, but I believe I have given far more to this family than they have ever given me, and it is beginning to catch up with me. I think that you should get your own food as far as you can, and I will make an evening meal of real food and you can eat it or not. Please, if I do go the extra mile for you, which I have always done, don't just tell me you didn't need or want it. You did need it, you continue to need it, and I will try to do what I can to maintain my sanity until you are better. 

😄SMOKIN' HOT SHOWGIRLS do the Crowd Wave with their LEGS!😄

So this, which I worked on for hours, got TEN views. I'd give up, but somehow after 13 years and 20,500+ subs, I find that hard to do.

WHY is this happening? Why are my subs rising by 300+ per month, but no one is watching? Ten views, when the Motormouth thing, which I threw together in ten minutes, has 14 MILLION.

Really, I give up, except I can't. I just had to keep trudging forward, but it does seem like everything I've built up since 2011 (over 3 THOUSAND videos) is just going down the toilet due to people's indifference. 

Is there a way ahead? I guess I will find out, yes or no. But it galls me that so many channels with 3000 subs or less are getting tens of thousands of views, while my stuff just falls into the gutter.

Can't Live: the Tragedy of Harry Nilsson

This is something I'd have to file under "it seemed like a good idea at the time".

When I finally found the song 1941 by Harry Nilsson, it (of course) sent the detective in me on a search for more about Nilsson's life and work. I began to realize how many amazing songs he'd written, and how incredible his voice was, with its pure 3 1/2-octave range vibrating like glass in the heavens. So as I trudged through the archeological dig that is YouTube, I turned up a documentary called Who is Harry Nilsson (and why is everybody talking about him?) The title was based on the song Everybody's Talking from Midnight Cowboy, one of my favorite songs from one of my all-time-favorite movies (which I saw again recently, and which once again knocked me out of my chair with its soul-shattering depiction of life's desperate fringe-dwellers).

I instantly saw the biographical connection with the song 1941 - the only difference being "the circus" meant, presumably, the music industry, money and fame. That last line "but what will happen to the boy when the circus comes to town?" is one of those one-liners that packs a tremendous punch. And it all happened. He was born in 1941, and his father walked right out the door three years later, leaving a scar on his soul that never seems to have healed.

I was hooked immediately because as the doc unfolded, it became apparent that  his destiny and fortunes were intertwined with those of the Beatles, in particular John Lennon who was every bit as adept at monstrous self-destruction as Harry himself. He even famously got drunk and rowdy with Ringo Starr (who seems to have pulled himself out of the fire just in time). Most of the people who contributed to this thing were industry types, who were in accord with the general feeling that Harry Nilsson was hell-bent on destroying himself for reasons that only made sense to him. Though he was described by friends and loved ones as sweet and gentle and lovely and all the rest of it, that is not the way he acted and not the way he treated people who deserved infinitely better than his sometimes monstrous abuse.

It was getting depressing, and I knew how it ended, but I trudged on. When John Lennon was shot, Nilsson became obsessed with gun control laws, though all his crusading appears to have come to naught. After that his career fragmented as he careened from cocaine highs to alcoholic lows, generating enough nicotine fumes to poison a whole community. Before John died, they had a screaming contest which resulted in Nilsson rupturing a vocal cord. His voice never recovered. But he seems to have inexplicably chosen to destroy his instrument in a way that horrified me more than all the rest of it put together.

So when he was 54, his life walked out the door. He ruined his body, and collapsed and died from all his extremes. But I had to ask myself if the San Andreas fault in his personality stemmed from that early parental abandonment.

It must have.

Nothing else could crack a soul clean through, could it? Unless there was some kind of abuse we don't know about, but maybe this was enough. By the time I got to the end of the documentary I had a heavy feeling, but I also felt the familiar anger I experience when I hear of someone pissing away the kind of golden opportunities that less fortunate people would give their right arm for.

Does fame do this? Why do so many famous people self-destruct, usually from drugs and alcohol and the disastrous situations that inevitably result? Was I spared, do you think? I guess I wanted it, but I also didn't. When I get a comment on a YouTube video I posted six years ago, when I receive an email comment on a blog post I did in 2012, it reminds me of something important.  It makes me realize (once again) that the rewards of the creative life are not what you think.

The rewards of the creative life are NOT helling around in bars, snorting cocaine until you hit the ceiling, abandoning a wife and son (yes, folks, he DID abandon a wife and son, just like in the song, before siring another five children with another woman, whom he soon left a widow). The rewards of the creative life are - simply - the creating itself. Or maybe touching just ONE person and hearing about it many years later. And realizing there may have been many others who just never told you about it.

I stepped out of addiction just in time, and like Ringo (and Paul), I'm still here and savoring my life to a degree I never thought possible. I keep it simple now (though it's never easy), and if I think about drinking, I think about where it took me, and I can never go back there again. But when I think of Harry Nilsson, I just get angry. There's something so perverse about the whole thing. He got drunk "at" people, that much is plain, and maybe even "at" himself. But why not use a few particles of that genius brain to figure out just what you have to do to live a peaceful and fulfilling life (and to treat the people you love the way they deserve to be treated?)

It takes no great genius to fuck up, to destroy, to obliterate. No talent at all. And I'm sick of hearing about tortured geniuses and listening to people make endless excuses for them. This song, though - it's just eerie, because the raw need in it, the sense of catastrophic damage, is disturbing to me. Do people need to be so irreparably broken to communicate such grief? What a horrible deal. 

So what's the conclusion? If you're a legendary creator and performer, or just someone who needs to write and perform, and want to live a half-decent life, be careful who you choose as a role model. Shoot for Ringo or Paul, who are still here and still creating - not poor, beleaguered, self-annihilating Harry.

The Troll Doll Channel: 🌞Buddhist trolls🌞

Someone left a comment on this video after it had been up SIX years! It only got 36 views, but there's something very gratifying about someone finally noticing it after all this time. It's actually quite lovely.