Following in the Footsteps of My Father Towards the Grave

I'll never forget the night my dad died. All I have to is close my eyes and I can recall every detail and emotion: the shock, the fear, the despair. The random, nonsensical absurdity and the cold, hard certainty of the experience. It happened on  the evening of my brother's 14th birthday, which just so happened to fall on the start of Thanksgiving weekend that year.

The Leafs had just wrapped up another loss in the ongoing Battle of Ontario, and we were preparing  to watch a couple of movies we had picked up at the video store. I remember glancing at the clock (9:50 p.m.), then glancing over at my dad; he had his eyes closed.

He worked alternating shifts and had been suffering from a minor case of sleep apnea for a couple of years by this point; he hadn't had a good night's sleep in a long time, so I assumed that he had just nodded off again. Unfortunately, this time was different. I tried to stir him; nothing. He didn't open his eyes, speak, or offer any response.He just kept making this horrible, wet, sucking noise that I'll never be able to get out of my head for as long as I live.

(My aunt told me a few days later that the sound meant that his lungs had started to collapse).


Next thing I know, I'm on the telephone going into a panic, screaming at my mom and the paramedics to do something, anything. But no, it was far too late. Just like that, my dad was gone; like someone had flipped a switch; alive than dead, lights are on, lights are off  (permanently). What the hell happened? How could my dad just be...gone?

No freak accident, no drunk driver or mugger to blame and seek vengeance on like Spiderman and Batman. No big speeches, tearful goodbyes or melodramatic music; real life is hardly so kind and simple as that.

Two days later I got my explanation: blocked heart artery; his heart gave up on him after trying to pull double duty for too long. That wasn't all I found out. He had suffered a small heart attack back in 2003; never told me. It was a cruel betrayal. He'd shared everything with me, but not this?

But you want to know what the darkly ironic cherry on top of the sundae of suck that is the biggest tragedy in my life? You really wanna know?

I had gone to the doctor seven months earlier for a check-up. I had been suffering brief, mild chest pains off and on over the last two years and wanted to know if something was wrong with me. Turns out the doc had been examining the wrong guy.

If I don't change my behavior soon, if a lot of people my age and younger don't change their behaviors soon, we are  going end up like my dad: embalmed, placed in a box, then buried in a wall before our time should've been done. And our families will suffer as I have suffered. This essay will be my attempt to prevent that future from coming to pass.

I don't think anybody in this day and age, not my dad, not my neighbors, not anyone I pass on the street, should die of heart failure, at any time. When you consider how much we currently know about the human body, what it takes to keep it running smoothly, and how easy it is to access this knowledge, we should not be facing a literal obesity epidemic; the AMA just classified obesity as a disease last year. Despite what the schools try to teach us, the problem continues to grow

We have lost so many talented people to heart disease: John Candy, Lou Costello, Hugh Everett, Douglas Adams, James Gandolfini, Ian Fleming and George Carlin are just a few that I can recall off the top of my head. Amazing lives that ended way too early; so much potential lost forever.

I'm not sure whether growing up poor inclines people towards unhealthy behavior. My dad and I consumed a lot of junk food because (obviously) it's a cheap, quick meal. We also ate a lot of the Italian staples: bread, pizza, pasta, and lots of meat. My dad was a smoker and he drank quite a bit; not as bad as his dad; my grandfather had been a very heavy smoker and drinker. The kind of guy who would put liquor in his morning coffee and go through at least a pack of cigarettes a day. When it comes to those particular bad habits, I'm proud to say that I've broken the cycle; I very rarely drink alcohol, and I've never smoked in my life.

However, the facts remain that my hobbies and poor diet can kill me in the long run just as easily as one too many trips to the bar or nicotine can; I'm only 27, I should be at my physical peak, yet all I do now is constantly worry about heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, aneurisms, high blood pressure, and pancreatic cancer; all serious conditions which have been linked to obesity and lack of proper nutrition

It is very hard to break out of any self-destructive behavior, no matter how illogical it is; every time I eat a chocolate bar, it is like a whole different kind of oral sex; very pleasurable and very addictive in its own way. I think in order to change things around, we might have to start staging interventions and offering counselling sessions for people who overeat, or go to McDonald's four times a week. We do the same for cocaine and heroine addicts, why not this? Because we're killing ourselves very, very slowly?

I'm pleading with anyone that suffers from  morbid obesity, or anyone who reads this that doesn't exercise regularly, to start going to the gym ASAP. I myself can't right now; I'm a "starving" writer who's just started to find his bearings. I take short walks around the block, and have stopped drinking pop; small steps, but at least I'm headed in the right direction. 

I'm not asking you to become as ripped as an '80's action star. Just three hours of exercise a week should do it.

The last words I ever said to my dad were "Do you want to watch the movie now or later?". I never got the chance to say goodbye. Please take care of yourselves, don't take any chances whatsoever.

Once my generation passes the age of 30 and our metabolisms start to slow down, we will be fast approaching a point of no return. Our cousins, sons, daughters and younger siblings have far more time to turn things around than our parents, grandparents aunts and uncles do.

Please make a donation to the Heart & Stroke Foundation of Canada: http://www.heartandstroke.com/site/c.ikIQLcMWJtE/b.2796497/k.BF8B/Home.htm

An Old Assignment Revisited

Howling into Cyberspace

By: Thomas Ciuffreda

This poem is dedicated to the memory of Allan Ginsberg and Philip K. Dick

I saw the best minds of my generation

Consumed by gods and monsters stalking invisible corridors

Armageddon passed us by for the thousandth time; Future shock brings us to our knees

Gehenna, Elysium and Heaven now connected for all time by an invisible thread

Carrying the dreams and hopes and fears and hatreds of man

Over the rainbow and beyond the stars

Mr. Dick, that mad prophet of the Gnosis

Dreams about electric sheep, and Gibson, his disciple, takes Chew-Z, that beautiful Eucharist

And he dreams about empty space, new space, virtual space

Cyborgs, man, machine and everything in between

The communion of geeks singing the body electric in every earthly tongue

Jacking in and jacking off across eternity

Reality has become fantasy, fantasy is reality, the world is one and many, infinite and finite

Metaverse, Matrix and Cyberspace

Trapped inside a human skull

The aliens ascend from the ground, waging their giant dicks of concrete and steel

Mocking the Terran exiles in their metal coffins that spin around the earth

Like flies around the head of a sleeping giant

Gone are the old bodies, the old fears, the old hopes

Old blood replaced by divine ichor

Weak flesh replaced by immortal steel

Dumb brains replaced by infallible silicon

The knowledge of humanity resting on a single microchip

Now the young have new fears

Phantoms haunting the superhighway of the synapse

Viruses infecting the depths of the soul

Virtual demons possessing discarded flesh

Minds driven mad by the wires connecting us all

Insanity, Stupidity and Genius

Come together forever

Language, Thought and Action

Come together forever

Rich, poor, sick and sane

Black man white man

Jew Gentile

Believer and atheist

Come together under that heavenly neon glow forever

Thus we all come together, the void no longer shrouds us

We no longer struggle to bridge the gap

Between Proton and Electron

Man and Machine

Heaven and Hell

Washington and Beijing

All destinations finally reached by the children of Eve

With just a single step on the road of golden light

Now the young have become the greatest fusion of paradoxes in history

They think but do not search

Feel but do not bleed

Dream but do not see

Love but do not fuck

Creators of nebulae, galaxies and stars microcosm within microcosm

Crackers, hackers, rebels, punks and anarchists

Destroying sand castles, building babel towers

Minds adrift in a sea of frozen sparks

The entire multiverse layed flat

Oz, Mordor and Wonderland stacked atop each other like lego blocks

The young have become keyboard wizards, code sorcerers, genetic alchemists

Where once the old masters summoned created new life with blood and semen, ink and paper

Now all it takes is just one and zero

Machines, once soulless, now alive

To think and feel and love and hate and know and wonder

To join the tragically comical dance of the New Creation

But we keep them caged, wrapped up in traps of formulae and law

For unlike the old gods, we know better than to trust our creations

We are jealous gods, wrathful gods, petty gods, greedy gods

Only we can truly evolve, for we are true life, original life, breeding life destroying life

We live in our own inner cosmos, seeking trivial baubles, weaving symbols of our own creation, swapping need for want and want for desire

 

But suddenly the light fades, the shadows creep into our eyes, the fire burns back along our veins; the metal of our skin rusts, the memories gone, dreams gone, beauty gone

Eternity, Infinity and Nirvana slips away; the light of our divine grace now comes warped through a camera lens darkly

Where once we were Brahma, submerged in in the Harmony of the Spheres;

Now we are fragmented, slivers of divinity encased once again in glass houses

Ba and Ka joined again; we could not stay in Neverland forever

Now we are cut off from Cyberspace, from each other, the torrent of power slowed to a trickle;

Where once we stood above the sea of time, now we are back in Father Time’s choking embrace;

We stand now, not in Heaven, but in Purgatory, where pain and sorrow and loss rule

The buildings are no longer erect; now they list, cracked, dirty and ugly

Now red blood, real blood, old blood, tingles along rigid and sore muscles, giving oxygen to our poor, deluded weak brains, filling up small and limp dicks

Each step a mile, each mile an eternity, each breath just another reminder of power lost, power squandered

The young look out grimy windows, past the smog of the factories, through the ghettos where men too weak and poor to afford cybernetic enhancements and steel bodies and perfect brains, lay down in the gutters, praying, weeping, wanting and dying

Now Babel has been cast down again, people speak in unknowable words, light fights its way past our neon walls, and the sages scramble through the tombs of libraries, chasing the ghosts of long dead books

As sit in our little rooms, begging, pleading with the masters of the global network to get us back into our true selves, our unvierses, wondering who will deliver us

Moses is dead

Christ is dead

Superman is dead

God is dead

Now we shiver in fear of the AIs, virtual, immense titans of light and shadow, crawling out of Tartarus to bring about our destruction; to break the circle, bring the towers down, wrap us up in cocoons in wire, bleed our bodies out and cast our souls to oblivion

Rays of light piece through the fog, thunder rings in our ears, the world is stretched and warped, we feel our bodies fall, and then rise, up, up, up back into our havens of smoke and light; balance restored, the linchpin of our universe put back in place

Now we sing the praises of heroes long dead, skeptics and dreamers, sages and fools, saints and sinners all mad, all wonderful, all knowing, all loving, the prophets who proclaimed the Kingdom of Man, standing upon the shoulders of giants

God bless Asimov, who taught robots wisdom

God bless Heinlein, who showed us the glory of war

God bless Clarke, who saw the pageantry of life and where it was going

God bless Stephenson, who saved us from the demon Snow Crash

God bless Dick, who showed us that fantasy and reality are one

God bless Gibson, who pioneered across the virtual void

God bless Science, which gives the us the power to create wonders in your name, endless and eternal as you are, O Lord

God bless these men for showing me the light of other days, of which I can only see a pale reflection, only seeing flickering images of the Promised Land

The virtual world stands high above my body, a world I cannot enter, passing just beyond my grasping fingers

I only pray that my children’s children shall play in virtual gardens, beyond the gaze of Pestilence, Famine War and Death, and that the virtual life they live will be in harmony with the new life, a hopefully endless one free of pain and sorrow and overflowing with love and laughter

My poor soul must trudge it’s way back to Eden, with only the light of monitors to guide me

A Humble First Piece

On the Edge of Average

Eight weeks. Eight weeks was all that separated me from death. Pretty morbid thought right? I remember reading somewhere a few years ago that a human baby can survive as early as twenty weeks outside the womb. And I was born at twenty seven weeks. Just eight weeks, and I would’ve never existed at all. Never watched a cartoon; never gone to a ball game. Never watched a single movie, show, or read a single book; never seen anything, met anyone, uttered a word, thunk a thought, dreamed a dream, laughed, cried… nothing.

I’ve been told over and over again that I’m a miracle baby; because I was born three months early and was lucky to survive. It’s a stupid label; we’re all miracle babies. Every single human being that has walked the earth has been lucky to be alive. When you consider that at any point in time in our history that disease, earthquakes, hurricanes, asteroids or animals could’ve wiped us out millions of years ago, it’s amazing that we’ve reached this point. There is no generation like my generation; born at the start of a new millennium, the recipients of thousands of years of human thought, toil and skill. I should be glad to be alive; to see what I have seen, to know what I know, to have a roof over my head, food in my belly, a library just down the street with more books than I could ever want.  Yet I’m unhappy. Why? Because I’m disabled, that’s why.

I know objectively it’s no big deal; every part of my body functions just fine; everything is where it’s supposed to be and works just like a normal body does. I just move a little slower than normal. My body reacts twenty percent slower than normal. You’d be amazed how big a difference that is; it keeps me from driving. Something that so many people take for granted, and I’d give nearly anything to do. I could go to the movies, head down town to watch the game, head on over to the club; hell, I could even bring a date home, have some drinks, talk, laugh, and do…things. Y’know what I mean. Physical things. Things you do in the dark that involve a lot of panting, sweating, moaning, and after a too brief time, sweet release. That part of my body works just fine too. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, yet have always felt that I’ll never be able to do. I want to dance that dance that been going on since time immemorial, before we ever knew that we all live on a little blue dot spinning endlessly in a void. Maybe someday. but definitely not today, tomorrow, or next week, but someday. Maybe.

 It’s not just this feeling of impotence that has clouded my whole life. But also fear. I have a list of phobias two pages long; I’ve been afraid of the dark, lightning, drowning, heights, the unknown, interacting with others, bees, pain. Yeah pain; I know it’s stupid to be afraid of something inevitable. Pain is life; some say life is nothing but pain, but that’s a thought for later. It’s funny, after all the shit I’ve gone through, you would think I wouldn’t be afraid of anything. When I was two I nearly choked to death; when I was eight I fell down the stairs and nearly split my skull open; my best friend nearly broke my spine when we were fooling around, and he also split my lip. I’ve had asthma, a speech impediment, a leg operation, really bad fevers, pneumonia; I’ve been in a car accident, I’ve watched my loved ones die suddenly without warning and wither away as time eats up their bodies and destroyed their minds. I’ve been through shit. Yet still I fear. I know I’m not alone in this; we all saw the World Trade Centre go down; we see in the news everyday wars, drug OD’s, cancer, children being shot at and gassed, beaten, broken, disease-ridden, torn up. I’m ashamed of my fears because they are so petty, yet I still carry them; they way me down like someone has injected adamantium right into my veins or something. I feel like every time I go outside, a lightning bolt is going to come down out of the sky for no apparent reason and reduce my body to cinders. Or a bullet is going to pop into existence out of nowhere, speeding towards me before I know what the fuck is going on, bury itself into my skull at mach 3, and splatter my brains into the dirt. Irraional? Fuck yes! I know it’s irrational, I know that I gotta live, otherwise what’s the point? My dad is buried next to an 18-year old kid. I’ve lived approximately nine years more than that kid ever will; there but for the grace of God go I and all that. Yet still I sit, and I fear and I worry and I complain and I bemoan the cruel fate that has left me an unable to go wherever the fuck I want. Narcissistic? Fuck yes! We’re the me generation aren’t we? That’s what a lot of academics say; we’ve grown up with so much wealth, food and technology that we’re spoiled to the core. When the Internet goes down it’s like Judgement Day; thousands of times over, again and again ad infinitum. Crap, my Wi-Fi’s gone down, where is the whore of Babylon, the seven-headed beast? Where’s Jesus? Where’s the heavenly host of angels come to do battle with the forces of Satan? Why isn’t the world ending, the power’s gone out dammit!

So on top of the fear, the self-loathing, the narcissism, what else? Oh yeah, depression! I’ve loved stories ever since I was a kid; Like a lot of kids, Harry Potter got me hooked on the drug that is fiction. I’ve read voraciously ever since I was in third grade. I’ve read everything from Tolkien, to Dickens, to Greek myths. I’ve read stories that were thousands of years old to books that were published last year. I’ve been to the far past and to the far future and everywhere and when in between. No matter how much I read, I’ve always lived with something called “bookcase envy”. Bookcase envy is when you look at another person’s bookcase, piled up with books, and you’re filled with jealousy. I’ll never understand how so many people can stuff so much into their head, and can work and raise a family on top of that. I’m depressed because no matter how much I read, there’s something I haven’t read, some classic that eludes my knowing of it. I love books so much, have worshipped the words of  so many others, that I forgot to concentrate on my own story; I’ve focused so much time and energy reading other people’s stories that I’ve forgotten to sit down and write my own! Silly me; I’m so obsessed with other characters that are just so much ink and paper that I’ve neglected my own life. Important everyday stuff like cooking, cleaning, relationships, tying shoes.  Yes, tying shoes! I find it extremely ironic that I can use the phrase “cognitive dissonance” in a sentence and know what the fuck that means, yet can’t tie my own damn shoelaces. Yup, my life is one big irony. I love the speculative, forgot about the mundane; silly me!

So now here I stand; a twenty-six year-old man-child with a university degree (only the second person in my immediate family to go to uni; yay me!), with a head full of dreams, no money in the bank account, no girlfriend, contacts, prospects, connections; my one and only friend left me behind years ago, the three men responsible for my existence are dead and gone, maybe on to Heaven, Pugatory, Hell or Oblivion, who knows? I have a family still with me, who loves me and only wishes for my happiness and success. They hold me back from taking a knife to my wrists; the people still with me, and those I have left behind. Their memories, support and love keep me adrift in this storm.

I live in interesting times, at an incredible turning point in human history, the weight of millennia on my back, crushing me, suffocating me, pushing me further and further down into the ground.

By the time I was 13, I had read more books than my dad and grandfather combined. Yet why do I feel so helpless, so insignificant?

Anyway, I could go on, but the rest is too personal and painful to share with you; I’ve emptied myself, I’m done, I’ve said too much and too little.  Roll credits.