March 14-15, 2015

Our title today is my response to an impulse I've had to resist to say Fuck it, What does it matter, Why do I care, How is this ever going to add up to anything anyway? It's a feeling that has me fully in its sway even as I write right now. And yet there it is, center-spaced and all, my professed response to this desire I have to throw in the towel, give up the ghost, and whatever other clichéd expression for saying I Quit.

I guess it matters if somehow I believe it makes a difference to continue to transcribe my thoughts and feelings, even as I slip further and further away from them into The Land Of I Don't Give A Fuck. It matters if I am committed to telling this whole story, not just its faltering beginnings. Yet the whole story is just what I fear most. That dream of marbles scattered across kitchen floor more than scares the shit out of me. It scares me silent. See that white cloth arcing into the ring? That's my towel, thrown in a signal of surrender.

And I guess I care because that's my nature -- I am one caring motherfucker. I care so much that I'm going to give you a chance to come with me on this entire journey. Even if that means showing you things you'd just as soon not see. And remember what Julie says, it's more than likely that it will take a long time for things to get really bad, and truthfully, I can't believe they'll ever go down that way, so if nothing else you'll get to see my denial crumble, brick by brick. Until finally, there'll just be a shadow of me, entering his spectral impressions on the page.

So that is what this will add up to anyway if I keep on keeping on. It will be the journal of a man who was not afraid finally to say a big, schematic Fuck You in the face of Parkinson's Disease, even if that meant staying the course more than a little bit longer than he knew he needed to. It will be my way of saying nothing and saying it slant, my way of saying I told you so when this disease is finally what does not end my days on this sweet planet of my wife, my children, and my dog, my way of saying thanks for listening far later than I might have said so otherwise. It will be my way of saying, Nope, I won't quit after all, especially with this much story left to tell.

So forgive me, really, should I bore you or seem at any point as though I am addressing exactly nobody. Please know that I kept on telling you my story despite every urge I had to do otherwise. I finally said, Have I got a cliche for you: it involves an imperative sentence with understood subject (You), and commands that subject to continue continuing, even though it may seem to be writing in circles, because it had faith that either it was not, or if it was, that the circles were worth knowing.