The St. Louis Blues...

The recovery continues...
For those awares and unawares, I have been recovering for two weeks from nasal surgery meant to correct my crooked, screwed-up septum. Perhaps this is t.m.i. but I do not care: I have been injecting a saline solution into my nose four times a day (recipe = 1 gal. distilled water, 3 tbsp salt, 3 tbsp baking soda, 3 tspn olive oil) and occasionally feel a need to blow something out, which is always a globular, reddish-black mass that appears to be algae. Needless to say, that is necessary *says the doctor. It is in order to prevent scabbing and to hasten the healing process so that I may enjoy the benefits of my +$6,000 surgery. I am beginning to become dizzy at times on account of the larger amounts of oxygen entering my brain. It is a wonderful thing. This leads me to the next thing: drug addiction and the newfound sympathy I have for those suffering from it.

In my previous blog, I was under the influence of oxycordizone...the painkiller which was precribed to me by my wonderful surgeon. I took it for a week straight and followed the label: take one every four hours. My memories of that week are highly pleasant, despite my circumstance of being bed-ridden and dependent on my wonderful wife. I did enjoy the time away from work. But enter the post-recovery period...
After I had the gauze taken out (my wife referred to them as "nose tampons" on account of there being two strings hanging out either nostril for the purposes of pulling them out), I was given the instructions to begin cleaning it. I finished my prescription cold-turkey and my wife and I headed to St. Louis for a couple of days to enjoy some time away from life as we knew it. Well, that evening I began to feel strange. What could have only been voices began to whisper donut recipes in my ear, torturing me on the way to St. Louis. Then the sweats came. Then the shakes came. Then the fears came. Then the anxiety attacks came. Then they all combined and teamed up on me, violating me mentally, physically, and emotionally in any sick and degenerate way they could. In a nutshell, I came down and I came down ***king hard off those drugs. I thought, "How can this be? I am healthy!" Exactly. That is it. I am a skinny young man who is 90% naturalist, meaning I take as little 'tampered-with' items into my system as possible. This includes most food and almost all medicines. I do not even take aspirin (call it a mistrust of humanity that has grown into a critical mass). So it makes sense to say that a young man of enviable vigor who eats right, works out daily at his job, keeps crapitha out of his system, and drinks lots of water would suddenly be thrown into a spastic shock when drugs are suddenly introduced into his naive nervous system. I am not used to taking pain meds, so when my body was introduced to the blissful effects, it loved them...LOVED them. When I stopped giving my nervous system those drugs, it hated me...HATED me. So the end result being that I spent my mini-vacation in St. Louis (highest crime rate in the nation per 100,000 people, by the way) glued to the bed, hoping that either the anxiety attacks and pain would stop or a Boeing would crash land on my hotel and put me out of my misery...hopefully sparing my two pugs. But I have considered the plight of those poor folks who unwittingly become addicted to this stuff. God help them. It is a true, private hell to have to feel your life revolves around some pharmaceutical concoction and to go to the extent of becoming an addict. God help them all.

Here I am one week after the gauze removal and am at about 80% capacity and a million times better than a week ago. I now owe my wife a better trip in which we actually visit the Gateway Arch and get to SEE the Max Beckmann expressionist paintings in the sweet St. Louis Art Museum. Say a prayer for me if you read this.

*Recommended listening while reading this blog: "Vacation" - by the Go-Gos

Drugs with the Pugs

I had surgery for the second time in my life on Thursday. It is to repair a deviated septum, which essentially is when your nasal canal is crooked enough to cause obstructions in your breathing. Needless to say, I am grateful for getting it done. As I type, I am hyped up on medication and stuffed with gauze. I cannot wait for the gauze to come out via two green strings hanging out my nose on Thursday. The flow of oxygen will be 'shocking', I've heard.

I want to talk about the use of these drugs. I despise substances, legal or illegal. I do not even like taking aspirin or ibuprofen. I see them the way I do caffeine: they're all designed as a crutch (caffeine, unfortunately, is one I have proudly limped around with for quite some time, now). But today I will give some credit to these 'drugs', at least the ones prescribed for me. First, they have relaxed me in an amazing way. You would think that sitting around my house for days on end would normally drive me nuts, but I have thouroughly enjoyed it. Only the drugs, people...I assure you.

Secondly, I deleted my useless myspace page I have kept active for five years for some sick reason. It feels wonderful not having that linger back there as if it were a bad canker. Myspace wore out its welcome in 2007 for me. Now I'm just waiting to say the same of Facebook. I may be waiting a little longer for that.

Thirdly, I've reconnected with some special people. I know now that when I'm myself, I'm apparently unsociable because I do not talk to people (phone, email, facebook...you name it). Since I have been drugged, I talk to lots of people...happily at that.

Finally, I've reasoned that this drugging is nothing less than a truth serum of sorts. It has a way of making me relax so as to allow what's below the surface come forth. I've been pleasantly surprised to learn I do not miss a thing about my job. I was honestly predicting I'd be bored at the house, recovering and all, ready to get back to work, but I have realized that I truly dread going back and therefore, I really must hate that place. In talking to my wife, we both are miserable at our jobs for different reasons. I will not go into all of them, but I guess I've learned that the next time I need to learn how I really feel about something, it pays to get sick for the intoxicating education of the prescribed chemicals alone. It would save a fortune on therapy.

I will say one thing has pissed me off terribly during this time. When I type, I have to rewrite every word twice because apparently...ineffective typing is a side effect.

Recommended music while reading this blog = "West Coast Friendship" by Starflyer 59

Poetry of the Day

I was going to post a large rant about my job, but I'm rather thankful that it has provided me with some insurance to get some necessary surgery. So halfway through it, I felt guilty. I will instead...post another poem. This is one about our capacity, as humans, to waste time. It is something I feel we have perfected. Here it goes:

The Chasm (or the Wasting of Time)

The great chasm rests in the earth
In the center of all man, great and small, courageous and afraid
It is unto a mighty gulf, fixed for all to gaze upon,
As a hideous scream amidst a sea of silence.
Impossible to pass over…of course, no!
Impossible for it to reach us…of course, no!

For dotted around the gulf, as a halo on the ground
Are gateways, numbered for each soul to enter
They take us into pathways which lead us into
The impossible place.
Impossible to pass over…of course, no!
Impossible for it to reach us…of course, no!

We follow them with such ease
As if freezing unto death, we feel a rising heat
We embrace the pathways before us and walk into its grasp
Until we reach the bottom of that impossible place, into the chasm
What mystery lies before us in this impossible place?
Only to discover it is everything we need.

Assume it has no shape, touch, sound, or taste…
Assume it is your love, passion, pleasure, and essence as one
It appears unto us as a forest, in the bottom of this dark, impossible place
It has one name…Time
Time is its name…this grove of green lushness in this pristine place
But alas, we were born to carry this axe.

In the manner of life, as we all know
We have learned one thing only and that is the following:
To carry this axe, with the pride of a lioness over her cubs
Born with it from the womb, yielding it masterfully, fearfully
The forest…Time…be damned, in this impossible place
We clear it with the urgency of a child on fire

The lushness laid waste, the trees now removed
This chasm is empty of the blackness, once strong
Into furniture, no! Into houses…why, no!
Into firewood, no! Into the fire…why, yes!
Time is burned thoroughly on account of our axe
We have done it well.

No use was our Time.


Recommended listening while reading this poem. Not recommended listening, but recommended watching: "The Beaver", starring Mel Gibson and Jodie Foster

Poem for the Day

The Rain
It comes, it comes
Like distant drums…
Repeating their shrill, rhythmic patter
Beyond a great hill

It surges on forward
Unfazed by the air
Unmoved by the trees and grass
It moves without care

In dissonant harmonies with crickets,
It marches along
Bellowing their anthems and choruses
A mystery…is its song

The song soars skyward
The song flows over land
The song joins the rivers and streams
The song caresses your hand

It may soothe you into laboriously earned sleep
With its pittering and pattering voice of a muse
Or awaken you with fear, running so deep
With its crackling of the earth in glowing, white hues…

Regardless, nevertheless, notwithstanding,
It drives through the hills
As a serpent through the reeds, around every weed
With its rhythmic shrills

So come forth my love,
In my sleep or my pain
Come soothe or awake me,
My lovely, precious rain.


-Andy Burney

Thirteen Years: An Arbitrariness

I want the last thirteen years of my life back, I have decided. I want them back so that I may invest them. Had all the facts been laid before me in 1998, I would have begun investing in gold, savings bonds, or at least opened a money market account for my life, right then and there, at that moment. I may have even followed the example of the lazy servant in the book of Matthew who buried his talent in the ground. But unlike that worthless loser mentioned in the Bible, I merely took it out and blew it in ways that make me cry a little more each day.
Let us reminisce a little bit...
I say 1998 because it was a pivotal year. While we are on the "investing" metaphor, we will just say it was the year I "opened the account". I got my first job. It was a low-paying job at a book store, but I recall being a scrawny, immature sixteen year old working as the sole, single man in a Christian bookstore filled with cute chicks. But it was also the year my parents ended their long marriage (God only knows why they waited). So the first thing I would have done was gone to the bank (remember, we're using the investment metaphor here) and opened my account as an independent under a false alias named Jorges LaPeu, so that I could have been free from parental controls. Let us face it...I was an old man at the age of five.
1998 was also the year some idiot muttered musings in my ear about joining the military and giving college the heave-ho...after all, "the military will pay for your college! We'll never go to war!" (circa 2000) If I were going to the bank, I would have reported that recruiter as a swindling insurance salesman attempting to hack into my account in order to exploit me and retrieve all the personal information I had so he could go back to his superiors and brag about his quota for the month...before spending his military pay on salty dogs and prostitutes. B*stard...maybe he's in Ohio someplace now.
Let us recollect 2000. That was a strange year. Sure, Y2K was a boatload of fun and the release of X-Men: the Movie, but the rest of the year was spent in a factory. The 'factory'. That word has taken on a unique definition in my personal lexis. It means 'the place I never wanted to be but I am; paying for all those times I back-talked my mother or got into trouble at school in fifth grade for writing dirty words on the desks'. Nevertheless, I had my first full-time job at a place that could easily be the portal to Hell (An aerial photo may have even shown that the place appeared to spell the word 'Great whore of Babylon'. It is not worth mentioning the name of the place. It shot steel pellets at my chest, crushed old ladies' hands in machines, and contained men who compared condom usage to 'washing your foot with the sock on' *shivers down spine*...) I worked from four p.m. until three-thirty a.m. The only souls who work those hours are centipedes, talking heads for radical right/left political newscasts on FoxNews and MSNBC, and college students. Since I was none of the latter, I was a sick human. Yes, for this ungrateful s.o.b. in this bad economy, factories are the worms that infect my intestine...were I to have a bad case of worms. Since that may be degrading to worms, who fertilize our soil and allow us to fish more effectively, I shall say a case of nematodes. So I would go to the bank once again, and say, "You know this 'factory job'...it is nothing more than an automatic withdrawal from some perverted American businessman in Thailand acting upon his perverted urges for underage girls...so CEASE AND @#$%ING DECIST WITH ALL UNAUTHORIZED TRANSATIONS!!!" Factories...*sigh* I am still in one by the way, at least while the Feds are on standby. I am not kidding.
I suppose the next few years may be summed up rather easily. I played music. Let's face it: I can play really well. I am one of those 'Nashville' guys who picked up guitar, vocals, theory, and what-not rather easily and can hold my own with some of the best. But let us shove the broggin' up the arse, as the drunken Scotsman would say. For had I spent time in college while it was still at half-cost in the early 2000s rather than chase pipe dreams of Christian rock-stardom (that term sounds as endearing as "Home Alone 6 : Kevin Comes Out"), I would undoubtedly be shouting down some student for referring to me as 'bubba' as opposed to 'Dr. Burney'. Seriously, if the hours spent jamming in some raggedy, warped-floored house had been invested in writing the next great romance novel as an English major, I'd be attending the next romance-writers convention with Nicolas Sparks, his wife, and mine...even joining them for tea, perhaps. I would have told the bank to give me another teller, because the one on the right stares at me in discomfiting ways.
This brings me directly to my next year of woebegon (via Garrison Keillor). But I proceed into this next passage with caution...my wife. I am happy I married my wife. I love her and I would never ask to replace the date of October 15th, 2005 with some half-baked fantasy of 'what might have been' with some Facebook ex-girlfriend...*shivers down spine* You know what? That's all I have to say concering that matter or that year. Marriage to my wife...that was a good one for the books. So I would go to the bank and leave a compliment, in writing, to the bank manager for an account well-managed for that year.
College filled the space for the dates of 2006 until 2009. But in reality, it should have been the entire thirteen years this blog covers. It took me ten years to practically execute a college education. The other three were wasted on the aforementioned paragraphs (read them and pay attention, you fools). But I tried engineering. God help me, it sucked something awful. You know, I used to be sensitive about this topic because I had some close friends who were engineers, but I will tell you of a truth. God only knows how it sucked so terribly. I dropped it after two months for two simple reasons: I had not the time nor willpower to invest in suckulus...i.e. calculus AND the guys I went to class with were the types I referred to as, how shall I put it post-high school: geeks. Sure...well-paid geeks, but geeks nonetheless. So I took my chances with the bold and the broke: the arts and sciences majors. I majored in history. I majored in history. I majored in history. Did I tell you about my worthless degree pursuit? I majored in history. I loved it, I was d*mn good at it, and I would do it again. God help me, anything to keep me away from those freaks I had in Calculus. So I would tell the bank a simple thing: 'You told me this was a free checking account. You charged me $1,000,000 a month. I do not yield an average income; therefore I cannot possibly pay this. Go write the next great American romance novel, you say? Well, let me think about it. Okay, I will try...but it's under protest.'
Okay, the last two years are a mixed bag. I have lost some close acquaintances, experienced some personal loss, personal gain (I have decent insurance again, albeit I am still at a factory with a bad case of worms...er, nematodes), and I have made some new acquaintances...most of them in my head. This is okay. But the greatest part of these past two years I want back is...well, answers. Answers are a tough call. There is never a guarantee they will be received or found. It is the 'not knowing' that makes this so hard to bear. There are some answers I am waiting on: have the past thirteen years been nothing more than a ruse to take precious time out of this already seemingly short life we will never get back?... did I really screw up so bad by playing my guitar with friends and not going to school like I should have?... should I have just kept drawing cartoons?... did I unknowingly blaspheme in church as a kid and automatically, but unwittingly declare all hope of divine intervention defunct? Who knows? What I do know is that those thirteen years are in the bank just like last Friday's paycheck. They are spent and they shall not return. The best I can do is check the records, read them, mourn them, learn from them, and repeat what was good and recant that which was bad.
I will say this. I have a beautiful wife and two awesome pugs. That, you can take to the bank.

Recommended listening for reading this blog: "River Flows in You" - Yiruma

Some Verbiage for the Pessimist...

If you ever want to lose your faith in people, just wait awhile... They never turn down an opportunity to deliver upon such a promise as that.
If you ever want to know what unconditional love is, look into the eyes of your dog. I read a lovely quote once: "You ask me if dogs go to Heaven. I tell you, they will be there long before we will."
If you ever need ideas for subject matter to write about, look no further than what happened yesterday.
If you ever want to be miserable, educate yourself.
If you ever need a philosophy to make sense of the world and all the ills within, ("why do bad things happen to good people?", "why did they have to die?", and so on...), then remember these words a wise man once told me upon finding out my close friend killed herself: sh*t happens.
If you ever wondered if the person writing this blog has issues or not, read the next statement.
If you ever want to question your faith in God, humanity, and life...have a miscarriage or two.

Writing, I feel, has saved my life in more ways than I will ever know, so I am eager to continue doing it. That is all for now. I will try to keep in touch, though.

*Recommended listening while reading this: "A Warm Place - NIN"