Recent content by Zatamon

Cigarette break The exhaustion washes over me in nauseating waves as I lean back in my chair, close my eyes... ...the yellow pool of the desk lamp's light casts a shadow on the wall behind me... ...my shade following my every move. I light up, adding the tiny, dancing flame of the lighter to...

Maybe subconsciously, I don't know. I don't like feeling guilty or thinking that she disapproves of me. When I do something that I know she would approve of, then I feel good. That's one reason I am still hanging on. I know she would want me to.

Do you ever wonder what your husband would say if he saw you doing 'this' or thinking 'that'? My wife was a fantastic bargain hunter. Every time we went out shopping, we had to visit every grocery store in town. She knew all the prices by heart, in every store, and felt great joy when she found...

My problem was that there was nothing to wait for. I knew that I could never be with her again. No way to go back to the past, and the future held no promise that I could want to live for. Once I had my epiphany, I realized that I could do only one thing: prepare for the end with as much...

PS. This poem inspired me to write the following, after watching a M*A*S*H episode: Fair Trade In wars we trade with the enemy: left arm for a right eye, burnt face for a kidney, orphans for orphans,… it’s not always a fair trade but the one who was counting is already dead. It’s all so...

The End and the Beginning By Wisława Szymborska Translated By Joanna Trzeciak After every war someone has to clean up. Things won’t straighten themselves up, after all. Someone has to push the rubble to the side of the road, so the corpse-filled wagons can pass. Someone has to get mired in...

Nice to meet you, fellow Canadian! :) Ever since I had that epiphany this morning, I feel a lot calmer, as if everything fell into place. Now I know what I have to do and am already doing it. Today I continued rebuilding the garage that was damaged by the snow during the last brutal Ontario...

Last post on the subject - I promise. I had to take the car in for an oil change, and on the way home, I had an incredible epiphany. What I realized, was that I had been looking at her death from the wrong perspective. I was focusing on the past and on what I had lost. That perspective resulted...

Why I hate time so much is that it gave me no warning. A blood clot in the lungs and she was gone in two days. From a perfectly healthy, happy, creative human being. Couldn't even say goodbye. I am still reeling, and it happened two months ago. I used to say I had two nightmares: in one I went...

I guess I need to explain why I need to kill time. Here is a tribute to her I wrote just a few months ago. Vera Without sparks our world is a dead world without fire, without warmth, without life. The cavemen needed the spark of lightning for his first fire; later the farmer needed the spark...

Thank you, Louanne. :)

Ever since my wife passed away, my life has become a crusade to murder time. Time is now my enemy and I ruthlessly murder it every day, any which way I can. When I wake up in the morning, I spend an hour in bed, coming up with more and more creative schemes to kill the bastard. It has a lifespan...

I should have said "against their perceived self-interest" - the attitude is ultimately self-destructive, even if they do not realize it at the moment.

The problem is much deeper than most people realize. - Human beings are motivated by reason and emotion. When the two are in conflict, in almost all cases emotion almost always Trumps reason. Now, in our North American capitalist and competitive culture, both business and political leaders want...

My wife of 45 years died 6 weeks ago. I still have long conversations with her in my mind every day. I wrote "in my mind", not "in my soul" - both are just words, referring to our consciousness that science still cannot define. I have a book written by D.F.Swaab, a neuroscientist: "We are our...