Coming back to the world, slowwwwwwly

There are a lot of kernels for future writing in here, but here's some free-form literary therapy:


I was a gizmo junkie.  I had a cell phone when they weighed 5 lbs.  I was, and this is true, Karl@aol.com.  I paid hundreds of dollars a month for dial-up access, got ISDN, then DSL, etc.   I jumped in with the Commodore 128 and have given all my (non-existent) disposable income to the gods of technology ever since.

And in music, jeez- I've been a Cakewalk user since the green screen version 1, and still qualify for upgrades.

And the internet- I had KarlHolder.net, I published all kinds of stuff on music posts everywhere.

Then, I died.

I knew it was coming because from 1990 onwards my physical health was a medical mystery.  Strange bouts of pneumonia,  laryngitis, loss of sensation in my hands and feet.  And as far as my mental health goes- man, I went through a lot of therapists and medication and still couldn't stop being a complete asshole.

But, what do you do when you have problems, your doctors know, but nothing is working?  You keep on going.  To any old acquaintances reading my posts- yup, I was crazy, and I was a drunk.  30 years of that.  Right on my first beer at age 18 I found out that I could feel good that way and that's where I stayed.  There was a very evil and dark side to that business.  Sorry!  It's my gut instinct to hang my head in shame now and hide because I am very, very aware of how I behaved.  By and large I have found my old friends much more forgiving and welcoming than I deserve.  Thanks guys! (and someone pin a medal on my wife.  Still married.  20 years.)

But I felt it coming, and told my wife "Pretty soon all of this is going to vanish and we'll be in some big trouble.  Live as large as you can right now."   I was right.

Anyway, I don't want to go into great detail about the medical side right now.  Let's just say that the crescendo was building, and I knew it, and when things went down it was like "A Day in the Life", at the end of the song with John Lennon conducting pure chaos and cacophony.

And now I'm back.  Kind of.  This whole facebook/blogging thing makes me kind of nervous.  For the last few years I have been repelled by technology and the narcissism of the internet.  That's an easy, easy trap for me to fall into.  You can, with a very small effort, invent a false life for yourself on the web, with lots of "friends" in lots of countries-friends you've never met and don't actually know.  It's fun, but it is irrelevant, it is illusion, and it will fill your head with delusion.  (Hey! future lyric.)

When I came out of my coma, the only thing I wanted to see was my wife's face.  I grabbed onto her and pulled myself back- and for the last few years my only focus and interest has been my wife and my kids.  I really didn't want my world any bigger than that, so I hid.

When I saw what happened in Egypt, and how these sites helped those people, I decided that this web stuff could actually help me, but I can't suffocate myself with it.  Narcissism is ugly.  There's a lot of it around right now.  I don't want to do that anymore.

You realize when you are alone in an empty hospital room, late at night, recovering from something that should have by all rights ended you, that your identity on the internet is an illusion.  A facade placed over a lonely and empty life.

So I re-invented myself.  But, I'm still really, really fucking sick.  I'm back, and I'll work this because it's very therapeutic, but I will not live on here.  I don't carry a cell phone.  I still remember that text messages were damn annoying with iPaqs.  My focus is on the real world and doing real things.