Calling the Bluff

Poker.

Just like in life, you need a little bit of luck and a whole lot of skill.
Texas Hold em', 5 Poker Stud, 7 Poker Stud, Acey Ducey, Blind Baseball, the Good-the bad-and the ugly, Strip, and so on and so on. Just know what game your playing. The rules are different for every one.

What you hold in your hand means nothing compared to what your opponent holds in his. You have to be able to read your opponent, know when he's lying and call his bluff.

So why the hell am I in a game of poker right now? Especially when I know my opponent was stacking the deck from the beginning and planning each and every ante. I guess it's curiousity. So the question is - who has the better hand? Does he really know what I hold or is he flying blind? I've called him on it. Now he's just wasting time deciding on what to do next. Let me help you out a little "dear". I don't bluff.

Or maybe he's worried I'll be upset if he takes his winnings and goes home. I really don't care if he does. It's only a game and all I'm looking for is someone to play with occasionally.

Or is he afraid he doesn't know what to do with his winnings? hmmmm......

So, are you willing to lay down and show what your made of or are you just going to walk away from your winnings? It's your call and you better decide or I might get back up from the table you so wanted me to play at and take my offer elsewhere.

Of course, maybe you just doesn't want to play with a blogger? :)

The Fire Down Below

Heart-pounding, gut-wrenching - jaw clenched, body tensed.



"I fell in to a burning ring of fire. I went down, down, downand and the flames went higher. And it burns, burns, burns the ring of fire, the ring of fire." - J. Cash



Okay, so Johnny was talking about love. But I think it works for that frustrating feeling I get when I feel the rage build up inside me.
Anger is something that I've never been able to deal with. To me, it was a sign of weakness, like crying or showing any emotion but sarcasm.
Showing anger or tears is something that lets them know that they've gotten to you, and therefore gives them great pleasure in knowing they have the upper hand.
But the thing is, it doesn't matter if you show it or not. It's still their, boiling inside you.
The more you bury it the more it builds and soon you develop a fear of it. What will happen if I let it out? Will I lose complete control? Will I go postal?
It starts to eat at you and chew at your insides. Some people start taking medication just to soothe it.
When I was younger I was told once by someone close not to show emotion, just walk-away. But it took so much concentration not to show emotion, that I couldn't get my feet moving to walk away - so I became a human target for anyone who wanted to vent their rage. I was tormented and tortured to no end.
But I'm not going to get into that. That's something my therapist has to deal with.
Right now I'm focusing on anger. I cry when I'm angry. I get so mad that I actually cry. I have been known to hyperventilate, even get sick. How much fear can you possibly instill in the person you're enraged with when you're wimpering and stuttering?
I have to find a way. I'm feeling the frustration build and I have to let it out. Maybe I should take up boxing.

Vivian the Victim

I'm having one of those days.

It seems lately I'm having a lot of those days. My horoscope says that the afternoon will be much better. So here I sit. Waiting for the afternoon bliss to begin.

Above me I hear the dripping of a leak from a rusty pipe to the left of me. No one believes that its there though because apparently I'm the only one who can hear it. Everytime I tell everyone to listen it stops.

I think I'm being messed with by an unseen force.

The torment isn't caused by the leak itself but by which pipe has the leak. Where does that pipe come from. I hear a flush and the drip turns into tap, tap, tapping sound. Oh Lord.

One second, while I move a little more to the right...

The electronics of our office have mounted a revolt against us. We haven't been able to connect to the internet all morning and in a last ditch attempt I brought our router to a professional who got it working in under five minutes. I came back to the office and plugged it in. I was able to connect but no one else in the building can, on any of the floors.

Then the phone calls came in of angry coworkers blaming us for screwing up their internet. So upstairs we went to reboot their router.

Downstairs again and my computer won't connect to the printer. I give up. Never been a fan of electronics anyways.

But the calls haven't stopped and no one seems to understand that the cause isn't us but the deceptively cunning electronics, who are mounting a raid to destroy mine and my coworkers day.

Wave the white flag with the apple logo on it. Take pity on us souls who are at mercy to the bits and bytes, html scripting and wireless ghosts of technology.

Throwing the Heat

Life has its ways of throwing curve balls. I've done my best to avoid those by never even getting up to bat.

You have to love baseball metaphors. I'm not much for the game but I do love those metaphors. In fact, I think the sayings are a bigger part of North American life then the game itself.

To listen to an avid baseball fan describe the crack of the bat or the flight of a ball to home base is like listening to Edgar Allan Poe describe the lost Lenore. You won't find that kind of poetic dreamery in any other sport.

Is dreamery even a word?

You'll have to forgive me. Sometimes I get a little long winded. Sometimes I'm right to the point. I think it depends on which of my many personalities have chosen to dominate that day. Maybe I should name them. Let's call this one "Wyonna, the Wanter." Not to be confused with "Purrsia the Ponderer" who are quite similiar at times but Purrsia is completely symbolic and even more long winded then Wyonna.

Anyways...as I was saying, I've always been afraid to step up to the plate. The fear of striking out always seemed far worse then never playing the game. When I was a kid I use to fake injury before the teams were even picked because I knew I would get picked last and the humility was something I could live without.

Of course, humility always had a way of finding me. Usually in the form of irony. In a game of baseball, Irony would be the pitcher and Humility would be the umpire. I would be sitting on the bench, faking a leg spasm, watching those who once sat beside me rounding the bases, as I nurse a case of rot-gut self-loathing. Suddenly, I would catch a smile crease the face of Irony as Humility signed her a play. She would nod and pull back on the ball. Those two little fingers would grip the stiches of the leather, and just before the release I would see her eyes dart in my direction. I would catch her devilish gaze as she released and even though I knew what was about to happen, I wouldn't be able to duck in time to avoid the inevitable slam to my face. And as I lay there in the dirt, I would hear the baratone boom of Humility's call, "You are outta there!"

Of course, as I got older, humility became more of a friend to me then I would have thought. When you spend your life stripped of most dignity, pride no longer becomes an issue, and you become more resillant to those sticky little situations that tend to befall us all at some point in life. What I mean to say is that even though humility may have caused my bruises it was always there afterwards to smother my eye in a big hunk of raw meat and tell me everything will be alright in the morning.

I still think Irony is a bitch though.


Why am I bothering with these overused, overripened baseball analogies you may ask? Recently I was faced with the decision to step up to bat and take a swing. This time I took it.

I struck out. Several times in fact.

But since I kept getting pitched to I just kept swinging. On the third attempt I hit it, not hard but hard enough. I made it to first base. I stood there flustered and bewildered, waiting for the chance to run the distance. It never happened. The game ended and I went back to the bench, while Irony knocked the mud from her cleats, smiled and gave me a shrug.

This time I smiled back though. I may not have made it all the way around the bases, but hell, this time when she aimed at me at least I had a club in my hand to defend myself.

An Introduction of Such

It's been awhile.
So long, in fact that I've become a stranger to you.
The written word, that is.

Please forgive me. It was not intentional, you see. Somewhere along the line I became disillusioned, and instead of turning to you, as I had done so often in the past, I blamed you for everything that had gone wrong in my life. I hid you beneath layer after layer of socially acceptable uniforms and soon forgot you exsisted.

I became obsessed with other things, small and simple to large and complicated. Obsessed with controlling my overindulgence and drowning in my own self-destruction. And there you lay, quiet and dormant, like the injured branch of a tree after the sting of winter.

I've seen my other branches grow. I've seen the birth of blossoms and the falling of leaves. I've seen the fruit of efforts fall to the ground and rot, and twigs snap off as I've reached upwards towards clouds passing by. But I forgot about you.

You were always there. Sturdy, strong and bare.

Then recently it happened. I'm not sure why exactly. I looked upon this limb and saw a speck of green poking out from beneath the skin. A small breeze came up and shook my leaves and I felt it to the tip of my roots.

I remembered.