this blast from the past was originally contrived very early one morning, ten days before #1 Daughter was born. it was, unfortunately, done at the resolution presented, because i was just goofing around, and as luck had it, i was never able to come back and replicate it at higher resolution. okay, “never was”. pfft. never did.

i’ve called this various things over the years, but i’ve never really applied a full name to it. it was created in MetaCreations Painter 7 (now Corel Painter X) using various Kai’s Power Tools plugins. it’s been a long time since i sat down to do nothing but art.

when i stumbled upon this tonight, i was struck by the lack of contrast, so i spent a few minutes tweaking it heavily, and when i was done, i had something pleasantly different than the original. so, here it is.

as some of my family members know, i have had minor tinnitus virtually all my life. at least, i think, since i fell off a 1.5-meter diving board straight onto the side of my head when i was in fifth grade.

this past summer, i managed to catch a hard-kicked soccer-ball on my right ear (the side with the tinnitus) as it rebounded off a goal-post, and the tinnitus naturally got a bit more pronounced. after a couple of months of dealing with it, i finally got a referral to an Ear, Nose, and Throat doctor, who did a full hearing test (including conduction) who determined that the tinnitus was caused by nerve damage and was not the result of anything wrong with all those little bones in my ears.

i’ve also had an old root canal “go bad”. one of the roots had cracked and it was infected up under the tooth itself. earlier this year, the dentist sent me to a specialist, who ultimately determined with the crack in the roots there wasn’t anything he could do about it. great. i waited to talk to the dentist about it at my next scheduled checkup, which happened to be on Halloween. this was right in the middle of harvest out here, so my allergies were very active. so, i got my teeth cleaned, and afterwards, the dentist poked and prodded around on the infected tooth, causing it to leak a bit straight into the back of my inflamed throat.

the next day, i was sick as a dog. i got prescription and knocked it down to a dull roar, but since the tooth was still continually supplying infection into my bloodstream, i really didn’t get over the infection until a week or so after the tooth was extracted towards the end of November. so, here i was in December now, actually feeling pretty good, except i began noticing that my tinnitus was getting progressively worse. up through about the day before yesterday, when i decided that i would rather be deaf in my right ear than to constantly hear this damned noise, which effectively has hearing stopped in that ear anyway: the tinnitus is that intense. it has also changed from being a straight noise that isn’t affected by anything (pressure changes, etc) to a noise that markedly changed by alterations in pressure, direct contact, chewing, anything.

so yesterday morning, i’m sitting here at the computer working on a blog meme for the otherwhirled (i’ll get it posted after i post this), and i turn my head to the side, looking at one of the kittens coming into the room. my head stopped, but my center of gravity felt like it kept going. “That’s weird,” i thought. i turned my head back to the computer, and it did the same thing in the other direction. “Great,” i thought, “i had just a bit more than usual to drink yesterday and NOW i decide to get tipsy? what the hell….”

ten minutes later, and i was attempting to detangle myself from three cats (one on my lap and two at my feet), because i had to majorly hurl. my center of gravity seemed like it was literally anywhere. i wasn’t dizzy; the room wasn’t spinning, but i couldn’t stand unassisted. hell, i couldn’t sit unassisted. realizing it was primarily an issue of vertigo, which i have dealt with all my life when in high places (yes, even though i used to jump out of airplanes and rappel), i forced myself up the stairs to where i’d left my phone. i got hold of the Spouse Unit at work and asked if we had a Carbon Monixide detector in the house. we do. it wasn’t going off. (i thought of that first because we had some friends who got CM poisoning several years back, and that’s how they said it started). i was on the front porch, and began to realize that every time i move, it set off the hurl. and that’s move anything: head, arms, feet. it didn’t matter. it was sub-20 outside, and i was sweating like a pig. lovely. so, back inside to our master bedroom, then. on the way there, one of the kittens who was with me down in my office, and who is very concerned, very nearly got me killed by twining between my feet as i was trying to navigate past the staircase with the not-very-sturdy banister. i made it to the bathroom and just had to live there for about an hour. every time i moved, the hurl came on. didn’t matter which way i faced, up or down, left or right. i tried laying down and simultaneously realized we hadn’t cleaned the floor in a while and that laying down didn’t help. eventually, i tried calling the Spouse Unit again. sitting up to do that, i was so overcome with vertigo and shakes, hyperventilating, that all i managed to do was lean on the number “3″ on my phone (her work speed-dial). i don’t think i managed to say anything. eventually i just lay down again and worried about the fact that every movement made me hurl, including turning my head to the side, which i needed to do so i wouldn’t choke. i was pretty much helpless and extremely pissed off, and all i could do was listen to the tinnitus raging so loud i couldn’t hear anything else in that ear, including when one of the cats came in to check on me and was meowing like crazy. i thought he was on my left, and i reached out that way, only to feel him bump me with his nose on my right cheek.

i don’t know how long it took, but the Spouse Unit got an ambulance out there to me. nothing like having strangers walk in on you laying on the floor in your own bathroom. (like it was the morning after a frat party or something. at least i was fully dressed.) they got me off to the hospital, where eventually the Spouse Unit hooked up with me. the intern and the doc checked me out, and eventually determined that i’ve got Benign Positional Vertigo. apparently, the infection didn’t completely go away, or it at least left behind my semicircular canals (your balance center between your ears) full of fluid. that’s why the tinnitus is so pronounced and why it can be affected in ways it couldn’t before (pressure changes, etc). so now i’m on motion-sickness medicine, and fighting the drowzy. they gave me a double-dose there in the ER, and i was a good boy and took a dose later yesterday evening, but i didn’t take one this morning. now that i know what to expect, since i’m not having to drive anywhere in the next few days, and i’ll take some meds if it starts coming on again. at least it gives me a few minutes to react to it. and i’ve got to be awake to do client work, which i’m now another day behind on.

but that’s where i’m at, and why i was incognito yesterday. i’m fine, i believe. the meds incidentally help dry up the inflated canals, so i might take one tonight just to keep that going. but the tinnitus, though lessened, is starting to drive me crazier than i already was. am. whatever. but, i’m back among the living, and feel like i owe the Spouse Unit my life…again.

my next-to-the-last wedding of the year is today. i’ve got a BAD sore throat. thus far in my career, i’ve managed not to have to work a wedding sick, so this will be first for me.

but i thought of this because of what my daughter said about staying away from guys right now and not getting married EVER. i SO felt the same way about women from time to time. several times, even. but in fact, i met the Spouse Unit just three weeks after i had TOTALLY given up on women. our meeting was completely unexpected, and our getting together was more than a surprise. so every time i shoot a wedding, i’m reminded of all the things that were pouring through my head ‘back then’ (positive and negative), and i’m still somewhat amazed that people actually want to get married, despite being happily married myself.

i was engaged three times in my life. sometimes when i look back, the acts of engagement were almost more significant than the acts of marriage that i’ve partaken in. they were emotional promissory notes that seemed to me to have more significant as a promise held in trust as opposed to the exercising of that trust. and if it weren’t for the exercising of Will, which is what a marriage ceremony is about, one of those earlier promises would still have been in effect.

which is not to belittle marriage in any way. there is something grand and inspirational about any marriage, as two people commit before witnesses to join their lives together, even when that joining is only a formality. i normally allow myself to get somewhat caught up in those emotions while i’m capturing wedding scenes, but with the way i feel today, i believe i’ll be more of an impartial observer. perhaps i’ll see some things today that alter my perception of this process.

regardless, every wedding i serve reminds me of my own wedding to the Spouse Unit and as such, during every wedding i serve, i silently renew my vows to her. it’s the least i can do, i suppose, since the weddings are part of what keeps me from spending more time with her and our children.

(…and maybe will someday, for that matter)

i am very proud of The Elder and Unknown. she contacted the Spouse-Unit after our return home and apologized to her for not being able to meet with her. she has apparently been open with her mother and step-father about the Spouse Unit’s and #1 Son’s contact with her, and that has predictably created some upheaval in their household. i’m proud of her because she has been honest and forthright about all this with her family. at her age, i would have found some way to screw this type of thing up.

heck, at 22, i did screw this type of thing up.

and i still struggle emotionally with wanting to contact her. honoring the law behind the release of rights that i signed in her regard, as well as the social contract that represents between myself and her parents, continues to win, though. i doubt my contacting her now, despite her positive responses to the Spouse-Unit and #1 Son, would really “help” her in any way.

and i’ve waited this long.

if i could talk to her, i would tell her that i’m proud of her, like i just said. i would also try to make it clear that i never intended this to be so hard on her. irresponsibility has many ramifications, and most of them verged beyond my control to rectify or mitigate once i understood that i wasn’t going to be given a real chance to rectify or mitigate them.

i would tell her that she always has a place here, both in our hearts and in our home, should she ever desire to get to know us. i would tell her that she has always been a part of us.

and i would remind her, in case she hadn’t figured it out yet, that i was a complete jackass when she was born, so her mother’s fears in her meeting us and taking her rightful place in our family is only justified if you accept the belief that people don’t evolve, mature, and progress from the states they were in when last they were known to you.

and then, sometimes it dawnnes on you ~

the name Dawnne came about a long time ago, back when i was at the Presidio of Monterey at the Russian Language School. i coined it as a cognitive antonym to “dawn”.

of course, a simple google will readily show that there are no unique thoughts, and that several people named Dawnne are older than i.

yeah okay, and they all seem to be female. shut up.

before The Elder and Unknown was born, her mother and i made a list of names. (The Elder and Unknown) Rochelle Dawnne, a combination of names i selected, won out. when i met my natural parents in that same year and changed my name, “Dawnne” became a literal attachment to The Elder and Unknown, who was born a month after my change of name.

when The Elder and Unknown was four, i was asked to give up my rights to her so that her step-father could adopt her and place her on his insurance. as i’ve already noted here, that seemed to be the best thing i could do for her, so i did. when he adopted her, however, “Dawnne” was dropped from her name.

but that attachment, which was always subjectively tangential in its own way, was never broken.

she hasn’t chosen to respond to mom’s last communication for several days. since she corresponds via her computer at work, that could be for any number of reasons, so we’re not reading anything into it.

irony of ironies, the Spouse-Unit has a conference in San Antonio next week. i will be going with her, as we’ve never had the chance for me to show her around my old stomping grounds. it won’t be like going home, though, considering all that happened in what seems like so long ago. i wasn’t Dawnne back then. and heck, Six Flags, Sea World, and the huge Mercado that used to be just a quiet Riverwalk weren’t even built until after i had moved away.

it’ll be another excercise in tempered impatience, i suppose. i have interesting karma. i’m still undecided as to whether or not i should be looking forward to the next lifetime….