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The Darkest Timeline
from 
thehypocrite
When is it darkest again? I forget.
When you are in a dark place, look for the bright point. There is always one. You will be drawn to it and it will save you. Or burn you. If you writhe in its warmth remember the empty cold you left behind.
Night Time
When the moon is full I bask, gaze east, Ask the wind — Are you there?
This faithful witness Showers us in glory At once, half a world away.
Dark expanse of heaven wraps us in embrace, Little different from adjusted celestial pricks.
A thousand years changed Less in the canvas Than these thousand miles. Yet, still, I call your name.
Strange fantasy at play These incorporeal connections A heart can drive to madness, And I was mad to begin.
Genesis 49:14,15 “Issachar is a strong ass, lying down between the two saddlebags. And he will see that the resting-place is good and that the land is pleasant. He will bend his shoulder to bear the burden and will submit to forced labor.”
I have a favorite saying: “I was born a mule, I will die a mule.” It is my way of accepting whatever comes my way, good, bad, or otherwise. And there's a lot of otherwise. Spending your life in service to others is a laudable and commendable way to live. But it will take a toll. Jesus famously told us that there is more happiness in giving than in receiving. But he never said we shouldn’t receive.
A mule will trudge tirelessly, burden born without complaint, until it collapses from exhaustion. He depends on his drover to think about the animal's needs and supply them. The mule's job, after all, is not to care for and manicure himself, but to move heavy loads. So, as long as the driven and the driver both do their job, everyone wins.
But, living as we do in a time when commodification and efficiency make living hardly possible, it is easy for the needs of the mule to be ignored and forgotten. This naturally is disastrous to both parties. If the mule drops dead, the master moves no cargo and the mule can no longer find satisfaction in fulfilling his intended purpose to the fullest degree.
Take care of your mules. We don't last forever.
I'm starting to claw my way out of a massive burnout and emotional crash. The last couple of years have seen Wolfiniius try to carry more and more. Asking for help is a start, but it requires reciprocity from those we ask. It isn't enough to say, “We'll give that some thought.” If you see someone in your life overburdened, don't just point it out, offer real help or suggestions to help save the soul before it is lost.
I don't know if I will ever find my way back to the place I was before. 18 hour days week after week and happy to just be useful. Now, if I get in two productive hours in a 24h period, it's a win. It feels like an implosion and something I didn't think myself capable of.
I admit to a curiosity of what the long-term financial solution to this state is. Maybe running out of money will be the cure. You can live in this world without heart or brain, but NOT without cash.
Now, let's go back to Issachar, one of Jacobs sons and the father of one of the 12 tribes of Israel. On his deathbed, Issachar's father told him that he would be a hard worker in behalf of his brothers. True to the prophecy, some 200 years later, after the land flowing with milk and honey had been given to the the nation, Issachar's descendants would become known for their hard work in not only cultivating the land but for the benefit of their fellow brothers and sisters. And they were known to support the physical battles of the nation as well. Specifically, Issachar is mentioned in the Bible as supporting the defense against Sisera during the time of the Judges. So that tribe of descendants really put their lives on the line. Not just dying for those around them, but living for them as well.
And they were praised for this. Service to others is worthwhile—but it can be deeply taxing.
The lesson I’m learning is this: Helping others is one of the best ways to live. But, we MUST care for our NEEDS first.
This is not selfishness. It is the opposite. For the stronger we are, the more of a load that can be born. A strong mule is a happy mule, just as a strong, well-cared-for person is better able to help others.
The inverse is equally true: a weak mule is a dead mule. In the end, we are all headed to the long house of our fathers. Buy why rush the conclusion?
Live long and prosper.
Revelation 19: 11-13 — I saw heaven opened, and look! a white horse. And the one seated on it is called Faithful and True, and he judges and carries on war in righteousness. His eyes are a fiery flame, and on his head are many diadems. He has a name written that no one knows but he himself, and he is clothed with an outer garment stained with blood, and he is called by the name The Word of God.
I’ve done it all. Whatever was asked. Not always with aplomb But I did it. Isn’t that worth something? Hell, I was a little kid And it’s never Stopped being hard It’s hard doing this It’s hard doing that Hard hard hard When does the hard stop? Only with the closing of my eyes In the final step? It’s too long of a journey Without enough respite. There’s no escape No out No easy mode. So what’s the point? The work? Is that the point? To live like dogs And die like dogs? Happiness is only ever a veneer.
#poetry #memoir #confession #essay #sxsw #write #100DaysToOffload
The Cousins Came to Town
from thehypocrite
you can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but do not pick your friends nose
This morning, a friend announced with gusto to a group of us, “you don’t love ANYONE as much as you love family!!”
I strained one of my eyes rolling it.
I am sure SOME people love their families more than anyone else. But others of us, well, family is something with which you are stuck. We choose whom we love with absolute abandon, not because of genetics but because the care and interest they have for us. My relatives, I mostly could never see them again and be fine.
Is that the lament of a lonely soul?
My wife is another matter though. When her cousins come to town everyone goes on hold to entertain them. They aren’t even close kin. Gabriel, Sarah and their adult daughter are cousins of a cousin. But in the 40 years I’ve known my wife’s family, he’s always been a fixture.
We used to joke my sister-in-law was secretly in love with Gabriel. Though many serious things are said in jest, nothing ever untoward ever went on. At least as far as I know. In my experience, the heart is more than capable of decades-long affection that goes beyond friendship but never quite blooms into romance.
Arriving at the restaurant tonight, the sun has dipped below the horizon and I wish I’d worn my corduroy hunting jacket. I am chilled and in a complete fog. The family has been trading around a miserable little head cold and while everyone else is either just starting to get it, or get over it, I am at peak feeling-like-shit. I’d rather be in bed. But duty calls. And love, love calls too. Just not of self tonight.
Coming late means everyone’s food is arriving and our waitress forgets to put in our order. The table is clearing before she rushes over with the wrong plate of food. No matter, we have pecked and grazed everyone’s meals and neither of us had much appetite to begin.
While we laugh and tell old stories we’ve traded a hundred times before, my wife has gotten stuck to the table. It is a patio setup and our table, one of two 6’ affairs, has oak slats with .5 inch gaps between each piece of lumber. It is attractive but also very practical for the outdoor setting. Rain cannot pool and the wood’s finish ensures a long, attractive life.
The gaps though, are the perfect size to capture her very elegant 18k gold bracelet that just happens to be .625 inches in width. Resting her wrist on the table allowed the flat chain to wedge between the slats diagonally. Tugging at it has only fastened it more soundly.
She is freed when I remove the bracelet from her wrist, but the gold is stuck fast. Pulling through below only wedges it deeper. The oak slats are new and fresh and have no give when pried apart with forks and knives. Fortunately, my nephew has a very sharp 4” folding knife (this is Texas, so that is normal) and I am able to very gingerly work the leading wedged edge up and out without destroying her bracelet.
We all cheer at the victory. Freed at last, she tucks the bracelet away as conversation shifts to other things.
We talk some of work, life in California (where Gabriel and his family live) and happy reflections on my wife’s sister who passed away in February this year. Many of our old stories have a new weight now that she is gone. God, EVERYTHING has more weight since her loss… I hear Lolly (the daughter) telling my nieces about her trips to Japan and Spain, Disney and Hawaii. She and her parents travel a lot. Gabriel and Sarah aren’t rich, but life in California necessitates a high wage and as Gabriel is a plumber, there’s plenty of cash for travel and experiences. I can sense my niece's jealously.
To my left, my other nephew trades stories about his recent purchase of a white and red 1991 Corvette. He has only owned it for a few weeks and is still very excited about it. I don’t engaged because my feelings are still hurt he wouldn’t let me drive it. I think he’s worried I’ll break the now classic vehicle. I am of the belief that sports cars, regardless of age, are meant to be driven sportily, not like your grandmas sedan.
Remembering his lumbering launch from my mother-in-laws house the night before, I smugly check the vehicles stats. The Chevrolet weighs in at 3400lbs with 245 horsepower. Compared to my old 5 series BMW touring sedan at 3600lbs and 282 HP, it’s not that impressive. I know the Beemer was a much better driving experience as sports cars are notorious rough rides. I know the 2005 540i was the best ride we ever owned. It carried us up and down the Eastern seaboard and across the country in the 5 or so years we owned the vehicle.
Everyone is tired. ARM and I because we got up early, volunteered most of the day, installed a shower in Campervan Beethoven, and cleaned up and dashed to a late dinner. The other 14 people because they spent the day two hours from home in the city. We will ALL sleep well tonight.
At least until some of us spring awake at 4am to reflect on the day.
Paying our tab and saying our farewells, we make plans for tomorrow’s festivity. Worship in the morning, a quick lunch, brief stint doing a little more volunteer work and then everyone is landing at our house for ribs and an animation festival in the evening. I am so tired, the thought does not excite me. But, soldier on we must.
When we arrived, I took note of a darling little Vespa chained to a light pole. As we exit, it is still there, across from the restaurant entrance. But now it has a new accessory: a windburned fellow in a dusty windbreaker and threadbare, greasy jeans. He leans cooly against his white and blue vehicle doing his level best to evoke James Dean.
At 50cc, it is the kind of bike you’d see in Europe ridden my much younger, more attractive men and women. This fellow is easily late 50’s. But I can tell he feels VERY hip. His attire and face are all wrong, but he has the countenance and posing of someone absolutely confident in their persona. A cigarette dangles carelessly from his fingers and he blows clouds of toxic smoke onto the cerulean night sky.
Doing the math, he is probably two strikes in on a DWI and has lost his license. In Texas, one does not need a drivers license for vehicles under 50cc, and his Vespa is technically only 49.
I wonder if he, too, has chosen his version of family—the open road, the night sky, his own company. Maybe not. Maybe he’s waiting for his wife’s shift to end, or perhaps he just needed a smoke break after gorging on spicy chicken sliders and fries.
As we pull away, the grizzled cyclist slips from my mind and I toss a final wave to the cousins and the rest of the family. I start to think of all the people I have chosen to love. Each of them lives in their own little room in my heart. Some exist in closets and some in penthouses. But they are with me all my days. It occurs to me that in this case, I DO love my family more than others. But, this is a choice. And a good one I think.
#essay #inspiration #motivation #memoir #write #100daystooffload #sxsw
Trash and Treasure
from thehypocrite
My home, like my mind, is cluttered with a lifetime of goodness unrealized.
EDIT: I've been thinking about that opening line. What is unrealized? The fact that we have collected these treasures is an indication of realization. The art is evidence of realizing vision. I think I am referencing the unpursued paths. The orphaned works. The relationships shelved or forgotten.
Every journey (creative, intellectual, physical) begins with such unfettered passion, but when the length of the effort is realized, something more exciting quickly and easily takes its place.
I had a friend who recently abandoned his life for something much simpler. He sold his broken-down home filled with a lifetime of detritus for a song and bought a small trailer in which to live. I say ‘had’ a friend because once he climbed into his little white car, I have not heard from or seen him since.
A decade older than me, Fred was never a big brother or father figure. He was a project friend. One of those people sent to teach you humility and patience. I was confident that with some love and guidance, he could come out of his shell and be a real friend. Over time I spent increasing amounts of energy trying to reach his heart and trying to help him find happiness after his wife of 35 years passed away.
Fred's significant other is a testimonial to the flexibility of the human heart. She was an insufferable woman to me. Always EXTREMELY opinionated and very vocal. Only, her opinions weren't usually very good. Demanding is a word that comes to mind. But, she made Fred happy. She was the personality he didn't have. When she died, he suddenly had to find a way to function as a human. He just couldn't do it. He stopped eating (mostly) and moped around all the time, refusing to attend any invitation I extended and resisting to seek any form of happiness. I understand loss and grief makes us sink to the depths of despair, but everyone has to come up for air from time to time. Except Fred.
Her death was unpreventable. She (Lenaie), was in her mid-80's and took deplorable care of herself. She was a brittle diabetic, grotesquely overweight and her excitable personalty just made it all worse. So when she got a worsening respiratory infection and refused to go to the doctor, the conclusion was foregone. Yet, Fred blamed himself for her death. IF he had taken better care of her, IF he had forced her to the doctor... so many regrets, this man.
It's ironic, the doctor part, because he himself hates the idea of doctors. I once had to cajole and force him to go when a hernia was pushing itself out of his body.
To be honest, I'm a little worried he may have slinked away like a dying dog to end his suffering. I hope not. His personal beliefs (if they were his personal beliefs) strictly prohibited self-deletion. But, the heart can drive us mad. And he was mad to start.
I passed by his house (old house?) this morning and knocked, hoping the new tenets or he would be there. If nothing else, the new owners could tell me, 'yes, he's gone' and not just dodging calls. But, no one was home. Just a big ugly, empty house.
And it is big and ugly. Just a two story stucco box that over 30 years he endlessly, and not very skillfully, added and added too. He refused to sell it to anyone he knew because he was worred he had made the building structurally unstable. That's part of why he sold it so cheaply. That and the fact that the 4 Great Danes living there with he and his wife for about 10 years. The place REEKS of dog even from the front porch.
I drove through the alley after getting no one home, thinking maybe some evidence might be visible from the back. It is the kind of neighborhood with dumpsters in the alleyway that a big truck empties. So it is were much of the detritus of his life ended up. In and around the dumpster. How sad when we spotted an 8x10 portrait of he and his late wife cast there with the other broken dreams. Did he not want it? Did it simply get caught up in the bloodletting of things that he had to experience?
I told my wife I'd burn our portraits before letting them end up as refuse on the side of the road. She is worthy of at least that much honor, I think.
It is a shrine to his shame.
And so, I am reflecting this afternoon about the mountains of art and experience manifested in little things. The seashells, the sand in bottles, the paintings, ceramic cows, toys, coins, old cameras, glass beads, sculptures... the list goes on and on of treasures that define my adult life. These things seem worth millions to me... and maybe to some special few they would be valuable mementos... but in an irony, I think to most, my treasures would be another man's trash.
Such is the nature of THINGS. When we are gone, people do not remember what car we drove, the color of our couches, or how new our lawnmower was (or wasn't). They remember the love we showed. Our laughter and insights. Books and music we shared. And maybe there are some things they would cherish. But mostly they remember us. The spark that is who we are.
Share that spark with as many as possible. Start the fires of love in as many hearts as you can. Do not worry if it is or is not reciprocated, just make the effort. If nothing else, you will be remembered not as a reclusive weirdo (ahem, Mister Wolf), but as a loving person who cared about others first.
And I think that's beautiful.
Love always,
Charlie
#essay #inspiration #motivation #memoir #write #100daystooffload #sxsw
Pelletyze — Update #8: Bring the error to the frontend!
from 
Enjoy the detours!
Finally, I found a solution to throw an error at the frontend, while importing wrong CSV Data on the server. For Fast-CSV, I needed a solution to parse the data and put the data into the database. While this part was easy, the error message from Supabase was swallowed, and I had no practical option to present the error to the frontend. Or, there was no uncomplicated way, since now. :D
const stream = csv
.parse(options)
.on("error", (error) => {
console.log(error);
})
.on("data", (row) => {
result.push(row);
})
.on("end", async () => {
const supabase = await createClient();
const { error, statusText } = await supabase
.from("fillings_import")
.upsert(completeFillings(result))
.select();
if (error) {
throw new Error(`${error.message}, ${statusText}`);
}
});
stream.write(fileData);
stream.end();
This was my initial solution, and the error at the end was never shown. 🤷
The new version is wrapped with a new Promise and calls reject if adding data to Supabase produces an error. Easy, right? I'm so happy that I don't need to wrap an <ErrorBoundary /> or something else.
await new Promise<void>((resolve, reject) => {
const stream = csv
.parse(options)
.on("error", (error) => {
console.log(error);
})
.on("data", (row) => {
result.push(row);
})
.on("end", async () => {
const supabase = await createClient();
const { error, statusText } = await supabase
.from("fillings_import")
.upsert(completeFillings(result))
.select();
if (error) {
console.error({ error, statusText, result });
reject(new Error("Looks like your CSV is not formatted correctly"));
}
resolve();
});
stream.write(fileData);
stream.end();
});
This little fix makes me happier than it perhaps should. But in the end, that it. I thought much more about a solution than it took time to write the code. I thought at least on and off for 3 days about it. And today, the “a-ha” moment under the shower. 😎
14 of #100DaysToOffload
#pelletyze
Thoughts?