Closer and closer to death

The man who has been trying to kill himself for over a month is still at it. I saw him a little while ago, and he looked a good deal more haggard, dark circles starting to form under his eyes, his face bruised where he has fallen. He was begging money from everyone to buy more beer. This is a man who cannot stop once he starts. He has been taken away inumerable times by paramedics but as soon as he gets where he is going to a hospital, or somewhere, he leaves and comes home again, and they say they cannot hold an alcoholic against his will.
Yesterday in a brief conversation he remembered that he had been sober for some time (5 years) since he tried to kill himself like this before, ended up in a coma from bleeding into the stomach He looks to me like he is not far from being able to die now. Don't know if anyone will realize it this time. They were barely able to save him last time.
It's pretty painful to be watching all this happening, it seems to have disturbed all the other alcoholics. Maybe they will see what is in store for them as their appetite for alcohol inevitably grows larger, while their body's tolerence for it grows less. This is like watching a man with a terminal disease wasting away. His will to drink is stronger than anybody else's power to stop him. Alcoholism is a terrible disease. This is very close to a death watch.

wild horse of death races in the westward ho

today a wild horse
is racing through our halls
nostrils flaring
crazy eyes glaring
teeth bared
slow down death
wait for us to catch up with you
try to touch you
ask you
what sent you mad
you want death
you know that wont help you
only life will fix
whatever gave you this pain
you hate yourself
tomorrow you will be kinder
to your tortured soul
frothing at the mouth
now now try to sleep
but take care you dont
leave us in your drunken state
mistaking death for
mere sweet slumber
dont forget to wake up
wild man
tomorrow life will not be
so hard to take

"Milk" a film about the assassination of a gay activist politician is also a message of hope

I came out of "Milk" actually feeling elated with such an achievement in film making. This story leaps into harsh reality the minute it opens and does not depart from it in my opinion. It is so strong that it kind of dwarfs all the other films I have seen this year that are contenders for honors. This film is the best picture of the year in my opnion, and I can't imagine a subject more difficult than the story of how gay activist Harvey Milk runs for city supervisor in San Francisco over and over until he is finally elected to the highest political office a gay had achieved at that time in the US. I also did not know that Harvey Milk fought a law that was proposed and had passed in Florida, Witchita, and other places, that would have gotten all known and suspected gays fired from jobs as school teachers, social workers where they interacted with children in California. Thanks to his activist efforts and debates, the law did not pass.
How unfair that kind of legislation seems to me as I had grown up with teachers I felt absolutely had to hide their sexual orientation in order to keep their jobs in a judgmental society. In other words, in order to be school teachers they were forced to lie their whole lives. My dad was a rancher, and he felt he had to lie. What a dreadful world that is when people must lie to please the religious dogmatic who are citing their authority as biblical. I have never thought that anyone could help what they felt sexually whether they inherited or developed those feelings along the way. They could not change their feelings, but I always thought that ignorant and unreasonable people were demanding that they do. This area has always been such a loaded minefield for society, where it is so easy to condemn without having ever walked in those shoes.
Yes, I would be the first to say that we must protect the children from predators whether they are homosexual or heterosexual, but if homosexuals are forced to lie to keep their jobs that is branding all gays a danger to the children which is simply not so. And all we will get from such policies is more people who have to make a living feeling forced to hide their sexual orientation, the same results that have usually always prevailed in backward societies, in my opinion. Because some people are always going to be homosexual, so these people will only be made to feel like outsiders, moral lepers you might say. Without just cause! The way to protect our children is through honesty from all, open debate, knowledge, acceptance, and civil disagreement.
Harvey Milk kept exhorting the gays to come out, to be honest about who they were no matter the fallout. He insisted that society needed to be able to accept the gays right to life, a place in society, so they could exist without having to lie. I got mad again at Anita Bryant in the film as I did back then when she did so much damage to gay rights in the name of biblical authority. Too much unreasonable condemnation of all gays can turn religion ugly, as it did in Dan White, a right wing supervisor, who eventually shot both the mayor and Harvey Milk after they had been too successful with the gay rights agenda. The worst part of it is he was only given a short sentence for manslaughter and served only two years. He punished himself far worse by eventually committing suicide.
It is always unsettling to have to accept that a parent, a child, relative, a friend, someone does not march to the same drummer as we 'normal' people do. I always thought that my father was a gift from God to me to study and try to understand and tolerate. I was close enough to him to perceive strengths as well as faults and failings. I did not have homosexual feelings but because of him I became the friend of tortured souls I met who struggle with these issues their whole lives, feeling condemned before people even knew them.
Harvey Milk cries out that out of his six relationships, five committed suicide. And he was due for still another suicide in his life when his partner when he was elected eventually killed himself, too. I felt that suicidal was my father's middle name.
This is a great movie. It seems to me almost a miracle that a story this complex has been told on film so well. Sean Penn has done his very best work to date in my opinion, earning his own right to be called a great activist.

2- Gerry finds best blithering idiot possible in Doc

This was Doc's kinder nicer title, an improvement on mine with the word best. I did have a bad day over the weekend of extreme frustration at my plight of being trapped with the average American male over 70, who if he is available, it is because he is overweight, alcoholic, a smoker and maybe a drugger. He does not want to change because that might mean giving into a woman. No, he is going to be himself whatever that means until all hope is lost. I am begging Hollywood to make more truthful honest movies about what the masses are up to. And they want health care for the worker when the out of shape seniors and disabled are on their way to breaking the system, along with health care legions who are charging big money to keep saving their lives? How is Obama going to change the out-of-control ways of the American people. Well, at least he is taking a good look at the situation. Which I think is more than Bush did. And I am trying to take a cold hard look at us, too, after an evening in the never never land of Hollywood.