Category: Lifestyle and Health

Lets Create Laws To Shoot People Legally Then Call It ‘Stand Your Ground’

On By Karl GessleinIn Lifestyle and HealthLeave a comment

The jails are just filling up with innocent Americans who gun down intruders in their own home then get stuck with a liberally biased jury and end up spending their lives rotting away in Jail. A bunch of people put their heads together and came up with the “Stand your ground laws” to save the day. We live in such an amazing country that now 21 different states or 2/5 of our more perfect Union now have laws protecting people who shoot other people as long as it is in ‘self-defense’.

People With Glass Guns Shouldn’t Throw Stones

In Texas you can shoot a Prostitute if you pay her for sex and she doesn’t deliver ‘the goods’. Walk away scott-free thanks to Stand Your Ground Laws, but don’t try to steal ribs from a supermarket with a knife in your pocket or you could end up with a 50 year prison sentence.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/10/opinion/moore-texas-craziness

I knocked on my neighbor’s door one day with my 12-year-old son by my side. He answered the door with a shotgun and a gruff  ‘get the hell off my porch’. I stood my ground and told him how inappropriate his constant speeding down our road was threatening the lives of every living creature around. If only NY had a stand your ground law, he would have been able to shoot me and my son in self defense for not ‘getting the hell off his porch’ when he told us to. Or maybe I would have been able to take his gun from him and shoot him because I felt that my life was being threatened. Who knows?

It took them 44 days to press charges against Zimmerman, after the Jury trial he walked. Members of the jury were left feeling like they should have charged him with SOMETHING. There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that George Zimmerman went out looking for trouble. If he hadn’t been packing heat and then whatever altercation he had with Travan would have ended in a scuffle with some bruises and hurt egos. Instead Travan died. Why did he die?

Because guns don’t solve problems.

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The Frustration And Madness That Is The Creative Process

On By Karl GessleinIn Cars, Lifestyle and Health, Love, Self-ImprovementLeave a comment
Love
Several very frustrating hours spent behind a dozen cans of spray paint.

So much of art is people wandering across something that you have created and saying to themselves or out loud if they are bold

“Wow that is pretty cool”

When they see something that is generated they don’t often even think about the work that went into creating it. There are those that call the state of creation the ‘flow’ state. So often when I move into that space-time seems to fly by and the outside world often shrinks away. Most of the time when I try to create something I start without much of a notion of where I will end up. Every time I take a step back and look at when I’ve painted or written I end up thinking to myself.

“Oh my god, this sucks so bad”

Almost all the art I created in the first 30 years of life I have destroyed because I honestly can’t stand to look at it. I keep throwing my heart at whatever I am doing again and again until I can start to tolerate my own creation.

But I never feel love. I never look at something I’ve created and say to myself

“Wow, that is pretty cool, I am so talented”

Even when complete strangers come out of nowhere and tell me that whatever I have made is the coolest thing they have ever seen I still only look at my creations and think…

‘It could be so much better’

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Becoming A Father – Heads We Breed/Tails We Don’t

On By Karl GessleinIn Lifestyle and Health, Love1 Comment

Becoming a Father. It’s been on my mind lately. So much to think about.

Orion in Troll Cave
Orion in a Troll Cave in Iceland (Click for full story)

It was an accident, the best kind of accident you could ever imagine happening. There was no broken glass, smashed metal and blood, only an overwhelming feeling of joy. When Marlo told me she was pregnant we never even had a conversation about terminating the pregnancy. Broken condoms were a pretty common occurrence in those days, and those betting odds finally caught up with us. When she told me she was pregnant it changed my life, but I could never have conceived how much his birth would change the very core of who I was.

I remember the day Orion was born vividly, it was the happiest day of my life. I had witnessed his growth in Marlo’s belly for months, but the reality never set it till the day he emerged. How could it? My old life was about to disappear and a new one would grow in its wake.

Things with Marlo had been on the rocks for a while, but when the day finally came we grew closer than we had ever been before. She needed love and support and I needed so much to give it to her. Our midwife Kate was amazing and she allowed me to catch Orion first when he came out of the womb. I remember when his head first stuck out how surprised I was, you expect the baby to come, but nothing can really prepare you for the emotions you go through when he finally arrives. This little creature that was the better half of me and the better half of Marlo changed my life more dramatically than anyone else ever could.

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My 40th Trip Around The Sun From That Fateful Day I Was Forced To Leave My Mama’s Womb

On By Karl GessleinIn Depression, Lifestyle and Health, Love, Self-Improvement1 Comment

Turning 41.

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When I turned 40 I still felt fantastic, my life was not perfect, but I felt like I could deal pretty well. My life had been really good, for a long time.  Sometimes it felt too good to be true, like I was trapped in a fairy tale. I had so much to be thankful for, so much gratitude every day for the good things in my life.

Then everything crumbled. I felt like I was watching 9/11 unfold in my own life, watching those buildings fall down again and again on every channel. Over the years I had known tragedy and calamity but also moments of great joy and ecstasy. My life had become just too good, like a junkie running dry it was all going to end.

My mind started to slip, I became unraveled. In the darkest depths of the darkest moments of my life I never imagined that I could feel so low. It didn’t let up. Everything important that I cared about just slipped away.

My work, my relationship with my son and his mother, my friends, my passion for life. A darkness descended upon my soul the likes of which I never imagined I would have to endure. Yet somehow I made it through. Months went by and every day was a struggle, my sadness became the strangest puzzle I had ever tried to solve.

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Gifts I Never Wanted But Could Never Refuse

On By Karl GessleinIn Lifestyle and Health, Love, PoetryLeave a comment

Gifts are something we always adorebaffin
Throughout the year it’s something we wait for
Given from those we love with our hearts
Bought from a store or made with the arts

There is one kind of gift that we receive with great dread
It’s the gifts we receive when our loved ones are dead
They bring back the memories of the struggle with life
The torment, the heartache, the hardship, the strife

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Losing His Place In Time – Love, Cancer And A Failing Mind

On By Karl GessleinIn Depression, Fiction, Love1 Comment

I spent 5 months visiting my brother almost every day as he suffered from terminal stage-4 non-small cell lymphatic cancer that was caused by smoking.  Every day I tried to understand how he saw the world and how he viewed what was happening to him through the veil of his Paranoid Schizophrenia. This story is my interpretation how he viewed the world. I am writing this as therapy for myself mostly, but also as a way of showing how terrifying life can be for people with severe mental illness.

George Saves NY
George Saves NY

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They were calling him back again, moving backwards in time was always harder than moving forward.  Near the end there was so much boredom, sitting around waiting for something, never sure what. There was less pain, the nurse would come every few hours and give him another dose of Oxycodone. Near the end he knew he was addicted, but he didn’t care. Normally it was not permissible to dabble in the addictions of men, but for his rank and pay grade no one would really notice. Besides he was so close to retirement anyway.

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My Struggle To Find A Brother I Didn’t Know I Had

On By Karl GessleinIn Depression, Lifestyle and Health, Love, PoetryLeave a comment
George seemed happiest when he was being visited by those who loved him
George seemed happiest when he was being visited by those who loved him

What am I doing here?
I would ask myself time and again
Sitting by your bed
No god would Amen

Day after day, month after month
I would pray twice a day that your sorrow would end
you fought and you fought and would not ascend
I could not understand, till I would be your friend

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How Megadosing On Vitamin B3/Niacin Saved My Life

On By Karl GessleinIn Depression, Lifestyle and Health, Self-Improvement29 Comments

It’s time for people to stop being afraid of being stigmatized and start having a real conversation about mental illness. This article is the first step for me.

hatteras

To say that the last year of my life has been the most challenging year ever would be a drastic understatement. There was 3 months where every single day I wanted to end my life. I constantly fantasized about suicide, I would have done anything to ease the pain. It started like most tragic stories start, with a girl.

Her name was Elise and I was madly in love with her. The courtship lasted a year and it was the most intense set of experiences I’ve had in my life. We were like two reactive chemicals, when we were together something unpredictable would always happen. The energy was insane in every way, and there was no boundaries, nothing was off-limits. Like most passionate romances, after a year it came to an equally spectacular ending. For a month after we separated I was elated, then I unwisely spent time with her again and the turmoil began. Half of me knew I could never have anything remotely functional with this woman, the other half was completely convinced that I could somehow make it work. I became a man at war with myself.

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Dumpster Diving and Bumper Tag – The Tale of a Disillusioned Youth

On By Karl GessleinIn Lifestyle and Health, Poetry3 Comments

volvo

19 years old
the story be told
All I can recall
was the insanity of it all

I drove in a Volvo without any doors
with the Police Dept I was constantly at wars
We played this game called bumper tag
we’d hit our friend’s cars, they had no airbag

Then we’d drive out with a frenzied haste
and ignore all the rules of the road as we’re chased
We’d run red lights and stop signs all over town
until the other car would run us down

Then we’d get hit and have to sit still
to anyone watching we’d look mentally ill
then the chase would begin anew
I really don’t know how I ever got though

Living in abandon buildings was just a haze
Dumpster food and coffee, life felt like a maze
Everything hurt, pain was the norm
Dancing in moshpits became an art form

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