Gerard DiLeo
Bio
Retired, not tired. In Life Phase II: Living and writing from a decommissioned Catholic church in Hull, MA. Phase I: was New Orleans (and everything that entails).
https://www.amazon.com/Gerard-DiLeo/e/B00JE6LL2W/
email: [email protected]
Stories (488/0)
Package Deal
"When he was born, the doctors said it would be best if I didn't see him. He said his mind would never develop past the age of five and I should just put him in an institution. Because the burden of raisin' a child like that would be too great. So I smiled at him and I asked for the baby. Oh, how could anybody think that sweet, precious baby could ever be a burden?" --Idgie, Fried Green Tomatoes
By Gerard DiLeo2 years ago in Families
- Runner-Up in We Have a Dream Challenge
SolipsismRunner-Up in We Have a Dream Challenge
We each make our own universe. All of the visible electromagnetic frequencies that strike our retinas, perturbations of air that oscillate our eardrums, temperatures that compare and contrast on our skin to derive a common sense of hot or cold, molecules that trigger our olfactory cranial nerve in a code deciphered higher up as smell--these are all data. The human brain, that majestic evolutionary assembler of such data and collator of it into meaning, is like a graphic user interface--a GUI like Windows or IOS. Others whom we encounter, with their own universes, are like the World Wide Web and have their own GUIs.
By Gerard DiLeo2 years ago in Humans
Juliet
Juliet was a friend long before she was a patient. That all changed when she divorced her first husband and met her true love, Dan. Before that, she couldn't see me as her physician because the previous husband imagined some voyeurism on my part or, worse, was paranoid over even more debaucherous suspicions. In all fairness, I can understand his reluctance, catching the way I would look at her; but my gazes weren't salacious, just an appreciation for the gift that Juliet was. My looks at her--not in any way longing for her on the outside--showed a love for her inner beauty, which is the rightful definition of true friendship.
By Gerard DiLeo2 years ago in Petlife
Self-Reports Take Precedence
6% of people self-report they are below average, but they are way above average in self-reporting. The 94% of people self-reporting to be above average are actually below average in self-reporting. The first shall be last and the last, first. Unless, of course, you're EXACTLY average. Then, you'll have to just wait in line with the rest of 'em. Average wait time for this ride is 80 or so years, unless you can somehow get a FastPass, which is by walking into a concentrated ghetto of ethnic homogeneity, chanting anti-ethnic slogans and slurs about said ethnic residents who live in the said ethnically concentrated homogeneity. When asked, 94% of people self-report that they can do this above average, but they only say that because they feel the other 6% live in said ethnically concentrated areas.
By Gerard DiLeo2 years ago in FYI
Pose and Repose
In the state of nature when the sense of hunger is appeased by the stimulus of agreeable food, the business of the day is over, and the human savage is at peace with the world, he then exerts little attention to external objects, pleasing reveries of imagination succeed, and at length sleep is the result: till the nourishment which he has procured is carried over every part of the system to repair the injuries of action, and he awakens with fresh vigour, and feels a renewal of his sense of hunger. --Erasmus Darwin, Zoonomia, 1794
By Gerard DiLeo2 years ago in Humans
Omens
The owl has portended good luck or bad luck, victory or defeat, death or a long life, over the ages, for those who had associated with it their own good luck, bad luck, victory, defeat, early death, or long life. A symbol of wisdom, solitude, and restraint, the owl lives a double life--one on the perch and one in the air, talons set.
By Gerard DiLeo2 years ago in Fiction
My Net Worth Is Nothing
In the beginning there was nothing, but nothing is unstable. A true vacuum is mythological and has about as much to do with the Universe as a unicorn. Unicorns are make-believe, but equaling zero is alchemy realized—real magic—when you consider the pluses and minuses that even out, the zero-sum-gain dynamic that invents infinite beauty in vacillating and fleeting apparitions.
By Gerard DiLeo2 years ago in Humans
- Top Story - October 2021
As the Macaw FliesTop Story - October 2021
I perch confidently, talons gripping the bark. I wonder...why I've never seen another like me, but is that really important? What is important, I sense, is that I have achieved self-actualization. After all, I was brought here from a place called Brazil (so I've overheard) to protect, direct, and in all ways construct the lives of those to whom I've been entrusted.
By Gerard DiLeo3 years ago in Fiction
Eat a Monster
We are all spinal animals, reflexic and epinephric--suprarenal. That wave of panic from the sacral segments to the cervical nerves bathes the brainstem perched at the precarious precipice that separates fight from flight. Fight or flight helped us survive; languishing in indecision betwixt the two and you don't survive.
By Gerard DiLeo3 years ago in Beat