5.27.24 Back at it
It has been a hiatus; I have been too busy to properly devote the time to the written word, and that is a sad thing. It is with a heavy heart that I return to the blank page for what seems the millionth time. That’s a lie, my heart is not heavy in the slightest, I am just a wee bit tuckered from the late nights of this long weekend. The latest nights have been the working ones, strangely enough. Or perhaps it is not strange since I get home at midnight or later on those nights. Perhaps I am just running out of things to talk about?
But now, as I eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and enjoy a glass of syrah preparing to put down the cigarettes for what seems the tenth time in the last month—I have about one left in the pouch—I am actually quite happy. Good things have arrived in my life and I am ready to receive them. I do not want for much, just happy to be here at all, something that was not a given at all considering some of the roads I have traveled. I suppose I have said that before but it seems important today to say it again. Say it again, Richard.
Of course as the rain comes down outside and I look out at the birds fluttering around the yard, the worms congregating on the concrete, the trees in full leaf…it is becoming summer rapidly, here on the day when we celebrate the season kicking off in earnest. Of course up here it is another few weeks before we hit the curve or the wall or whatever you want to call it when the hordes arrive. The droves and droves of people that descend on our little towns and drive our economy hard enough that businesses can make it through the shoulder seasons. It is a strange place to ply a hospitality trade, I must admit, though not a wholly unsatisfying one.
Enough about the weather and the work. We are here for some fun, some tomfoolery. I am going to have my last cigarette and then return to this and tell you all about nothing, as it seems I always do. Is this really worth reading? That is my constant quarrel in continuing to stretch it down the page towards what end? Eleven years from now? Twelve volumes of this nonsense? Why not, I suppose. That is an interesting sentence, I don’t know how to punctuate it, so I did it that way. Maybe wrong, maybe right, who can say? That one was easier, a question in the finishing clause definitely deserves a question mark. And here I am splitting grammatical hairs, are you sure you want me to continue for years and years of this?
I think I do, I think I want to compile thousands and thousands of words of meandering thoughts. Want to show you what makes me tick for years and years until you know me better than I know myself. That is the way, uh huh, uh huh; who knew what that song was when we latched onto it as children…it is a strange and vibrant world, and one that I want to experience for many years to come. It seems odd to me to aspire to many years knowing of course that the longest human life is a drop in eternity’s bucket. That time is your friend but it is far vaster than we could ever imagine. No wonder we dreamed of God when we realized this. And how did we realize it other than magic mushrooms, or perhaps specially bred ergot in Egypt. Who knows anything about anything without drugs? A lot of people if I’m being truthful. Which I most always am. Catch me in a lie and I will smile and nod.
Of course I do lie sometimes. It is a necessary social skill, especially when one is living with one’s parents. White lies only though, though that is a detestable phrase if the origins are as they seem. And they probably are, unless it comes to white magic. The color of the sun, or something. White light, white heat, which is a great album. It is a strange morning, and I am going to cut this short. I’m tired of rambling for the moment, which is a great surprise. I want to work on other things, which is less of a great surprise. I suppose this is the moment I bid you adieu for the day. And if you must go with God let Them be a friend to you. For without that what is their purpose in existing? One can only wonder.
TTFN.
5.29.24 The Process
You could call it mining the ethers. You could call it shooting in the dark. There is a brutal aspect to creation that few of us ever mention. It is taking from yourself and giving of yourself to the world. It is scary, it is freeing. Now I am lagging just a touch; my processing units are scrambled. I want to curl up and dissolve and to think this for a long time was my resting state. What a strange man I have been. And continue to be. I wish that I could show you the world I see. It is imperfect and sad and yet beautiful and complex and magnanimous. I suppose I have described God. That great and utter failure of a mass delusion. And yet I still know that something like God lurks in the goodness of other humans. Gut, the root, after all.
What would I be without my family? Dead, probably. Homeless, certainly. I am blessed by my karma, and cursed of course at the same time. To live in the world is to know pain. Siddartha said that. I just know that he was right. I am ready to not waste my life anymore. I will not cling to the notion of a reward beyond the grave. Except maybe rest. Return to silence, the end of dharma. End in several senses. And sanskrit such a lovely language to appropriate. All languages are mine, if I can wield them. Language belongs to no master. Even the king’s english got away from him. What does it mean that I am improper? What does it mean that I am American?
It is a strange lot, no doubt, to have been born in the time and place that I was. I don’t talk about my childhood very much but it was happy but with a lot of physical pain. I was a bit of a daredevil. It took a lot for me to be afraid for my own safety. Confident in my athletic abilities. Maybe a little too confident. And then that injured ankle. That cleat stained flesh. I am sorry for that, but I am just a klutz. A klutz with a wonderful smile. And a good heart. That is all I can offer. I am tired but excited to see what the next year brings. And the year after that. And the year after that. Hopefully a great deal many more than that.
I wish I could write the great american novel. I wish I could fly a plane. I wish I wish to be right here right now writing this sentence. Maybe another will come true now. I doubt they’ll ever let me fly a plane. I’m done, for now. Rest in peace Richard, when it is your time to go. Rest now in the peace that comes with knowing that your day too is gonna come. Of course, makes sense, makes peace, makes turbulence, makes fear. I do not fear much but I fear the big one. Not the heart attack or stroke, but the death that will surely take me. The cigarettes are a struggle but I will die young if I can’t quit. The cards are stacked against me, but I must beat the house. I know I can it has just been so hard. When I don’t smoke I can feel the thrumm of the haldol. And the quivering of the depakote. It is pain ladies and gentleman, I think I can say that for certain. But alas, I must choose my poison. Must face the bear straight on.
And do anything but stay the course,
Dickie.
5.31.24 What days await us?
From here I can see a lot of smiles. Smiles on my face. On the faces of loved ones. It is a nice place, and I hope it continues. I am slow, slower than I have been at other times. But I am whole, and that is worth more than any rapidity. I wish to express that if you have read the whole thing you are more of an audience than I ever deserved. I feel smooth, feel tumultuous, feel sane. What a gift to be sitting here on this porch with this punk rock tune playing from the speaker. To be young and able bodied. The biggest dilemma before me being golf related. Who can say what we are to make of anything that happens to us?
I wish you could be here with me, noons and hoons and sunshine and vainglorious existence. I like that word if I don’t know precisely what it means. There is a lot of that going around, but I am happy and thriving if that is an appropriate word for what I am doing. I don’t want to be around violence of any kind. I don’t want to die young. Even as I smoke another cigarette. This slow death, prescribed for me by circumstance, which I called God at one point in this. Certainly there is a case to be made for that. But there are many cases to be made for many things. There is no limit to the cases that can be made. We can split hairs eternally.
Slow down. What is the hurry? You are way ahead of schedule. And way behind. What have you done? Not in an ominous way but an incremental one. Be curious. Be kind. Be effervescent, leave people tingling. I wish on stars that fall but it is the ones that remain in the sky that have staying power. Listening to the same things over and over. Feeling myself breathe. I wish I could smile like I used to. When I was in emotional pain. Frustrated and bored. Always bored. I speed up my breathing and laugh at the afternoon that tastes like tobacco smoke. Cigar box and linen.
What a strange day, a strange series of weeks. In the best possible way. What is to be said for the slow motion release of tiredness that has me feeling alert. Has me feeling like I have nothing to fear. That everything is alright and I don’t have to worry so much anymore. I wish I wish I wish that all was as it is. That I struggle and I smile and I grow older with each passing moment, each sand through the aperture of the hourglass. There is beauty in all things, even the most gruesome. We still continue to think and to feel, those of us that are left, and it was never fair. We don’t get a straight shot to the promised land but to those of us that know, we are already there.
Dick
6.6.24 I need to write more
It has been busy. Sad for the words that they seem to be the first thing to be neglected. Everything else, fun, etc., comes first. It is beginning to be summer and I don’t want to be inside on the computer so much. And even when I write outside it seems that I am more distractible now that the weather is warmer. It is just a facet of the season, I know, but it leads to a dearth of written words when I want to be steady Eddie in that regard. I haven’t really been working on anything other than work and play. This is the real work, this is where legacies are born. Here on the page where there is always infinite promise even if the framework is only letters in sequence. I must be more diligent! I must make time, must get back in the habit of writing again in the morning only the other factor is that my parents are both home all of the time.
Alas, the perils of living at home, which has a number of such perils even if it will allow me to get back on my feet. Will allow me to save money in droves over renting at the exorbitant rates in this town. For what you get the rent is so high, and probably not as bad as some other places. Certainly NYC is worse, but I have no desire to live there. I’d like to have a one bedroom apartment in Rome someday, but that’s as close to a cultural capital as I’ll come. Living now here in the house I was born, writing now from the room where I have spent most of the nights of my life (I think), I am just glad to be vertical and mostly healthy despite my inimical habits. I think I may have stolen that phrase, but I cannot quite remember.
To harm and obstruct, I do not wish to do either. Just wish to go about my business, which is trying to be happy. I think I am doing alright. I go through phases of depression of course. Who doesn’t? Sometimes anyways. Is anyone that well adjusted? I don’t think so, don’t think that anyone is always even keeled. We all have crosses to bear and some bear them more silently than others. Or rather they are successful in looking like they didn’t bear them at all. That they are always swimming along downstream while the rest of us are headed upriver to spawn. Who knows, that might be a mixed or malodorous metaphor. I am glad that I am writing metaphors at all. I haven’t written a word in a week. I need to be more diligent!
Of course it does not matter so much, except maybe to you, dear reader, if anything new appears in this space. If I make the words come out of me like bees from a hive, searching for flowers so that sweetness may come to the honeycomb. Bears like honey. Bears, beets, battlestar galactica. Is that what I have become? A list of pop culture references. I could sleep now but I must go to work in just a little while. Must drive a ways and then stay until the wee hours of the morning and then drive back. It isn’t so bad but I was much more productive with the blank page when I was not working. It seemed that I could pile up thousands in a day, both in here and in more focused projects. Projects that are not just me trying not to beat my head against the desk. Projects that someday may see the light of day and who knows, maybe even win some awards.
Of course we do not do it for the fame. Money, maybe, but fame no. We will take it begrudgingly if it comes, trying to keep our face off of the book jackets, trying not to become Salinger. Anything but that (of course not anything, there are limits to all absolutes), I say. I also do it because I love it even when it bores me so badly that sleeping sounds better than sitting here and pushing buttons to make strings in the directories move and words appear on the page. I do not mean to imply that I believe in string theory, I was using a puppet analogy. Levers, strings, who knows what happens in this machine at a physical level. The chips take care of everything for me, and words appear as if by magic. Silicon, you cruel and indifferent god. Magical element, you summoner of demons, you demon yourself, if the number of devices in landfills are any indication.
And as the afternoon assumes its full swing I wonder if anyone cares that I am not grappling with writer’s block so much as feeling like I have things I want to do more than sit here and type. It is distinct from the stoppages that cause you to feel as if you are a helpless ghoul in the midst of an exorcism. I’m not really sure what that means, I think I’m going to go soon, move on with my day now that I have done my inane obligation. I think I’m doing okay, but one can never be too sure. I think a lot of things, and even when I meditate my thinking mind does not totally stop. I like this world, I like my life. If I am tired often it is only because apparently I need a lot of sleep these days. I’ll blame it on the meds, which are a tiresome part of my routine, perhaps literally. Lit’rally.
Of course I am not British and will never be. I am an American for better or worse, and even if I leave this country behind as I hope to someday I will still be an American abroad. It does not matter so much, I am a man of the world. In the world and of the world. It is a beautiful world if you do not think too much about the horror of the warzones, which for all the publicity recently are not really anything new. The world has been at war for a long long time, and while I detest what I see coming out of Gaza I wonder why I do not see so much of it coming out of Africa. Genocide is happening every day, and has been for many years. It is sad, deplorable, inexcusable, but those perpetrating it are not even really required to make excuses. If I could stop it I would, but doing so would probably have consequences I did not anticipate. I do not think Israel is right, do not get me wrong. Horror after horror coming out of there. Just today the news that they lead the world in child amputees. Most ever in a conflict, allegedly.
And yet the breeze blows past my window. The music plays on the little magic box I carry with me everywhere I go. I have running water and a place to sleep. My world is not the whole world, certainly, but it is mine, and it is what I have to hold on to. If I can keep it stable, and safe, maybe I can change the big picture someday, but I am not even close to ready to do that. I will not do it with endless social media posts. Who ever affected national security policy with an Instagram post? Those guys won’t listen to anyone, they are rogues who do as they please in order that we not suffer at home. And yet many do suffer, if they couldn’t imagine the ravages of war. There is no solution, there is no fix. It will go on forever and if we are lucky we will not be so touched by it other than having our hearts rent by the things that trickle down to us. It is sad, very sad, but I cannot weep. I cannot save even one person I don’t think. The world will have its way with itself, and war, unfortunately, is the way of the world. That maniacs bomb civilians is a fact. It has been happening for ages, and is nothing new. Modern technology has just made it faster and then the aftermath more easily seen. Don’t forget that as bad as it is it is not anything new nor the end of these practices. When this one is done and Israel has established their free trade zone or whatever happens there will be other conflicts that are worse, probably. I am sad now.
Thanks diary, for making me sad. It is all you had to do today that I write something and then I had to go thinking about the miserable state of the world. How does one turn a blind eye to it? One should not. We must stare it in the face and try to sleep while the rockets and bombs fall on the innocent half a world away. Maybe even the protestors will effect some change. But I doubt it. We have been at war a long time. Most of my life. On terror. Allegedly. Who knows, but this has gotten away from me. See what happens when I allow my mind to wander. Televised war is nothing new, but the internet means everyone and anyone can post anything, for the most part. So scared and tired I will rest my head awhile. It is all I can manage at the moment, and if the world desires more from me I will be out of the office until July 4th.
That is all, sort of,
Richard
6.10.24 All the world’s China
Of course there are greater dangers than allowing yourself to become complacent. Like driving drunk, or base jumping. There are snakes and bears in the wilderness though many women claim they would rather meet a bear than a man. I think that is fair and silly in equal measure, for not all men are bad, nor neither all bears. But I understand the premise, it is a thought experiment, that is for sure. And some men are bears, so to speak, and likely as such not threatening to a woman. I don’t know what to think about all the chatter on the internet, even as I contribute to it here. This missive that carries on despite my truest inertia: laziness coupled with busyness.
There are many things I could discuss, many things going on in my life. I wish to say that I do not think this the place to discuss all of them. Who knows what one wants? Is it a naive melody? I think maybe it is, that this must be the place where all the loose ends come together and weave a tapestry of words that will carry me beyond obscurity into the realm of writers who are actually read. It is a strange conundrum to be producing these words for such a small audience, though that audience—I think—is growing. To be sad is to be young is to be high, and I am not so much any of those things today. Young maybe, but not sad, not high. I am happy to be here, typing away in silence as the birds chirp beyond my open window. That is a dream that many across the world could never dream of. It is a blessing truly, which is a concept that ultimately transcends even our notions of God.
I left my cigarettes in the car. They are baking in the sun. I do not wish to keep smoking them but the force of habit keeps me bound to that wheel. Spinning and spinning pinwheels of smoke that rise from the end of the little death stick and come out of my lungs with what must make me seem a fire-breathing dragon to the little insects and spiders on my porch. What would you make of a being that controls fire with its mouth if you were just a wee chitinous thing? I would think it a monster, though I would think it probably a monster even if it did not breathe fire. I think we are bound to our enormousness by the nature of gravity, and really not so enormous when you consider the animals like elephants and hippos. Still, to a bug we are giants.
There, there are some random thoughts from the last few days. I am writing you now from the shadow of William Seward Burroughs, who hangs above my desk since years ago. He is no saviour, no saint. But a great writer who seemed to have anticipated this rise in Israeli nazism. Hear me out, that the nazis time traveled by being hung in war crimes court to 21st century Israel (their ideas of regional domination anyways) much in the way that Burroughs’ characters did. Here we see the new fascists waging genocidal war in order that they might expand their empire. It was just a thought I had the other night, a contextual envelope for all the far out sci fi that Burroughs proliferated with his multitudinous volumes. Hang yourself to travel through time was a major theme from what I remember, though it has been some time since I have revisited those texts.
Still it is interesting that within that cannon such an ultimate leap of faith was required to leave your life behind. To move (mostly backwards in his iterations) through time meant that your body would die and you would live the rest of your days in a host. Interesting stuff, certainly, but what if Netanyahu is the new Hitler? What if those ideas of invading Poland came instead with the Gaza Strip? Hostages, rescues, 200 dead to save four. What a trip, what an inglorious use of military force. I cannot support a regime that supports that regime but with the clusterfuck that is the Donald I must support that regime that supports that regime. Here in America in 2024 our hands are tied and we must vote as if we have no time left to gain sanity.
Of course in my experience we have a tenuous grasp on sanity to begin with. Both personally and in the mass sense of what we believe to be our reality. So many look to God to save us from ourselves, not knowing that God is of us. Meaning that God is our creation, not the other way around. Back to Burroughs again: “Man created DOG in his own worst image.” You see the inflection, the double entendre, for Burroughs also was not fond of canines. But of course cat people always have their way with the world and I not so much one of those and not so much one of anything, just a man with enough time to reflect on the strange topics bouncing around his skull. This is one of those.
I don’t know what I’m saying. Just putting words down and hoping they make sense. That is all I can manage on this Monday when the sun is shining and the hours before I have to work grow ever fewer. I wish for all of us to know peace knowing of course that in this world that is impossible. It is a tired gasp that anyone anywhere know it for a moment. Of course there is the peace of the grave, the rest that comes for all of us and sends us to realms unknown where so many have speculated as to what awaits. I have done a fair amount of it in this, thinking mostly, after all, that we do just get to rest. To no longer exist, painful as the exit might be.
And I not wanting to join those who have gone before yet. Not wanting for a long time a break from the humdrum minutiae of day to day life. We must suffer as long as we can bear and find space to enjoy ourselves as well during that time. That is a life well lived, to my estimation. To live long and prosper, as the famous Vulcan told us. We must try our damndest not to let this world bring us down; we must find joy under the rocks and stones of this vast field of existence; we must look up at the sun and know that it is the giver of life and that it is enormous and indifferent to our plights. For our problems do not exist to the universe. It is too big, too cold, too…I don’t know what additional adjective to add. I wish to say that I think God is a good concept for some people who can’t grapple with the sense that nothing matters. I’m a computer, thank God, and the super-structures of our society keep me in line. I love you, I love you, I love you, but that is quite enough of that for now.
Richard
6.13.24 The day is bright and sunny
And I am inside here writing to you. To you, dear Reader! The two of us spending time unawares of all the things going on in the world, the latest massacres and fires and what else is going on…I do not watch the news, do not try to keep up with the big picture. My little 8.5x11” window to the soul is enough for me, this mirror here where we thinking about the broken glass in my trunk and the poor golf shots that were hit yesterday. But that is yesterday L&G, that is a bygone thing and today is for phone calls and coffee and catching up on the sleep that is necessary apparently as I get older. I wish it weren’t, that I could still go on endlessly without getting tired but in truth that is only a manic symptom and the other symptoms outweigh that positive. It is no good to need no sleep, at least for me.
Of course we are a long way removed from mania, from madness. This summer is for sanity, for staying in my lane. Maybe such a thing can go on forever. Maybe we will see everything we’ve ever dreamed of. Healthy and happy forever. Forever, forever, forever. Maybe another fifty years at best, is all I hope for of “forever”. Who’s to say though, maybe something will radically change, but I doubt it. Aging is a part of life and I can feel how much older I am than even a few years ago. Mentally certainly, as a result of having been to hell and back several times. I wish to never go through that again, if I can avoid it. Such things are hard on one’s sanity, hard on the things that make us tick. Like clocks we wind up in the morning and make it through the day by the skin of our teeth. Do teeth even have skin? Asking for a friend.
Yesterday I got yelled at for smoking pot. I thought that at 32 years old with that substance being legal that such things would be behind me. But there are rumors that it makes me crazy. It does not, does not do so much to me other than make me a little spacey and a little tired. Today I am going after it sober, until much later (probably tomorrow by the twenty-four hour clock) in the day. It is not such a bad thing, not such a problem, not any of it—including the yelling. I can stand a little conflict sometimes, so long as I am not truly in the wrong. And I don’t think I was wrong yesterday to have a little spliff, as a treat. It was a hard day on the golf course, and sometimes you just need to tie one on, so to speak.
There is a man inside me that is anxious about all this change. All these things in my life that are leading me onward into a future that is uncertain. Though they seem to mostly be good things and things that generally should lead to me being happier, the difference in my life from my life a couple months ago is striking. Eight weeks into something new and I feel the absence acutely, the return now for a couple of days to solitude feels almost unwelcome. It is strange, as it was solitude that for so long made me my most productive self. That made me write every day as if possessed by the spirit of Poetry Herself. The muse coming through and lobbing fastballs from centerfield that I nearly always bunted. I got on first a couple times though, and now, with someone to kiss again I feel as if these infantile fantasies of literary fame and success are nearer than they ever have been.
Because there are links in the chain L&G, there are people out there that can see my dreams and may actually have the relationships to make them happen. To no longer have to tend bar would be a welcome relief, wouldn’t it? But then again I love the work, both this work, here, with no one but you and I present, and the work in the “real world” where we see all sorts of people and even sometimes get to know their stories. Because it is the stories that drive the wheel ultimately, and though I am not mining my restaurant experience for material—I have more of that already than I have time to write out—it does make one see that humanity is our greatest asset even when the people you serve seem to be utterly lacking in any good qualities. Did that make sense? It felt like a mouthful.
A mouthful of pebbles would make for some chipped teeth, would make me wonder what I was doing chewing on rocks. That’s a bit of a stretch from one thought to the next, but I think ultimately that it doesn’t matter so much, and that licking stones is a good way to expand your palate where wine is concerned. I’ve heard minerality dubbed electricity in some contexts, and maybe this is a better way to think of it, as there are no dissolved minerals in the wine. And yet you can taste the soil, as if the sun transpired it up the vine and into the fruit. Or maybe it is dust, or maybe, or maybe, who can know how things come to be in the world of wine. It is a great and fruitful mystery to me, slowly uncovered as I go through the paces of tasting new things.
Do you think that you will ever know everything you want to know? I am certain that I will not, that I will not ever be satisfied with the amount of information I can retain. How could one be satisfied in the face of the nearly infinite number of things to know? And that is just limited to planet Earth, saying nothing of the vast reaches of the universe where things are likely to behave differently than they do here on our little blue dot. Suspended in a sunbeam, isn’t that the line? But Jesus doesn’t want me for a sunbeam, Jesus has been dead a long time, I thinks. And probably not coming back, I thinks as well. Some disagree, and I won’t bother to dispute their reality, because it is everyone’s prerogative to believe what they will. That is a large part of the American Dream™.
But what is my American Dream? To be far away from America, I think, in a place where few, if any people know my name. In a place where I can disappear into a crowd at a moment’s notice and emerge hours later in another part of a city amidst a different set of strangers. To be lost in the world knowing all the while that my place is one of peace and happiness. To know myself to be free, as much as such a thing is possible in this world. Because we all live in chains, be they golden handcuffs or literal shackles. There are many places in the world where you can’t be yourself, and honestly I have forgotten who my self even is. Spellcheck doesn’t like that phrasing, but I do not care. I soldier on in my liberated English, free from the strictures of grammar and happy to play with these words rolling out from my fingertips like a ball down a shaved putting surface. Roll, roll, roll.
I wish you could be here with me today. You know who you are. You who has become a shining light left out in the darkness of what came before. The endless winter of sadness and liquor, the fall before that of raving insanity, the summer before that of stress and pain. Of hard things that needed to be done, and I much happier for having done them. You saw me grapple in the beginning with the perpetual feeling that I had to leave. It never left me alone though I was comfortable in the stasis that relationship provided. And this, my therapist more so than my therapists have been. This blank page that holds for me both mirror and ideal. It is a strange place, always, to be greeting you from. This satisfaction I find in expressing my truest, most inner self.
For you see, all the details withheld only contribute to the mystery that you can learn anything from me here at all. Me who has just begun to learn all of the things that I will learn. A beginner truly, for all my knowledge. For no one has it figured out. All those people who are well adjusted struggle to sleep at night. Or maybe I am wrong and there are some who were made for this world. Surely everyone knows pain, from the richest man to the poorest. Who is to say that we aren’t all one being? Some call this being God. I have said this before.
For I am a broken record. A repeater of myself, of others. I do not wish to be so, but it is all I can manage on the days when it is simple to keep adding letters, keep adding words even when there isn’t so much to say. To stretch my limits of composition until I fall asleep from the boredom of carrying on when the wind races through the leaves of the trees outside my open window. That rushing sound like water falling, the sense that the Earth is happy to have us here for a few months. Tonight I will be lost behind glass, tonight I will read some poems, tonight I will be occupied. Tomorrow I will be free, as I have been free the last couple of days. And the day beyond that, beyond that, beyond that, who knows? Who is to say how I am spending my days?
Certainly it is I, and I would say that I am spending them as much in happiness as I possibly can. That I am trying my damndest to be joyful at every turn, grateful for every blessing and every setback both. The road is uphill but it is the climb that makes us strong. Only who ever wanted to be strong? Who ever wanted to be anything? Did many of us ask to be incarnated in this world? Or were our parents just horny? Or did they want kids, rather, I should say. Probably a little column A, little column B. God knows I’m horny. That I could rub one out right now. But I’ll spare you that, to the extent I still can. There are things to do today, and no time for masturbation. And no partner to be found this week. Who is to say what any of us really desires? Is it just someone to hold, someone with whom to be physical? Someone to support us emotionally and spiritually? To keep us from feeling run down when the world seems to be piling it on? To make us smile when they look at you with those nice eyes that allow you to forget for a moment all those horrors going on overseas?
It is a strange world L&G, and I am happy to be a part of it. If I could trade one thing from my past it would be the times I spent wishing things were different. Things should be exactly (or almost exactly) how they are, I see that now. Of course we must work to better the world, by connecting with people and by doing good works. It is nice to be here chatting with you, even if I am being repetitious and inane. At least I don’t have plantar fasciitis, and at least I have a plan to quit smoking fairly soon. When the city sojourn is over the cigarettes will fall away like the skin of the cicada. I will live little longer than a cicada in the scope of the universal stream, so I had better make sure I enjoy myself and keep myself healthy so I can continue to enjoy myself. That is my goal, on this morning, this Thursday morning where I am manifesting only my continued existence.
I will not do it by sheer force of will alone, I will be soft and exposed and so show the world another way to be. To be blown around by the winds of circumstance with a smile on my face. To stare into the moon and see not my own reflection but the craters on her face. To see the smile that she is wearing as she looks down upon the lives no more or less significant than her own. Oh to be a heavenly body would be such a boring lot. Spinning, spinning, always spinning. At least we cannot tell we are spinning. At least we have the illusion of moving in straight lines.
That is enough of this for now, I think. I think you have probably had quite enough of my ramblings. I think I have been stretching these out a little bit because they have been less frequent, writing more less often. And the other projects dead in the water. I don’t need to always be producing, I need to launch a career from this firmament of letters. Cathedral of words, never to be understood. Because there is nothing to understand. A tale is a tale is a tale does not necessarily have to have a moral. It is conflict without resolution, it is tension that refuses to abate. Here we are at the end of something, and myself in the early stages of something, and happy to be doing anything at all. Love you all so stinking much, don’t I? That I would continue on for a lot of words after I said I would be done. It helps to keep addressing myself to these illusive readers, the few who actually sit down and take the time to peruse the contents of my brain. Of course this is more mind than brain, the brain is just a chemical structure that gives rise to mind, no? Or perhaps that is wrong, these are questions far above my paygrade, which is not so high in the grand scheme of things. I just want to hold on for a little bit longer. To make it to the fall and watch a soccer game. To get to next week and play a round of golf I can be satisfied with. It is simple things that make me happy. I suggest you try to find some for yourself. I suggest you look around you and realize yourself already in paradise. Unless of course you’re in the hell realms, in which case run like hell. There is a reason for that phrase.
Basta. Enough.
TTFN.