John Swinburn

I played with software on Christmas day this year, creating two covers for two bogus magazines I’ve written about in years past. And then I smoked and reverse seared three enormous ribeye steaks. Just another day in the Arkansas outback. Christmas day did not materialize quite as the plans had forecast, but that’s okay; too many voices in the house can be deafening. Until around 3:45 p.m., there was just my wife and me. She took a long nap from late morning until mid-afternoon, so I had time to play with Microsoft Publisher and entertain myself with inane endeavors. Later in the day, her sister came over and we finished cooking, albeit with some surprising adjustments. After smoking the steaks until their internal temperature reached 110 degrees, they looked positively raw. I was concerned the meal was not going to play out as planned, but I pan seared three monstrous one-inch-plus-thick ribeyes on a cast-iron skillet, using the propane burner on my grill on the deck. They turned out just fine and graced our Christmas plates with aplomb. But we only needed one of the three to feed us, so we have cooked steak in the refrigerator for future meals. After our early dinner, I played my Spotify playlist of Christmas music while they enjoyed a few games of Sequence. All in all, it was a throwaway day, but one that I enjoyed. I hope that anyone reading these words had an equally enjoyable Christmas. Maybe next year we’ll organize a more traditional day, suited to the season.

Merry Christmas. Happy Holidays. Whatever your preference, I wish everyone (anyone?) who reads this a joyous winter season and a better 2018 than the year soon to end.

Last night, for the second year in a row, we spent the evening sharing soups prepared by members and friends of the Unitarian Universalist Village Church. Janine’s contribution was a North African inspired red lentil soup. Judging from the fact that all of it was eaten and several people commented positively about it and asked for the recipe, I think it was a hit.

We enjoyed the evening, but something about the experience left me feeling disconnected to the group. I felt almost as if I were observing the event instead of participating in it. I don’t know whether Janine felt that way, but from my perspective, we were both observers to a far greater degree than were participants. There was much conversation, much happy laughter, lots of person-to-person engagement all around us, but we were rarely part of it. Maybe it’s because we’re both introverts and tend not to initiate conversations. Maybe it’s something else that I can’t quite put my finger on. Last night, I felt very much like an outsider, even though I was in the midst of it, taking pictures that I might use in the church newsletter and engaging in the occasional quick conversation with others. “Conversation” is not the right word; my engagements were more like quick, superficial chats.

The pain in my left knee that began yesterday morning have colored reaction to last night’s experience. By lunch time, it hurt to walk and to bend my knee, which was visibly swollen. When it came time to drive to the church, I could not bend it enough to get in the driver’s seat, so Janine drove. I limped around getting soup and wincing at the pain. When we got home, I took a couple of pills for pain, which, this morning, seem to have helped a bit. My knees (both of them) increasingly complain about bending of late. I suspect the pain is simply the price of ageing and carrying too much upper body excess baggage.

Maybe today, Christmas Day, I’m just feeling a bit removed from society in general. I suspect I’ll get over this malaise. I always do.

It’s officially Christmas Eve. Or should I say it’s officiously Christmas Eve. In either event, the calendar claims the date is December 24, the day before evidence of the existence of Santa Clause will be found in households across the land. Not in this household, mind you, but in many households.

In this household, the evidence will point to the existence of the Chile con Queso Spirit, a moderately obese man of Mexican heritage who delivers incredibly flavorful cheese sauce to the tamales of children who have been good enough to merit tamale deliveries in the days leading up to Christmas. Inasmuch as there are no children in this house, the Chile con Queso Spirit has seen fit to deliver the ingredients for that delectable cheese sauce. Fortunately, one of my brothers organized the delivery of a couple of dozen pork and jalapeño tamales to our house a day or so ago, so there will be something in which the Chile con Queso Spirit’s make-it-yourself-sauce to bathe. And it will be good.

In advance of that spiritual undertaking, we shall attend a Christmas Eve candlelight service at an accepting-of-non-believers-church, where we will share soups at the conclusion of the festivities. Only afterward will be return to our home to eat tamales and chile con queso and chips and drink Arkansas-brewed beer.

Tomorrow, I will smoke enormous rib-eye steaks for an hour, then reverse sear those monsters. And THAT will form the foundation of a meal that will satisfy all of the eaters. Christmas comes only once a year. But we may decide to increase its frequency.

I think I’m coming to grips with the fact that I’m an extremely emotional person. I still try to stem the tears when I can, but I’ve reached the conclusion that some people (and I’m one) are just hyper-emotional. Maybe it’s genetic. Maybe it’s a product of my upbringing or life experiences. Whatever it is, it’s not going to change. I know that, because I’ve been trying to change it for the better part of 64 years. Tears come remarkably easily to me; I hope that’s an indication of the depth of my empathy. But there’s an ugly underbelly to the emotions that bring forth tears; that same emotional scale permits anger to rapidly erupt into rage. The love I feel (I’ll call my empathy by that name) when people need my compassion is counter-balanced by the white-hot loathing I feel (I’ll call my unbridled hatred by that name) when I believe people deserve my molten contempt.

My entire conscious life has been spent searching for meaning that, ultimately, I’ve decided does not exist. This universe and everything in it has no intrinsic meaning. We attribute meaning to “all of creation.” But that’s only a wish, not a reality. There’s nothing to search for. It’s inside us. Each of us determines the meaning that merits our very existence. I think suicides don’t necessarily follow pain, but a loss of self-induced meaning. And the loss of self-induced meaning can follow sensations of guilt, betrayal, loss, unworthiness, and so many other bits of broken-ness.

Tonight, on the eve of Christmas Eve, I’m melancholy and wishing the world were a better place.

I awoke at 3:56 a.m. No, that’s not quite right. That’s when I got out of bed. I awoke a short while before that. I got out of bed at 3:56 a.m.

Subsequent to abandoning my effort to sleep until daybreak, I thought about how the world has changed since I was a child. The advent of the internet gave rise to our addiction to 24/7 instant access to news and rumor and manipulative misinformation. The internet is just the latest technology to rip our lives apart. Television, radio, automobiles, airplanes, printing presses, the cotton gin, steam locomotives…the list seems endless. Every radical new technology-enabled capability seems to have altered life as we once knew it. I wonder whether life on earth—both human and otherwise—has been improved by all these transformations. There’s no way to perform an unbiased analysis, of course. In many ways, technology has magnified and enabled humans’ ability to do damage to the planet and ourselves. We’re probably less connected to the earth that we’ve ever been. And that’s unfortunate because that tenuous connection makes us less likely to consider the effects of our actions on everything around us.

We can never return to”the ways things used to be.” We can only learn from our experiences and attempt to create a future built on the best of what we’ve learned. The national, even global, conversation isn’t about building a future. Instead, it’s about tearing down a past. I wish I knew how to change the direction of the conversation. I’ve spent the better part of two hours ruminating on the subject. I am no closer to knowing now than I was when I awoke. But I’ve had two more cups of coffee than I’d had when I awoke, so I suppose I’ll call that progress.

My stenosis and bone spurs reared their ugly heads again a few days ago, causing my tangled nerves to react with pain in my arms, shoulder, and right shoulder blade. I had stopped taking my "nerve pain" medications, which was probably a mistake. And I hadn’t been getting the physical therapy I should have been getting, at least not as much a I should have. So the blame falls squarely on my very painful shoulders. It is getting better, though. I’d prefer a few shots of morphine to speed things up, but the government thinks free access to morphine would be problematic.

We had planned to go to Tulsa the other day, but I couldn’t see myself driving (or being a passenger, sitting in one spot) for four or five hours. Seems to me the pain is greater when I’m sitting in a car. I wonder how much of it is psychological?

The cold weather, coupled with the aberrant pain, is exaggerating my suffering, too. Every one of my joints complain about arthritis. I understand what they are saying; they are expressing their dissatisfaction with the way I’ve treated my body all these years. I can’t argue with them. My arthritis seems to get a new lease on life every time temperatures drop below forty degrees.

And if I didn’t have enough to complain about, I took my car in to have the "check engine" light checked, only to find the car needs $1000+ to address problems with the vacuum hoses (pretty much all of them) plus a valve and rust on the gas filler tube (the thing the gas cap screws onto). The car is fifteen years old and generally in very good condition, so $1,000 is not too much to spend on it, I guess. But after just spending $6,000 on getting the house painted and a couple of grand or so dealing with my nerves, that hit a sore spot. They gave me a loaner car, while the work is don, a "small" pickup that seems to me as big as a tank.

I could complain about the snow, but we didn’t get any. I understand Houston, Corpus Christi and perhaps points sound in Texas got a bit of the white stuff. I’m happy to keep it away from here, along with its cousin, black ice or sleet or any other frozen precipitation.

Tonight will see temperatures drop into the upper twenties, but tomorrow we’ll reach sixty and tomorrow night will edge to just below forty.

Tomorrow, a guy is coming to give me a quote on removing a large, badly sick tree. Tuesday, the fireplace checkup guy will be here. In between, provided my neck/ shoulder/arms can take it, I need to rake enormous volumes of leaves, Some days, and this is one of them, I wish I lived in an apartment where all the maintenance was handled by management. Or in Mexico. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Channels run deep within us, channels as delicate as gently bubbling streams and as powerful as rivers that fiercely tear into the bedrock of the earth over which they flow. Through these channels flow the aspirations that drive us to seek a better world, not just for ourselves but for future generations. Some call these channels conscience or morality or decency or humanity or…a thousand other names. I do not know what they are. I know only that they exist, even though in some of us they are clogged with doubt and grief and hatred and selfish narcissism. Shovels, in whatever form, can clear those congested paths.

Today, I’ll smoke the turkey we bought before Thanksgiving. Even though we had no intention of cooking a turkey for Thanksgiving dinner (our nice neighbors had us over for that meal), we couldn’t resist the low prices offered for the big, frozen birds. I let the bird thaw in the refrigerator for four days and then, last night, I brined the fowl. Today, after several hours in the smoker, it will be ready to be the centerpiece of a meal that will include a broccoli and rice casserole that mi esposa bonita prepared last night and will cook today. So, that’s tonight’s meal.

Tomorrow, it’s an entirely different situation. My wife agreed (albeit I think somewhat reluctantly) to let me arrange a tapas-fest in our home, provided that I’ll do most or all of the cooking/food preparation. So, we’ll end the “work week” with a glorious assortment of Spanish (and near-Spanish, in that some of the ingredients won’t be ‘authentic’) treats. For the record, here’s what I’m planning to make:

White fish “cooked” in vinegar: I’ll use tilapia, which I’ll soak in cold water for an hour, then “cook” in an 80/20 mixture of vinegar and water for six hours. After rinsing the fish (which will be white and firm by then), I’ll marinate overnight in olive oil enriched with a lot of diced garlic and flat-leaf parsley. Strips of the oily fish with garlic and parsley will then adorn slices of crusty bread. This sounds very much like ceviche, but vinegar is used in this dish in place of lime juice in ceviche. Actually, ceviche sounds better to me, but I decided to give this a try, just because.

Chorizo in red wine: I will poach thinly sliced rounds of dry, hard Spanish chorizo (unlike we, soft Mexican chorizo) in red wine infused with vast quantities of garlic, bay leaves, and a bit of cayenne. The chorizo will plump up considerably with the red wine, which will essentially disappear into the sausage while poaching. When finished, we’ll stab the rounds of chorizo with toothpicks and devour the wine-soaked delights.

Garlic shrimp with olive oil: This recipe will use about two pounds of shrimp, which will be cooked in olive oil infused with garlic and red peppers. Another toothpick dish.

Spiced almonds: Designed for nibbling, this dish involves heating a bit of olive oil, infecting it with cumin, paprika, and sea salt. Then, I’ll drench the almonds in the oil, put them on a cookie sheet, and bake for about ten minutes. I expect they’ll be quite tasty.

Chimpinones al ajo (mushrooms with garlic): Have I mentioned I like garlic? This dish is a garlic-lover’s delight. I will saute white mushrooms and garlic in a mixture of olive oil, lemon juice, sherry, paprika, and flakes dried chiles, then top the cooked mushrooms with chopped flat-leaf parsley.

Albóndigas de cordero a la hierbabuena (lamb meatballs with mint): One of my favorites. This wonderful tapa combines ground lamb, egg, bread crumbs, chopped mint, onion, salt, pepper, dry white wine, beef broth, tomato puree, and garlic to form delicious meatballs with a spectacular sauce. My mouth waters as I write this.

Patatas bravas: Basically, fried potatoes accompanied by a simple but delicious aioli made from tomato sauce, mustard, hot sauce, paprika, red wine vinegar, and olive oil.

Tapas peppers: This is an Ina Garten recipe that I’ll modify slightly to suit my taste. I’ll pack wide slices of red and yellow peppers with a mix I’ll make from sherry, golden raisins, salt, pepper, chopped olives, anchovy fillets, tomato,  bread crumbs, and olive oil. Then, I’ll bake the stuffed peppers. Unless I’m mistaken, these will be quite tasty.

Slices of Iberico ham: Store-bought stuff; my only involvement will be to open the package and plate the food.

Manchego cheese: Again, my role will be to open the package and cut the very expensive cheese into bite-sized pieces. I do love good cheese, but I’m always stunned by the price. If I had the wherewithal, I’d make my own. I think I could enjoy cheese-making. I’ve done a bit, but nothing like manchego. Perhaps I’ll ruminate on that and act on it, or not.

Olives: I’ll offer an assortment of olives, including black, green, spiced, etc.

Fig, Serrano Ham, and Goat Cheese Bruschetta: Because I’ve been unable to find Serrano Ham, I’ll substitute prosciutto. For this, I’ll spread fig jam and goat cheese on slices of baguette that I’ve flavored by smearing them with cut garlic and olive oil. Then, I’ll drizzle a reduction I’ve made from balsamic vinegar and top the bread with the prosciutto and chopped fresh basil.

Crusty baguettes: More store-bought stuff. I’ll make a dipping sauce for them, though, using olive oil and garlic and other such stuff.

Spanish red wine and Tio Pepe Sherry: Before and during the tapas festival, we’ll drink red Spanish wine (and we’ll have white but not Spanish white available) and Tio Pepe dry sherry that my niece was nice enough to buy for me and bring with her during her last visit to Hot Springs Village.

My wife winced as we bought the ingredients for this extravaganza of food. I’m not sure whether the sheer volume of food or the cost (or both) were the cause of her reaction. Probably both. Given that there will be only five or six of us for dinner, I may have overdone the menu. But it’s confirmed now, so there’s nothing to be done. Except invite more guests, perhaps. Hmmm. I may consider that.

Obviously, the effort involved in preparing tomorrow’s meal of tapas will be significant. I have to start today, for example, by preparing the white fish. Despite the amount of work, I’m looking forward to it. I like spending time in the kitchen, preparing food. I enjoy trying new dishes and tweaking dishes I’ve made before. And I like sitting around with people I like, nibbling on small-plate dishes.

I was thinking aloud (actually, online) last night on matters of morality and how the boundaries of morality depend in large part on one’s upbringing and one’s perspective on the human condition. Though one might recognize certain behaviors as “immoral,” one might engage in them, nonetheless, for myriad reasons. Does that make those behaviors any less immoral? Does that make the person who engages in them immoral? Are there “extenuating circumstances” that relieve a person who engages in immoral acts of the brand “immoral actor?” Morality and ethics, frequently used interchangeably, are different; morality derives from one’s own principles about right and wrong, whereas ethics relate to rules imposed on behaviors externally by the society in which one lives, e.g., church, legal system, etc.

I say about many characters in my writing that they are “good people who do bad things.” In one sense, that could define people who live according to their own sense of morality but who behave in ways that break the rules imposed on them externally. In another, though, that statement could provide the tension the character feels between his or her moral beliefs and actions that run counter to them.

Ultimately, both morality and ethics should (in my view) be guided by the physician’s creed: “first do no harm.” So much easier to espouse than to apply.

I’m going to the ophthalmologist today to have my vision checked. I’m not expecting to require an eye replacement, but I might need new lenses. If neither, I may have to get used to inadequate vision. I made the appointment without consulting my calendar, which means I’ll miss a program on writing Christmas letters, put on by the local writers’ club. Missing the program bothers me a little because I like to support the organization’s programs, but the topic isn’t of great interest, so I’m not crushed. It occurs to me that I’ve been going to doctors far more frequently of late than I’d like. I’d rather avoid them, if possible, inasmuch as visits to doctors tend to coincide with diagnoses I do not like. Methinks that’s not coincidental; doctors are paid to make diagnoses.  If I decide not to go to the doctor and, therefore, not pay for the visit, I reason that I won’t get a diagnosis and, thus, will remain healthy. Maybe I’ll cancel my eye doctor appointment today, in the hope of achieving 20/20 vision. Makes good sense to me.

As I look out my window this morning, I see leaves, held captive by trees for many months, taking advantage of the wind to escape from the branches that held them prisoner. I would be happy for the leaves except that I’ll have to rake, blow, or otherwise act to remove them from my driveway and rockscape. I’ve done quite a bit of leaf relocation of late and I have no interest in doing more. My interest, though, and my actions do not necessarily achieve mutuality. I wonder if mutuality is a word? I’ll look it up when I’m older. In the meantime, I read something yesterday, as yet unverified, that says the Oxford English Language Corpus includes more than two Billion (yes, that’s a B) words. That stuns me. The same source suggests that I (and whoever else reads the article) am likely to know only about fifty thousand words. This seems to me a challenge I should take on: counting all the words I know. I’m not sure exactly how I’d go about the task. Perhaps I should just do it in alphabetical order. Yes, that’s it. I’ll make a list of every word I know, starting with “A.” This is apt to be an arduous task (I’ll include “apt” and “arduous” in the list).  But I’ll wait to start the project because, as you already know, I have an appointment to have my eyes examined today. The fact that I’ve actually written about making a list of all the words I know suggests that I should have another part of my body examined, i.e., my head. Well, my eyes reside in my head, so that’s the right place to start. But do my eyes actually “reside” in my head? Or are they just there. One generally does not speak of one’s body parts as “residing” anywhere. They may be attached to or part of one’s body, but saying they “reside” there suggests they may decide one day to move on to a new residence. I would be disappointed in the extreme if my eyes decided to change residence, opting to leave my head for the warmth afforded in my arm pits. This conversation with myself is degrading, badly, so I must do something to stop the carnage. Maybe I should tell a joke! That’s it! Well, I’ll try. I did not create this joke; but I’ll try to tell it as best as my memory will allow.

A guy walks carrying a satchel walks into a bar one day and sits on a stool in front of the bartender.

“Gimme a beer,” the guy says. “I need to drown my sorrows.”

“Sure, guy. Here’s a beer for you. Anything you want to talk about? I’m a bartender, so I’m a good listener.”

“Okay,” the drinker says, “I’ve got something in my bag that really bothers me.” The guy reaches into the bag and pulls out a tiny piano and puts it on the counter. He reaches back in and pulls out a tiny piano bench and puts it on the counter. And then he reaches into the bag and pulls out a tiny man and puts him on the bench. Immediately, the little guy starts playing a piece written by Beethoven. His skills on the piano are stunning.

The bartender says to the bar patron, “This makes you sad? This is incredible! You could make a lot of money just showing this guy around. Where’d you get him?”

“A genie gave him to me. I rubbed a bottle and the genie popped out. Said ‘make a wish and I will grant it to you.’ So I made a wish and, poof, this guy appears, along with the piano, out of puff of smoke.”

“Wow! Where’s this bottle where this genie lives?”

“Right here in my satchel,” the guy says, reaching in and pulling out a gorgeous metal vase.

“Wow, can I make a wish?”

“Sure, just rub the thing and he’ll come out and grant you a wish.”

The bartender rubs the vase and out pops a genie. “Make a wish and I will grant it to you,” the genie says.

“I wish I had a million bucks!”

Instantly, the room fills with mallard ducks, quacking and flapping their wings wildly.

“Your genie must be hard of hearing! I wanted a million bucks, not a million ducks!”

The patron looks at the bartender ruefully. “Yeah, I know, do you think I wished for a 12-inch pianist?”

Deep in the tangled weeds of today’s early morning, between the time I awoke at 2:30 and the time I finally accepted that I had lost another good night’s sleep, I stumbled across a reason to be glad about my insomnia: a book entitled The Cabinet of Linguistic Curiosities: A Yearbook of Forgotten Words. The book, published in the UK, is available online from Amazon and others for around $20, including shipping from the UK. Though I find it appealing, I have better things to do with my $20; but I wish I could justify making a trip to London to pick up a copy and save on the shipping costs. The author/compiler (Paul Anthony Jones) presents 366 words or phrases, one for each day of the year (including February 29). Jones offers up fascinating words like ambilaevous (adj.), meaning equally clumsy in both hands, and word-grubber (n.), someone who uses obscure or difficult words in everyday conversation. The discovery of The Cabinet of Linguistic Curiosities led to other linguistic gemstones mined from the book by BBC, including these (selected by BBC among twenty-six words they don’t want our language to lose):

Agerasia (pronounced ‘adge-uh-ray-zee-ah’), a more youthful appearance than one’s true age (derived from a Greek word for ‘eternal youth’).
Beard-second, based on the same template as ‘light-year’, one ‘beard-second’ is the approximate length a man’s beard hair grows in one second: five nanometres.
Charette, a period of intense work or creative activity undertaken to meet a deadline; this word recently found its way into the Hot Springs Village Property Owners Association’s lexicon, where it’s being used to describe a series of public meetings designed to generate ideas for a “master plan” for our community.
Eucatastrophe, a sudden and unexpected fortuitous event. JRR Tolkien, who coined the word in 1944, defined it as “the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears.”
Proditomania, the irrational belief that everyone around you is a traitor; the unnerving feeling that you’re surrounded by people out to get you.
Spanghew, to inflate a frog and bowl it across the surface of a pond. (I cannot believe the word is not in more common use.)

I have been actively absorbed by langualust since I was a child, but I was never as bright as Levi Budd, a precocious six-year-old Canadian who noticed the gaping absence of a term to describe words that form different words when spelled backwards (e.g., spoons-snoops, stop-pots, spit-tips). So, he coined his own: levidrome. I’ve been a fan of neologisms ever since I first heard the term used in my Linguistics 101 class in college (I have no idea the context, but I do think I recall that’s where I first heard it). Speaking of palindromes…I coined the phrase “automotive palindrome” to describe the state in which a car’s odometer reads the same from left to right and right to left, as in 100001 miles or 51515. That will probably be remembered as the greatest contribution I made to humankind.

So, in spite of being enmeshed in what I think is at least the third straight night of sleep interrupted by insomnia, I’m smiling now at the world of words.

If my fingers and forearm didn’t hurt so damn much, I’d have a lot to say at 3:00 a.m. I’d have quite a lot to share with this tiny piece of the world that reads my words. But my fingers and my forearm hurt too damn much. The pain of being who I am, where I am, when I am, is too great to permit me to share my agony with the world just now. So I’ll stop and say this: one day, my words will spill from me like blood from an open wound. One day, the immeasurable agony of an inconsequential life will flow like blood from veins freed by a scalpel from the constraints of the channels within which they churn.

I question everything at this time of night. I question the value of humanity and whether  kittens and puppies are as pure as we’d like to believe. Do we live in a world in which decency is, truly, an option? Or do we deceive ourselves into thinking…wishing… humankind has the capacity for empathy and compassion? Times like this…times in which Trump is president and North Korea wants desperately to kill us all…make me think suicide is a suitable alternative to living among deliberate idiots.

Can I get some sleep tonight? I doubt it. But maybe I’ll try. If I’m lucky, I’ll fall asleep and won’t wake up. But that, too, has its own set of problems. No, I won’t wish that on anyone, either. I just want to wake up from this goddamn nightmare. I want to wake up to the possibility of hope. I want to wake up to something beyond despair.

I don’t quite know what to do with myself in the wee hours of the morning these days. In days gone by, I’d get up and write. But my bum spine/arm/neck/elbow conspire with my flagging creativity to turn me away from the “pen.” Pen sounds better than keyboard; more romantic, anyway. Instead of pounding away at the keys in the morning, lately I’ve gently pushed the mouse to maneuver the cursor around the screen and simply “clicked” on items of interest. There’s no creativity in that. There’s no sense of adventure in reading the words of newly-minted baby reporters fresh out of journalism school. But there it is. I squandered my productive years in search of my creative niche, only to find it filled with the quick-setting cement of advancing age. The most bothersome aspect of my disinterest in (and physical problems with) writing is the fact that it corresponds with a waning interest in things that used to excite me. Even my recent fascination with the concept of timebanking represents a muted version of the old me, the me who would have jumped all over the concept and sought out with rabid zeal anyone willing to listen to me speak of the idea. The new me—the me with a much-dulled interest in almost everything—wishes someone else would take the idea and run with it. Ach! Even typing these few words this morning is akin to swimming with lead weights attached to each of my fingers. If lethargy is a malady, I think I suffer from the terminal variety of the disease. Caffeine is doing nothing for me this morning. Perhaps I should try a shot of good whiskey. No, that’s not an option, as there’s no good whiskey (or bad, for that matter) in the house.  I feel as if I have discovered and moved to the mystical town of my own making—Struggles, Arkansas. I’m the proprietor of the Fourth Estate Tavern, Calypso Kneeblood. My brothers, Fletcher and James, are out in the world, one attempting to save us from nuclear annihilation and the other probing the darkest corners of our souls. I, on the other hand, am satisfied to serve pork congee and dark beer for breakfast to early morning customers who barely cling to sanity by the tips of their fingernails in a broken little town whose future is even more bleak than its past. These last few sentences suggest I may still have a little “oomph” in my writing chops. Maybe. Or maybe I’m just writing an epitaph about the death of creative thought. I should return to my little story about Struggles, Arkansas and try to write about how it changes from a fulsome existence to a place where there’s at least a shred of hope peeking out from beneath the detritus of ruined lives and wasted opportunities. But for that to happen, I have to believe Struggles, Arkansas wants to and can change. As long as Trump is in the White House—no, as long as the corpulent vermin lives and breathes—there’s no room for hope in Struggles, Arkansas, nor indeed in all of the earth on which we depend for our every need. I could write about his demise, couldn’t I? I could dream with words about his extinction when melting glaciers flood his luxury estate, drowning him in a sea of offshore oil unleashed by the icy currents. Or, I could practice meditation with which I cast off the ugliness of the world around me and focus exclusively on to goodness within and without. Yeah, that’s the ticket. And my blood pressure will benefit with the latter approach, perhaps falling to within the new “normal” limits.

If there were even a single piece of bread in the house, I’d make myself a piece of toast now. But there isn’t and I won’t. Instead, I’ll explore the depths of the refrigerator for something entirely unsuited for breakfast. That will take my mind off the collapse of western civilization for a while.