John Swinburn

The streets of a small town at a quarter past four in the morning tell stories that cannot adequately be told in the light of day. Those dark, deserted streets reveal the abandoned hopes of people who do not fit the molds into which we try to press them. Those streets express what could have been but was not to be; happy, carefree souls who, though different from the rest of us, could fit into molds of their own making.  Instead, the small town, closed up tight, forces the strangers among us to experience the streets in darkness,  save for the artificial lights that illuminate empty streets. Those few unique people wander in the darkness: an old man on a bicycle overloaded with all his worldly possessions; a bi-racial couple sharing a bottle of vodka, staggering past a car-wash; another bicycle rider, a young man whose shaved head must be intended as a message, though it’s not clear to me what; and a young woman exercising with hand-weights as she walks briskly in front of shops that, in a few hours, will sell tawdry tourist trinkets priced barely high enough to keep the doors open.

Who are these people, these characters who either by choice or chance inhabit the night? Are they really unusual, unable or unwilling to crawl into the molds into which most of us readily fit? Or do they simply opt to experience life from the inside out, sleeping while we wake and waking while we sleep? I could ask them, but I am in my car, slowly cruising by—wondering about them but not sufficiently curious to warrant stopping for a chat. Besides, if I stopped, they understandably might think of me as an aggressor, an accoster, an old man with bad intentions.

The few cars on the streets move about with purpose, as do the delivery trucks. The drivers know where they are going, but I can only guess at their destinations. Where do people go at this hour? Nothing is open, not even fast-food drive-through lanes. I suppose they are like me: they have been some place, or are going some place, suited to four-in-the-morning-darkness.

In my case, I am driving home after a “sleep study” that began at 8:00 p.m. I was attached overnight to wires that measured brain waves, eye movements, breathing, heart rate, and any twitching of muscles in my legs and arms and chest. The purpose was to determine whether I stop breathing when I sleep and what might be done to keep me from taking that very last breath before its time. That’s more dramatic than it is, really; it also aims to help determine what will enable me to sleep longer and better. The technician noticed that I was awake just after four, though, so he came in and removed the wires so I could go home.

Even the classic American main street, with its mixed-use buildings right up against the sidewalk, is now illegal in most municipalities. Somewhere along the way, through a series of small and well-intentioned steps, traditional towns became a crime in America.

~ Andres Duany ~

As I drove through the periphery of the town and into the heart of Hot Springs, I felt the same small-town heartbeat I’ve felt hundreds of times before as I’ve driven through small towns in the wee hours of the morning. The heartbeats of small towns are different from cities; small towns’ hearts are more honest about their pride and about their ailments. Hot Springs’ pride is obvious in its touristy cladding. But it cannot hide its ailments behind that translucent covering. The town sports abandoned buildings and structures that, once majestic, now hide their decay behind gaudy signs and attention-grabbing paint. In that way, Hot Springs is like many other small towns; it is trying to resurrects its heyday with only moderate success. It is attempting to recreate the look and feel of a time before the era of plazas and campuses, an era that made typical small-town street scenes an anachronism. Time will tell whether the town’s efforts will pay dividends.

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Algeria cut diplomatic ties with its neighboring country, Morocco, with which it shares a 1200 mile border. How massive would the dislocation have to be to prompt the U.S. or Mexico to cut diplomatic ties with its neighbor, with which it shares a 1950 mile border? Tensions in the rest of the world would escalate to the breaking point if the U.S. and Mexico broke diplomatic relations with one another. Is the world just as anxious about the Morocco/Algeria border? Why not? Geopolitical intrigue clearly illustrates global madness and hypocrisy. And power. Raw, ravenous, greedier-than-greedy power.

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Some days are much harder than others, though I don’t know just why. Some days seem filled with blocks of concrete and lead, piled on my chest so high I cannot hope to breathe. But, then, everything suddenly seems fine. The air is cool and the day is bright and all is right with the world. But then it starts over again; I’m brittle and far too easily broken, as if made of thin layers of glass. It’s a mystery. All will be well. It just takes time and patience. I don’t know how much time I have. My supply of patience apparently ran out when I was a much younger man; maybe even when I was a child. Possibly when I was an infant. In fact, I may have been born with out the normal supply of patience and have never been able to grow my own. No matter how much I try to be “Zen,” it doesn’t seem to settle in to the guy I am. But I keep trying. Today, I’m twisting a little. I’m dangling from a string and twisting back and forth between happy and sad; between strong and weak; between certainty and ambivalence.

It was 4:10 this morning when I finally acquiesced; I gave up trying to sleep, opting instead to pee and to seek out coffee and the solace of waking darkness. A small dog lay, half-asleep, in front of the toilet, challenging my aim for the bowl; I was successful, in spite of the animal’s steadfast refusal to move. Had I failed, the dog would have felt the drizzle of golden showers. The idea of “golden showers,” a term I’ve read about but never had any interest in experiencing in any way, shape, manner, or form, is off-putting. Yet here I am writing about it, as if I were a budding pornographer. The mere mention of the phrase makes me want to wash my hands with soapy water and then spend ten minutes under a hot shower, just to be sure I am clean and untainted. But that will wait. First, I have thoughts to think and words to release from the prison in my head, allowing them to flow through my fingers and onto the launch pad from which I will send them dribbling into the unread fringes of the internet. Run-on sentences are my specialty. Sort of like pronouncement after a guilty verdict, wherein the judge informs the guilty party that he will serve 285 consecutive life sentences without parole. The criminal’s body will have long-since stopped smelling like a rotting corpse by the time the dried piece of human jerky is delivered to its descendents. My IC claims she sometimes cannot follow my conversations; I think this paragraph might explain why that is.

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Reading a friend’s poetry last night (along with some mood issues of my own) prompted me to give the genre a try this morning. So, here goes; I call it

I pass the time by whittling twigs into toothpicks,
leaving piles of wood shavings at my feet and salty
tracks of endless tears further etching my already etched cheeks.

Twigs are not to blame for the time I have to pass,
yet they are the victims of my need for distraction from
a reality I cannot alter with drink or drug or denial.

The permanent hole in my soul cannot be filled with
wood shavings or tears or a thousand calendars stacked
end to end, covered with sweet memories and stinging regrets.

No matter what I do, I cannot repair the broken pieces,
the fractures I feel in my head and in my chest every day,
even on those happy days when I am wrapped in new love.

Time cannot heal wounds; but it can smooth the deepest scars
so they are not quite as obvious and not quite as tender
and not as prone to open up again in the light of life.

My new role now is to tend quietly to my wound and
gently let the scar dissolve into the mist of time;
never letting go of the past, nor ignoring now.

Living between two lifetimes is an exercise in fragility,
a beautiful but dangerous place in which to worship
history and the future, while exalting the present.

The tree from which my whittled twig was harvested is
stronger than the knife I use to shave it and more
beautiful than the toothpicks it yields.

The tears that etch my cheeks are as fleeting as
the time I try hard to remember and forget in the
same breath, in the same lovely and horrid moments.

Life and death are unavoidable struggles; they make
existence beautiful and painful, wretched and wonderful.
I long for that saving embrace that proves it all.

I, alone, must confront the pain and welcome the peace,
taking help when it’s offered and useful and rejecting
well-meaning attempts that worsen the burden.

But I am not alone; a cadre of friends will catch
me when I fall and will straighten me
when I’m twisting a little.

Some days are much harder than others, though I do not know just why. Those same days seem to deliver so much love that I welcome but feel I don’t deserve. Deserved or not, though, they seem to save me from myself. That dangerous bastard who is capable of being as unlovable as Hannibal Lecter and as professionally competent as Norman Bates.

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I’m starting this day in an odd mood. I hope it improves as the day ripens.

My sleep was interrupted by pronouncements, by two alarm clocks, that the time to arise had come. And so I arose, went to the kitchen, started the coffee, and got dressed. By the time I returned to the kitchen, the coffee had begun to cool and I had exchanged a couple of text messages with another friend who likes to wake early. And then I rushed in to begin writing my blog before the time to go to my IC’s house comes. As I write this, I have only a few minutes before I need to leave to meet her ex-husband there; he will detach shelves full of CDs and will take them to his house. My IC does not need or want the CDs; she is fully satisfied, musically, with online delivery on command. Her ex-husband built the custom shelves, though, and seems to be very happy to have them back. All’s well when such good things happen.  But now, I must go. I’ll continue writing when I return. Or maybe I won’t and will let this day pass without posting to my blog. My readership is tiny, so only a very few might even notice the lack of a post. Such is life.

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The CDs and the shelves are gone and I moved two bedside tables from my IC’s former home to their new location in my house. My left arm, now wrapped in a “tennis elbow” brace, prevented me from doing any more; probably, I should not have done what I did, but that’s history now and the pain in my arm is a sharp reminder. I acknowledge that I can be stubbornly stupid at times and should be figurately beat with a rubber hose.

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A friend who has only recently finally recognized her innate writing talent shared just a bit with me not long ago, but I’ve seen nothing since. She reads this blog from time to time, so perhaps this little bit of nagging will remind her that we need to get together again to discuss writing, imbibe mood enhancing liquid and non-liquid products, and philosophize about the state of the world. Another friend, an aficionado of white zinfandel, needs to return to finish her bottle and, perhaps, help me understand how to use the telescope she lent me.

When the move is complete and we’re settled, we shall have a party of sorts. Not the loud, raucous party one might think of; the not-so-loud, raucous party that brings out the extrovert in my introverted friends but calms the tendency toward extreme extroversion in the others. Hmm. How will that work? We’ll just have to have a party and see. In the interim, I need periodic injections of conversations, with wine, with each of my friends.

Yesterday, the grandiose bed and bedside tables I sold to friends were picked up and taken to their new home. Photos from the new home revealed that the bed and its companions really belong in their new home; much prettier even than they were here. It’s nice to know they are someplace they will be treated well.

The removal of the bed necessitated the relocation of the Sleep Number box springs and mattress to another room and the removal of an old box springs and mattress. The old mattress set will be picked up on Friday by ReStore. The Sleep Number mattress is now on the guest bed in the guest room. Until the bed from my IC’s house is delivered and set up on Saturday, we’re sleeping in the guest room. Last night was just fine; the same old mattress in a new environment. But even little positives can inject minor stress into an already stress-filled period of time. I look forward to the alleviation of that stress.

Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.

~ Herman Melville ~

Regardless of what I do before I go to bed, sleep cannot be guaranteed. Sometimes I sleep soundly; other times, I sleep barely at all. And I rarely sleep late, which I define as any time after 6:00 a.m. But lately I’ve occasionally slept in; later than 6. I am not comfortable with or happy about that. My time early in the morning is my only totally private, self-renewing time. I need that time. If I had to choose between sleep and that freedom, the choice would be easy. I’ll go with those private times.

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This morning, my IC and I discussed my ambivalence about possessions. On one hand, I like art and computers and beds and tables and photos and televisions and refrigerators and on and on as much as anyone else. But I value my freedom even more, I think. Some days, and this is one of them, I feel like I’d be happier and more free if I got rid of everything and lived as simple life as possible. But I’m fooling myself, am I not? Could I get by with no chair that I consider “mine” and no place to which I could retreat? That’s a hard one. I don’t need the chair, though I would miss it immensely. But taking away the place where I can think would be murderous. It would be equivalent to taking away the eyes of a person whose only joy is his eyesight. Or maybe I’m kidding myself again. Maybe I’m a charlatan, a pretender who only thinks he needs his freedom to think.

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Even though I had a relatively good night’s sleep last night, I am about to drift off here at my desk. I need to get up and get busy, lest I replicate last night’s slumbers.

The sun had long since risen and the clock was poised to announce that the time was 7:00 a.m. when I awoke this morning. For a person who is used to getting up very early—usually between 4:30 and 5:30, this unusual experience was akin to losing half the day. Though I suppose my body needed the sleep, I wish I had gone to bed at 7:00 p.m. last night so I could have arisen during darkness, at a civilized hour. Two shot glasses full of very high-end sipping tequila (Don Julio 1942) probably contributed to my very lengthy nap. I’m in the process now of weighing which I want more—waking in darkness and isolation or drinking superb tequila. It’s a hard choice; I want both. And perhaps I can have both. Tequila in the late afternoon, followed by bed in the early evening. I suspect I would be up and ready to face the day by 4:30 a.m. the following morning. I’ll have to experiment with this concept.

It is well to be up
before daybreak,
for such habits
contribute to
health, wealth, and
wisdom

~ Aristotle ~

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Aristotle was one of my mentors, though he appeared before me rather late in life, after I had misspent my youth. But his admonition to get up early, while the sun still slept, has been with me since I was just a child.

This blog contains so many mentions of the joys of arising early, before daybreak. It’s a bit like a religion with me; I believe in its value and its strength and power, even without any evidence of consequence.

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My IC is closing on the sale of her house today, which calls for celebration of some sort. However, we still have much to do to empty the contents of her house (even though the title is changing to the new owners today, they have given her additional time to vacate and give them possession). So, maybe celebration will have to wait. In the meantime, we’ll continue to lug carload after carload of stuff to my house, where we’ll find places to put it. This process has prompted me to go through much of what I own and to dispose of a lot of “stuff” for which I have neither a need nor a want to keep. And, of course, I have to get rid of some things that I’d rather keep, but that I cannot justify keeping for any reason except sentimentality. Sentiment is sometimes a valid reason. But not always. Sometimes, sentimentality is just a crutch that keeps a broken heart from healing.

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Even though I do not have anything pressing that demands my time at this hour (7:34 a.m. as I type this), I feel rushed because it’s well past daybreak and the day has moved along far beyond where it normally have been this soon after waking. So, I’ll put an early end to thinking with my fingers this morning. I have much, much more on my mind, but the call of a productive day is competing with the call of a late leisurely morning—and winning.  But know this, as you wade into your day; you’re on my mind even when I don’t write about you and your exploits. Even now, as I scramble to catch up with the time I’ve misspent by sleeping in, you’re on my mind.

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A week or so ago, my IC and I had a conversation that included discussion of the poem, Desiderata, by Max Ehrmann. The poem moves me the way few do. About four months ago, sometimes in April, I included the full text of the poem here on my blog. This morning, a few lines stand out in my mind and help me overcome my embarrassment about getting up so damn late:

… be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be.

So, there you go. Here I am, experiencing a morning when I could berate myself for sleeping in; but I don’t, thanks to the words of Max Ehrmann, even in their syrupy optimism. Sometimes, we have to be blindly optimistic that the world is not as horrible and painful as it appears to be.

I got an email from a friend from church yesterday, letting me know she and her husband are leaving in their RV today, heading toward Nova Scotia. Suddenly, I wanted to be in that RV, making the long, intriguing trip to what amounts to another place and time. Nova Scotians live in a different universe, I think. They have successfully bypassed the majority of modern-day urban insanity in favor of an indescribably happy and chaotic serenity. At least that’s how I perceive them.

My friend and her husband will miss church today, I guess. And they will not attend church, this one at least, as long as they are gone.  Which raises a question in my mind: do I have to go to church every Sunday? No. But I have to go every other Sunday because I agreed to facilitate post-service discussions. And therein lies the stress…of feeling an obligation that is deeply at odds with what I want for myself these days: the freedom to just not show up if I wish. It may be selfish…it is…but I feel the need to be able to withdraw without notice; to simply vanish for a week or six weeks or six months. So, I may “give notice” before long; give the organizers enough time to find a willing replacement and myself an adequate carrot to keep me going for awhile longer.

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The tension within me is getting tighter and tighter: stay where I am, with its stodginess and familiarity, or move on to someplace unfamiliar but potentially exciting and revitalizing. Before I suddenly found myself in love with my IC, I was ready to sell and move on. Then, I decided I had to stay. But now I’m getting antsy again. Fortunately, she is ready to explore, as well. Still, leaving friends behind is hard. Yet most of us have done it before, though. That’s how we ended up where we are; we left the past, even the good pieces of it, someplace else. A place we might want to visit, but don’t necessarily want to live there.

So, I spend time online, reading about various cities, towns, and communities, trying to imagine life there. And I look at real estate listings, marveling at the price of housing in some places. I find myself drawn to places I have never been.

I’ve explained and previously written about feeling a sense of fernweh, a German word that translates as “farsickness.” Fernweh refers to “feeling homesick for a place you’ve never been or could never go.” I’ve been infected by the disease it my entire life.

Our list of places is odd and unusual. Tulsa. Fayetteville. Schenectady. Decorah. Las Cruces. And so on. One of our first trips will involve Fayetteville. And Schenectady. Because fernweh.

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Lost. He understood that men were forever strangers to one another, that no one ever comes really to know any one, that imprisoned in the dark womb of our mother, we come to life without having seen her face, that we are given to her arms a stranger, and that, caught in that insoluble prison of being, we escape it never, no matter what arms may clasp us, what mouth may kiss us, what heart may warm us. Never, never, never, never, never.

~ Thomas Wolfe ~ Look Homeward, Angel

I am not quite sure why I sought out these words, extracted from a book—one I have never read—by Thomas Wolfe. “Why” I sought them out and reproduced them here is of no real relevance. Except, I suppose, that the words are true; that they get to the heart of the fundamental loneliness of our existence. That they acknowledge we never share enough of ourselves with one another to overcome the insurmountable obstacles to real intimacy. I believe the word Wolfe used with significant impact was “never.”

We don’t share because we are afraid. Of being misunderstood. Of being ridiculed. Of feeling shame or embarrassment. Of experiencing the dismissal of matters vitally important to us as frivolous or stupid.  Of seeking and expecting the tenderness of understanding, only to feel the sting of mocking laughter, instead.

Loneliness is born of fear and fragility. We’re taught how to be strong and resilient; what we should be taught, instead, is how to survive during despair and frailty. Strength and resilience, though, they are the goals; so they form the basis of our social curricula. If the curriculum were based on reality, survival would be on the syllabus. But that would admit to vulnerability and inadequacy. And we can’t have that, can we?

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I wake up some mornings to grief so strong it could choke the life out of me. It’s grief, it’s guilt, it’s a sense of emptiness I cannot describe. And, on the other end of the fulcrum, there’s joy and gratitude and fullness that keep air flowing into my lungs. But “what if” scenarios run through my mind like runaway trains; powerful and unstoppable and deadly. There’s monstrous tension between what I had and what I have, what I did and what I do, who I was and who I am. Sometimes I feel like there’s no more room in my head for thoughts or emotions or ideas or dreams; a single addition could cause my head to rupture, revealing that everything is artificial—it’s all fluff and mush.

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It’s just after 6. Two hours have passed since I got up and stumbled into the kitchen to make my first cup of coffee. I think I’ll stumble back there for more coffee and, perhaps, a breakfast of leftover arroz con pollo from last night’s dinner. And I’ll stumble on through the day. We have a lot to move from my IC’s former home into to her present home. After church, perhaps. Later. Later. There’s always later, up until the point there’s not.

Several months ago, I suggested that the world would be a better place if every culture would embrace the concept of mid-career “mandatory volunteerism.” I argued that the oxymoronic concept be expanded well beyond the idea that conservatives seem to embrace: that recipients of public assistance should be required to “volunteer” their time in order to qualify for benefits. In my view, I wrote, a mid-career “volunteerism” break should be required of everyone who is not exempted from such service for some legitimate reason. I equated the concept to Peace Corps or AmeriCorps. But I proposed an international program; I envisioned a program wherein membership in ANY international or multinational organization would require participation in this mandatory volunteerism program.

Over time, my thinking on the matter has evolved. Every country should replace optional (and compulsory) military service with compulsory humanitarian service. The size of all nations’ militaries should be diminished dramatically in a fashion that would provide military forces only enough resources to defend against attacks, but not enough to initiate them.  Humanitarian services, on the other hand, would be dramatically increased. The discipline and structure that is now so much a hallmark of militaries would become the hallmark of humanitarian service organizations. The top-level generals and admirals who command military forces would transition to humanitarian forces.

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I appreciate that people who serve in the military can, under circumstances none of us want to experience, protect the rest of us from invasion, attack, etc. But the reality of our political landscape is that we’re the ones who invade, attack, etc. I still appreciate that people in the military do what their countries ask; I just don’t like what we ask the military to do. I cannot bring myself to say “Thank you for your service” when thankful is not what I’m feeling. Sure, I appreciate the military when it is involved in humanitarian efforts and I gladly express appreciation for that. But not for standing at the ready to launch attacks that should never have been launched.

Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace, and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.

~ Winston Churchill ~

Utopian ideas. Wishful thinking. Fantasy. Gullibility. All legitimate terms to throw at the ideas. Tilting at windmills is a waste of time and effort, I’m afraid. No matter how much time I give to ideas with no possibility of being realized, the ideas will not be valuable or valid. My ideal world does not correspond to ideals held by people far more powerful than I.

Why does my idealism call on people to “volunteer” at mid-career, rather than from the outset of adulthood? I think mid-career people better understand the world than wet-behind-the-ears kids who are just doing what the generals and admirals tell them. Maturity and experience tend to plant the seeds of wisdom, too; the discipline of blindly following orders might morph into the discipline of following orders with a full understanding of the consequences of doing so.

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I have no business commenting about the pros and cons of military service; I’ve never served in the military. But I have seen the consequences of military service when used by politicians and a cudgel or a club. I’ve seen the sacrifices of life and limb by people who were commanded to engage in unnecessary battles that serve only political aims. So, I suppose I have as much business commenting on military service as I have commenting about the presidency or decisions of the local school board; I have no experience as president nor as a member of the school board, but I have a stake in what they say and do.

If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.

~ Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace ~

We are at war with ourselves and neither side is winning. We’re battling vaccinations and masks. We claim the right to “live free” at the expense of others’ deaths.  Somewhere, while sipping champagne and eating caviar, the political hacks are laughing at the dimwits who fight so fiercely against the dimwits who fight so fiercely. There’s money to be made and power to be consolidated in pitting one against the other. We are the dimwits and we know it. Yet we battle on, convinced we will win an undeclared war against an enemy in the mirror.

All warfare is based on deception.

~ Sun Tzu, 5th cent. BC, Chinese general & military strategist ~

H₂O

If there is magic on this planet,
it is contained in water.

~ Loren Eiseley ~

A woman who became friends with my late wife while they both attended graduate school at the University of Texas has long predicted the greatest threat to humankind is the scarcity of readily available potable water. I have agreed with her all along, though I haven’t been nearly as vocal as she. Recent events are proving Geraldine right. People who have been paying attention will have noticed that the U.S. government, on August 16, 2021, announced a water shortage declaration (its first-ever) for the Colorado River, triggering future cuts in the amount of water states will be allowed to draw from the river. Arizona farmers will be the biggest losers of water as restrictions kick in. Arizona and Nevada, along with deliveries to Mexico, will see water supplies sharply reduced in January next year. California has not been targeted for big cuts, yet, but the likelihood is high that cuts are coming to that state, as well. I read an assessment that suggests California will see cuts in 2023 as water levels in Lake Mead drop ever lower. The current cuts were prompted by the fact that Lake Mead will be at less than 40% of capacity by the end of this year (its lowest since the completion of the Hoover Dam in 1936.  And I suspect concern about water shortages, always on the horizon for New Mexico, will grow exponentially in the coming months and years.

Nothing is softer or more flexible
than water, yet nothing can resist it.

~ Lao Tzu ~

Pandemics can sicken and kill millions. Water shortages can reduce economies to rubble and kill many, many more millions. We squabble about masks and vaccines as aquifers dry up and lakes turn to dust and golf courses and lush lawns take precedence over drinking water and “breadbasket” crops. And news about LeBron James matters. Really?

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Bullets.

• Thanks to my IC paying attention, I got my third Moderna vaccine injection yesterday; some say it is a booster, some don’t.
• Simultaneously, I received a flu vaccine yesterday, the earliest I’ve ever received one in preparation for the upcoming flu “season.”
• Yesterday’s hope for installation of a mini-split to heat and cool the “sky room” were dashed, for the time being. Installers showed, but the unit they brought was too big; we’ll have to wait for a properly-sized unit, which could be weeks, months, or longer.
• Completion of the renovation of the screen porch is nearing; it was to have been finished last Monday, but time has a way of stretching in on itself. Patience, Grasshopper.
• I screamed in pain a few hours ago as leg cramps returned with a vengeance. The real pain coincided with pain in a dream as I was conversing with Janet, Patty, and a familiar but unknown woman about health challenges of  representatives of Allied Member companies of an association I once managed.
• In connection with the pain of my leg cramps, my IC reminded me I should drink more water all during every day.

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In one drop of water are found
all the secrets of all the oceans.

~ Kahlil Gibran ~

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It probably will surprise almost everyone who has ever known me to learn that I have, off and on, seriously considered abandoning the life I was brought up to cherish in favor of the life of an ascetic. Oh, I’ve written about it before, but I suspect most people who noticed my stream-of-consciousness drivel think I was kidding. I was not. It’s not that I think asceticism has any innate appeal in and of itself. Instead, I think asceticism is a tool with which modern humans can distance themselves from all things artificial, including artificial ideas and artificial emotions. I am intrigued by the prospect of learning what life is actually all about in the absence of material things and thoughts. In my way of thinking, the absence of the artifice of society might enable a person to absorb wisdom by way of interacting with nature in its purest forms.

But I think it’s too late now. I doubt I could ever muster the discipline to be an ascetic. I have grown  too reliant on having the world delivered to me on a custom platter. I am too much like too many; a soft, pliable, malleable assemblage of wants and desires that outweigh needs…so much so that needs and wants can hardly be distinguished from one another.

A friend who calls herself something of a “prepper” is probably far better equipped than I to successfully live an ascetic life, though I suspect that lifestyle is not on her top ten list of things to experience.  People who pay attention to their environment and who prepare for how they might react if that environment changes dramatically are better prepared to deal with massive change, I think, than people like me: people whose reaction to needs is to pull out a credit card or explore the part of the billfold that contains paper money. I don’t necessarily find people like me contemptible, but neither do I find them especially good role models.

That’s enough introspective disappointment for today. Perhaps I can go out in the world and do something of which I can be rightfully proud. Like express heartfelt appreciation to the oceans and to the clouds that bring rain.

Namasté

I honor the place in you
in which the entire universe dwells.
I honor the place in you
which is of love, of truth,
of light, and of peace.
When you are in that place in you
and I am in that place in me,
we are one.

I do not know the source of these words, though I am sure some will attribute them to the Buddha or to Buddhism in general. It makes no difference. I believe it is as close to truth as anything we hope or pretend is true. I will gladly grasp at these words as the ideal toward which I will forever reach.

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Patience exists along a continuum. A willingness to bend and flex exists along the same continuum. When patience and flexibility are strained to the breaking point, the world takes on an entirely different and dangerous demeanor. Once restrained and accommodating, the gentle people in one’s sphere of comfort suddenly become as hungry and as heartless as wolves. They tear at the body of a terrified fawn who is attempting to escape the inevitability of Nature’s wrath. Though there are men too gentle to live among wolves, some humans can shed their gentle garments and replace them with steel plates festooned with the fangs of poisonous snakes, still dripping with venom. Humanity, too, exists along that continuum. At one end, the meek gather in compassionate appreciation for one another; at the other, the violent and virulent huddle in vengeful packs, anxious to slaughter their enemies and feast on their flesh. In the middle, nothing is certain; fear is an appropriate response even to friendly overtures. That’s where the rest of humanity resides; in the massive middle.

+++

I learned yesterday of the death of a friend the day before. Though we were not close friends, we took an instant liking to one another when we met at one of the first Hot Springs Village World Tour of Wines dinner events a few years ago. We shared a love of good food, writing, architecture, and travel. He was a retired architect who was instrumental in the design of airports, including the Kansai International Airport in Japan while he lived there. He told me about some of his experiences in Japan, both the culture in general and the unique dishes he learned to enjoy and to prepare.  Paul died after a lengthy battle with pulmonary fibrosis, a disease that robbed him of his ability to get out and enjoy time with his friends. When COVID-19 came on the scene, I suspect he was especially wary of being around people. The last time I saw him was during a brief visit at his sister’s house well over two years ago. What a painful life this is, a life that tempts us with so much enjoyment and pleasure, only to take it all away in the end.

+++

This morning, I will make another try at persuading the medical establishment to take whatever bold action is necessary to address my two immediate and significant complaints: debilitating arthritic pain in my left elbow and wheezing and a need to constantly cough and clear my throat, caused—at least in part—by having stopped up nasal passages. Given my history with the latter of these two complaints, I am not especially hopeful that the medical establishment will take bold action. Though, I have to admit, when I first complained about a cough about three years ago, the establishment did take bold action; it removed a portion of my lung (which, in hindsight, subsequently may have contributed to the present complaint). Hmm. We’ll see.

My complaints about the medical establishment’s failings notwithstanding, I trust its urgings to get vaccinated and to wear a mask. People who refuse to accept the science behind those urgings are stupid and dangerous. The rest of us have every right, methinks, to protect ourselves from those idiots; those idiots effectively are assaulting us and so should not be surprised when we react accordingly and with the zeal of a person whose life is threatened.

+++

I think that is enough. I’ve reached the end of the rope and there’s no climbing back up. Not today. The universe dwells not inside me but beyond me, just beyond my reach. More than enough.

My friends are getting older,
so I guess I must be, too.

~ Greg Brown ~

I think of these lyrics on friends’ birthdays, days like today, when we celebrate the formality of delving deeper into geezerhood. Today, a good friend—several years older than I—is eligible for another of those annual celebrations, those moments when we simultaneously recognize both ripening and decay. Unlike me, this friend is able to spend hours at a time on his knees installing flooring. If he would not have been deeply offended by the gesture, I think I would have paid to have the flooring installed by professionals, thereby saving his knees, and those of his wife, from accelerated aging. I have learned that younger, more agile people are better suited to installing the carpet on my porch. Were I to want wood flooring to be installed, I would hire the same people to do that work. Not that I would not trust my friend to to it; only that I would not want to be held accountable for permanent disability tied to his frozen knees. Hmm. The lyrics to the song might well need changing:

I guess I’m getting older,
so I guess friends must be, too.

Happy Birthday, Melvin T! May the road rise up to meet you. May the wind be always at your back! As always, I recommend a big slice of wine and a glass of birthday pie in celebration of this momentous occasion.

+++

Speaking of bad knees, my left elbow should be arrested for assault and battery. Its constant aching is punctuated by the occasional piercing pain, thanks to what I believe is malicious arthritis. I’ll be off to see my primary care doctor tomorrow in the hope that he will find it in his charitable heart to stab me with a syringe, injecting something like steroids that will alleviate the pain.  As it is, I am of limited value in either packing the significant belongings in my IC’s recently-sold house or in carrying the boxes laden with those belongings into my house. I wonder whether my ailment is psychosomatic, brought on only by the thought of relocating “stuff” equivalent in volume to Central America and a few states of Mexico? That’s not really fair. “A few” overstates it; more likely just Jalisco and Quintana Roo. Oh, my right elbow is experiencing more than a few twinges of arthritic agony, as well. Anyone have a little spare morphine sitting around the house? I understand LSD or cocaine, too, tend to make one forget how pain feels. Or, possibly, enjoy it. The lyrics, “hurts so good,” may have arisen from a cocaine-induced love-fest with pain. Maybe not.

And speaking of visits with medical professionals, so far this week I’ve had my eyes examined, my skin frozen, and a suspicious-looking bump on my left hand sliced off with a razor, ostensibly as part of the process of having said bump biopsied. I’ll return to the skin slicer in two weeks for further discussion. I prefer youth to excruciating maturity.

+++

My IC will take her shih tzu to the vet today. Having spent far too much time so far this week with the human equivalent of veterinarians, I feel for the dog. He is a very nice dog. He does not deserve to be tortured. Not that I think the veterinarian will torture him, but I’m sure he must feel he is being punished when he is taken to the vet. I know I feel I’m being punished when I have to sit for long minutes and hours in waiting rooms that look and feel sterile and unfriendly and that seem dressed in purposely psychotic décor.

+++

In spite of the fact that he’s a nice guy and his wife, too, is very pleasant, I am tired of having my handyman in and out of my house. I want him gone. Whether or not he finished up today, though, his temporary replacement (in the form of an electrician and a mini-split installer) will invade my house tomorrow. If the world is even remotely fair, tomorrow’s invasion will result in a much more pleasant “sky room,” the term I apply to the little room off the master bedroom. The sky room has heretofore been mightily unpleasant when the sun heats up the room and when the deep chill of winter makes the room feel like a walk-in freezer. The mini-split should rectify that. Although I may need to replace all four big, stationary windows and the four panes in the casement frames. But the pain of that expense will be for another time, if indeed I have to do it.  I do so look forward to having the room useable as an office or a refuge or a wildlife viewing area or an exercise retreat. And I look forward to the reliably peaceful environment that isn’t regularly interrupted by strangers who charge me for invading and modifying my space.

+++

Snark. That’s what I feel this morning. Ice-cold snark courses through my veins in place of warm blood. I feel my eyes dart around, lizard-like, looking for insects that I can nab with my prehensile tongue. But I’m not really looking for insects, nor is my tongue prehensile. Yet I feel the way I think a lizard must feel when the world around him is moving at break-neck speed for no apparent reason other than to confuse and confound him. Why is the world so damn chaotic? Why can’t I feel the serenity that comes with gentle, soothing music (in a room otherwise absolutely silent), a glass of nice wine, and a view of a spectacular sunset? I can answer why: it’s because of where I am and who I am and when I am. I need to be someplace else and someone else at another point in time, far in the past or the future.

That’s what meditation is supposed to do for a person; transport one from the hustle and bustle of time on steroids to the serenity of never or always. Tempus nervosa is the term I coined to describe a hostility toward, or fear of, time. Not so much time itself, but what time carries with it, the weapon with which time performs its unwholesome functions. Time rips us out of our comfortable cages and thrusts us into the blinding light of years and years of afterbirth.

The final sentence of the preceding paragraph will one day find its way into a story or a novel or an unfinished dialogue with the devil,  Then again, it may never be written again. That’s the thing with language. It can be docile or it can be dangerous. And it can be carved in stone or written in clouds or steam or the vapors rising from a swamp.

I could spend the rest of the day playing with words. Not playing with words like the games we play but, instead, playing with words as if they had meaning and their meaning had power. And that power had repercussions. And those repercussions had consequences. And so on and so on and so on.

+++

I may cook bacon this morning for no other reason than to satisfy a desire that deserves to be sated.

Last night, just as we sat down to watch Season 3, Episode 1 of How to Get Away with Murder, the power went out. Moments later, it came back on. We settled in again to watch the series. But the power went out again. The second time, it stayed out; from 7:40 p.m. until roughly 10:20 p.m. When I reported the outage, Entergy claimed there was no known outage in my area. A moment later, though, the story changed. The outage affected 188 households and should be back on by 11. A moment or two later, the story changed again. The outage was a “planned outage” to upgrade Entergy facilities. Sometime later, the cause was a “scheduled interruption.” Whether planned or scheduled, Entergy did not bother to notify customers, which rankled me a tad. My mood all day had been borderline bitter; Entergy helped push it to sharp, sour, rancid, fetid, caustic, acrid, and deeply biting and unpleasant.

Night fell. We sat in the darkness; she played games on her phone, I fumed and paced, inside and out. Finally, around 9:00 a.m., we went to bed; no fan, but I opened some windows in the hope of a little breeze. Around 11, I awoke to lights in the living room. I could feel the air beginning to chill. The expectations one has, living in a first-world country in the twenty-first century, again were met. Just over three hours without electricity and I was complaining bitterly about paying my electric bill, but still only living in a third-world country. Shame, embarrassment, and assorted other unpleasant emotions tied to low self-esteem flowed from my brain; they continue to flow, as they should. What a spoiled brat. I was alone in my earned embarrassment; my IC took it all in with stoic resolve.

+++

Day before yesterday, I posted—here on this blog—photos of my canopy bed and my dining table. Good friends noticed and decided they wanted the bed. And they shall have it! Not only that, through a family connection, my IC’s big desk will disappear, as well. I love it when things work out that way; we wanted the beautiful pieces out of our way (though I will, in many ways, miss that glorious old bed) and they wanted that grandeur in their home…as if it were meant to be! Life can be good, even while being dragged beneath the surface by waves of ennui.

+++

I had a very long eye-care appointment yesterday. I arrived on time, just before 1:45 p.m. I walked out into the blinding sunlight (eyes dilated so my pupils were the size of pancakes) just after 4:00 p.m. Yes, I need new prescription glasses. I knew that going in. I do not know how much of an improvement I will get, but the technician who calculated the prescription strength mentioned 20/15 vision more than once. She also said she would increase my reading prescription from +2.50 to +2.75; the doctor, though, backtracked and left it at +2.50. I tend to trust the technician a little more than I trust the doctor. I may buy a pair of +2.75 reading glasses just to see what they might be like. Before I buy new lenses. And new frames. The optician (after the eye exam) said they do not carry magnetic clip-on sunglasses frames, but she said I could find them at Walmart. I may look. Or I may wait and look at Costco, where I bought my last magnetic clip-on sunglasses about 9 or 10 years ago.  Time will tell. It always does.

+++

From my little black book of Zen-influenced quotations:

Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise
From outward things, what’er you may believe.
There is an inmost centre in us all,
Where truth abides in fullness.

~ Robert Browning ~

I am not quite sure I understand, much less embrace, those words, but I find them comforting, nonetheless.

+++

I had a series of odd dreams last night, In one of them, I was in the passenger seat of a car being driven by a friend from church. At some point, she said something to the effect of “I noticed you flinch when I brushed your leg in the pew. Don’t worry, it’s just my way.” Then, she started laughing uncontrollably as she reached over with a whisk broom and brushed my leg with it. In another dream (or maybe the same one), I had a rope tied around my waist as protection against falling; I tried to lean from a ladder to knock down a hornet’s next. Suddenly, I fell off the ladder and dangled, swinging back and forth, from the rope. I was petrified with fear, but whoever was with me laughed hysterically at my plight. I was as frightened of the hornets that I heard buzzing around my head as I was of falling to the ground, far, far below. Dreams are bizarre in so many ways.

+++

So far, today is modestly better than yesterday. I suppose it’s just the stress of major changes in my surroundings; it will be fine. But I can hear my heart beat louder than ever this morning. It’s like a slow-paced bongo; that’s the kind of noise I hear as the blood is pumped through the vessels in and around my ears. It’s the sort of sound that could, if it continued unabated for hours, drive me stark-raving mad; loony enough to take a machete to scarecrows protecting farmers’ crops of pumpkins. And the farmer, a firm proponent of taking Second Amendment rights well beyond their intended limits, would riddle me with bullets from an AR-15. So, maybe today is not really THAT much better than yesterday. Any day in which one’s imagination includes feeling the pain and seeing the blood pouring from wounds caused by a hail of gunfire is not an especially hunky-dory day.

+++

More coffee, thence to Walmart to pick up yesterday’s online order of groceries.

Try to be positive. But beware that positivity may be impossible some days. Some days drip with sarcasm and skepticism. It’s hard to say why. Even after good news, positive experiences, and a good breakfast, the world can slit the throat of positivity. It will return one day; just be aware of the sutures keeping  the skin around its neck from flapping in the breeze.

+++

I feel an immeasurable sense of weariness with the world. Ennui doesn’t begin to describe it. Afghanistan. COVID. Vaccination rage. Uneducated hillbillies who believe deeply in their superiority and in the words of moronic preachers whose sermons ooze ignorance and anti-Christian philosophies in the name of Jesus Christ, amen. Mothers who refuse to require their children to use seat belts because “God will protect us.”  I shake my head from side to side in response to my own question: “Can I do anything to emerge from this disappointment with humanity?”

+++

If that’s not cheery enough…Do not read on if you fancy a day filled with lollipops and daisies.

Science fiction has a history of accurately predicting the future. Sometimes. But it’s not the only literary genre that offers a glimpse of life as it might—and often does—become. Political thrillers, too, have painted pictures of futures that came to pass. Political satire has done the same. Dystopian novels give us snapshots of futures we hope never to see but which increasingly seem likely, given the apparent degradation of civility, compassion, and simple human decency.

Literature has long disguised the crystal ball peering into the future. We  believed crystal balls were imaginary, make-believe glances forward into a time that has not yet come to be. But crystal balls are real, regardless of material or configuration. Crystal spheres they are not, though. They comprise writers’ imaginations, coupled with either cursory or deeply analytical assessments of the real world around us. The crystal ball is a “what if” device that produces alternate futures delivered by way of printing presses, Kindle e-readers, blogs, print-on-demand technologies, and myriad other ways of looking into the future.

Too often, we read writers’ warnings as if fiction is just a pleasant (or a jarring) pastime. In reality, whether the writer and/or the reader know it, fiction often carries an urgent and ominous caution about what is to come “in the real world.” Fiction, whatever its form, often warns us to change our ways if we wish to avoid cataclysmic failures of human society and the agonies associated therewith. At our peril, we flinch and giggle, hoping the messages are simply artificial alerts delivered by doomsday alarmists.

But fiction can be wrong, too. Fiction can predict fabulous tomorrows when, in fact, the future can turn murky and dark and violent. Today is not the stunningly beautiful destination we raced toward as children. It is more like a return to cholera and smallpox and polio, steeped in a slurry of gasoline and methamphetamine. This yesterday’s tomorrow is one in which pharamacists mainline heroin and worship science-deniers. It is a time when the collective “we” drowns children simply to spite the water and their swimming instructors. It is a time in which nurses, their syringes filled with super-dose warfarin, carry axes and don white hoods before entering medical clinics in poor neighborhoods.

This moment in history will be the one that will not appear in history books because books are being taken to alternative libraries, where they will be banned and burned. Or maybe not. Maybe skilled theologians troll the shores of the Gulf of Mexico for freshwater antelope while snorting FDA-approved cocaine. The point is this: today is both tomorrow’s yesterday and yesterday’s tomorrow, Simultaneously, it is a chaotic mix of irrationality and understandable fear. We have every right and reason to be afraid. Marauding gangs of deeply stupid motorcyclists could reach your street as soon as now. They are, most probably, outside your window at this moment, ready to fling vats of maggot-infested meat and blood through your open doors.

+++

Indoor-outdoor carpet should be delivered soon. Who knows what happens after that? I’m down for no discernible reason. In fact, my mood is utterly at odds with all the good news surrounding me. WTF, I ask? WTF?

Zen in its essence
is the art of seeing
into the nature of one’s being,
and it points the way
from bondage to freedom.

~ D. T. Zuzuki ~

+++

Yesterday’s post here weakly advocated for minimalism. The quotation with which I chose to introduce this post might rightfully be considered when one considers minimalism. In my view, the capitalist’s devotion to consumerism is a form of bondage; breaking free of that bond could, I suggest, let freedom emerge in ways we cannot even image.

The topic remains on my mind. A friend responded with a comment about the matter and sent me a link to a somewhat dated documentary about a Hutterite community—in southern Canada—where minimalism is practiced as just one element of a utopian way of life. The Hutterites emigrated from Germany before the first World War, going to the U.S. Then, before World War I, they immigrated to Canada. Pacifists, their refusal to fight in World War I made them personae non gratae  in the U.S. I haven’t yet finished the 30-minute video, but I ‘ve watched enough to get the flavor of the film and the culture it portrays. Minimalism, for the Hutterites, is one component of a lifestyle dictated in large part by the group’s interpretation of the Bible. But it’s easy to see the nonreligious impacts of minimalism on their day-to-day life. Their lives are simpler than those of the rest of us. Their minimalism contributes, in my opinion, to their ability to maintain a commitment to peace and community. Perhaps watching it in its entirety will change my perspective; I think not.

I’ve found a problem in years past (and I expect that will continue on today and tomorrow) with minimalism. That is, the responses to an interest in minimalism ranges from a tepid “hmmm” to a weak semi-commitment prefaced by “yes, but…”  The “but” introduces commitments to the pleasures of our complex lives. Consumerism—materialism on speed— fights tooth and nail to cripple minimalism, even while superficially expressing gratitude for the concept. I can do nothing to change cultures’ ideas about minimalism or consumerism; I can only live my life with as little hypocrisy, with respect to the concepts, as possible.

+++

Today, we will skip church in favor of packing and moving materials from one house to another. Yesterday, we did a little of the same, plus I made tentative arrangements to put my dining table and (up to) 9 chairs and my canopy, posted queen bed out for consignment sale. I’d rather someone just approach me and buy them, but that’s unlikely. But, just in case, here are some photos of said “for sale” items.

I welcome any and all offers. In an ideal world, I would replace neither of these items, opting instead for stepping boldly toward minimalism. This world, my friends, is complex; it is anything but minimalist. We live in an environment in which consumerism is trained into us from an early age; an environment in which “more” and “better” and “nicer” are sacred concepts that form the basis of our fervent, almost religious beliefs in capitalism and the allure of all its sparkling, glittering, shiny bits and pieces.  But, seriously, we all need a place to sleep and a place to eat, so I truly welcome your interest and offers. 🙂

+++

I think I am considerably more open-minded than most people. Though I find many activities or behaviors distasteful and would not pursue them, I have no objection to others engaging in them. But my open-mindedness might be considered stepping toward the fringes of  “normalcy” by many of my more traditionalist friends and acquaintances. Nudity, for example, which I think is a natural state of humankind that we’ve made into something disturbing and “wrong.” Though I am not personally a fan, I do not think “threesomes” are revolting. Ditto for sharing partners; though I am unwilling to participate in any form, I do not judge those who do. And if people want to sacrifice goats to pagan gods, be my guest; I only ask that the sacrifice be as quick and painless as possible.

It’s interesting that so many people (I include myself) call themselves open-minded but, when presented with concepts in opposition to our own, close our minds like a bank vault guarding money. Think of topics like “open-carry” and “right-to-life” opponents to abortion. Open-minded? Please! We allow ourselves self-congratulation for our open-minded convictions at the same time we condemn others for theirs.

Where do we cross the line between open-minded and narrow-minded? I think we sometimes confuse to two lines.

+++

Enough for now. Time to attempt to be progressive and open-minded, while allowing others their freedom to oppose my positions. It’s gonna be a hard road to hoe; always was, always will be.

The world is full of good people.
If you can’t find one, be one.

~ Anonymous ~

+++

I could find all sorts of faults with the structure of—or even the content delivered by—that anonymous quotation, but I think the underlying message is fundamentally true and good. The world really is full of good people, although they sometimes are hard to spot among the rest who litter the landscape and fill social and not-so-social media with malignant malice. As much as I frequently want to lash out at those shameless degenerates, the best response is to replace them through behavior—simply by being good, rather than attempting to eradicate them with their own weapons.  I wish I had the willpower, the sheer discipline, to always “turn the other cheek.” I wish I were the kind of man whose strength shines through in his gentleness, as opposed to his righteous rage. As I grow older, my admiration for people who have that sort of fortitude grows, along with my contempt for people who try to demonstrate their strength through confrontation or aggression or animosity or cruelty. But, ideally, my admiration should not grow in parallel with the weakness inherent in contempt. Somehow, appreciation of goodness should grow alone, not paired with antipathy toward its opposite.  I suppose that message is one humankind has attempted to deliver through religion for ages. Obviously, though, delivering the message does not, alone, produce the desired outcome. Perhaps nothing ever will. All we can do is try, one person at a time.

+++

Too often, the message we hope to deliver is misinterpreted or jumbled in translation. I watch as people attempt to follow Gandhi’s admonition to “be the change you want to see in the world,” only to be slammed for their efforts; others misread their good intentions as something utterly different and unintended. We can’t “be the change” when the world around us reacts with unbridled rage at our audacity. When the message we send is not the message the world receives, we have to examine whether the messenger might be at fault. Or whether it’s the message. Or the audience. If it’s the audience, the message obviously is the wrong one, at least in form if not in fact.

+++

It’s five in the morning and I’ve been up for an hour and a half. I slept, more or less, for five and a half hours. Maybe that’s enough for me. Or maybe the stress surrounding me is having unexpected consequences. I don’t feel stress; at least not the kind of full-throated stress that one might expect with major life changes. But, still, it’s there. I sense it in the way I respond to little things. Like last night, after going out to dinner with neighbors/friends; instead of accepting their invitation to stop at their house for wine and conversation, I did not want to. I wanted, instead, to return to my cocoon with my IC and watch a television program that drew me into another world and away from mine. Merging households is both exciting and profoundly tiring; television can serve as an anesthetic of sorts.

+++

Both elbows hurt now, not just the left elbow. Fortunately, I was able to make an appointment to see my primary care doctor next Thursday. I hope he will give me an injection or some other treatment that will eliminate (or at least make tolerable) my pain. That appointment, next Thursday, will be my third medical visit next week. I have another one to check my eyes/vision and another one to follow up on the unsatisfactory treatment of skin “growths” that have twice been frozen. Freezing does not (or, at least, has not yet) accomplish what I wanted: complete disappearance of itchy skin disruptions.

I think, despite a conversation to the contrary within the last day or two, I am elderly. The definition is not necessarily age-related; it is ailment-related. According to my definition, a teenager can be elderly if he has enough ailments. I feel like an elderly teenager. I want to go sky-diving and scuba-diving and racecar-driving, but my ailments make such endeavors unwise.

+++

The tasks associated with merging two households is clarifying for me—again—that minimalism is the way to go. We have too much “stuff.” Too many clothes, too many shoes, too much furniture, too many kitchen utensils, too many electronic toys, too much paper, too many books, just too damn much crap. I believe we would all be happier if we spent much more of our time focusing on intellectual and emotional possessions and much less on physical things. The fewer the number of physical things we owned, the more intensely valuable those few things would be. Consider children: those with millions of toys place little value on any of them, but they place enormous value on the vague aggregate collection of crap. I’m in favor of giving a kid a little red wagon and a set of blocks and letting him get creative. If we load them down with hundreds of electronic devices meant to occupy their time, they will become enormously dimwitted.

As I contemplate these matters, it occurs to me that the same concepts apply to me. The more I write, the less what I have to say matters. My prolificacy makes me less interesting; more disposable. I produce too much minutia. Too much drivel. Too many words that have no appreciable impact on the lives of the few people who read them. This post, for example, covers too many topics too superficially, but with too many words to justify the writing. That’s why most people tend not to comment, respond, acknowledge that they have read what I’ve written. They skim what I’ve written, if they view it at all, because there’s just too damn much. Fortunately for me, it doesn’t matter. I’m writing for my sanity, not theirs. Whether I’m succeeding is anyone’s guess. Ultimately, it does not matter.

+++

Okay. It’s 5:30. Time to stop and attempt to catch a few Zs before more coffee.

+++

Yesterday was a scramble, beginning in earnest the process of relocating household goods and finding places to put them. But we did not spend the entire day on that undertaking. Instead, around 3:00 p.m., we stopped for a visit with a friend. We offered her wine; we drank gin & tonic. Yes, it was early to imbibe, but we deserved it—the break constituted a well-earned stress reliever. Taking the break was just what I needed; I hope my IC feels the same. I enjoyed conversing with our friend.  She is good company. Intelligent, sharp-witted, and generally a very good person. I hope we can spend more time with her on a regular basis.

And that leads me to recognize that I would like to spend more time with several other friends. I am of the opinion that we do not give ourselves enough free time to develop and nurture friendships with people whose company and conversation we enjoy. An occasional trip to Little Rock with friends is great. Intermittent gatherings at one anothers’ houses are enjoyable. One-of-a-kind excursions to participate in new and unique activities are great fun. But those engagements, in my opinion, are too infrequent and too short-lived for deep friendships to fully develop. Deep, soul-melding, profound, compelling friendships require time and immersion.

But perhaps I am one of the few people who desire those powerful, life-changing relationships. I have to acknowledge that many people—maybe most people—prefer relationships that are closer to the surface. I do not mean they opt for superficial relationships; only that for whatever reason they do not wish to invest the energy in friendships that require heavy fuel. Incidentally, I borrowed that concept from a song by Dire Straits; it’s the closest I can come to describing what powers deep, psychologically riveting and fruitful relationships.  Back to the issue: maybe I desire friendships that involve delving deep into interpersonal engagements. Friendships that are both extremely comfortable and painfully open; the kind of personal involvement that encourages sharing even the most painful experiences or memories, all the while protecting one another’s friends from the aches and torments of life. Ultimately, I suppose what I’m attempting to describe is both friendship and love or a combination of the two. Or, perhaps, I’m coming to realize as I type that friendship is simply a manifestation of love. At least that’s what I want it to be. And it is, as I consider my relationships with various people. Or it could be, if we permit it to morph into its highest and best form.

This morning, as I think about people I consider friends, I ask myself whether they meet the criterion I often assert as a measure of friendship: do I feel sufficiently comfortable with them to invite them over for a beer or simply a conversation without prior notice? And vice versa?  And would they come? Would I go?

The complexities of life interfere with that criterion. We’re all too busy with day-to-day calendar commitments and irrevocable obligations to just “drop by.” Or are we? Are we allowing ourselves to set priorities that illustrate the diminishing value we place on friendships?

These are the kinds of questions that rattle around in my brain every single day. Every day. If I could make a list of the topics that flow through my brain every day I would have a list a thousand yards long. I suppose that’s what makes life interesting and ever-so-challenging.

If our nature is permitted to guide our life,
we grow healthy, fruitful, and happy.

~ Araham Maslow ~

I think Maslow was right, though our natures sometimes hide beneath layers of solid granite formed from cooling volcanic magma. We simply must chip away at the hard stone until the softness below it reveals our true selves.

+++

I titled this post after I’d written it. I thought it best to lighten the mode, tempering the paragraphs dealing with COVID, rather than suggest that the entire post would be as much of a downer as the initial section might seem.

+++

An online article from NPR this morning presents a sobering and frightening assessment of what we can expect from the delta variant of the COVID-19 virus. Tom Wensellers, an evolutionary biologist and biostatistician at the University of Leuven in Belgium, responding to what he says was an overstatement by the CDC of the transmissibility of the delta variant, said this:

“Anyone that chooses not to get vaccinated will in all likelihood get infected by the delta variant over the coming months.”

Wensellers also said that, in spite of the CDC error, the delta variant is much, much higher than the original virus: two- to three-times as contagious as the original version of SARS-CoV-2. And he said:

“As long as people would get vaccinated, then we will not get huge wave of hospitalizations.”

For example, the city of San Francisco has had 3,041 people hospitalized with COVID-19 since March 18, 2020. Only 16 of them were fully vaccinated.

But given the high level of vaccination refusals, though, I expect the latest variant of COVID-19 to spread like wildfire in Arkansas and in other places where people stubbornly refuse to pay heed to scientists and medical professionals. Those people are putting themselves, their families, and the population at large at much greater risk. Even people who have been vaccinated can get and can transmit the virus; but the effects are far less deadly for those who have been vaccinated and the degree of transmission is dramatically less. Still, people will refuse to accept reality. They will suffer and die. But before they do, they will be forced to accept responsibility for killing people they know and love.

I am trying to accept that I cannot change minds about this catastrophic steamroller of a pandemic. I am trying to “be Zen” about it. But it’s so damn hard to read utterly specious arguments—from people who believe conspiracy theorists over highly educated and intelligent epidemiologists—and not want to beat them bloody before removing them from the gene pool.

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Okay. After starting the day with a little anger and rage, I’m ready for something that might be a little less of a downer. So I look online for help.  I found it. Andrew Cuomo resigned as governor of New York after an independent investigation found that he sexually harassed several women. I think he made the right call; he has no business in the role of a public servant after having been found guilty of behaviors that, at minimum, are appalling from someone who should serve as a role model.  Maybe the “system” works on occasion, after all. Yet the calls for him to be impeached, anyway, seem rather silly and mindless. The purpose of impeachment is to remove someone from office; he’s already gone. Why waste time and money on a process designed to accomplish what has already been done? If lawmakers want to strut about to show off their superior morality, let them censure him in some way (quickly and without too much time and expense). That might be a good idea, actually: let the world know that, Democrat or Republican, behavior like that of which Cuomo has been accused (and found guilty by way of investigation) will not be tolerated nor excused. (But we all know such an action would be more for show than to make a real case for human decency. Or is that my skepticism showing?)

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We’re still viewing Season 2 of How to Get Away with Murder, with four more seasons to go. It’s riveting, but getting weirder with each episode. I do not know whether I’ll be able to maintain my intense interest if it keeps confusing me with flashbacks based on imaginary circumstances shaped by mental meltdowns bent into ribbons shaped very much like a lemniscate (). But I’ll keep trying as long as my IC is willing to sit by my side as we wade through the series.

But the longer I stay away from my foreign flicks (especially Scandinavian) in their original languages, the more removed I’ll be from television and film that draws me in so deeply that I feel part of the cast and the action. I learned from my IC that I can watch foreign flicks and series on Netflix and can listen to dubbed audio while reading captioned text. I was used to reading captioned text (and I got so used to it that often I did not realize I wasn’t hearing the characters speak English). And I liked hearing foreign languages; somehow, the languages contributed quite a lot to the stories and the plots. I may go back to doing that. But I think my IC may not be interested; I haven’t asked, though, so she may surprise me.

Regardless of my recent TV viewing habits, I feel the need for at least an occasional foreign flick. Maybe I’ll find some Pedro Almodóvar stuff to watch. Almodóvar has been in the news of late, thanks to Instagram‘s reversal of its decision to ban a promotional poster for  his latest film, Madres Paralelas (Parallel Mothers). The poster showed a nipple producing a drop of milk. What an affront to human decency; nipples should, of course, be hidden from view at all times because they symbolize all that is wrong with humankind, don’t they? Instagram has since apologized, as well it should have done. What an idiotic attempt at mindless, pointless censorship! Wait, John. Zen, please. Ah, yes. Zen. Nipples actually have a pleasing appearance, don’t  you think?

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People reading this blog in the coming weeks may be in for a surprise. Whether it is positive or negative depends on one’s perspective. I expect I may write less about my daily experiences and more about my philosophies and my emotional journey through time. But, who knows. My decisions about writing change day by day. I just know something is bubbling beneath the surface of my brain and it will have an impact on what I write. Time will tell. It always does.

The mind is very difficult to see,
Very delicate and subtle;
It moves and lands wherever it pleases.
The wise one should guard his mind,
For a guarded mind brings happiness.

~ Dhammapada ~

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When she writes her rare posts, the Canadian woman (with whom I feel I share a certain kind of approach to emotional obstacles that I find impossible to articulate) seems to capture emotions I cannot articulate. “But I know it when I see it.” Her struggles are radically different than mine ever have been and they are, by and large, far bigger and more difficult to overcome. But for some reason, when I read her posts, I feel an overwhelming sense of kinship with and compassion for her. She has been through a mastectomy for breast cancer and, more recently, made the decision to remove her other breast. She has been in therapy for severe depression for a long time. Yet she perseveres. She and her husband enjoy time with their grandchildren and the kids’ parents, though COVID has drastically reduced opportunities to visit. In other words, her challenges are dramatically different from and generally more difficult than mine. But, still, I feel a strong sense of kinship with her.

Finally, in a flash this morning, I think I understand why. It’s not similarities in our experiences that produce my sense of affinity with her. It’s the fact that she so openly shares her predicaments and the challenges she faces. Even though hers are far more daunting than mine, the mere fact that she writes about them appeals to me. I’m not alone in dealing with emotional issues by writing my way through them. She does the same thing. And her emotional obstacles, though very different from those I sometimes face, have some of the same character; they mine depths of my psyche in ways that seem familiar to me because I’ve read about what they do to her. My description of how her writing makes me feel a shared sense of experience will be inadequate to most people who read these words. But I understand it now. And that understanding helps me better understand why I write my way through depression or fear or anger or whatever other emotion that has grown too big and intimidating to deal with otherwise.

Hope/Cheryl, if ever you read this, know I appreciate your revelations and your willingness to expose the hardest and softest pieces of your life to a sometimes unkind world. I hope doing that does for you what my writing does for me.

My education as a human being continues.

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Life is moving along at lightning speed. My intimate companion sold her house yesterday, after only two or three full days on the market. Well, there’s still an inspection and paperwork and all the preliminaries, but unless an unexpected issue arises, the closing will take place in about two weeks. Two weeks later, her occupancy of the house is slotted to end. By then, we need to sell or otherwise dispose of some of her furniture and mine so that we can merge our households into one.

While this was taking place, a house down the street from me hit the market at a price of $429K. Even before a sign was in the yard, the house sold—above asking price. The online listing showed no photos inside the house. But the one or two photos that showed the view to the back, behind the house, showed that my house has a better view. This big-dollar sale is pushing me ever harder to consider selling at what I think is likely to be the very top of the market. Yet the resurgence of COVID and the possibility of a monstrous new variant puts everything in a state of limbo. Here’s something, dated July 31, 2021,  from Infection Control Today:

Investigators in Chile conclude that the lambda COVID-19 variant is not only more infectious than standard SARS-CoV-2, but could also possibly shrug off vaccines. The first case in the United States has been spotted at Houston Methodist Hospital.

Last night, my IC and I discussed the possibility (that seems increasingly likely) that we will once again be confined to the home in an attempt to outwit the virus. That might mean no restaurants, no grocery store visits, no gatherings with friends—the same thing we did last year. The same thing that drove so many up the wall.  Yet, still, millions of baboons dressed up like people refuse to get the vaccinations, refuse to wear masks, and openly flout the advice of scientists who have spent their entire careers studying infectious diseases. These moronic subhuman scum-sucking bastards base their arrogance, in part, on the fact that the experts “change their advice,” which these pieces of rotted rat-flesh take as evidence the experts do not know anything, failing to grasp that a brand-new infectious virus that mutates at the speed of time may be something of a challenge to fully understand. My anger is showing, isn’t it? Pardon me while I take a breath and try to compose myself in the traditions of Zen.

That’s better. I am calm, composed, and way-chill-to-the-nth-degree now. I will not allow myself to wish I had magical powers that could allow me to cause the arrogant COVID deniers to spontaneously burst into flames. Nope. Won’t go there.  Whew! I think I deviated from my though-path. I’m back on track, to the extent that a track exists and I’m somewhere in its vicinity.

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Even irrevocable decisions can be rescinded. Even steadfast commitments can be broken. Even the most staunchly defended lies can be revealed as deceits. Even truth can be undone and turned into falsehood and fiction.  In other words, nothing is truly permanent. And if nothing is permanent, nothing is real; at least not real as we understand it to be. A stone placed on a mountain top ten thousand years ago can roll down the slope when an earthquake today wages war against a long-dead volcano. Nothing is permanent. Not even life. Not even death. We do not know the cycle; we only assume it exists. And time may have no end and no beginning and may never repeat itself. Cycles do not necessarily repeat themselves; they simply continue on an eternal journey, seeking a repetitive pattern that may not reveal itself until long after all the observers are gone. So, no one can bear witness to the cycle beginning anew.

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I vow that, today, I will be happy. I will not allow myself to slide into depression over little things. I will exercise control over my emotions, whether that means making difficult decisions or simply allowing the day to flow over me. I will engage in a happy battle with the world. And I will win.

My education as a human being continues.

I found the following quotation in my little black companion, The Essence of Zen: An Anthology of Quotations, only after I wrote this morning’s post but before I posted it. The quotation seemed so apropos that I could not leave it in the book; I had to share it. It is the brother and sister of how I am thinking about the world this morning.

Autumn’s colors dropping from branches
in masses of falling leaves.
Cold clouds bringing rain
into the crannies of the mountains:
Everyone was born
with the same sort of eyes —
Why do mine keep seeing things
as a Zen Koan?

~ Muso ~

Consider your life a work of fiction that features a character created by a writer—you—who has no control over the world in which she lives. The author—you—must develop the character against a backdrop dictated by millions and millions of other writers, whose only means of control involve writing their characters’ thoughts and behaviors in response to the same environment. In other words, the writer essentially has absolute control over the character but absolutely no control over the context.

Put another way, we do not control the world; only how we respond to it. Yet the manner in which we respond to the world shapes the world to which we respond. Catch-22. Again. And it’s related, of course, to the question involving chickens and eggs. In the words of someone whose fame or notoriety as originator of a certain phrase disappeared into the mist of time: “It is what it is.”

This morning, I chose to live in a soap bubble I created with my own breath. Every time I exhaled, the bubble grew larger. Each inhalation, the source of  the pressure that keeps my bubble growing, was through a tube connected to the outside world. A world in which infinite amounts of air were available to me as I created the environment inside my bubble. Now, the bubble is complete and I am safe from the fierceness that surrounds me. Except that the bubble comprises an almost imperceptible film so thin and delicate even a mosquito’s proboscis can puncture it, causing the sphere to explode or to collapse.

The world I created is fragile, isn’t it? But I’m not alone. All of us live in a world that is only a hair’s breadth distance from coming apart. That is why we must take such great care to tend to it. We must be careful to respond to the environment in a way that makes a positive contribution to the world over which we have no control.

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My IC and I await the formality of one or more offers to buy her house. Last night, her Realtor called with news of multiple serious expressions of interest. She suggested a formal offer might come this morning.  Yesterday morning, I received an email that featured ten houses for sale that Zillow thought might be of interest. One of those houses was the one my IC is selling. Another was a house just up the street from me. The asking price for the house nearby stunned me: $439K. The description suggested it is a beautiful place with many lovely features; the few photos, though, did nothing to confirm the attraction of the house. Even though it may be a lovely place, it’s only a two-bedroom house. And its view of the distant mountains and the valley below, if the photos are any indication, is inferior to mine. I’ll be very interested to see whether the place sells and at what price. I possibly could be persuaded to sell my place if I could walk away with $375K+ in my pocket. Or maybe not. It’s so damn hard to know what’s best. For now, though, I only look forward to finishing the process of settling in here with my IC, having left all the stress and demands of selling and moving far behind.

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COVID is a monster. All the vaccines in the world will not eradicate it if millions of people refuse to get vaccinations and if people refuse to wear masks and otherwise adjust their behavior. I read this morning of a woman who lived very near me in the Village who “did everything right” but who still contracted the virus and died. Her husband, understandably upset, made a comment that suggested he was furious with people who demand their “rights” to behave irresponsibly by rejecting vaccinations and refusing to wear masks. My angry hope this morning is that those bastards pay for their self-righteousness with lengthy experiences with breathing tubes before their final breaths. I wish I could be more understanding and more forgiving when faced with such people. But I’m not sure I really want to forgive them. I’m not sure I want to understand what could make people insist that science is part of a demonic cabal intent on destroying humankind. Ambivalence again. Damn it all.

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I sent another vial of spit to Ancestry.com yesterday. The first vial, sent months ago, apparently did not reach them. Or I screwed up the online registration. Or something. At any rate, within six to eight weeks, I should get the results of my DNA test. I assume I will be identified as the Missing Link or a latter-day Neanderthal. Actually, I expect my DNA will reveal that I am, indeed, the product of a “pure” history of people from England. Imagine how surprised I might be to learn that I have Canadian First Nation blood flowing through my veins. Or that my ancestral history includes a coming together of Vikings and African tribesmen and indigenous Maori warriors. I think I’d rather be a rainbow of shapes and colors than a bland, simple-strand Anglo-Saxon tobacco farmer. We shall see. Maybe. If my spit ever reaches the Ancestry.com operators and if they actually run DNA tests on it. I agreed, in the accompanying paperwork, to let them do what they will with my DNA. That could mean an unintentional discovery that I am related to an axe-murderer. I could be mistaken for him, incarcerated, and hanged for his crimes. All because of a misused and abused DNA test. Still, I want the results. I want evidence that I do, indeed, have blood cells of Kolbjørn Landivk coursing through my veins and that I am a descendent of a Japanese fisherman and an Ethiopian peasant and a French grape merchant who wandered what is now Provence before the region was fully settled. And, of course, I want breakfast.

Generally, when I consider the stresses of everyday life, I think of matters that put a person on edge; things that cause noticeable changes in one’s frame of mind. I think of those changes easily traceable to mental burdens which mental health experts say can be quieted deliberately if one employs techniques like meditation. In other words, I think of stress as something quite easy to manage and, with adequate effort, eliminate.

But today I worry that stress may be less obvious and, therefore, not so easily controlled or contained. This morning, I envision stress like an invisible cloud of carbon monoxide. He is the benign visitor who smiles sweetly as he sucks the life-giving oxygen out of the air, gently causing his victims to perish in a soft, silent, secret suffocation. Stress pads about in thick socks, muffling the sounds of assassination as he hands his victim a pair of noise-cancelling headphones or plays soft jazz. Sounds dissolve softly into the distance as the organs shut down in preparation for their final sleep.

It’s hard to fight this invisible killer, this murderer who slips one end of a hose over the tailpipe of a car parked in the neighbor’s driveway, placing the other inside the tightly-sealed room where one rests after a long day of labor and worry. But there are clues that warn of deadly efforts of stress. Lethargy. A sensation of being on edge; that feeling that I always equate with stress. A sense of dread and frailty and ineptitude. A powerful longing for sleep, as if sleep were a tranquilizing injection capable of exchanging pain for dull emptiness.

We never realize how fragile we are until irreplaceable pieces of our psyches break into a million pieces. Stress can crush the finest crystal, turning it into tiny slivers of sharp memories that draw blood even before they puncture our lives, as they approach the skin. We are, after all, nothing more than our own memories, histories woven like spun glass into delicate shapes that time shatters as it delivers stress by the minute.

How did a fleeting thought turn into a dark cloud? That is what stress—even weak wisps of it that seem innocuous and benign—can do, I guess.

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Last night’s meal consisted of enormous ribeye steaks, baked potatoes, and Greek salads, washed down with wine. I overcooked the steak by a little; by the time the meat rested for a bit, though, it was overcooked by a little more. Still, it was more than tolerable. It was a nice meal, one both a rarity and a lovely treat. The grill needs cleaning today, of course. But it needs new grates even more than it needs cleaning. I think I’ll search out replacements online; somewhere, I suspect I have the literature for the Char-Broil grill that might even tell me the part numbers I’ll need. And, while I’m at it, perhaps a grill cover will find its way into my online shopping cart. Or maybe not. So often, I fail to finish what I start; often, it’s because I find the costs offensively high. Later, I realize my options are limited; either do without or pay the going rate. Life is like that, too. Pay the cost of living it the way I want or scrape by in semi-poverty.

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We had plans to leave town this week. All week. But those plans changed, though we cannot recall exactly why. Maybe it had to do with my IC’s hoped-for house sale. Maybe it was COVID. Maybe it was something else. Whatever it was, it robbed us of a five to seven days of being away from the Village. We may still get a way for a day or two, but that’s not the refreshment I feel I want and need. I may need a week or two. Or a month or two. Time unavailable to the normal demands of being present. But there’s so much more to do. I can feel my nerves fray and my joints creak and my bones form cracks on the surface. I need the tender embrace of isolation and the distance of being comforted in welcoming, loving arms. Ambiguities abound. I need sleep that lasts for days, but I need the productivity of sleepless days and weeks and even months. Ach!

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I believe COVID may be the visible expression of the death throes of humankind. It may be a long, painful, death—one that plays out over the course of a generation or two—but I would not be surprised to learn, looking back fifty years from now, that 2020 was the trigger for the collapse of human control of the planet. I can’t seem to climb out of this  well. The walls are slick with wet moss that grows less able to hold onto the hand’s grip with every attempt to clamor out.  The light above is dimming.

Le mieux est le mortel ennemi du bien.

~ Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron of La Brède ~

French is one of dozens of languages I wish I had studied and mastered. But I did not. So I could not translate the sentence above into English without help. No, that’s not correct. I did not just have help. I relied entirely on what I believe to be someone else’s translation, which is, literally, “The best is the mortal enemy of the good.” A less literal but more generally accepted English translation is the aphorism: “Perfect is the enemy of the good.” Too often, I make half-hearted attempts at perfection, only to be disappointed at the inadequacy of the outcome. Even full-throated efforts frequently yield less than perfect results. Those disappoint me, too. Although I recognize, appreciate, and subscribe to the concept of the golden mean, I commonly make the mistake of permitting my thinking to stray from what I know to be logical and productive. Rather than requiring myself to function, mentally, between two extremes, I wander into the far end of the Pareto principle, wherein I devote 80% of my energy toward attempting to achieve the 20% of an undertaking that is not worth my time and effort. In attempting to find some wording to explain the golden mean better than I can do on my own, I came upon this phrase in Wikipedia: “…in the Aristotelian view, courage is a virtue, but if taken to excess would manifest as recklessness, and, in deficiency, cowardice.” If I had insisted on coming up with my own descriptive phrase, I would have been guilty of wasting my efforts in attempting to create something that already existed.

Though I often chastise myself for failing to achieve perfection, I know better than to believe my admonitions in their entirety. I’m not completely invested in faulting myself for my flaws, in other words.  Here’s another quotation, this one from my little black book of Zen-influenced ruminations:

The One and the All.
Mingle and move without discriminating.
Live in this awareness and you’ll stop worrying
about not being perfect.

~ Sen Tsan ~

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Not long ago, I wrote a to-do list; a reminder of tasks I needed to start or complete. Writing a list sometimes helps me remember things I otherwise might put off so long that they simply do not get done. I came across that list this morning. Four of the twenty items on the list remain undone. Responsibilities for two of those shifted to someone else who was paid to get the jobs done. One was deemed unnecessary, after all. One remains to be added to another to-do list. That other to-do list is already longer than the original 20-item list. Some days, it seems like I’ll never catch up; as if I’ll never get to have a few completely lazy days without feeling a sense of guilt for things that remain undone, including things that grow increasingly urgent and troubling by the day. It’s not simple lazyness that prevents me from completing my list. It’s also a lack of discipline and an intense dislike for getting enmeshed in some of the items on my list. Yet they must be done; I’ll pay deeply unpleasant consequences if they don’t. The solution, of course, is to set aside a few days dedicated exclusively to engaging in those tasks; foregoing my morning coffee and blogging and other pleasant introductions to the day and, instead, focusing on productivity from the moment I get out of bed until the sky darkens at nightfall. As unpleasant as that sounds, the sense of accomplishment and the elimination of dread will make the sacrifice worth it. Won’t it? Maybe. We’ll soon see. But not today. Not tomorrow. But soon.

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Making jokes at the expense of others demonstrates a lack of top-of-mind compassion, at best. At worst, it can put the joke-teller in dangerous waters with an awful undertow. I have a history of too often treading those waters and later wishing passionately I could return to dry land; to the moment before the tide touched my feet. But only when one is the brunt of the joke is the lesson crystal clear. The experience, for the joke-teller, is a little like playing with fire. But unlike playing with fire and getting burned, those jokes can drown both the teller and the “told.” They can undermine trust and turn solid relationships soft as rotten bananas. “Good natured” jokes at another’s expense are not good natured at all. Especially if they poke at a “tender spot,” they parallel the power plays between bullies and bullied. As I think back on jokes I’ve told at someone else’s expense, I cringe and wish I hadn’t told them. Has the lesson settled in on me, changing my behavior? Time will tell, as it always does.

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My IC and I went to Clampit’s yesterday, where she bought two enormous rib-eye steaks. Tonight, for dinner, I plan to grill the steaks, bake some potatoes, and make a nice, healthy salad (to counteract cholesterol-laden steak). My IC and I will enjoy the decidedly decadent meal in anticipation that her house will sell quickly for a price she finds satisfactory. She discovered last night that quite a number of people had already viewed the listing on Realtor.com and several had saved the listing, presumably to return to it later for a closer look and, perhaps, a visit with a Realtor. We look forward to the time we can relax and look back on the time we moved her furniture to this house with fondness. In the meantime, we’ll deal with the stress of selling a house and moving or otherwise disposing of furniture; having a nice steak tonight will help smooth the stress, I hope.

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Time to have more coffee and get ready for church. Ach. Some Sundays, church does not have the allure I wish it did. Onward, though, through the day.

It is not the body,
not the personality that is the true self.
The true self is eternal.
Even on the point of death
we can say to ourselves,
‘My true self is free.
I cannot be contained.’

~ Marcus Aurelius ~

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I’ve spent the last two hours trying to write a blog post. No, I did not try. I actually wrote a few. But all of them could have been interpreted wrong; or right, depending on one’s perspective. So I erased what I’d written and started over. Still, it was not suitable for publication. So I abandoned it all. Some days, it’s best to keep one’s thoughts to oneself. Some days, the insecurities and anger and fear and wishes are just not good for public consumption. So I gave up and tried to find something innocuous.

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Throwing-axes have an interesting history. In my opinion, the history as presented by Wikipedia is far more intriguing than the information offered on the World Axe-Throwing League website. But that just may be me. I found reading about the sleek and attractive francisca (a throwing-axe used as a weapon during the Early Middle Ages by the Franks) is more interesting than learning about the rather clunky-looking axes used in modern-day lumberjack axe-throwing competitions. And the Viking axes, similar to francisca, are more appealing to me than today’s new-world tomahawk-style axes. Regardless of the styles and their histories, I learned last night that I have miles to go before I develop even a modest degree of low-level adequacy in axe-throwing. And I learned that, in all probability, one time was enough for me. My axe-throwing skills last night demonstrated a level of incompetence that might well be used in a training video on how not to hold, throw, or retrieve thrown axes. It was fun, nonetheless. Post-axe-throwing pizza plans were derailed when we called Grateful Head Pizza to inquire about available space; no, we were told, a party of 30 was arriving and there would be no room for our party of nine for a long, long time to come. So, we called Sqzbx Pizza and Brewing, instead. Despite a crowd there, they were able to immediately accommodate our group at a large table. Almost every other table was full and a waiting line formed shortly after our arrival. Last night was Gallery Walk in Hot Springs, so we just got lucky at Sqzbx. Gallery Walk is a monthly event when all the art galleries in downtown Hot Springs are open for viewings and, generally, during which the galleries offer wine and munchies to strolling guests. Restaurants tend to fill to overflowing during Gallery Walk. At any rate, last night was a blast. My IC and I were delighted to have been invited to participate.

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My sister-in-law,  my intimate companion (IC), and I sat around the dining table yesterday morning, talking about the accumulated stresses we individually and collectively have experienced during the past year.

The conversation led us to explore one of those simple quizzes that tally both positive and negative stresses that, taken together, might culminate in health emergencies (e.g., heart attacks and the like). Most people likely are familiar with the list of stresses included in the quizzes: death of a loved one; marriage; divorce; new job; lost job; major illness; child birth; major change in romantic relationships; significant weight loss; significant weight gain; move to a new home; global pandemic; political battles; religious transformations; death of pet; adoption of pet; adoption of child; home purchase; home foreclosure; etc.; etc.

We did not get to the ultimate measures of just how dangerous the stresses of the past year might be. For that, we would have had to offer up our email addresses so the quiz results could be sent to us (and so marketers could seize upon the opportunity to deluge us with unwanted messages in perpetuity). But, even without the formal results of our quizzes, the message was clear: we have put our bodies and minds at great risk simply by living through the chaotic experiences of the last year or so. In spite of the fact that the quizzes were “all in good fun,” ignoring the danger of those stresses would be at our peril. It is imperative, I think, that we work through the stressors to avoid their potentially dangerous, even fatal, consequences. How we do that, though, is up for grabs. Usually, we’re advised to get more exercise, meditate, listen to music, get adequate sleep, get professional counseling, etc., etc. Most of the stress-reducers are relatively easy to execute. However, we tend to be stubborn creatures of bad habit. More often than not, we initiate stress reduction only after significant warning signs like minor heart attacks, The problem with waiting until we get those warnings, of course, is that they’re sometimes far more than simple warnings;  they emphasize, with deadly certainty, the need to “chill.” And I’ll leave it there. We can learn by thinking it through or by failing to acknowledge reality.

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My IC put her house on the market yesterday. The real estate agent expects action—that is, one or more offers to purchase the house—within forty-eight hours of the time the house is listed on the Multiple Listing Service.  That potentiality brings into sharp focus the need for us to quickly decide what to do with duplicate furnishings as we merge two households into one. We need to decide what to sell, give away, put in storage, or otherwise dispose of. And where to put what we keep. And where to find strong, capable young bodies to handle the heavy-lifting involved in moving big, weighty pieces of furniture and appliances. Speaking of stresses…

To add to the stress, I hired a handyman to do some major work on some closets, garage storage, and various other projects around the house. Like replacing all the screen in the screen porch. And more. My timing probably was not the best. It amplifies the stress involved in the time-crunch of integrating two households into one.

We do it to ourselves. I am attempting to reconfigure myself in the midst of a major reconfigurations of society and my own life. Hmm. More meditation may be in order. And more sleep. And perhaps medication. And exercise. And maybe exorcism.

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Obscenely good food and beer. That describes, in part, our experience yesterday afternoon with two good friends. We drove to Little Rock, where we had a late lunch (I had a “Stupid Hamburger,” which was wonderful, and my IC had a monstrous Philly Cheesesteak), preceded by appetizers of fried olives and bleu cheese chips. One of our friends ordered my beer for me: a wonderfully flavorful Flyway Brewing’s Mango-Habanero IPA, which is exclusive to the restaurant where we ate, Brood and Barley. The beer had a very slight hint of heat that grew just slightly after swallowing a sip. It was delightful. After lunch, we walked to Flyway Brewing, just up the street, where I had a Pick-a-Pepper Pale Ale, brewed with jalapeño, serrano, and poblano peppers.

Being in the company of our friends is a great way to reduce stress, I think. These two women, in particular, are especially good fits with us; they are intelligent, have wonderful senses of humor, and share many interests with us. Plus, they are—like us—quirky. They are fun-loving people who we delight in being around.

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This afternoon, our same two friends will join us and some others for an axe-throwing experience. One of our other friends, in particular, has been intrigued with the idea of axe-throwing for some time. Her interest has spurred ours in exploring the…what? Sport? Game? Interest? Whatever. This afternoon and evening, we will go to downtown Hot Springs, where we will go to Big Axe Battleground for some good old-fashioned axe throwing. Then, we’ll have dinner at Grateful Head Pizza Oven and Beer Garden. I think there will be nine of us. I can feel the stress flowing out of me as I think of it. I hope what I feel is not blood escaping from a gaping wound caused by an errant axe.

+++

My IC and I have not abandoned the idea that we might move to a new place, but the thought is tempering a bit. We both like my house very much. With some relatively minor adjustments, it could become an oasis. In fact, I’ve committed to the expense of installing a new mini-split air conditioner in what I call my “sky room,” which will make the small room (essentially floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides) comfortable no matter the season or the outside temperatures. And my handyman soon will repaint the white structure of the screened porch; white will become dark grey to match the deck railing. He also will replace all the screen and the indoor-outdoor carpet. With the addition of some of my IC’s outdoor furnishings, the porch and the deck will become a more colorful, casual, inviting place.

Aside from the physical “place,” we have developed a small but increasingly close-knit group of friends who we value more every day. An intimate group of friends can make an enormous difference in one’s attitude toward life in general and one’s place in it.

Yet we’re still not certain we will stay here. We wish this place was more walkable. We wish for more entertaining, more casual places nearby to go and experience. Restaurants, coffee shops, retail stores, etc.  But we love the relative solitude of the forest community. But we wish for the amenities of the “city” or even the “town.” We just don’t know. And it may take a while to know. Time, though, does not stop to wait for us. The incredibly strong housing market may not last forever. A real estate assessment of my house suggests I should (if I chose to sell) market my house at $413K, which could result in offers beyond the asking price. With that kind of money, Tulsa or Fayetteville or even Flagstaff could be “doable.” Yet would we find good friends there? We could, of course, invite friends to visit and we could do the same. But moving would unquestionably reduce opportunities to spend time with people we have grown to enjoy enormously and who, I think, enjoy our company just as much.

When we mention the possibility of a move, our friends urge us to forget the idea. Of course they do. And they may be (and, it seems increasingly likely) right. But ultimately, we have to make the decision. Yet another reason to form a cooperative or a commune or a co-housing alliance. But we still have a hard sell on that one. Except for one woman, a friend who I think is ready to jump into co-housing at a moment’s notice. She and I, I think, are among the strongest proponents. We just have to find ways to explain what co-housing is really like. And maybe that would require spending time visiting co-housing communities to see, first hand, what we’re all missing by living separate lives with only tastes of what real community can be like. I am, at heart, a socialist. I want to be in love with the best aspects of humanity and with people who share my utopian ideals. I got an email from a friend yesterday, who said of the two of us:

…we are both still on the fence: utopia on one side, real life on the other.

True, that. She peruses my blogs occasionally, obviously reading and understanding my wishful thinking.

+++

Today, the woman who cleans my house every few weeks is scheduled to come. So, I must spend time this morning getting ready for her. I would not want my cleaning woman to find an unkempt house, would I? I sometimes wonder if I have enough good sense to live in the real world.

+++

Time for breakfast and more coffee. And, perhaps, a spark of brilliance that will answer all my questions and their competing answers in a way that will, once and for all, guarantee happiness for all time. Yeah. That’s it.

Mistakes, impossibly deep and costly, alter the course of the future and bring an end to the illusion that joy is within reach. Nothing can stop the errant, fast-flowing river of time from flooding its own channel, scouring its banks and leaving them bare, like bones picked clean by gluttonous scavengers.

+++

I feel oddly uneasy this morning, as if all my wishes and hopes and dreams had belonged to someone else and they are being recalled. I am left hollow and empty and unable to think of anything to replace them.  Everything around me and within me is dull and lifeless. Even fantasies of road trips and new environs are flat and pointless. This is not something one wants to encounter on waking. Coffee that’s dry and tannic. Air that smells vaguely like rotted fruit and old socks. Ach!

During the night, jammed with disturbing dreams, smoke from a dust-fire spilled from a clogged attic into the room below, causing a commotion among golfers who blamed me for everything that went wrong with their rounds and their lives. I could do nothing to quench the flames nor correct what went wrong with their games. The golfers were arrogant and hungry and quick to lay blame on me for the smoke and their lack of food. Blinding smoke contributed to automobile accidents on surrounding streets. I was responsible for escalating monetary damages, though I had no money to pay them. Scared and angry, I thrashed about, trying to get free from the rope that tied me to a corpse.

I awoke to excruciating pain in my right shin. It was, in reality, a severe cramp in my leg, not the amputation without anesthesia my dream claimed it to be.  Seven hours of sleep; enough to make up for the night before, but not a curative for all that ails me.

+++

Later today we  have plans. But for now they seem years away. I will try to wash away the debris of the night with more coffee; something that tastes better, I hope, than what I’ve had to drink thus far. Where is the promise of cooler weather and all the pleasantness it would bring? Where is the brilliant sunrise that fills the sky with color and light?

Some days just wallow for hours, never quite achieving what they could have been. Maybe this is one of them. My head aches and my eyes itch and nothing seems quite right. I have to drag myself out of these doldrums, if that’s what they are. I am not good company for myself at the moment. God only knows what kind of company I might be to my IC or anyone else. I should hide under a tarp until I morph into someone more tolerable than this.  But I think I must meet my obligations, instead.

+++

Time to face the day. Odds are that the day will win this round. But maybe I’ll beat the odds. Not likely, but possible. I’ll try to go against the odds.

Before I try to find sleep again, I must relieve the shaman in my head of his responsibilities. I have to explain to him that he is not real, he is only an idea born of fantasy and fiction; a child of an imagination gone awry. First, I have to excavate my brain in an attempt to uncover intellectual and emotional treasures. Those riches can be found only by digging through the rubble of ideas that sprang into being, only to be crushed by the weight of worry. I went to bed after 1:00 a.m., only to awake to a cough at 4:00 a.m. I worry that I may not be able to sleep again this morning, which could translate into exhaustion by early afternoon. I have things to do today. I cannot capitulate to fatigue.

I awoke around 4:00 a.m. to a stopped-up-sinus-induced-cough that worsened by the time I reached the bathroom. Five minutes of convulsive coughing woke my IC, who offered water and comfort. I declined the former but appreciated the latter. Finally, after blowing my nose and cursing the need for empty cavities in my head—cavities that seem to fill with concrete—the coughing subsided. But I was up for the duration by then. So here I am, breathing easily through my nose once again and wishing I could see my way clear to returning to bed and to sleep. But that is not to be, at least not immediately, though I am extraordinarily tired.

+++

At least my short sleep followed an invigorating evening. Friends invited us over to watch Hamilton. Despite my IC’s laudatory comments about the musical, I did not expect a two-hour, forty-minute program to hold my attention. It did. I found it fascinating and informative, despite knowing in advance that some of the information it presented deviated from history, thanks to poetic license. I was enthralled by the story and was predictably moved by several scenes that caused tears to form (but not fall). I now understand why some people (including my IC) relish watching it multiple times. Our hosts, for example, have watched it innumerable times while hosting “watch events” with other friends. The male component of our host couple, an acknowledged expert in American music, calls the musical the Great American Opera. And I do not doubt he’s right.

+++

Yesterday, my handyman told me he had reconsidered the ease with which the cabinet above the refrigerator could be removed to make room for my IC’s beloved refrigerator. After more thought, he said he would not want to take on the job, fearing he could splinter crown molding that would be nearly impossible to replace. He suggested a professional cabinet-maker might do the job. I appreciated his consideration and acknowledgement that the task might be beyond his skill level. We’ve decided not to worry with it. We have enough to concern us for now. But, still… Oh, well. Life goes on.

+++

Time alone in the wee hours prompts me to think, a dangerous enterprise. I think, again, about tearing myself away from this cocoon. This time, though, I want to travel with my IC to a place where the cocoon is surrounded by walkable amenities like coffee shops and restaurants and theatres and music venues. Maybe Little Rock is the place. But maybe not. We must examine options that might produce in us bolts of energy and sparks of excitement. Damn! I wish we could engage our friends in this pursuit—this desire for diversity and tolerance and enlightenment and cohesiveness that could provide everlasting refuge from a world that grows more frightening and less friendly every day. I realize, of course, that creating a community can take a lifetime. I realize most of my lifetime has been spent, or misspent, on a treadmill in a cage where the destination has been “retirement,” not “happiness.” But, still, there’s time to start something. There may be time to experience closeness in both mental state and proximity. Where, though? Little Rock? Fort Smith? Fayetteville? Ajijic? Small cities in Iowa or Kansas or Mississippi or Tennessee or Oklahoma or Washington state?

When I watch people leave the Village to go to their families in far-away places or seek happiness in places of refuge a thousand miles away, I realize utopia does not exist here in Hot Springs Village. Maybe it does not exist anywhere. But, still, I want to look for it. I want to find places it can grow and flourish. Perhaps not now, but in a hundred years?  I am torn between where I am and where I wish I were. I need the future, but I wish I had the past.

+++

It’s almost 6:00 a.m. I’ve wasted another couple of hours fantasizing with my fingers. I once started writing a story set in the future—but have never finished it—in which a well-to-do lawyer learned he had a terminal disease. In this future, certain well-off people could purchase more life by parting with both their fortunes and their pasts. My protagonist had to choose between spending several months dying in the presence of his family, who would remember him after his death, or disappearing from the memory of everyone who ever knew him by taking on a new identity and forfeiting his hard-earned wealth and comfort for an unknown future. If he chose the latter, though, his memories of his past would stay with him; everyone he loved, though, would have no recollection of him at all.  I feel a little like my protagonist this morning. When choices are stark and painful, how does one choose? My choices are not nearly as difficult, but they are not easy. Not in the least. And now I am not alone in making choices. That’s gratifying, but it also adds a dimension that makes choosing even more difficult. Yet, regardless, one makes one’s choices and moves on. It has always been so.

Several years ago—three or four, I think—I experienced an increasing level of debilitating pain on the top of my hand and lower right arm. The pain migrated to my upper arm and shoulder and then to the area around my right shoulder blade. A series of X-rays and CT scans revealed that the pain was caused by stenosis in a few of the vertebrae in the upper part of my spine and by some osteophytes (bone spurs) in the same region. A neurosurgeon in Little Rock recommended I try a series of three injections in my upper spine. The first injection should eliminate much of the pain, the doctor said, and the next two should eliminate it entirely. “No guarantees, of course,” he said.  I either had no insurance at the time or the coverage was poor; my portion of the cost was about $800 per injection. Following the first injection, with no change, I opted to stop emptying my bank account. I went for the alternative the doctor suggested; a medication that targeted “nerve pain.” It seemed to work. The pain gradually disappeared after I started the medication and I’ve been taking the drug ever since. But, lately, I’ve felt tinges that feel a tiny bit like the original pain. Now that I am covered by Medicare, I suspect I could get the series of injections, but the pain is not sufficiently bad, nor sufficiently frequent, to merit what could be an over-the-top treatment regimen. I hate the idea of being stabbed in my spine unnecessarily. But neither do I relish feeling pain like I felt before. I remember cancelling a road trip with my late wife because the pain was too intense to allow me to drive or even sit in the passenger seat for any length of time. So, I’ve given myself marching orders: if the pain even approaches the levels I felt before, or if the frequency of pain is enough to interfere with day-to-day activities, I will see a different neurosurgeon (the one I saw before has long since moved out of the area). I absolutely LOATHE experiencing bodily decay, especially the pain associated with it. I think I am the stereotypical male: someone “allergic” to pain; I whimper like an injured puppy and insist on receiving relief from even minor pain.

+++

I learned yesterday that some friends have decided to sell their home and belongings and hit the road in their new RV. When I got the news, via an email message from one of them, I felt pangs of envy and an immediate sense of loss. The idea of getting behind the wheel and setting out on a road-trip adventure—with no set destination nor timelines to meet—is deeply appealing to me. But I will miss them. I’ve had several conversations about RV travel/life on the road with the woman who shared their good news with me. Though we’ve only rarely gotten together over lunch to share ideas about co-housing and social conventions and the like, I will feel her absence acutely. Those conversations always left me feeling like I’d had an intense and pleasurable exchange of ideas with someone with whom I share life philosophies and who understands my emotional attachment to the concept of  “community.” I will miss her quiet intensity and her commitment to justice. Though I have not had as much interchange with her husband as with her, I’ll miss him as well; his sense of humor and gruffly gentle disposition made the gatherings of which he was a part a delight.

Learning of their decision to move sparked feelings of regret in me because I had not initiated more social engagement with them. I’ve intended to invite them to my house for drinks and conversation but, like so many “intents,” that one went undone. I suspect that, now, their time commitments will be even more intense. Nevertheless, I will make an effort to get to know them better, socially, before they embark on their new adventure.  I hope their news will prompt me to act more quickly and decisively on other social intentions. My IC and I may decide in the not-too-distant future to embark on our own new adventures; I do not want to do that without cementing the bonds of our relationships with other friends.

+++

Yesterday marked the beginning of a set of new projects around the house. I’ve enlisted my dependable handyman to take on several jobs around the house that will help make life just a bit easier. Things as simple as upgrading garage shelving, replacing annoying metal “rods” and shelves in clothes closets with wooden dowels and shelves, replacing water shut-off valves under the sinks, replacing worn and dirty screen with new materials, cleaning and painting the structural part of the screened porch, and installing new faucets in the bathrooms will make the world a better place. And, yesterday, he confirmed that he he can remove the cabinet above the refrigerator, which will allow us to move my IC’s fridge into that space. She adores her refrigerator and scorns mine, so soon we will be able to relocate hers to its new home. Her home will go on the market later this week; if it sells quickly, as we expect it will, our lives will transition to performing a high-speed household integration. We have to decide what to do with: four beds and only two bedrooms; three desks and only two places to put them; duplicate kitchen appliances; multiple sets of dishes; several couches and chairs and coffee tables and end tables; and on and on and on. When I encouraged her to move in with me, I wasn’t thinking her furniture would accompany her. 😉

+++

I must go out into the garage in a moment to begin putting things away on the newly updated and safer shelving. The handyman and his helper/wife will be here in about three hours to begin the next phases of the home-improvement projects, so I have to prepare the space so they can work. I believe they will bring a trailer with them that, when the materials in it are removed into the garage, I can use to pile “junk” in for them to take to the dump later. I am committed to simplifying my life by getting rid of things I do not need or want. Many of those things will go to Habitat for Humanity or other organizations that can redistribute them to people who need them. And much will simply go directly to the dump. In both cases, those things will leave my house, never to return. I plan to discard or otherwise get rid of a lot of excessive “stuff” that I have, in my unchecked greed, accumulated over the years. I may well ask friends to come have a look before I get rid of some stuff (like books, furniture, etc.); friends can have what I plan to give away and can have first choice on anything I might try to sell. As I go through things to eliminate from my home, I know I will get very emotional about some of them because of their connection with my late wife. I’ll just have to deal with that. Life, and the pain of living with grief, goes on.

So, it’s off to the garage. The race is on!

I did not wake up thinking I wanted to write about the horrors of war, nor about how much I abhor the concept of officially-endorsed killing. I did not get out of bed with the intent of thinking about the monstrosities of inflicting murder and mayhem on innocent civilians or professional soldiers. But sometimes circumstances simply spiral out of control. Like regional conflicts blossoming into global havoc and pandemonium. Disagreements mushrooming into all-out war.

The sequence of events that caused me to subscribe, online, to the Boston Globe fades into memory now, less than a year after my deeply discounted subscription began. I recall, though, that my interest began well before I subscribed to a free Boston Globe email column, entitled Fast Forward, written by Teresa Hanafin. Hanafin’s writing style got me hooked. My interest in her selection of news topics almost always surprised me; her writing made even pieces about Boston sports teams intriguing to me. At any rate, I’ve found that I like the newspaper quite a lot, even though I do not read it every day, nor do I read it in depth. Some days, though, the articles grab me by the collar and refuse to let me loose until I’ve finished reading them. This morning, for example.

An article attributed to Mike Ives, New York Times, caught me by surprise. The piece recounted the recovery, last year, of the remains of Major Paul A. Avolese, a navigator on one of two B-52s that collided over the South China Sea in July 1967 as they approached a target in what was then South Vietnam.  Six members of the crew of the two planes survived; six were lost and not recovered. Avolese was declared dead days later. The U.S. military later classified the remains of the six missing members of the crew as dead and “non-recoverable.”

Avolese’s remains were discovered and were retrieved last year, thanks to the use of sophisticated undersea robots. The article described the process of searching an eight square mile area of sea floor and getting permission from the U.S. and Vietnamese governments, by satellite phone, to recover the remains discovered through imaging. That information, alone, was intriguing enough to warrant reading the article. But I also learned from reading it that 1,584 U.S. service personnel were still listed as missing, as of late July, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA). That figure struck me: 1,584 people lost during the war and their remains still have not been found and/or recovered. Learning that figure prompted me to explore further the extent of the carnage of that war.

We left so many dead (58,220, according to Defense Casualty Analysis System (DCAS) Extract Files) and so many still missing.  An article in Britannica online reports that, in 1995, “Vietnam released its official estimate of the number of people killed during the Vietnam War: as many as 2,000,000 civilians on both sides and some 1,100,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters. The U.S. military has estimated that between 200,000 and 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers died.

We sent so many men and women to fight a war that, in my view, was never justified. And so many more went off to war as they were commanded to do by their governments. They were told they were sent to fight a “just” war. But, then, in my opinion no war is ever truly justified. During my online explorations this morning, I uncovered so many facts we seem regularly to forget. Of course, I am one of thousands or millions who recognize the absurdity of war. I came across an article from October 2016 from the Tehran Times that addressed the hypocrisy of our own statements about war, in referencing the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan:

Interestingly, U.S. President Barack Obama, despite being awarded 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, would defend this war of atrocities, in a clear contrast to his prize. He said: “This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity…So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is fundamental to the defense of our people.”

I hold Obama in high regard. But I hold in contempt the viewpoint that war is justified. But no matter how absurd war is, individual soldiers have little choice but to do as they are told. Their options are limited: go to war or go to prison; in either case, death is a very real potential outcome. And because our culture (and many others) worships “warriors,” we treat war as though it were a holy cause, not a massive and catastrophic failure of humanity. I will say that self-defense is legitimate, but war is not. One does not necessarily lead to the other. I could defend my statement, but I don’t bother here. I would be tied to my computer for days, maybe even weeks.

The fact that I quoted the Tehran Times could no doubt be used to classify me as a traitor or a socialist or a communist or God knows what other demonic beastly label might be used to excoriate me. Those same labelers will claim I do not support American soldiers because I do not appreciate their sacrifices. It is precisely because I appreciate their sacrifices—but hate that they are asked to make them in support of corrupt policies and philosophies—that I loathe war. I loathe carpet bombing civilian targets, whether in Vietnam or Afghanistan or New York. I hate brain-washing American Air Force officers or Marines or Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards into believing the populations of entire countries are enemies.

It’s too easy to blame soldiers for the atrocities of their political leaders. Soldiers are effectively war-slaves because they have no reasonable choices. But the lyrics of a song by Buffy Sainte-Marie keep coming back to me as I think of what it would take to put an end to politically-motivated warmongering. It would require every soldier in every country to simply refuse to do the murderous bidding of their commanders who, in turn, would have to refuse to to the bidding of their political masters. It will never happen. But would that it did. Here are Sainte-Marie’s lyrics:

Universal Solider

He is five feet two, and he’s six feet four
He fights with missiles and with spears
He is all of thirty-one, and he’s only seventeen
He’s been a soldier for a thousand years
He’s a Catholic, a Hindu, an atheist, a Jain
A Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew
And he knows, he shouldn’t kill
And he knows he always will
Killing you for me my friend, and me for you
And he’s fighting for Canada, he’s fighting for France
He’s fighting for the U.S.A.
And he’s fighting for the Russians
And he’s fighting for Japan
And he thinks we put an end to war this way
And he’s fighting for democracy
He’s fighting for the Reds
He says it’s for the peace of all
He’s the one who must decide
Who’s to live and who’s to die
And he never sees the writing on the wall.
But without him, how would Hilter have condemned them at La Val?
Without him Caesar would have stood alone
He’s the one who gives his body as a weapon of the war
And without him all this killing can’t go on
He’s the universal soldier and he really is to blame
His orders come from far away, no more
They come from here and there, and you and me
And brothers, can’t you see?
This is not the way we put the end to war

What a sad, sad topic as the new week begins. It’s either that or COVID or the misery of tearing the U.S. apart politically.

I woke just before 3:30 a.m. It’s now about 5:45 a.m. This day may have started out on the wrong foot. Perhaps more coffee and a decent breakfast will help.