John Swinburn

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 ~

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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.

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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. 🙂

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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.

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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 ~

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

+++

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!

+++

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 ~

+++

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.

+++

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.

+++

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.

+++

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 ~

+++

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.

+++

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.

+++

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.

+++

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.

+++

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.

+++

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.

The stresses caused by fierce winds can build up over time. A huge, thick, powerful, mesquite tree might survive monstrous hurricane force winds in successive storms. The tree may lose a few limbs but stand resolute against the forces of nature, only to topple later when wind is only half as strong.

People are like that. They can survive unthinkably strong emotional upheavals, only to succumb to far lesser turmoil. It’s as if the cumulative force of emotional stresses shatter the barriers that protect us. I believe that is what happens. When people survive repeated periods of emotional despair, the strength that shelters them weakens. Even a relatively moderate emotional storm can decimate their ability to cope with the stresses of life. The terms “mental breakdown” or “emotional breakdown” describe that sudden disintegration of emotional defenses. Life’s challenges simply become too much for psyches to handle; our tough protective shields weaken. We capitulate, as if surrendering in battle. We can’t find within ourselves the strength to fight anymore.

Too often, I think we witness those struggles but do not know what we can do to help people get through or around them. I think we’re embarrassed, for some reason, as if their battles carry a stigma. In my opinion, the stigma is found in the failure to intercede; the stigma is in giving one’s personal emotional comfort more weight than the emotional survival of a person in pain. But it happens all the time. Excuses abound: “It’s none of my business.” “He would not want me to interfere.” “If I say something, it will only make it worse for her.” “She needs her privacy to deal with it.”

I offer this implicit condemnation of the failure to intervene as if I am a practiced intervenor. I am not. I know the excuses because I have used them. It embarrasses me that, even though I recognize the likelihood of a need, I can use lame excuses and personal timidity to stay an arm’s length from the experience.  Stronger personalities ignore the potential embarrassment; they barge ahead as if a life depends on it. And it well might.  When I find myself saying “I should have…,” my self-esteem drops a notch. As well it should. People (like me) would do well to put aside their own feelings of embarrassment in such circumstances and take the risk. We might blunder and make some embarrassing mistakes, but we might sleep better, knowing we cared more for someone else than about our own fragility.

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The next several days should be far more tolerable, with respect to temperature, than the last few days. Highs in the low- to mid-80s will feel a bit like fall weather after stifling heat and humidity that could drown even the strongest swimmer. These few days will provide opportunities to work outdoors without too much fear of heat stroke. I will blow leaves, power wash a deck railing, and paint said railing (with the help of my IC). We’ll be cleaning up and fancying up her house to help her sell it. But, before I blow more leaves, I will spray myself with something to keep the chiggers at bay. Yesterday, I made the mistake of wading into leafy debris without protection; this morning, I have chigger bites that, so far, the Chigger-Rid or whatever I have on hand does not seem to help.

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My stomach has been “queasy” the last day or two and it seems to be on track for more of the same today. I thought, before, it was a minor flare of Crohn’s, but I’m not convinced that’s not it. Instead, I think it’s a mild stomach bug that will probably disappear soon; but it has been a minor annoyance thus far. Nothing even remotely debilitating, but definitely irritating. My appetite is fine (too fine, in fact, like it always is). Maybe that’s the issue; I enjoy food too much. I’ll slow down a bit and will eat only food that is good for me. And I’ll drink water with my coffee. And so forth. I could stand to lose 75 pounds; I’d still be someone overweight. Losing 75 pounds is an attractive target. But I don’t want to put the cart before the cart-dragging hyper-power engine. Patience, Grasshopper.

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A friend has invited us over to watch Hamilton on Tuesday evening. I’ve been wanting to watch it, so this will be a treat, but I’m not extremely good at sitting for three hours (the length of the experience). We’ll see. If I can’t sit still for three hours, I’ll have to try to doze off without waking everyone with my snoring. Seriously, I will manage to sit still for three hours, but I am amazed that anyone creating modern-day operas thinks three hours is a reasonable amount of time for such presentations. Two hours should be the legal limit.

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We have other obligations this week, including what promises to be great fun in Little Rock, where we’ll sample hot-pepper-infused beer and will, no doubt, eat some extraordinary food. We’re going with friends who have a special connection with the brewmeister and the restaurant I have adopted as my favorite.

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It’s off to church this morning, wearing masks. I’m not fond of the idea of church this morning; it just doesn’t appeal to me. I’d rather stay at home, where I could contentedly mull the vagaries of life. But I will go to church. I will wear a mask, but will growl at not having coffee; a decision was made that, in my opinion, should have involved me, to forego coffee and treats and require masks (the latter about which I agree). But I was not consulted. Regardless, wearing masks during the post-service period probably will impact the post-service conversations. In future, I will not attempt to engage in moderating conversations among people wearing masks; it would be a noisy and fruitless endeavor.

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It’s interesting to me. As I think about disagreeing with good friends about important issues, I never for a moment think my disagreement will have any impact on our friendship. But disagreements with people—people with whom I have no connection—tends to make me feel increasingly estranged from them. That makes no sense. I think I need to examine my thought processes. I need to determine why I can disagree with people close to me without damaging our relationships, yet my distance from people I do not know tends to grow greater when we disagree. There’s something in there that may explain how we can overcome angry disagreements with strangers. I just don’t know what it is.

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Some mornings, and this is one, I wake up and wonder “why?” I question why so many things are as they are. I wonder why I am the way I am and not the way I might want to be. The concept of church, as unappealing as it sometimes is to me, attaches to the questions and attempts answers. It’s the answers that I find both thought-provoking and laughable. Religion is a banal attempt, I sometimes think, to answer questions that have no answer. I think we should give up on trying to find out “why” and, instead, try to understand how we cope with what is. But that’s another deep thought for another deep time.

I think if I’ve learned anything about friendship, it’s to hang in, stay connected, fight for them, and let them fight for you. Don’t walk away, don’t be distracted, don’t be too busy or tired, don’t take them for granted. Friends are part of the glue that holds life and faith together. Powerful stuff.

~ Jon Katz ~

Yesterday afternoon was good. Exceptionally good. We had good friends over for a few hours. We ate, drank, and talked at length about everything under the sun. We simply  enjoyed one another’s company. Such afternoons are precious reminders that, no matter what else is going on in our lives, spending time with people who really matter can boost one’s spirits and make the world feel like a better, more welcoming, happier place. Friends who share one’s sense of humor are among the most spectacular gifts. Spending time with people whose values align with one’s own almost certainly spur the formation of close, strong, solid friendships. One of the group (there were only six of us) came a little early and shared her writing, her newfound passion that clearly reveals the depths of her creativity and her emotions—and her innate talent and intellectual breadth. All of us shared experiences and opinions and ideas—the things one does in the company of friends. It may be too much to wish for, but I wish we could gather more often and even more casually. Though the “preparation” for the event was not extensive, we made dips and prepared munchies and such that were good to have. I think a bag of chips or crackers, alone, could be adequate. It’s not the food that makes the experience; it’s the people. I feel extremely fortunate to have those people in my life. Friends can make all the difference.

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My handyman worked diligently yesterday, replacing outdated light fixtures in the garage, the master bedroom closet, and the crawl space under the house with new, energy-efficient, brighter LED light fixtures. He will be back Monday to continue checking off items on my to-do list. Replacing difficult-to-use metal closet rods with long, smooth, wooden dowels will be high on his (and my) list. I’ve finally come to my senses; it’s best to hire someone to do things one is capable of doing but that require more motivation than one is capable of bringing to bear. Plus, the recently-exercised skills of a handyman who makes his living doing such things make the jobs go faster and the end-produce function better. I do not like to part with the money, but I’m much happier to have the work done than to stew over not having it done.

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My IC will put her house on the market this week, thus culminating my efforts to convince her to move in with me. Between now and the time buyers take possession, we have a lot to do and a lot of decisions to make. Our work will include determining how to merge two households into one; which furnishings to keep, which to sell or give away, etc., etc., etc. The tasks seems daunting, and they are, but I am sure we will manage.

Yesterday, during our gathering with friends (I don’t want to call it a party, because it was not a party, but I think “gathering” is not quite the right word, either…I don’t know), we talked about people of our ages deciding to create multi-family communities in which everyone has the privacy of individual living space but in which everyone is a part of a cohesive group that is available to help and support the others. Co-housing, in other words, without the vernacular and structural formality. I still love the idea.

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My IC and I are exploring the idea of living in a different place.  A place with ready access to walkable neighborhoods that offer restaurants and bars and entertainment and museums and…all the stuff of big city life without the big city. It’s early in the discussion, but we’re having fun considering different places. So far, we’ve talked a little about Flagstaff, Arizona and Tulsa, Oklahoma and Fayetteville, Arkansas. There must be hundreds of other places that offer strong possibilities. Among our criteria (though nothing is carved in stone) is access to a Unitarian Universalist church; it’s not so much the church itself that is a draw, it’s the fact that such a church is apt to draw the kind of people with whom we might want to share our time.

In an ideal world, we would find a place that offers all the tangible elements that would draw us in, but also would be as free as possible of right-wing rednecks and hillbillies. I don’t mind centrist or left-wing (within reason) rednecks and hillbillies, but their counterparts are off limits. I do not want to be around people who subscribe to conspiracy theories and truly believe that aliens or Democrats plan to destroy the Earth by infecting us all with COVID or by operating child pornography rings out of pizza parlors. Sheeeeesh! It givces me shivers to think that these people are running free, spreading their miserable lies with abandon.

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For most of my life, whenever my wife and I decided to move, for whatever reason, we did not include criteria in our searches that might lead us to people with whom we held shared values or interests. Our decisions were based more on costs, housing styles, access to grocery shopping, and other things that did not overtly include “people-related” matters. Since moving to Hot Springs Village, though, it has occurred to me how critically important it is to be around people whose commonalities make life more comfortable and fulfilling. In the Village, I found that the UU church and the Democratic Club were the two best sources of like-minded people. Though I joined a writing group and belonged to a painting group for a while, they fed my need for “technical” affiliation but not for “emotional” affiliation. The difference, I suppose, is that “emotional” affiliation is stronger because it includes one’s personal beliefs or values.

If only I’d come to that realization many years ago, our lives might have been far happier and more fulfilling. That is not to say that we were not happy; we were. But we were, in large measure, the only anchors to one another’s happiness. We had no one but each other. That was good, of course, but it was lonely in many ways, too. If only I’d known.

At any rate, we’re exploring our options. And we’re considering how extremely important our friends are to us. If we leave, we must find ways to keep strong our important connections with the people who matter to us. We must keep our friends close, whether near or distant.

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I’ve written before that one of my favorite books of poetry from my youth is There are Men Too Gentle to Live Among Wolves. As much as I’d like to be as gentle as those men, I’ve come to the conclusion that There are Men Too Stupid to Live. Period. Once again, I’ve proven myself among the latter group, though at the moment I’m simply a stupid observer. The active and deeply stupid participants are the local men and women who—frothing at the mouth and screeching like wounded banshees—post on NextDoor, spouting idiotic conspiracy bullshit. The most recent nonsense says the Biden administration is intentionally releasing COVID-positive illegal immigrants into border communities along the Texas-Mexico border. These moron posters don’t bother to manufacture any reasons the administration would do this; they just spew lies saying outright that Biden and his supporters intentionally are spreading COVID, “as promised” in Biden’s campaign rhetoric and policy statements. I am convinced nothing can be done to rehabilitate these stupid spewers of such obvious lies. Instead, the humane thing to do would be to throw these men and women into industrial-sized meat grinders and feed the grinders’ output—post sanitation, of course—to farm animals.  End of rant. End of admission that I can be just as stupid as the stupid people I consider reprehensible scum (but I’m not lowlife scum, but they are).

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Hugs are important to me. Long, leisurely, casual hugs. I think I’ve called such things by another name in the past: embraces. I like them. They make me feel like I’m really connected with a person. Except when the subject of the hug/embrace is uncomfortable with either the physical contact itself or the length of time it takes for the “connection” to take place.

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I’ll close this post with another quote by Jon Katz. I do not want to lose my way, nor do I want anyone I love to lose theirs. The fact that I gravitate toward isolation and privacy does not change the fact that I want and need good people in my life.

It is difficult to see ourselves as we are. Sometimes we are fortunate enough to have good friends, lovers or others who will do us the good service of telling us the truth about ourselves. When we don’t, we can so easily delude ourselves, lose a sense of truth about ourselves, and our conscience loses power and purpose. Mostly, we tell ourselves what we would like to hear. We lose our way.

~ John Katz ~

The nature of humanity, its essence, is to feel another’s pain as one’s own, and to act to take that pain away. There is nobility in compassion, a beauty in empathy, a grace in forgiveness.

~ John Connolly ~

I opted to stay home last night instead of playing Trivia at The Beehive. My IC played, as I suppose she always will whenever she’s in town on Trivia night. I am not addicted to Trivia, nor to throngs of loud people in loud places. After weeks and weeks of once-a-week exposure to that adrenaline-laden environment, I think I needed a break; a serene Thursday evening. I do appreciate the experience of gentle night-after-night serenity, interrupted only by noises coming not from live humans but from a two-dimensional screen that can, unlike groups of live humans, be muted and ignored without fear of creating offense. Trivia is enjoyable. Being social is fun and rewarding; but my personality requires breaks from the stimulation of crowds. I need to recover my energy through isolation and solitude. My IC, on the other hand, recharges through social interactions. Interesting, I think, that people with such different personalities are so well-matched.

Home alone, I watched one episode of Rita, a Danish comedy-drama. I may continue watching it, a bit at a time, but the single episode I watched did not grab me the way so many Danish and other Scandinavian series and films have done. But it may provide mindless entertainment when I feel the need to watch drivel. For some reason, I prefer to listen to foreign television and film in the original language, reading the dialogue as English subtitles. In an ideal world, I would be fluent in every language and, therefore, would understand without subtitles. The world is not ideal, though, so I will cope with written translations. Speaking of subtitles, I find it interesting to watch an English-language program with the English-language subtitles turned on; the text version rarely matches what I hear coming from the speakers. I wonder how many adjustments are made to the actual “noise” from foreign flicks when I am reading the English language version? I’ll probably never know and it’s probably okay that I will never fully understand. Life is never quite what it seems, is it?

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I would be wise, every day, to consider the quote with which I began this post. It would serve as a reminder of who I think I am, at my core, and might prompt me to steer clear of behaving in ways I find juvenile and reprehensible and fundamentally at odds with the world in which I want to live.

Yesterday, I made the silly mistake of reading some NextDoor posts that presented as factual a barrage of unreliable stories about so many things. I should have ignored those appalling, stupid, mindless, moronic posts. But I did not. And my responses were predictably met with bitter attacks by people who very probably believe our flat Earth is inhabited by rat-people whose primary objective is to infest the body politic with rat-people disguised as humans. The world would be a better, safer, more humane place without them. Yet I took the bait, which no doubt caused these beasts to ratchet up their falsehoods. I wonder what causes them to be such utter and complete dimwits? Perhaps they are responding to pain and pressure the only way they know how; by spreading malicious lies whose only purpose is to fan the flames of hatred. I want, desperately, to be a better person than I am. These creatures make that wish an almost impossible dream. Despite my loathing for far-right-wing idiots who refuse to engage in debate and, instead, engage in lies, I can feel compassion for even the beasts among them. I do not know whether a guy who posted last night about losing a friend is left wing, right wing, or a flaming moderate. I know only that his post reveals he is experiencing pain. His neighbor and friend, who lost his wife not long ago, died. The guy who lost his friend posted a poignant comment about missing his friend. I felt compassion for the guy. It doesn’t matter whether he’s a Trumpster or a fan of Biden, he’s a person who lost someone who mattered to him. It’s painful to read about such an experience. It helps me to acknowledge that even the monsters among us have human feelings. (This guy, incidentally, is not someone I’ve named a monster…I do not even know his politics.) If only the “other side” would attempt to feel some modicum of compassion. But, even more, if only they would feel some sense of obligation to the truth. Alas, they feel an obligation only to made up and manipulated “data” that claims to support their spurious beliefs.  I wish I could assume their beastly behavior is simply an expression of their pain. But I can’t. I have so much work yet to do on myself; it’s an unending and impossible task.

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I had my handyman over yesterday to discuss with me a LOT of projects I want him to do for me. He should be over later this morning to begin working on them. The projects will take quite a while to complete, but my guy is ready to begin them today. I’m in no rush; but I’ve been wanting to get them started for ages, so it will be nice to begin them.

I should have remembered, though, that I’m having several friends over this afternoon. I’ll have to ask him to park so they will not block him in. And I may have to have him focus his attention on project components that won’t have him underfoot or vice versa. Oh, well.

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Tomorrow morning, I’ll orchestrate a video conference with several siblings. I look forward to another engagement, despite the fact that it will not be in person. Such is life. “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometime, you will find, you get what you need.”

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Do all people long to be better humans? Does everyone recognize how far from perfect they are, how deeply flawed? Am I the only one who looks in the mirror and sees a patchwork of cracks that can be repaired only by starting over with new glass and a fresher image to reflect? That may be the wrong way to look at oneself, but I think it may be the only honest way. Seeing and feeling and knowing where the flaws are seems more honorable and genuine than denying those faults or trying to conceal them with strips of artificial personality. But concealing them may correspond to an attempt to eliminate them; so, maybe hiding them is not dishonest, just hopeful. And forgiving oneself for possessing them is said to be a requisite first step for eliminating them. But how much forgiveness is each of us due? At what point must be recognize that forgiving ourselves is like a “get out of jail free” card? If all we need to do to “atone for our sins” is to recognize and forgive them, what’s the motivation to keep them at bay? Or, perhaps, the way to change our perceptions of ourselves is to accept the argument that says “if you are flawed or broken, what does that say about me and my embrace of you as you are?” No, that seems more like the style of an enforcer  trying to strong-arm a person into coming around to his point of view. It’s hard to say what might bring a high-polish shine to a rough stone. Maybe a high-polish shine always is artificial. Maybe cracks and rough surfaces represent the natural order. Maybe attempts to improve one’s humanity are destined to bring flaws into more intense focus, calling attention to them instead of correcting or concealing them. Maybe our attempts to “fix” our core selves are just as vain as trying to “fix” the way we look.

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Enough internal examination for today. Time to get another cup of coffee and take on the universe.

I awaken early and steal into the kitchen, careful to minimize any sounds that might jolt the world around me out of its slumber. Mornings should be quiet, peaceful, serene.

For the forty-some-odd years I spent with my late wife, I took care to avoid making noise that would disturb her when she was sleeping. My normal habits—going to bed after she went to sleep and arising the next day before she did—could have been irritating and distracting, but I took great care to let her sleep in peace. It’s a practice I continued when she was in the hospital and in rehabilitation centers; even when I was alone, I crept around the house, careful to avoid noise and light that might have awakened her. I still do, though the world has changed for me. Now, I try to protect someone else from unnecessary light and sound.

Some mornings, like this one, I dwell on how important it was, and is, that my early morning habits not intrude on people who should not suffer my moody recollections. Some mornings I want to scream at the world. I want to slam pots and pans on the granite counter and break glasses in the sink. I want to howl, as if that might release the pent-up anger and pain that resides deep in me like a permanent burning ember, searing my gut. There’s nothing to be done, though, to release those scorching, scalding emotions. Only time can do that; and maybe time is not even powerful enough to completely erase them.

So I hold onto myself; I refuse to let the shouts and screams and howls escape from me, because mornings should be quiet, peaceful, serene. Somehow, I will hold those noises inside. The only evidence of the emotions that clamor to be released on the world are tears that stream down my face. Even those will be dry before morning light bathes darkness and sends it away for another night. And the day will progress as usual. It will unfold as if the howls and screams and tears and rage against something unknown were just imaginary beasts that died and disappeared when the sun rose.

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The good news is that my brother, who has been in hospital ICU and cardiac intensive care units for several days, is out of the hospital. The catheterization and implantation of a pacemaker went well and he is feeling good. I’ll arrange for a video call with all my siblings and spouses/partners for Saturday so we can celebrate. Though we can’t be together physically, we can all join in to celebrate electronically. We all should celebrate one anothers’ presence on a regular basis.  When I say “we,” I mean the collective “we.” As in all people. Life is too short to allow celebrations to wait; they should take place every day.

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My life is improving with each passing day, thanks to my IC. She provides motivation for me to get on about the work of making this house as livable as possible. Today, a handyman will come over; I will give him a long list of projects to tackle. He only has two free days, so he will not get to everything right away, but he will make a nice dent in projects that I have put off for far too long. Some are minor, almost unnoticeable. Others will dramatically change the environment of the house for the better. I’ve just been lazy and too frugal and unsure of whether I wanted to invest in a place I might leave soon. Her motivation has let me break through those obstacles; whether we leave it or not, we’ll make it a better place for ourselves or someone else.

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Friday afternoon, a small cadre of close friends will gather at my house again to celebrate being alive. I will again be the only male in the mix; I will be more than happy to be in the minority—I will be delighted. Have I ever mentioned that I enjoy the company of women? Well, of course I have. My IC enjoys the company of women, too, but she says she is just as likely to appreciate the company of men. It’s interesting, I think, that men’s and women’s intellects and emotions are fed and soothed in different ways. If I were more energetic, I might explore the literature about the psychology of male and female emotional triggers to learn what has been measured and what theories have been hatched about the impact of gender on emotional attachments. Or something like that. I’m still intrigued by psychology. I still wonder whether nature or nurture or something entirely different directs our tendency toward establishing emotional attachments. When, if ever, will humans learn enough about one another to actually understand why we behave and feel the way we do? Odd, isn’t it, how a casual mention of a female-dominated gathering evolved into an exploration of psychological differences between the sexes? One of the reasons I think I tend to gravitate toward women in social settings is that the topic I’ve just mentioned is much more likely to catch fire in such settings, generating conversation and ideas. In a male-dominated setting, the topic might be more likely to elicit yawns or quizzical stares than conversations. Or am I being bigoted in the extreme by saying such a thing?

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I’ve returned from taking a small, fluffy dog for a walk, leading to his morning poop. Upon our return to the house, I rewarded him for his actions by giving him four tiny dog-treats. He seems to absolutely love the little crunchy snacks. I would happily feed him the little treats for hours and I’m sure he would eat them, but that would no doubt upset his tiny-dog-digestive system, so he’s limited to four at a time, with many hours in between. He’s gotten used to the wait. He is a very patient, friendly (but not overly so) dog. Exactly what I was hoping for when I was in the market for a dog. Alas, he’s getting well along in dog-years. Of course, I’m getting well along in human-years, too.

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Look for your naked photograph on billboards in your neighborhood. Forgive the quality of the image; I had to shoot it through sheer curtains or an early morning fog.

A a small squadron of brown pelicans glides inches above the water, their reflected images so close to touching their bodies that their movements seem perfectly choreographed. As the birds seek their early morning breakfast, an occasional splash of a fish breaking the surface disturbs the glassy bay, sending gentle ripples across the still water.

I remember that scene. Or, rather, those scenes. I saw scenes like that—with those birds and their brethren—dozens, if not hundreds, of times when I was a kid and, later, when I was a young adult. Those quiet moments when the glowing morning sky and the water seemed to meld into one helped shape who I would become. Who I am, even now, I suppose. My experiences on the Texas coast imprinted on me.

Fifty years after leaving the water’s edge, I still miss the sounds and odors of the salt water coast. There’s something about early mornings on the coast that can’t be replicated anywhere else. Humidity, as thick as syrup and carrying the unforgettable aroma of salt water and creatures who live along the shoreline, was not oppressive back then. It was the natural way of the world when I was a child. I’ve long since forgotten exactly how to bait the hooks and cast the lines, but the sights and sounds and smells of the coast remain embedded in my memory. I don’t know why, but lately I long for those sensory experiences. I crave them, I think, the way an addict craves drugs. There’s a need deep inside me that nothing but time, alone, on a salty coastline can fill. No, not alone. I want privacy, not isolation. The privacy of sharing—with good friends and the woman I love—the deep connection I feel for the shoreline. If all goes according to plan, I will feel that deep connection in early November and will share it with people who matter to me. That’s when I will join people I consider members of my “tribe” as we make the trek to Galveston and experience the coast the way it’s meant to be experienced. Not as tourists, but as appreciative explorers. I can hardly wait.

The coast has changed, of course, since I was a kid. South Texas beaches are no longer empty, pristine places. Condominium projects and chain restaurants and convenience stores have invaded both the northern and southern tips of Padre Island, where I spent time as a teenager. Even the clay cliffs a short walk from my parents’ last Corpus Christi house have disappeared, replaced by sloping, grassy entrances to a manicured city park. The natural order of casual waterfront life has morphed into a more formal environment in which appearance counts for more than experience. But there remain places, I am sure, hidden from developers and overactive city planners and the like, that will recall the days of pure enjoyment of the way things were. I hope so, anyway.

For some inexplicable reason, I feel deeply sad this morning at the realization that I simply gave up on the coast so very long ago. Without giving it a second thought, I abandoned the coast and all the memories it had packed into my brain. The allure of bigger cities and their amenities seemed so much more appealing, then, than the charm of quiet isolation and the shoreline smell of a sandy beach. I did not realize, then, that much of the attraction of a desolate beach was the desolation; that the seduction of the seaside was as much its lack of “attractions” as its physical beauty. Barnacle-crusted boats and piers attached to the seabed with smelly, seaweed-laden posts were—and remain so in memory, at least—so incredibly appealing. They were part of the fascinating appeal of the water’s edge.  I gave it all up for something; I just don’t recall exactly what replaced my childhood.

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I may need some time to write and remember things that have long since escaped by porous brain. I’ve forgotten so much; I’d hate to forget the rest without writing it down. Documenting one’s recollections can be an important contribution to the future, if only people can be persuaded to read the drivel that spills from the memories of the aging and the old.  Most people seem to prefer fiction to fact; I think I’m among them. Reality is too harsh and glaring and painful. Life is more tolerable when we can manipulate its effects on our minds and bodies. “Tolerable.” We should embrace life, but we don’t always value it as much as we should. It is all we have, yet we tend to take it for granted, as if it will always be available to us, to do with what we will. We know otherwise, of course, but we sometimes choose to behave as if it is limitless. Yet our actions sometimes suggest we recognize just how important it is. When we hug one another, I think that’s a tacit acknowledgement of appreciation and value that we might choose not to (or my be too embarrassed to) openly express in words. So we hug. Hugs should last longer and be stronger. They should be embraces that require external efforts by third parties to pull the parties apart.

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Here’s a hug for those who actually read my mental spillage, especially those who read it today. I would appreciate a hug in return. I could use one this morning, as I mourn a lifetime away from salt water and sand.

Nothing is impossible. The planet on which we live could split in half, hemorrhaging molten lava from its open wound and wrecking the stability we’ve come to expect from Earth’s chaotic behavior. The Perseid Meteor Shower might surprise us during its August 11-12 peak this year, raining down massive, burning boulders that night and bringing an end to Earth as we once knew it. Time itself could come to a sudden and violent end one day around dusk, leaving in its wake a void in which “before” and “after” and “noon” and “6:45 p.m.” are meaningless noises uttered by maniacs and the misguided. Everything is possible. Nothing is impossible. Humankind has as much control over the universe as an amoeba has over the orbital path of stars in this monstrous place we call the Milky Way. Any claims we make to power are contrivances based on lies. We do not act; we simply react. We respond to external stimuli in the same way moths respond to flames; we circle the allure of fire until we shrivel into dehydrated hulks.

None of this is meant to be judgmental, though. It is what it is. Life and its obverse control everything, including us.

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Last night, we listened to the Hot Springs Concert Band play music from a number of musicals. The Sound of Music, Phantom of the Opera, Music Man, etc., etc. It was an enjoyable evening; light and happy are two words that might best describe the evening. A friend who plays in the band was happy to see us in the audience and we were impressed that such a diverse gathering of potential misfits could produce such appealing sounds. Interesting, that.

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I’m not sure whether it was a dream or something I read; whatever it was raised questions: Why is diversity so valued? What does diversity “bring to the table?” “Why do we (progressives and liberals, at least) so value diversity?” At first, the questions angered me. “What the hell do you mean questioning the value of diversity?!” But, then, I realized the question is legitimate. And if we cannot individually and collectively give reasoned, valid responses, we should stop using the argument in favor of diversity as a progressive crutch. However, I can say with considerable confidence that diversity is, indeed, good. It exposes us to alternate realities. It shows us what we are, by showing what we are not. It strengthens the breadth and depth of our knowledge. It chastens us and causes us to realize ours is not necessarily the best “way.” Diversity reflects the planet on which we dwell and the universe we inhabit. If we asked what we value about diversity, we might as well ask “why can’t we be satisfied with iron, alone, instead of having to acquaint ourselves with all those other metallic elements?”

Yet the question deserves more than flippant answers. It deserves consideration. It merits a full and complete mental assessment, followed by an explanation that is more than sweet porridge and cold milk. We who value diversity should be able to express the reasons for our appreciation of the circumstance clearly and unequivocally. Maybe I’ll think more on the topic soon. Maybe I will attempt to articulate the arguments in favor of diversity…diversity as a general state of being, not necessarily diversity as simply an expression of skin tones and sexual conditions and position in the social strata.

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Why are so many subjects simply taboo? Why is it considered rude or at least impolite to discuss bathroom habits at the dining table? Why do we avoid asking questions about neighbors’ preferences for various sex positions? Why are questions about the circumstances leading up to, and the manner of, death of a friend or relative considered so utterly heartless and insensitive?

It’s not like we pretend the unspoken topics of conversation mean the subjects of avoided discussion do not take place. If we were as open and as outspoken as we sometimes think we are, we would have no trouble approaching a friend in church on a Sunday morning, saying, “Hello, Charlotte, I noticed you and Anders left the party early last night; did you go have sex? How was it? Would you mind describing the entire process to me, from foreplay to climax and beyond?” Admittedly, I would find those questions hard to ask, if for no other reason than I do not know a Charlotte, nor an Anders. But, really, why have we chosen to surround certain topics with secrecy and taboo? Sex, death, and bodily functions seem almost universally unmentionable. I just don’t understand. And even if I did, I would forget and I would ask the question over and over again. Because no explanation is a particularly good one. We might as well pick another topic to avoid at random: “There will be no mention of hair color or pocket knives in this house!”

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I just stumbled upon a “to-do” list I wrote several weeks ago. I was grateful to see so many items marked off, but disappointed that several remain, including: “explore options for sky room glass selection…” and “explore treadmills.” Also, “measure and order screen and spline for screened-in porch” remains undone.  There are others, though some have been intentionally delayed. But the ones that have simply gone undone are annoying. I get annoyed at myself pretty easily. And I stay peeved at me for quite a while. I’m still upset with myself for things I did or did not do in 2019 and 2020. I hold personal grudges against myself that only I can address through mediation. The best solution to this unpleasant set of circumstances is to complete the items on my to-do list and keep the list up to date. I will try that next time. Next time? There should be no next time.

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It’s happened again. I’ve spilled random words all over the screen and have failed to connect them in any coherent fashion. That’s the way I roll, of late. I’m afraid my thought processes are going off in uncharted territories.

My IC convinced me to return to watching Schitt’s Creek last night. She has seen the entire series multiple times; I have only seen season 1. But, last night, we watched part of season 2. I feel confident that, one of these days, I will become as much a fan as she is. But it hasn’t happened yet. I expect it any minute, though!

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The forecast for Friday, July 30, calls for the temperature to reach 102°F during the day, dropping to 79°F. Both those extremes should be considered crimes against humankind and wanton attacks on the natural order. Something must be done. We can’t live like that. Maybe a trip to the beach, or into a convenience store freezer, is in order.

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Okay, I recognize that this may sound sexist or misogynistic, but I hope it won’t and that it isn’t. So, here goes: When women (and men) dress themselves to appeal to their “target” demographic, are they effectively flaunting themselves and suggesting they are interested in sex? Imagine, for example, a woman—wearing a low-cut dress, short skirt, sparkling necklaces and bracelets, and smelling of alluring perfume—walks into a well-known meet-market bar. What is she after? Is she using her appearance and aroma as “bait?” And, what of the guy who goes into the same bar, wearing a tailored leather jacket, expensive woven shirt (thin enough material to reveal his six-pack abs), high-end wool slacks, and $500 boots? Is he, too, trolling for a little action?

No, some might suggest, both of them are only presenting themselves in an appealing light in the hope of attracting attention. Naw, I don’t think so! The end game, for both of them, is excitement. They’re throwing themselves in front of their “target market,” only to discover at some point that, in that environment, victims eat victims eat victims eat victims. They tell themselves otherwise and accept nods of agreement from others who refuse to entertain the idea that we were all engaged, in our younger days, as gigolos or paid escorts. Except in my case my bait did not work. I went home and sulked, alone. Poor, abandoned, destitute me. I should have filed for emotional reparations, made necessary by the Sexual Revolution. And I missed it.

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Today’s time-swallowing events include a visit with an investment advisor at her office, a visit by a pest control guy to my house (the spiders, scorpions, and other such creatures are becoming intrusive), and a foray into a local school to hear Broadway musical themes, played by the Hot Springs Concert Band. I should not complain about my time being swallowed. It’s my fault; I let it get away from me without even a weak effort to stop it. Some days, I’d like to switch obligations with someone else; someone with an exciting, richly rewarding life. But who?

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So, shall we return to the time when we wore masks whenever we might encounter groups of people? I had not been doing it, but I think I shall return to the “old days” of protecting oneself and others against dimwits who consider COVID-19 a political hoax. I remain amazed and appalled that these people can lace their own shoes.

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Yesterday, following church service (consisting of a film about how rural America might cope, politically, with climate change), I facilitated the post-service discussion. I suggested that, if people simply focus on desired outcomes versus the process of getting there, our disagreements might be much more readily resolved. A woman in the audience made known that she disagreed, vehemently. She made a strong case (making mine wither into dust on the floor), after which the real discussion began. I was able to stay out of it, for the most part. Which is as it should be.

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Listening requires hearing between the bands of soft, smooth noise that deliver words to our ears. Listening, without understanding (unless accompanied by investigative explorations of the barely-audible static above and below and to each side of the thoughts words prompt or deliver) is simply hearing. It’s those investigations that can yield either the zenith of pleasure or the most excruciating pain. You have to be willing to laugh and cry and feel, louder and deeper than the sea, if you want to be a listener. The potential for pleasure makes listening for an impossible-to-reject siren’s song one’s purpose in the presence of noise.

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Protests against mandatory vaccinations against COVID-19, by French healthcare workers, have given me reason to become yet more confused. Their position is that the vaccines may not have been given adequate time in trials, among other easily defensible arguments. But one argument that exists only as an insistent chant on a sign got me thinking. Translated, it says “My body, my choice.”

Immediately, my argument commences: “No, not your choice, not when your idiotic decision puts other lives at risk!” I then begin to think about the arguments for and against a woman’s right to control her body, i.e., get an abortion. My argument has to include insistence that the fetus is not a person or is not being injured (in legal terms) by the action. But there, hidden in plain view, is the core of the argument: when life begins. By then, I’m still angry at the French healthcare workers, whose decisions have the potential of harming or killing thousands. Not true, I say, of the mother who aborts a fetus. And the problem’s scope becomes even more visible as we hear a response: “What you call a ‘fetus’ we call a living baby.” Some problems arise from such deep-seated and utterly opposite beliefs that we have almost no chance of resolving them.

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Once again today, I woke up much earlier than planned or expected. I was out of bed around 4, or maybe it was 4:30. At any rate, it was quite early. My energy level is not dependable, but this morning I felt fairly energetic for a while. I could have emptied the dishwasher and gotten more “minor” tasks done, except I did not want to wake anyone. So I sat, reading and writing and mulling over matters of life. Some of the matters of life are too difficult to address with mulling or writing; and reading can amplify them. Some days, I truly wish short-span, fully-recoverable, self-induced amnesia were available on demand

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I may not have told you, lately, that I love you. Well, I do. Yes, you. You know you’re the one, don’t you? Well, yes. And of course there are others. All of you, though, are magnificent in so many ways. You make others’ lives livable, enjoyable, fulfilling! Consequently, you’re over-the-moon-happy with every aspect of life that’s eligible to love. And you’re tolerant of those other elements of life on earth that feel like one is sleeping on a rocky matt without even a sheet. You take what comes and deal with it, no matter how difficult. I admire that about humanity. At least when that trait is visible.

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Enough of this for the day. I hope I begin writing more substance in the near-term. Enough of “me.” More of “someone else” is in order.

It is not only possible, but advisable, to begin each day with at least a modest appreciation for awaking from sleep. Acknowledging that good fortune (and it is good fortune) can trigger an ability to withstand the slings and arrows of wandering among the living and the living dead. The living will be at least moderately pleasant and the living dead will be tolerable. At least the latter may cause forgivable fantasies of doing unthinkably bad things to creatures some folks mistake for people.

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Some uplifting, soul-stroking poetry would be in order this morning. Something that would cause readers and/or listeners to tear-up and consider their beautiful smallness in this enormously complex and dangerous world. But, instead, I’m writing depressing, soul-crushing prose that promises to cause avalanches and earthquakes and tornadoes and monstrously devastating hurricanes; all this during horrible ice storms and devastating droughts.  My poetry gadget is out of whack. That’s a sucky way to start the beginning of a week filled with obligations and consternations.

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Awake since 4:30, I arose alert and alive and ready to jump into the day. After having been awake and writing for a while, I feel worn and tired and lethargic. I want to sleep, but it’s almost 7 now and the world is calling on me to behave as if I were awake. I keep falling asleep at the keyboard, a sure sign that I have a bad case of narcolepsy. The cure doesn’t exist, but a number of treatment options exist.

As I write my words here, I wonder how many people might stumble upon this blog and mistakenly believe every word I’ve written. Or believe my  descriptions of life or my experiences are one hundred percent accurate. Or overlook the that that I get my kicks in ways many people would find offensive in the extreme. Such is life.

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My IC and I both wish to initiate a healthier lifestyle; better food choices, more exercise, and a few related things. One of the prospective behavioral changes involves cutting back on snacks and “junk” foods and cutting back on (or cutting out) alcohol for a time while our bodies get reacquainted with the “Mediterranean diet” or “Mediterranean lifestyle” or whatever it is that make us feel and look great.

The personality I’ve worked so hard to develop all these almost countless years is considering rebellion, though, because I’ve been trying to force it to accommodate my own self-imposed deadline. That deadline can be arbitrary and selected without any thought being given to whether the date is “ordered” properly in my very anal way of living certain aspects of my life. For example, I need to start new “improvement” projects, whether of a  personal nature or involving major change in the physical environment. So, my next self-improvement engagement will commence on August 1. In the interim, I will be just as wanton and reckless as usual. But on that date and moving forward for an undetermined but necessary timeframe, I will adjust myself with an eye toward meeting as as-yet-undefined objective.  Clear? August 1. Wait for it.

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My day will again be split asunder by my obligations to the church. Minor obligations, but obligations, nonetheless. It is unfair of me to even consider being surly in the face of willingly-accepted obligations. It is not right for me to feel even the slightest resentment of doing what I’m doing. The difference between right and wrong can be as simple as curing an errant thought.

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Shutting off the pipeline of grief becomes possible after awhile. It’s simply a matter of twisting oneself a little, like turning a faucet handle. And then the flow of grief stops or, at worst, drops to a trickle. Grief becomes tolerable and a return to a normal life becomes both appealing and achievable. But the washer that keeps the faucet handle supple and productive becomes rigid after a while; some days, when it’s turned a bit, the leak that may or may not have existed before becomes apparent. That’s the time to tend to it; replace the washer with freshly-minted memories. Grief never dies.

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It is too easy to devote oneself to making changes in oneself to ensure a proper “fit” in a relationship. That is easy because it doesn’t involve persuasion; it involves internalization and enforcement of external expectations. Persuasion is much harder, but more likely to be permanent and gratefully accepted. Persuasion encounters reasons to reject making changes in oneself and, instead, insist on someone else making the changes. But it’s possible that no change is necessary. It’s possible that the perfect “fit” already exists. It’s possible one’s partner is perfect, thus acknowledging to oneself of one’s responsibility to correct the imperfections and make necessary change. The possibility exists that both partners in a relationship need only acknowledge their perfection to one another, thus bypassing any need for assessment.

Give and take, in bite-sized pieces, results in almost imperceptible changes that bring about near-perfection. That’s the way to look at the world of wonderful adjustments; not as defeats in a war-time battle, but as the spoils of a beautiful peace.

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Last night, after a day that involved a last lunch stop at SqzBx Pizza and Brewery in Hot Springs, we watched The Dig, a historical fiction novel of the same name, which ostensibly “which reimagines the events of the 1939 excavation of Sutton Hoo.” Sutton Hoo, for anyone who, like me, has been so incredibly sheltered to have never before heard of it, was called “one of the most important archaeological discoveries of all time” by Sue Brunning, Curator of the Early Medieval European Insular Collections at the British Museum. The role of Basil Brown, the archeologist who found it and started the dig, was largely dismissed and ignored until many years after the 1939 find. At any rate, the film: It lasts about an hour and a half. Both audiences and critics have found it to be a decent film, if a bit slow going. I agree. Its overall rating by Rotten Tomatoes is 87%, with the audience at 78%. Watch it if you like. I cannot force you to watch it nor prevent you from doing it. You’re on your own.

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The mind that occupies my skull is experiencing technical difficulties this morning. It is bouncing aimlessly off walls, some of which do not even exist. My mind sends signals to the universe, only to have the universe reject them as undeliverable. I try to leave a message and the recording says the box is full, as if my fifteen second message is too long to fit into the storage device that holds more than twenty-four billions messages, many of which last seven to twenty minutes. You may have guessed; none of this is true. Why should it be?

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The first person who comments about this post will be eligible to receive enormously meaningful rewards from me. The rest will be pictured naked on billboards spread all around downtown Hot Springs.

Our choices are limited. We can accept our lot in life as it is, work to change it for the better if there’s room for improvement, or reject it outright and refuse to attempt to do anything to change it, suffering the consequences without taking steps to change them. There may be a few more, but those cover most of them, I think. I would be well-served to remember that those, by and large, are what we can do with the lives we have. Obviously, life is not quite that simple; but only because we insist on believing in and/or hoping for the utopia we know does not exist. Those thoughts bring to mind this quotation from my little black book of Zen quotations:

Beneath, the mountain stream flows
On and on without end.
If one’s Zen mind is like this
Seeing into one’s own nature
cannot be far off.

~ Hakuin ~

The connection to what I have written may not be entirely obvious, but when I think of the two concepts from different perspectives, they come around to meaning the same thing in ways that words cannot adequately explain. Even though I am in love with words and language and meaning, words cannot always do what art and abstract thought and inexplicable emotions can do.
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My IC and I staffed volunteer roles at last night’s fundraising dinner/silent auction for the Democratic Club of Hot Springs Village. My role was meager; hers was more involved, processing payments for late registrants and silent auction bid winners. I placed one bid, before the crowds arrived, on an enormous and truly gorgeous metal container. My bid, $75, exceeded the suggested “value” of the item by $15. Almost immediately, it was doubled by someone who wanted it even more than I. Then, after another few offers, the bidding stopped at $250. Still a bargain, in my book. The metal container was hand-crafted somewhere in the middle east, probably in Saudi Arabia, at least a few decades ago. I asked the winning bidder if I could come visit or whether we could share joint custody of the piece; the said I could come visit from time to time. Ach! In fact, I have no place to put the enormous piece of  practical art. But I would have made room, somehow. My IC, however, was the successful and sole bidder on a beautiful, framed piece of artwork; a lovely batik image of irises. The question, now, is where it will hang.

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My hospitalized brother called me yesterday while I was on the way to a pharmacy in Benton. He confirmed what I had heard; that the doctors plan to wait until blood thinner in his system has dissipated so the risk of unintentional bleeding is reduced during the implantation of a pacemaker. He expected to be transferred from the regular ICU to the cardiac ICU as soon as space is available in cardiac. There, he will wait until Tuesday for the procedure; he hopes he will be released from the hospital on Wednesday. He says he does not anticipate needing any assistance from a caregiver when he is released. I hope that’s verified before too much time passes. At any rate, the news is good and the prognosis sounds just fine.

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Health issues abound for my IC’s dog. His heart murmur is bad and his time probably is limited. Yesterday, while she was at the lake with her swimming friends, he pooped repeatedly at her house. Then, after she returned here, he did it again. Last night, on our return from our volunteer roles at the Democratic Club dinner and silent auction, he did it again. (We had left him in rooms with hardwood floors, but he did his thing…on a large throw rug…when got back home.) He spent the night isolated behind the doors of the master bathroom and the laundry room. He was left in doggy comfort with his bed, his toys, and a towel on top of a large, soft bath matt. I have not opened the door yet this morning to see whether he left any more gifts overnight. Poor pup! My IC walked him a bit last night after we returned; during the walk he either injured his left hind leg or got a thorn or some such ugliness. We could not find what was wrong; my IC will take him in for a veterinary visit today. LATE NEWS: The dog is happy, alert, and not limping this morning. He left no gifts overnight and seemed just as chipper as ever when he and my IC left for a walk a bit ago. I hope he remains happy and healthy for a good while longer.

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I am worried that stubborn, misinformed, and/or stupid people who refuse to be vaccinated against COVID-19 will dramatically extend the pandemic and may well make it much worse. Already, the numbers are spiking again in many places, including Arkansas, where something like one-third of the state’s population has been vaccinated. Two-thirds of my fellow citizens have opted to believe conspiracy theorists and political monsters over qualified medical professionals and epidemiologists whose lives have been dedicated to learning about such things as COVID-19 and how its spread can be mitigated or, possibly, completely stopped. I am not only not proud of the majority of Arkansans, I am deeply ashamed of and embarrassed by them.

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Open expressions of love, the kind of love for our fellow humans we gladly reveal to the world, sometimes hide something deeper and more intimate but potentially awkward. Sometimes, we may be unable to articulate that deeper feeling, either for lack of the words or out of concern that it could be rejected. Or it could be viewed as inappropriate in the wider culture—or in the narrow slices of culture that define our lives. It is within these little woven ribbons of emotional connection that we allow ourselves to complicate the world in which we live. If everyone accepted and appreciated and endorsed all expressions of love of whatever kind an regardless of how they were expressed, we might all be happier. But that will never happen. While I acknowledge, intellectually, the value and desirability of the concept, emotionally I would be utterly unable and unwilling to accept it. I am—and I think most of us are—too emotionally brittle and lack the self-assurance to accept it.

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The day is off to a good start, over all. I am ready to conquer the world and the sum of my fears. Whether readiness will translate into success remains to be seen. More coffee and some sustenance may propel me toward good things. I’ll try them.

I learned last night that the procedure to give my brother a pacemaker on an emergency basis has been delayed due to a low platelet count, which could cause uncontrollable bleeding during the procedure. He is in ICU, where he is expected to stay for a few more days to address the platelet count before the procedure is done. At the moment, he is being told he may be in ICU until (or beyond) Tuesday. While you want to be in the ICU when constant, critical care is important to your comfort and health and survival, it’s not an enjoyable place to be.

My wife’s time in ICU last year was hard on her, if for no other reason than the fact she had little interaction with the outside world except for doctors and nurses. I was able to be with her some of the time, but she was either asleep or unable to focus her attention on me for much of the time.  Another brother’s time in ICU about three years ago was trying on him, though it triggered some laughter, as well. His hallucinations combined actual interactions with nurses and doctors with an overactive imagination tinged with a little paranoia and distrust of the anesthesiologists responsible for certain aspects of his care. Despite bits of humor and sleep that minimized periods of patient concerns, though, it was a highly stressful time for everyone. I suspect my brother who’s now in the hospital is feeling the same sort of stress. And I’m the sort of person who tends to feel it by proxy. Unfortunately, I can do nothing to minimize it for any of us so affected. Time and the actual experience are the only ways to deal with it.

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Last night, our trivia team came in second (just one point behind the winning team). That was a semi-happy experience. That success capped off a day that began with breakfast with the church men’s group, followed by a visit to the urgent care clinic at the west gate of the Village. There, I was given a shot (steroid) as a means of reducing the pain in my joints, especially my left elbow. I left with a prescription for another steroid for the same purpose (and as a possible remedy to my constant wheezing) and a prescription that might also work on the wheezing issue. I think the combination of drugs may have worked. The trivia almost-championship might have boosted my mood a touch, but the evidence this morning suggests its boost was very, very modest if, indeed, it helped at all.

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When I woke up a hour or so ago (around 3:30), my thoughts swirled around the idea that I might feel much happier, freer, and better able to enjoy the experience of life if I disposed of virtually everything I own: house, the vast majority of its furnishings, most of my clothes, etc. If I could withdraw from the responsibilities I’ve willingly taken on and escape the obligations of homeownership and organizational memberships and the like, I might feel the burdens of social constraints and commitments lift like fog.

These feelings are nothing new; they have come on me with some regularity for years. I’ve never acted on them by shedding ownerships and duties and contractual bonds or promises, of course. But I have never been able to completely erase them from my psyche. Part of the reason I cannot simply make my obligations simply disappear is that I have emotional ties to so many people. While sometimes those ties can feel like cables binding me to anchors, I am unwilling to sever them. Doing so, I think, would reveal that pure freedom is unbearably, intolerably lonely. The unrestrained opportunities afforded by pure freedom would come with different forms of pain, mitigated only by rushing to regain abandoned ties and commitments. Have I written about Catch-22 lately? I know the concept has been rattling around in my head a LOT.

There is no pure enjoyment. No joy that comes without strings or ties or cables. One must ALWAYS make choices and choices require making decisions about the relative value to oneself of multiple options. The freedom that comes from abandoning commitments or obligations is accompanied by the heartache of isolation or solitude. My IC and I have spoken about making choices that might give us access to some of the things we desire and appreciate, like walkable access to pubs and entertainment and shopping and so forth. Those choices, though, would come with population density (and its potential crime) and noise and concrete. And they would involve fewer trees fewer chances to see wildlife and otherwise experience the beauty of nature. And there’s the matter of whether these places might involve too much ice and snow in winter and too much heat and humidity in summer.

Utopia does not exist. But that’s what we’re after, isn’t it? We want perfect weather, perfect social conditions, perfect political and economic structures, perfect health, perfect friends and families and lovers, and perfect lifetimes. We want everything to be just right. We tell ourselves that perfection would be boring, though, so we justify to ourselves the fact that we tolerate imperfection. But that tolerance may be just a way to accept a reality we do not now, nor never did, want. So we keep trying to correct the imperfections, with the aim of achieving the unachievable. We learn to accept the unacceptable and try not to mourn what’s missing from our lives. We attempt to appreciate the challenges and the defeats we encounter in our experiences, deceiving ourselves into thinking those blunders and aberrations are just stepping stones along the way toward perfection. I suppose the only other choice would be to permit ourselves to accept the truth, thereby plunging into an abyss of depression and inescapable madness.

It’s almost 5:15 and I’m not making much headway toward achieving a positive attitude this morning. The empty coffee cup beside me, only the dregs visible at the bottom of the vessel, has done no good. I don’t know that I’m going to do much more good by drinking another cup, but I will do it, nevertheless. A much earlier attempt at coming out of this grey frame of mind, by scanning the online news, was understandably and abysmal failure. Maybe chewing a gummy and ripping into a perfectly round “personal” watermelon will do the trick. I just may give those options a shot. I have nothing to lose and maybe a tad to gain.

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My ideals change from moment to moment. I do not know what I want or need. And I do not even know whether my wants and needs are relevant; it’s others’ wants and needs that matter in this world. If all of them (they, the others, people outside myself) have their needs met, maybe my needs and wants will fall into place. Maybe meeting my wants and needs relies exclusively on others’ needs and wants being met. Maybe, in fact, I only imagine what I want and need because of my disappointment that others’ requirements are being ignored by the world at large. And maybe I’ve lost my mind; maybe all these jumbled thoughts are evidence of my madness and my inability to cope with the world as it is.

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Didn’t I just say I was going to try a gummy, some more coffee, and some watermelon? What the hell am I continuing, then, banging on the keyboard?! Dimwit! I’m stopping, right now.

Reminders about life’s fragility poured into my consciousness yesterday. First, I learned that one of my brothers was advised to have a heart pacemaker installed on an emergency basis. Next, I was stunned and saddened to learn that the younger brother of a former sister-in-law (with whom I became close long after she and another brother divorced) is in home hospice in response to metastasized stage 4 lung cancer. Then, last night, I got a call informing me that, just days ago, a man who had been extremely active in the local writers’ club in years lost his battle with cancer; he was 79 when he died. Other reminders of mortality abound. My IC’s dog, a sweet little twelve-year-old shih tzu, was diagnosed not long ago with a heart murmur that, in all likelihood, will claim his life sometime before too much more time has passed.

All life is temporary, though in most cases we experience it as if it were just as long as the sun is bright. Life is all we know, yet in the context of time, it is so brief that it passes in much less than the blink of an eye. I like the concept of life as an opportunity to pursue the equivalent of heaven (as if there were such a thing) here on Earth. Today is all we have. We should milk every moment as if it were our last; because it very well may be. Life is precious. It is not only only all we know. It is all we have. Life is not measured by how many dollars or automobiles or houses or boats we accumulate. It is measured by how much joy we experience and how much we share.

Sentient beings are fortunate in having consciousness of ourselves and our surroundings. We feel an almost impossibly strong connection to the the world of which we are a part. Yet humans know life ends. The more intelligent among us latch onto life as our greatest gift; one that deserves our utmost respect and attention because when it ends, it is over.

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My IC made an enormous batch of macaroni and cheese yesterday. We took a sizable portion (enough for several meals, except for gluttons like me) to the next-door neighbors. The “he” of the couple experienced a mild stroke recently, but he seems almost his old self. When we delivered the M&C, he wanted us to sit and chat and drink, but we had to leave. We will visit them some time next week, when we will drink wine with them and enjoy munchies and conversation. The two of them are sharp and spry in spite of their advanced age (he is 92 or 94, I think) and they both enjoy “happy hour” as if they were sixty years younger. I like people like that—people for whom the pursuit of Earthly pleasures is among the purposes of our existence. I happen to agree with their perspective on the matter.

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My recent visit to my doctor’s office was something of a dud. I went in seeking solutions to insufficient amounts of restful sleep, arthritic pain in my joints (especially my left elbow), and continuing wheezing and stopped up sinuses. I saw the doctor’s nurse practitioner, who said she would refer me for a sleep study. She forgot to address the other two issues that I told her nurse assistant about when I was first weighed (and queried about the reason for my visit). And I was sufficiently surprised by the rapidity of the visit’s conclusion that I did not bring up the other two issues. As I was leaving, the nurse practitioner learned of a family emergency and rushed out. When I called back yesterday, hoping to be given prescriptions to alleviate my pain and my symptoms, I was told the NP was still out with a family emergency and no one else could prescribe anything. I was advised to go to the critical care clinic outside the west gate to ask for solace. Bah. I want a personal physician dedicated to my health and comfort. And while I’m wanting, I’d like perpetual good looks, a six-pack abdomen, and one hundred and seventy-three million dollars in tax-free cash. I promise I would be philanthropic and generous in the extreme. My elbow still hurts (though Motrin helps a little) and I wheeze like a two hundred year old man with allergies and emphysema. But I’m moderately alive. I suppose that should be enough. After all, haven’t I just compared life to heaven and said it was all we have? I should stop with the ingratitude and whining. Neither become me.

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Finally, we finished Bosch. And we started watching Knives Out. A friend sent me a link so I could watch the latest season of Unforgotten, but I haven’t started watching yet (but I am grateful for the link in the extreme and I want to do nice things for my friend in return).

It occurred to me that, until a few nights ago, I have watched virtually no television/film since the end of May. The TV has remained essentially dark and silent for all that time and I have been blissfully happy without it. Though I never watched it a LOT, I did tend to watch a segment or two of favorite seasons of TV series or short films; now, though, I seem to treat TV as entertainment of the last resort. Conversation and word games and such are at least as engaging. But, admittedly, television can be addictive if one is inclined to allow addiction in one’s life.

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I’ve decided I will start posting nude photographs of “lurking” visitors to this blog, soon. If we can’t engage in conversations through comments, at least I can trigger excited chatter through soft pornography, right? So, if you have been reading this blog but have not commented or otherwise engaged in online conversation with me (and other blog visitors), you can expect to see photos of yourself, full-on buck-naked color images, before long right here on your computer screen. Lest you think I’m saying this in jest, please note the fact that most of your computers are  equipped with cameras and I am equipped with a vivid imagination. Combine the two and you’ll realize that I may have taken snapshots of the way I envision you in the altogether.  Now, if that’s not enough to spur comments here on a regular basis, at least it will reveal the exhibitionists among you.

Yes, I realize that what you read her may not be sufficiently intriguing to merit comment. Still, a simple “I saw what you wrote and I find it deadly dull” will suffice. (Admittedly, such comments will cause me to weep and wail openly, but what the hell.)

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In about an hour, I will head out to breakfast with “the boys,” a group of old guys from church who have nothing better to do on Thursday mornings than listen to one another express themselves. Actually, that’s a pretty good reason to go have breakfast. Before I go, though, I will try to coax a small sleeping dog to go for a brief walk and do his business.  Time flies, and so much I. More bloggery at another time.