John Swinburn

Hurt feelings can cause emotions to get even more breakable. They do not become softer with use, they become brittle. It doesn’t matter whether the actions or omissions that caused the feelings to be scuffed were intentional or even legitimately hurtful. Hurt feelings are magnetic for more of the same. And the greater the number of real or perceived hurtful behaviors, the more delicate the emotions get. Psychological Catch-22. I’ve been there. It’s painful. It’s even more painful to watch it take place—or think it’s taking place—in someone else, someone you wish could just cast the feelings aside and start over. So, that’s a bothersome thought on my mind this morning. Witnessing someone experience pain that you can’t fix. Not a pleasant situation.

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I managed to drop an unopened bottle of wine onto a granite countertop last night, flooding the counter, the floor beneath it, and the “appliance garage” beneath the wine rack with pricey red wine and a million shards of glass. And when I began to pick up the pieces, I managed to insert a few slivers of glass into my left thumb. My allergy to even the slightest bit of pain kicked it, so I whined a little as I extracted glass from my flesh. And, then, I picked up broken glass for about ten minutes, after which I scooped up pieces of glass for the next ten minutes (times are approximate, estimated by a brain unhappy with its owner). I’m not even sure what I was doing to cause the wine bottle to drop. I doubt I got all the glass up. Or the wine. I suspect I will continue to encounter glass for weeks. And I will smell red wine in places where the odor of red wine is inappropriate. Like the drawer that houses aluminum foil and freezer wrap and such. Oh, well. It will be a memory, augmented by the senses.

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Two meal engagements are on the calendar today. Lunch with a couple of friends to chat about various and sundry things and dinner with a couple, just to re-connect after several months without communications between us. Before lunch (if I move quickly enough…I need to take a shower, shave, take care of a few “to-do” items, etc.), I’ll participate in a “spiritual practices” Zoom meeting. We’ll see about that. I allow myself to get too busy sometimes, but it’s busyness that I enjoy; except when there’s too much to do and not enough motivation to get it all done.

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My brain sometimes gets so scrambled that I cannot decide whether a thought represents a memory or just a wish. For example, I want someone to come visit me…did I already ask them, or is my intention to ask simply sitting idly in my head, awaiting action? Is that a sign of intellectual decline? Or have I allowed too many mundane things to fill up empty spaces in my skull?

It’s not just those scrambled bits and pieces, either. I allow myself to get distracted by matters large and small. Frequently, in fact, I will push aside important matters (filing taxes, paying bills, scheduling medical appointments) in favor of other things that are not necessarily “important” but are so much more appealing and attractive than the stuff that truly should command my attention. I suppose we’re all like that to some extent. But it’s not infrequent that I feel a little like a self-launching ping-pong ball, rushing from one thing to another, but not pausing long enough with any of them to feel like I’ve given it the attention it deserves. Like this morning’s post so far (and, almost certainly, as it moves forward for another paragraph or two); short bounces between a thousand paddles.

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I learned yesterday that the Brubeck Brothers Quartet will play live at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa next April 1. And I want to see them! I think it’s a “sign” that my interest in Decorah, Iowa should not take on immediate importance. Rather, I should wait for a while; take it slow. But I have put the concert on my calendar already, so the plan to see Decorah is in motion. Just not immediately. The way I learned about the concert date will be fodder for another blog post one day, along with other elements surrounding that happy accident. Well, it wasn’t an accident, but it was happy. More later. One day.

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I have so many things on my “to-do” list. Or things I keep forgetting to add to my  to-do list. Like getting my eyes checked and getting new glasses. Like getting painful little bump removed from my left foot (perhaps the third time removing the same painful little bump will be a charm). Like discarding my dead electric smoker. Like power-washing my deck and the front of my house. Like cleaning out my garage. Like…on and on and on. First, though, I think I’ll take a shower. Prepare to face the world head-on.

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One day soon, I’ll get back to writing something that matters and makes sense. For now, I’m just acting like my fingers are printer ink-heads; they need to be used, whether anything of consequence flows from them or not.

As I begin today’s blog post, it’s almost 1:30 a.m. I’m awake because I haven’t been to bed yet. Going to bed late is not always the result of some external influence. Nor is it always a symptom of some kind of psychological trauma. Sometimes, it’s “just because.” Maybe something good happened and you’re wired up and cannot imagine going to sleep yet. Or perhaps something is troubling your mind and you feel a need to sort out the issue before trying to sleep. Whatever the genesis of the matter, wakefulness in the wee hours is not necessarily the result of insomnia.

Insomnia, incidentally, is from the Latin insomnia (yes, the same word), which owes its genesis to another Latin word, insomnis, the combination of the Latin words in (not) and somnus (sleep).  Odd, that. The fact that a word we use today is the same word in Latin. So, when we speak of insomnia, we literally are speaking Latin.

To reiterate, though. I was awake at 1:30, not from insomnia, but from a different affliction. Affliction may be the wrong word; state of mind is probably better; longer than a single word, but more descriptive. My state of mind was and is one involving a sense of heightened awareness. As if my brain is receptive to every stimulus that comes its way. The sound of my breath. The way the air feels as it enters my lungs. The way the light emanating from beneath a lamp shade seems sharper, somehow, than the light from above. The way my fingers feel as they touch the keyboard. And my brain’s receptivity extends to emotions, as well. Every emotion that can arise in my brain has done so. During the last several hours, my positive emotions have reach a zenith, then scrambled to climb down that peak in an effort to avoid falling off of it. And that resulted in stumbles. Mental mistakes I associate with distraction.

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A little time in bed, but then actual insomnia takes over. I’m up again, but now it’s 3:00 a.m. I can’t sleep. My mind is racing. What’s my hurry in deciding whether or not to sell my house? How important is it for me to drive off to see Decorah, Iowa? Is it necessary for me to explore Guttenberg, Iowa, after all? Can a new me emerge right here in the forest? Can I be thinner, more active, more engaged, and a better person over all without changing houses and without leaving friends for the unknown? Are my attachments here real or are they wishful thinking?

It’s off subject, but it’s one of the thoughts vying for space in my brain at this hour; loneliness. After a while, loneliness begins to feel, if not comfortable, somewhat normal. That tender pain—the one that feels a little like the intense sadness of abandonment—weakens over time and becomes more tolerable. Loneliness starts to fit like it was tailor made. Like a bespoke garment. Bespoke is a British term that means custom-made or tailor-made. I picked it up years ago, probably from a novel, and I liked it. It somehow seems more direct and certain than “customized” or other such words.

Anyway, back to the off-topic of loneliness. When it is interrupted and replaced by its opposite—something akin to a loving embrace—it stays just under the surface, ready to emerge in an instant. When that occurs in full force, even temporarily, a person feels that awful raw pain again. I think loneliness causes wounds to the psyche that never fully heal. Scars may cover them and make them less visible, but the wounds are there. And a person becomes increasingly susceptible to a sense that loneliness could be thrust upon him at any moment, so he better be ready for it. But he never is.

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I tried sleeping again and it worked. For reasons that make me question my sanity, I set my alarm clock for 6:45 before I went back to bed. I was sound asleep when the noise roused me out of bed. Immediately, I realized I had not taken in the hummingbird feeders last night. I looked outside and saw that one of them was in place. Where the other should have been, only the hanger remained. The bloody raccoons came back! When I feel so inclined, I will climb down the steep hillside in an attempt to retrieve the feeder, hoping it is not broken.

The bird feeder I purchased yesterday remains where I hung it. I have seen no evidence of birds around it yet, but I’m growing in patience, so I’ll wait. It may just take time. A friend recommended a specific birdseed that has been treated with herbs or spices that make the seeds seem too hot to forest animals but that do not impact bird behavior. We’ll see.

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My calendar today is relatively free. I need only to go buy a bottle of cabernet sauvignon to take to a gathering of wine aficionados on Friday. And I need to decide what I’ll make for hors d’oeuvres to accompany the wine. Everyone (or every couple) will bring a bottle of wine and something tasty; everyone will share. It’s a relatively small group, but a comfortable one. I look forward to that.

In addition to wine shopping, I should do any number of things that need doing around the house. Whether I do any of them remains to be seen. My mood shifts from elated to deflated and back again this morning. Perhaps it’s the lack of sleep. I am not sure what time I went back to bed, but I suspect it was around 4:00 or 4:30.  And it’s only just after 8:00 now. Well, I had slivers of sleep that, together, add up to a reasonable amount, I think. I slid off my calendar again, didn’t I? Evidence of a need for sleep. But I will not nap. Because I might get a phone call from someone I’m eager to speak with. Or American Express National Bank my return my call from last Friday. Or something else might occur that I might miss if I were napping. So I will not nap. I’ll save that for the wee hours of tomorrow morning.

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It is not too early for me to “date” or “court” or “go out with” women again. Though it has been less than six months since her death, my wife was kept away from me for most of the preceding five months. So it’s more like just under eleven months now that she has been inaccessible or gone from me.  Soon, it will be a year. That’s a long time. But I’m not the only one “out there” who’s lonely. Others cope with being alone far better than I. There’s a difference, of course, between being alone and being lonely. I can handle being alone pretty damn well. Loneliness, though, is much harder. Because just as that empty space that causes loneliness can get filled, it can be emptied. That very fact puts one on guard.

Cripes! I can’t keep on topic long enough to finish a paragraph! Back to my wandering thoughts. It’s not too early for me; other opinions to the contrary be damned. I’ll explore the world at my pace, on my timeline. It could take me years to find someone, or I could make a connection right away. In fact, I might already have met that connection. Who knows? Time will tell.

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Looking at next week’s calendar, I see all manner of appointments and commitments. I start the week with a PET scan, followed by an office visit with my oncologist. When I get home from that, a representative of the Hot Springs Sentinel-Record will come by to deliver an iPad. My subscription to the newspaper makes me eligible to get an iPad from which I can read the newspaper. Though I only signed up for a month (or six?), they want me to get used to it and to feel compelled to re-subscribe so I can keep the iPad. I already have an iPad. Though it’s well over ten years old, it still works. The following day I have an appointment to have my teeth cleaned. It seems I’m there almost monthly; my teeth should sparkle like diamonds. They should be as white as…something or other. The following day, I have an appointment to see a counselor; I decided I might need a little professional assistance in working through some emotional things before they become unmanageable. I have other commitments the rest of the week. And I have various appointments, etc. the following week. Ach! The week of July 4 looks like the first week that’s entirely open (except for some things I can easily change or ignore).

When a person really want to, though, he can change his schedule. He can empty his schedule for good reason or no reason at all. Self determination. That’s it. If a meritorious reason presents itself, I can change my schedule or tear it up completely. Freedom. That’s such a fortunate state to be in.

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How can it be 9:00 a.m. already? That’s what one gets when one stay up late and doesn’t get but three hours or so of sleep. I could easily fall asleep at this desk, but I would curse myself later for the pains in my neck, back, and so forth. Enough writing for now.

The weather can take at least partial credit for my cheery mood yesterday morning. The mood could have continued with unabated joy, had the temperature ever reached its forecast high. But the rising temperatures seemed to stall around 67°F around 3 p.m., which is a bit chilly for my taste. Especially in late May. It edged up a tad by 5:00 p.m. to 70°F; better, but not quite the perfection I was hoping to experience.

I feel confident I will wish for cool late May temperatures when the oppressive weather of July and August makes breathing just as difficult as it is uncomfortable. Such is life. I will adjust and cope as necessary. With good fortune, I’ll be able to wander off in search of more appealing weather, at least on occasion, when sweltering summer temperatures spring upon us, fangs exposed.

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A few weeks ago, as I mused with my fingers about life, I wrote a couple of short sentences (an oxymoron when it comes to my writing) that stuck with me: “My thought process has to be my own. I have to reach a conclusion by myself; no one else to congratulate, no one else to blame.” The matter on my mind at the time was the  choice between a “place in the country” and hitting the road alone in an RV. I had not yet made up my mind between the two. Regardless of which direction I might choose, I thought at the time, the choice was exclusively mine to make. And it remains so. Choices always come with consequences. And making choices between two options is sometimes confounded by the emergence of a third choice—a choice that seemed improbable, at best, or even impossible. But, then, there it is, suddenly staring you in the face—like the unexpected gift of a new puppy or discovering all six winning numbers on the lottery ticket—rendering all other options irrelevant. Life is marked with surprise after surprise after surprise. It’s best to accept that reality, rather than try to manipulate or control them. Hmm. These last several sentences read like hidden messages from a mystic. They are nothing of the sort; they simply are ruminations that pop up from time to time when the morning air is right and the sun is properly positioned in the sky.

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Just before I awoke this morning, I was in the midst of what may be the most bizarre dream I’ve ever had. It was so bizarre that I cannot even begin to adequately describe it. Let me say only this: it involved a series of impossible experiential puzzles in which visual clues transformed the presence of an object or a shape into something completely different. The only one I think I can describe in a way that MIGHT make sense is this:

At the top of a drawing of a rectangular box, a tiny fragment of the top line of the rectangle is missing from the rectangle. The missing fragment, just above the box, is bent into a meaningless shape. But looking carefully at the meaningless shape, it becomes apparent that, when viewed from a specific perspective in conjunction with the remainder of the rectangle, the whole rectangular drawing looks like a negative-space image of something completely different (for example, the top of the rectangle looks like an image of the entrance to stairs leading into a basemen). It’s too strange to attempt any more.

“You had to be there” is the only way to describe it, really. And that rectangular clue was one of literally dozens that appeared in the dream, all in a huge empty white field of space.

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The desire for of an object of one’s passion grows exponentially greater when one gets just a taste of the object, only to have it snatched away. Think of a desire for salty caramel ice cream. The ice cream store clerk gives you a little taste, sending your taste buds into shuddering ecstasy. You ask for a bowl.

“I’m sorry, that taste was the very last little bit we had,” the clerk says to you. Your hunger for that specific flavor of ice cream spikes.

“You must have another container of the stuff in a different freezer,” you say to the clerk.

“No, I’m afraid not. I probably shouldn’t have let you taste it, knowing what I know about how powerfully addictive it is.”

“What?! You knew I could not have any, yet you gave me a taste?! That is cruel! It is beyond cruel! You are a monster!”

You jump over the counter, pushing the clerk aside. “Tell me where the other container is hidden! Tell me or I’ll strangle you!”

“Sir! We have no more,” the clerk replies, the fear in her voice almost palpable. “Please leave. I don’t want trouble.”

“If you didn’t want trouble, you shouldn’t have teased me that way. You shouldn’t have ratcheted up my craving for salty caramel ice cream!”

You reach into your satchel, pulling out a collapsible guillotine. “This,” you point to the blade as the device self-assembles at the push of a button, “is your punishment for torturing me like that!”

It goes downhill from there, of course. Like most ice cream stores, this one has an emergency call switch to summon the police in just such an emergency. And, naturally, the clerk used it. In an instant, a S.W.A.T. team rushes through the front door. They disable the guillotine, wrap flex-cuff disposable zip-tie handcuffs around your wrists, and haul you away to a prison cell. Outside your cell, you witness guards scooping salty caramel ice cream into bowls, serving all the other inmates…all the inmates but you!

And so it goes with desire. It is dramatically amplified when you can have just a taste of something powerfully addictive; but no more than a taste. This message is brought to you by Blue Bell Creameries^TM and the International Tactical Team Officers Association.

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Eh. I think I’ll stop writing for a bit. Maybe I’ll come back later in the day to see if something meaningful has entered my mind. Something worthy of taking up the time of anyone stumbling upon this post (or the next one). Writing is an addiction, but it isn’t always a 24/7 addition. Sometimes, I need a little break to collect the millions of shards of broken mirrors that constitute my brain. I need time to sweep them into a dust bin, then melt the pieces of glass so I can begin anew with something stronger and more lasting. And so off I go to shower, shave, and begin the day again.

Unlike a day ago, I awoke later than normal this morning, having slept soundly. Any dreams I had were pleasant; thoughts that went through my mind overnight left me feeling good, as if I had made peace with a sometimes troublesome world.

The chill in the air this morning prompted me to pull on a favorite old t-shirt, but that wasn’t enough to satisfactorily warm me. So, I added a sweatshirt, warming me enough to feel at ease with what feels like an unseasonably cool late May morning. As I sip my first cup of coffee, I consider how good I will feel under a hot shower. That will wait for a while, though. First, I will ease into the day by acquainting myself with an unusually positive mood. And, then, I will see what the day holds. I had planned to get together today with my friend who’s an RV aficionado, but some troubling health issues with her dog put that on hold. I offered to accompany her to a veterinary ER in Little Rock if the dog needs that level of care, but I gather from an email I read this morning that probably won’t be necessary today; it may be a day or two from now, if at all. So, today belongs to me for the moment; I will behave accordingly.

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All sorts of things went through my mind before I went to bed last night, from taking a road trip to New Mexico to planning a trip to visit my brother and sister-in-law in Mexico in the not-too-distant future. But, unlike some of my travel fantasies of late, those ideas weren’t spurred by escapism. Instead, those thoughts sprang from desires to explore and discover. They arose from a desire for new experiences or for refreshing my experiences in new environments. It’s odd…waking from a good sleep—after an evening in which all sorts of exciting possibilities seemed to present themselves in my mind—makes the world seem more inviting. Friendlier. More exciting. Just a better place to be!

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I doubt it’s thunder I hear, though the barely audible rumbles sound like distant thunder. The sky offers no evidence that the atmosphere is angry or that the air is considering a revolt against the very cool morning air. But somewhere “out there” are noises that sound like Mother Nature either is perturbed or ate some dark grey clouds for breakfast. The faint sounds linger for several seconds before they dissolve into the background noise in and around the house: the buzzing electric motor of the refrigerator, incandescent light bulbs hissing suggestions that they are approaching the point of burning out, taps of woodpeckers that cannot differentiate wood siding from tree trunks. When sounds are too soft to identify but too loud to ignore, they become troublesome, as if one hears ghosts…or termites chewing on structural timbers that keep the house from crashing down into the crawl space below. No, that can’t be. My mood is too good at the moment to acknowledge any danger of dangerous termite infestations. I’ve recently had my annual termite inspection, anyway, so that thought should not even be permitted a temporary parking space in my head. The sounds could be imaginary, like the ones I thought I did not really hear several months ago. But those were not imaginary, though I thought they were. No, they were the sounds of blood being pumped through the veins and vessels near my ear drums. I determined the source of those sounds on my own, without any assistance from medical professionals. Some people may think I still need the help of psychological professionals to rid me of those noises. But I know otherwise. The sounds of blood coursing through one’s body is a little like hearing oneself think. But different. I cannot remember who told me, years ago, that Richard Nixon once said to someone, “We’re a lot alike, but in different ways.” That has always troubled me. It sounds too much like hearing blood being pumped under high pressure through “blood-pipes” in the body. A “blood-pipe” is a perfectly good term for the flexible carriers of blood through our bodies, isn’t it? Of course it is.

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Yesterday, I wrote about the powerful first kisses of youth. And I questioned whether the excitement of first kisses is an absurdity unavailable to those of a certain age. As I mull the question this morning, I am relatively certain excitement and desire are not reserved for the young. The young stumble into first kisses, not knowing what to expect or how to feel about them, whereas age and experience enable us to develop deep and abiding wisdom about how meaningful first kisses can be when we have left the ignorance of youth behind us. Yet, even knowing what we know about them, we are apt to be surprised—stunned—when we discover again how exciting and enriching they can be. This paragraph pretends to be based on age and experience, but it is just as likely that it is based on dreams and memories resurrected from the recollections of youth. We can wish and dream as we grow older, but our fantasies and fancies may be built upon recall that has been “repaired” by time and experience. That is to say, it might all be in our imagination; and it might be running away with us. I say, though, let it run!

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If I look in the mirror this morning, what will I see? Will I see a face that looks as happy as the mind behind it feels? Or will I see the same old face; possibly adjusted to accommodate a slight smile or a little grin? I suppose I’ll find out soon enough. Time to think more seriously about shaving and showering and otherwise preparing not only to face the day, but to seize it. Embrace my feelings about the day. Hold those feelings in my hands and embrace them. Be passionate. Always be passionate. Passion is what makes the day worth exploring. I read recently that one should approach each day as one might approach trying on a new pair of shoes. It would be pointless to try on a pair of shoes that one expects will be uncomfortable. The same is true of the day. Expect it to be good and comfortable and it probably will meet the expectation. Yes, I know, this sounds a little like naiveté and the power of positive thinking. So be it. What can it hurt?

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Good morning.

Here it is, 3:15 a.m. and I’ve been awake for more than twenty minutes. I can feel my eyelids attempting to reclaim the sleep of which they are being deprived, but the allure of sleep is insufficient, for now, to lead me back to bed. So, for at least a bit, I’ll try to empty my mind of what’s keeping me from enjoying sleep the way it should be enjoyed.

Forty-five minutes before my dinner guests were to arrive last night (yesterday afternoon, actually), I opened Facebook. There, right at the top, was a photo of my wife. She was smiling broadly, as she so often did. I could see the happiness in her eyes as she stood in front of a beautiful, brightly colored painting in the lobby of the Boutique Hôtel Cezanne in Aix-en-Provence, France. The photo was taken five years ago during the Road Scholar tour of the south of France we took with my sister. Despite the happiness of the image and the memories it triggered, seeing it prompted almost unstoppable waterworks and an outpouring of grief, the immense power of which I hoped might have begun to subside these past few months. I should have known better. I spent most of the next thirty minutes trying to regain enough emotional control to finish preparing dinner, as I recalled our experiences in Marseilles, Aix-en-Provence, Arles, Avignon, Cabrières-d’Avignon, Gordes, Nîmes, and dozens of other little towns and villages.

And, then, I spent the following fifteen minutes astounded and embarrassed at the emotions that followed; selfishly wishing for a warm hug from a loving woman who would hold me close and comfort me. The two emotions seemed—and still seem—so utterly at odds with one another. Grief, missing my wife with an enormous fervor, on one hand, and desiring the comforting embrace of another woman, on the other. What kind of demon processes those kinds of competing, opposite emotions at the same moment? Maybe it’s not an ugly, selfish, craven madness; maybe it’s normal or, at least, not thoroughly abnormal. No matter whether normal or monstrous, though, I am confident I will try to find a way to excuse it as simply an expression of grief. Isn’t it so very convenient that I do not need to condemn inexcusable flaws because grief provides a shelter for even the most egregious transgressions. Ach!

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I pulled myself together in ample time. The evening went without a hitch. In fact, last night’s dinner was pleasant and calming. My guests, a couple who are friends from another lifetime ago, enabled me to transform a guilt-ridden few moments into an evening filled with laughter and memories and genuine enjoyment. These friends, now retired, owned a very successful mystery shopping company and were active, as leaders, in one of the associations my company managed and served. We talked about conferences we attended together—in Moscow and Dubrovnik and so many other places. And we reminisced about other people whose company we enjoyed so much during our travels. Though we never completed the conversations, nor the ideas, we toyed with the possibility of hosting a “reunion” of sorts, right here in the Village. Though I do not miss association management, in general, I miss some of my client associations and the members to whom I became close.

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During a recent conversation with a friend from church, the possibility of international travel came up. That conversation has kept coming back to me, prompting me this morning to open my always-ready link to the Iceland Monitor. The first thing I noticed when I opened the link was an article discussing an unusual haze over Reykjavík. Here’s what the article had to say, explaining what what going on:

Meteorologist Eiríkur Örn Jóhannesson, at the Icelandic Met Office, explains the reason for the haze: “This is dust from the outwash plains around Markarfljót river, [South Iceland]. We’ve had strong southeasterly winds [since Wednesday], and it’s been very dry, so the sand is dry, which is why this exceeds what we’re used to.

“This appears as particle pollution at the Environment Agency stations,” he continues. “It is somewhat coarser than particle pollution from studded tires, but of course it has an effect, which is why it is marked as red.”

The next thing I noticed was from a photo-op, showing US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Icelandic Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir in conversation. Iceland has, for years, been attractive to me. It occurs to me that I might finally just invest in travel to the country. I love the fact that Iceland seems so youthful and willing to embrace equality. And, to top it off, from all accounts it’s a gorgeous country.

Like so many things, I have a broad and shallow knowledge of Iceland. I should learn more and plan to travel there. Anyone want to join me?

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It’s nearing 4:00 a.m. now and I am getting wider and wider awake. That is not good, because I want to be fully awake and energetic when, this evening, another friend comes over with a bottle of wine and an interest in looking at the ceramic masks I have made. So, perhaps I’ll put my fingers back in their cases for awhile and will try to get back to sleep. I look forward to enjoying wine and hors d’oeuvres and conversation this evening, enjoyment that could be derailed if I were constantly yawning and nodding off in the middle of sentences.

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So, I’m off to bed. I expect I’ll be back here to continue, or to finish, what I’ve been writing.

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The time is now 6:54 a.m. I have been up since around 6:30 and now am drinking a cup of coffee. I rather expected to sleep even later, given the intensity of my wakefulness before I returned to be, but one never knows. This morning, as I ruminate on our trip to the south France, I recall how thoroughly taken I was with the region. I believe I could have been left to live in the Camargue and I would have adapted quickly. Except for speaking French. It is a lovely, melodious language, but my tongue is not suited for it, I’m afraid. The shape of my tongue and my mouth and the demeanor presented by my body language screams Deutsch,. It’s as if I were a native German whose accent remained perfectly harsh and acute after an accident that robbed me of making coherent the sharp and stringent guttural noises!

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Hania Rani is a Polish pianist, singer, and composer whose talents are stunning. Listening to her play the keyboards just once was an extremely pleasing experience that introduced me to her remarkable talents. Listening a second time, almost a month later, persuaded me she is a genius. Listening again this morning as I write this convinces me I can be calmed by piano music; entranced by sounds generated not so much by the instrument being played but by the soul of the pianist. I sometimes listen to “Spa” music on Spotify and the twin brother on my Amazon Echo. Even the best of those offerings pale in comparison to thirty-year-old (plus or minus a year or two) Hania Rani’s music.

Speaking of music, I am delighted that my taste in music runs the gamut from jazz to blues to rock to rap to the classics. Even country has its place in my repertoire of “go-to” pleasing sounds. Music simply elaborates one’s moods. Musical sounds capture and amplify (or release and soften) emotions. When I think back to times (some quite recent) during which my musical preference tends to be stable, leaning toward one genre or another, I think my moods and thought processes tend to echo that “sameness.” Musical variety mines my emotions the way a diver mines shallow waters for abalone shells. Every new find is different from the one before; rich and beautiful and glistening with iridescent colors that spark passionate responses. Sticking to one genre, no matter which, seems somewhat limiting to me. I think we need to shock our emotional responses to music by regularly exposing our ears to sounds and rhythms that, on first listen, might seem initially unpleasant or unfamiliar or discordant at first. Our ears and our minds and our emotional cores learn from experience; even when that experience is painful or gut-wrenching.

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Many years have passed since I had that “first kiss” that electrified me. The first one took place when I was just a kid; I must have been somewhere between eight and twelve years old. I remember the girl’s name, but I’ll use only her given name: Amy. Amy’s father was the school principal where my mother taught school. For reasons I never knew, Amy and her father were at my house one day. Amy and I went into my very big back yard, where large mesquite trees provided ample “cover” and privacy for two children who were physically attracted to one another. I do not recall exactly how it happened, but I assume Amy initiated it; even then I was shy and reserved and more than a little scared of girls. Whatever the genesis of the experience, we kissed. As I remember it today, it was a long, leisurely, but passionate kiss. I felt a new and powerful emotion that caused my body to feel like an electric current flowed through it. I don’t know how it affected Amy; I don’t think she was similarly impacted by it; we did not kiss again.  remember thinking, for weeks afterward, that I must have done it wrong, because it didn’t seem to have the same effect on her as it did on me. She was not lovestruck. It must have felt like more of a casual brush on the cheek to her, whereas I think I assumed a kiss that deep and powerful could only have arisen from true love. I was a gullible romantic then; I’m not quite as gullible now. But in the intervening years, I experienced a few similar moments in which I felt the electricity course through me with enough power to leave my arteries and veins singed from the heat.

Now, in the midst of feelings of both intrigue and guilt, I wonder about the next “first kiss.” Do they even happen anymore after one reaches geezerhood? Is the very idea of an exciting “first kiss” an absurdity at this late stage of life? I honestly don’t know and I’m probably too embarrassed at my inexperience to find out. That’s another thing about moving (and renting) to a new place where one is unknown. Mistakes, when the embarrassment attached to them is too great to take, can be erased simply by moving away to a new community for a new chance. Friendship and its more intense embodiments

+++

Last night, during our dinner conversation, my guests told me about their daughter (in-law?) who had just lost a pet. She feels intense guilt for its demise, because she took it to the veterinarian to be euthanized. She now thinks she should have taken it home to live out its final days in a familiar place. Even though it was in agonizing pain, could not walk, was in an ongoing state of diarrhea, and otherwise was in miserable condition. She felt, and feels, guilt. I feel for the poor woman; having responsibility for an animal’s life and death is a weighty one. But I think when a person concludes the time is right to release the animal from its suffering, the person’s conclusion is correct. Maybe the animal would have lasted a bit longer, but its quality of life would have been awful. Euthanasia is the right thing to do, in most cases, I think.

After my guests left, I viewed an email sent by a friend, informing me that her dog was critically ill. Consequently, some plans we had to get together to talk about RVs and selecting communities in which to live and other such stuff might have to wait. I offered to go with  her to Little Rock if she determines her dog needs to go to competent doggie ER.

Coincidentally, just as I was writing this, my cell phone rang. I saw it was her calling. But when I picked up and said “hello,” I did not get a response. I spoke a bit more and I listened to indistinct voices on the other end. After a moment, she realized someone was talking to her from her phone. The call was made accidentally; commonly called a “butt dial,” though I’m not sure exactly how it happened. At any rate, I learned a little more from her (after she realized she had accidentally called me) about her dog. I hope it gets better, but I reiterated I would be available to go to Little Rock if necessary. A woman who used to follow my blog (and with whom I used to regularly exchange emails) would have called the circumstance an example of synchronicity. Now, I wonder what my former follower is doing these days and how she is doing; for reasons too convoluted to go into here, I was getting concerned about her, after reading some things into her emails. But, I suspect she simply tired of “talking” with me. I hope that’s it. Uh-oh. I just slipped part way into a rabbit warren, didn’t I?

+++

Crap! I’m falling asleep again. I may take an early morning nap to get it out of my system.

Recently, I’ve engaged in conversations about places that, for various reasons, attract me. Among them: New Mexico and parts of Arizona, as well as several other places where rain is not as common, by far, as it is where I live now. During those conversations, I’ve expressed concerns about some of those places, due to the potential for water shortages.  Yesterday, a CNN headline online caught my attention: First-ever Colorado River water shortage is now almost certain, new projections show. My vague worries about an ill-defined point in the “future” are coming into focus, far clearer than heretofore. Right-wing climate deniers might refute the projections. And they could, conceivably, be right about causation (though I seriously doubt it). But denial of causation seems to carry with it denial of demonstrable facts; like, we’re running out of water in a lot of places. Whatever the cause, we have to do something. And that might include killing lawns, redirecting water from golf courses to city drinking water supplies (okay, I hear the unhappy murmuring of golfers as they reach for their torches and pitchforks), and planting crops that maximize nutrition and minimize water use. And, finally, we may have to insist that people who want to live in the desert are on their own when it comes to water, except that we must limit how much they take out of the ground.

This discussion seems to out of place as I look out the window at miles and miles of wetness. It’s too wet for me even to comfortably walk out onto the deck to hand the hummingbird feeders. I assert that it’s not out of place.

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And now for something out of the ordinary.

How shocking would it be for people to learn that I suddenly left Arkansas in the company of a woman, destined for Christchurch, New Zealand. The surprise would grow when the circumstances of my departure became known. I had been hired to handle international marketing for the Te Pae Christchurch Convention and Exhibition Centre. The shock would grow exponentially when the identity of the woman who accompanied me became known. A married woman who was understood to be morally steadfast and devoted to her husband. Yet it was clear; she was not just in my company, she was my intensely romantic companion. As we waited together in the LAX departure lounge, she took a selfie while giving me a passionate French kiss and sent the image, attached to a text message, to her closest friend. “Willard will never understand, Lela, but I hope you can and will. Please try to comfort him and assure him that I love him, though it may not seem that way now. But I need this excitement, this passion, in my life.”

Tongues would wag for months. Poor Willard, though initially stunned and hurt, would eventually find comfort in the arms of Letitia, a beautician from El Dorado. And Lela would join us in Christchurch a year later, bringing her new lover, a jazz violinist named Galileo Smart, with her. Lela, too, would have discovered what Susanna and I had long since learned: life lived wrapped in the barbed wire chains of a moral code more suited to a Victorian age than to modernity, can be intolerable. Infidelity and raw romantic excitement, as we say, are as natural as breathing; maybe more so. Lela’s husband, Barney, eventually recovered, more or less. He and Willard spent their days playing pickle-golf and drinking Geritol-laced vodka tonics.

Obviously, I have a bias against unquestioning adherence to irrational social convention turned into compulsory manipulation that serves only to keep us subjugated in the master/slave relationship, where “master” is cleverly disguised as the church or the body politic. And I realize mocking Willard and Barney for sport is an indecent failing, a flaw I am trying to correct. I promise. But the freedom to pursue the forbidden fruit of what most consider illicit passion is a privilege I refuse to surrender.

That’s a tiny part of the backstory. The reality of this unexpected vignette has yet to be played out in my head. Which may be best for everyone who stumbles upon this twisted fiction. Or what might best be called twisted friction. Written from an intricately woven first, second, and third person point of view, this never-to-be-finished piece would engage the reader in direct conversation with the writer while exposing elements of the experience that could be revealed only in third person (well, maybe a better writer could do it better from a whole different perspective, but…I am the one with the keyboard and morally corrupt fingers). Okay, that’s enough of a foray into fiction for the moment.

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I am hosting a religious, Republican couple for dinner at my house tonight. I’ll roast a pork loin (smoking it is no longer an option, thanks to the untimely death of my electric smoker). I do not know what else I’ll serve. Whatever it is will require me to go grocery shopping. Maybe a salad, some sort of potato dish, perhaps corn or green beans. And for dessert? Will  I even serve dessert? I am not much of a dessert eater, but I will eat it if it’s placed in front of me. It is extremely rare for me to order dessert at a restaurant (it’s not rare; it’s extinct). But I need to do something. Maybe ice cream? And after dinner? Cognac? Do I have any cognac? Do I have any cigars? Will my television set willingly display FOX News? Just kidding. It feels odd for me to host dinner by myself. I can’t say it’s a comfortable feeling, either. It’s more an obligatory feeling of reciprocity (these folks, as different as they are from me, have been caring and have been very kind to me in response to my loss of my wife, so I should stop being such a jerk about religion and politics). I’m doing something just like it next week; a different couple, but also at opposite ends of my spectra. And responding to my own sense of obligation; but also wanting to express my real appreciation.

It occurs to me that I should invite several other individuals to come over for dinner, for the same reasons. But these are people who share much with me in the way of political and philosophical sensibilities. They are women who delivered food to me in the aftermath of my wife’s illness and death. I wonder whether it would be unseemly for me to invite them over, one by one, for candle-lit dinners? The invitations would exclude their husbands, of course. My twisted sense of humor remains intact, I think. Actually, I have to admit, though, I probably would be far more comfortable with them than their husbands. Their husbands, on the other hand, might not be comfortable with that scenario. Especially if they read any of my old (or new) fiction vignettes involving torrid affairs and the like. They probably would wonder, legitimately, whether my moral compass registers true north. Sometimes, I think I am intentionally demonic in one sense and prone to provocation (would the word “provocative” be more appropriate here?) in another.

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A few days ago, during a conversation with a friend, I mentioned that I have in mind reinventing myself (and I’ve probably written the same here). My friend suggested I could do that right where I am; I don’t need to go anywhere to do that. But as I think about it, I have to say I disagree. I’m relatively sure it would be much harder to dislodge others’ perceptions of me, based on their experience with me, than to create new perceptions untainted by prior knowledge. In a new environment (with enough effort on my part), I could become a gregarious, outgoing extrovert. That would be essentially impossible where I am; too many people know me as I am (gregarious, outgoing, extroverted on the page, but withdrawn, introverted, and generally uncomfortable when social settings become too big or insufficiently intimate).  In a setting where people do not know me, I could present myself as a retired police investigator or as having been the owner of an art studio before retirement. Or a practitioner of placebo medicine; sort of like placebos in drug trials, but in a medical office setting…the real doctor would work in one set of examination rooms, I would work in another. The real doctor would prescribe treatments and medications and so forth, whereas I would simply ask patients to disrobe and watch them, in their discomfort, while they describe to me their symptoms.

One of these days, I’m going to be imprisoned for my ideas. They’re going to be so far outside the mainstream that people will feel uncomfortable in my presence. Hell, that may already be true.

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I need a drink of water right now. But there’s none to be had. I’ll just drink from my coffee cup and pretend it’s water. That’s the ticket.

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Too much of what I write involves me. I. I. I. I. Who gives a flying…? People should care about themselves, of course, but not at the expense of others. The balance between one’s own happiness and the comfort and happiness of other people in our world is a difficult one to achieve. So here is something that might help cement that balance in at least one life:

He who loves
does not think about his own life;
to love truly,
a man must forget about himself.
If your desires do not accord with your spirit,
sacrifice them,
and you will come to the end of your journey.
If the body of desire obstructs the way,
reject it; then fix your eyes
in front and contemplate.

~ Attar ~

And thus ends another exploration of tortured madness.

May the road rise to meet you
May the wind be at your back
May the sun shine warm upon your face.

Paul Simon is probably right. There must be fifty ways to leave your lover. But without question there are a million different ways to replicate the outcome of the same mistake in different forms. I write from densely personal stupid experience and inescapable insanity. Hence the apothegm, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.” I write this as a reminder to myself. Not that I’ll change my behavior, of course. Because that would be the intelligent thing to do. I just want to go on record with evidence, just in case I need it for the insanity defense.

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I spent time over lunch yesterday with a very intelligent, kind, and beautiful woman, absorbing some good ideas and excellent advice, capped off with an outstanding cappuccino gelato. During the course of the conversation, I discovered with glee that I am not alone in being enamored with the concept of co-housing and enchanted by the possibilities of the tiny-house movement (in which “movement” is defined not as physical displacement in space but as “a diffusely organized or heterogeneous group of people or organizations tending toward or favoring a generalized common goal.“). The time I spent yesterday triggered new ideas that may cause me to adjust my thinking about whether or when to sell my house and what to do should I move forward with a sale. The upside is that I might pursue activities that could otherwise have gone undone. The downside is that I might have invested a rather significant amount of time during the last several weeks (months, even) in pursuit of ideas that might never be realized. But that’s the way life works, isn’t it?  I learned of a place that has captured my imagination in a way few others have: Point Roberts, Washington. So many appealing things about the place!  But that’s not all. I left the conversation with a renewed interest in travel to Greece and Iceland and Denmark. A danger in all this, of course, is that I might get depressed because I cannot “do it all.” I would need several more lifetimes to pursue all my desires. But isn’t that true of all the wishes and dreams one has in life? I won’t let this episode derail me, though. I will use it as another tool in the process of honing things down toward near-perfection.

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Buffalo Trace Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey should be consumed only in very small amounts and never after unmeasured but significant amounts of good India Pale Ale beer. Refer to the first paragraph, above. The lesson need not rely exclusively on Buffalo Trace or IPAs. It could just as easily be Rock City vodka and Guinness stout or Herradura tequila and Red Stripe beer from Jamaica. In the immortal words of Tom Paxton, “It’s a lesson too late for the learning, made of sand, made of sand.” I have it on good authority that consumption of such pairings can lead to dreams in which midgets dressed in Pacific islander native costumes accompany nurse practitioners on house calls.

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Guilt. Regret. Remorse. Shame. Many more related words might flood from the Thesaurus, but those additional words are not necessary. Guilt, alone, will do. I have been thinking about guilt, as well as its etiology and its ramifications, for some time. During that time, I’ve discovered several ways in which guilt is categorized and classified. Depending on whose perspectives one adopts, guilt can be said to be rational or irrational, natural or free-floating, persecutory or reparatory, reactive or anticipatory or existential, adaptive or maladaptive…and on and on. I have no sense as to the true number of classifications or theories of guilt, but I know this: guilt and its companions regret and remorse and shame, etc. command a significant amount of investigative and theoretical energies. Guilt is both easy to understand and impossibly complex. Guilt can be both therapeutic and irreversibly damaging. From the perspective of the layperson whose experience with guilt may be both rational and irrational, whatever form it takes, guilt can be debilitating. It can be so overwhelmingly painful that its soul-crushing strength can lead one to think the unthinkable. I think feelings of guilt must be tackled early and addressed fully. Whether guilt is a legitimate response to acts or omissions or, on the other hand, an irrational reaction to circumstances over which a person has no control, it needs to be acknowledged. Coping mechanisms that recognize legitimate guilt and channel responses into positive thoughts and behaviors as part of “lessons learned” can redirect the power of the emotion in productive ways. Intentionally dismantling irrational guilt and internalizing the fact that it is not a person’s “fault” can dissolve potentially negative, even deadly, misdiagnosed “guilt.”

In all the clinical, unemotional dissection of the emotion and all the thought I’ve given to guilt, though, I’ve discovered something else. For me, guilt sometimes has more power than all the tools I use to assess and dismantle it or to try to disarm its most painful weapons. It carries a bigger stick than I can fit in my bag of tricks.  Sometimes, I think the only reasonable response to feelings of guilt is to allow the emotion to take hold and let it ring out the tears until one is as dry as the desert; hoping the pain is flushed away in the deluge that leaves the landscape dry.

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I encounter a lot of emotion in other people, people I know, every day. I try to keep it out of my writing, purely as a matter of respecting privacy. I do not always succeed; sometimes, it slips in and I don’t catch the fact that I might have betrayed an assumed or even a requested confidence. Given that possibility, though, I try to keep others’ names out of my writing. Sometimes, my words make it easy for readers to identify a person, though; I try to allow that in only when doing do does not compromise the person in any way. All of that notwithstanding, sometimes I want to paint a full and comprehensive picture of others’ emotions, complete with identities, home addressed, phone numbers, and identifying marks. That desire usually does not arise out of contempt for a person but, rather, out of frustration that the person does not seem to recognize or acknowledge the legitimacy or necessity of emotion. Usually, the person is male. Males are taught to hide or even deny their emotions. Those lessons obviously did not “take” with me. But the part of the lessons that said “if men show their emotions, they should feel embarrassed and should try to recover from such an awful faux pas” stuck with me quite well. I resent those lessons. I think those lessons do far more damage to men than any good that might arise from an imaginary “benefit” that might be attached to adherence to the masculine macho stereotype myth. Resentment is a weak word to describe my feeling toward those lessons. Contempt and fury and rage come a little closer, but I think the word that fully describes my emotional reaction to those lessons has not yet been invented.

The irony of the image of the stoic male who either hides or simply does not have deep emotions is this: the image hides a fundamental weakness that belies the myth of strength. Men who can’t or won’t show their emotions lack the strength to reveal what true humanity looks like; as if they could not handle reactions to revelations that they, too, are sentient beings.  And, of course, when I get upset with myself for being unable to hide my emotions, I am buying into the myth and revealing my fundamental weakness. It’s odd, isn’t it, that a façade that tries to hide emotion behind a curtain of  strength is actually a sheer veil whose every wrinkle reveals weakness? I wish I could find a way to unlearn the lesson that causes my discomfort and embarrassment at emotional release.  Even though I recognize what it is, I cannot seem to overcome it. Most men can’t. Those who do are derided by those whose weakness had been perfected to an art form. But, those same men who are derided for exposing their emotions are admired by people who recognize the trait as strength.

Where the hell did that come from this morning? Well, I’m glad I wrote it, despite being surprised that my fingers spun the words.

+++

Language pleases me. I saw a post this morning, with the following heading: “missing a yellow child’s kayak.” My reaction was laughter, as I wondered whether a kayak for a yellow child was missing or whether a yellow kayak for a child was missing. I’m easily amused, even by normal language not intended to amuse.

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Today feels like a Saturday for some reason. I know it’s Thursday, of course, but it just feels Saturday-ish. Enough for now. I a million things to do, thanks to my lethargy earlier in the week.

As I was saying, there’s much more on my mind. Not that I’m going to record it all on this blog at this moment. Some of it, though…

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I can’t control another person’s thoughts and emotions; I can control only my own. And sometimes not even my own. But I should always try to exercise a significant degree of direction over myself. Suddenly, though I’ve known it for almost as long as I’ve breathed on my own, I realize that when I forgive someone, an enormous burden of anger or disappointment is lifted from my mind. Whether they forgive me from real or perceived transgressions, I always can forgive them. And that releases me in a sense; it release me to move on to things that merit my energy and attention. Anger absorbs too much energy that could be devoted to productive thought. Reinventing myself will require some constant reminders of such matters. The most difficult aspect of forgiveness is forgiving oneself, I think. While forgiving oneself does not necessarily require withdrawing judgment, I suspect it does require it more often than not. Forgiveness involves forfeiting the roles of judge, jury, and executioner in favor of figuratively dressing oneself in the robes of clergy.

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Ripping through billowing clouds while inside a jet airplane flying at several hundred miles per hour is, no doubt, different from drifting slowly through those same clouds in a glider. I have experienced the former, but not the latter. I’ve always wished I could find a way to go inside the white pillow of a summertime cloud so I could compare the sense of being in a thick fog with the sense of being enveloped by an entity that has more precise and distinctive boundaries. I would like to know whether the experiences. It is like being in a thick, grey fog or something more vivid and distinct, as if the soft white swollen balloons were more cohesive and substantive.

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I am drifting in and out of consciousness as I try to type my thoughts, a byproduct of sleeplessness. Obviously, I need to get more sleep than I’ve been getting. It’s just a matter of giving myself permission to sleep late, after a sleepless night, without condemning the practice of “sleeping in” as slovenly or wasteful of daylight. It’s odd that, at the same time I’m nodding off at the keyboard, I’m getting occasionally intense hunger pangs, despite having eaten a bit of cantaloupe just an hour or two ago. Weakness trails along behind the path insomnia; I wonder whether it’s the sense of weakness that makes me think, artificially, I’m hungry or whether I’m actually hungry. If the former, I’d rather not eat. I weigh far too much; is it the result of eating when I’ve tricked myself into believing I’m hungry. Or it is something else?

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I have to stop this and go shower and shave. Maybe that will wake me. For now, though, I will abandon my efforts to continue writing everything that was on my mind. I think it has disappeared into a pit formed when narcolepsy solidifies around an ill-formed idea.

In spite of the drab, grey morning and despite the fact that the deck was wet (not sure whether it was just heavy dew or rain from last night), something about the morning’s atmosphere captured my interest and appreciation. Maybe it was the refreshing coolness that did it. Or an almost fictile sky that beckoned me to take it in my hands and shape it into a comforting embrace. Or a little of each. Whatever it was—and is—I like the way this day began and the way it is progressing thus far. Today has potential. I can feel some energy that belies the sullenness of an overcast morning. Some mornings seem perfectly suited to action; but action that’s gentle and slow and purposive. This day is unfolding as a graceful introduction to late May.

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And now, for some thought-provocation:

The purpose of life is to live it,
to taste experience to the utmost,
to reach out eagerly and without fear
for newer and richer experience.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt ~

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Lately, I wake in the wee hours almost every night. Sometimes, I am able to get back to sleep pretty quickly; others, my mind simply won’t stop racing in ways that make sleep impossible. Whether it’s just a brief interruption of my sleep or its complete abandonment, I often “feel” there’s a hint of something on my mind that causes me to awaken. I think at least part of that “something” has to do with an aspect of my psyche that either troubles me or excites me. Maybe I’ve uncovered some of what it is through a conversation with a friend.

Last night, I drove with a friend from my church to participate in an NAACP peace rally in Hot Springs. During the drive to and from Hot Springs, we talked about all sorts of things including my thoughts about possibly leaving my newfound friends if I move away. I told her one of the reasons prompting me to consider moving was to give me the opportunity to essentially “start over;” to become a person I could like better than the person I am. A little later, in response to my comments, she explained how she had changed. When she and her husband moved to the Village, she morphed from a conservative, reserved woman who had worn the formal greys and browns of the legal profession (the environment of both her work and her social life) to a progressive, adventurous risk-taker whose wardrobe and lifestyle are awash in color and excitement. Hearing her speak about that transformation—and knowing her as a beautiful, energetic, kind, loving, and enlightened person—the idea of reinventing myself is beginning to take shape as more than just a fantasy.

I don’t want to leave the impression that my plan is to start with a blank slate. Despite significant misgivings about myself, I have no intent to discard aspects of myself that I value. I will continue to be progressive in my thinking. I will continue to try to do my best to be compassionate, empathetic, and kind; I’ll just try to enhance those attributes and reduce the instances in which I exhibit their opposites. I will hold on tightly to valuing and embracing diversity and I will continue to be an ally to people whose sexual and gender orientations differ from mine. Those, and a few other core elements of who I am, will not change. What I hope will change will be the negative aspects of my lifestyle and my personality. More energetic; less judgmental of those whose views conflict with mine; more conscious of my physical appearance and state of health. Those sorts of things. And of course I recognize I don’t need to move to make those things happen. A change in my physical environment, though, might remove elements that support staying as I am. I hope a “shock to my system” might trigger what I need to become someone more likeable, more loveable, more appealing to the kind of people to whom I want to be appealing, including myself. Good, decent, caring people. People who, I hope, are like the person I will be. And, yes, I know how this whole thing sounds; like a fantasy sparked by trauma. While I cannot explain how and why I know that is not true, I just know it. It’s a bit late to do it, too, but that’s not going to stop me. Whether I decide to move away or not, I will become a different me.

+++

My Echo Dot reminds me to take my pills, to weigh myself, to bring in the hummingbird feeders, and various other things. Occasionally, I feel like I’m ceding responsibility for memory to an electronic device that can hear me and that speaks to me. There’s good reason for that; I feel that way because I’m doing it. I’m absolving myself of the responsibility to train my brain to behave the way a brain should behave. Is it really wise to ask “Alexa” to recall and remind me of obligations and responsibilities? Is such a dependence on a magical electronic device healthy for one’s brain? I suspect not. I suspect relying on Alexa may allow parts of my brain to atrophy.

+++

There is so much more on my mind, but I’ll stop for a while. My sister-in-law is on her way over for coffee. I may write more later…

…to be continued…

In my opinion, The Woman in the Window, on Netflix, is a waste of time, intellect, and the investment made in producing the film. Why I watched it all the way through is beyond me. Fortunately, after I finished that miserable excuse for a movie, I had ample time to watch something else of greater value…which would have been damn near anything. But I didn’t watch anything. Instead, I cogitated and mulled and mused; three endeavors I sometimes find fulfilling.

The only value I found in the film was the opportunity to see just a bit of Julianne Moore, who I find extremely attractive and from whom it is impossible for me to turn away my gaze. That having been said, I would have rather watched almost anything else, and should have done. Arabic cartoons based on the collected works of the philosopher, Abu Yaqub al-Sijistani, would have been more entertaining and engaging. Incidentally, I had never heard of Abu Yaqub al-Sijistani until this morning; incredible, isn’t it, what one can learn when one awakens before 5:00 a.m.?

+++

I am not getting Ricky the chihuahua. While various matters made it impossible or inadvisable for me to adopt Ricky, apparently, someone else snatched him up. Which was good, because my veterinarian friend suggested several reasons for passing on the dog, without even meeting him. And I trust my friend’s advice.  So, instead of introducing her to Ricky, I may participate this evening in an NAACP Peace Vigil in Hot Springs, along with several members of my church.

+++

I spent four hours over lunch yesterday with my veterinarian friend. We talked about RVs, the RV lifestyle, moving to new places, selling existing places, political intrusions on friendships, the definitions of friendship, dogs, Unitarian Universalism, the perception that women have the propensity to gossip, the reduced propensity of more highly educated women to gossip, men and their tendency to talk sports and other such stuff that holds no interest for me, cats, parrots, the advisability of getting a dog immediately before a potential move, Iowa, Wisconsin, Missouri, military posts, and a thousand other matters. It was an enjoyable four hours. I learned some fascinating things about her history and experiences and discovered that we have some traits in common, including traits we wish we had corrected before we built our respective businesses. She shared with me some of the pros and cons of life on the road (in an RV), giving me much to consider, if I were to opt to pursue it, even temporarily.

We compared notes about all sorts of things and agreed to do it again sometime soon. I discussed with her my meeting yesterday morning with a real estate agent whose assessment of my home’s value and potential for sales matched another agent’s advice. This agent reiterated that, if I really plan to sell, I better have a plan as to where I will go after the sale. I told her I’ve been looking for small towns that might appeal to me. Though I did not put it in these terms to the agent, I later told my veterinarian friend I was looking for a  Mayberry-type town with easy access to big-city amenities. And I mentioned that I had found several possibilities in Iowa, of all places. I’ve looked in New Mexico and lots of other places, but Iowa seems, at present, to offer many of the things I’m after. Who knew? But, then, there’s Wisconsin, and Minnesota and upper Missouri and a dozen other places. My vet friend and I agreed to get together again soon to compare our assessments.  Wow. I am stunned at what appeals to me in these geezer years.

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When I got home, I viewed a text message from another friend who expressed an interest in viewing my ceramic masks (evidence that she read yesterday’s blog) and who offered to visit—and bring wine. That was a propitious message, as I was planning to invite her to join me for conversation about that same topic we recently had discussed (selling homes and moving on) . I feel fortunate to have stumbled upon people like her with whom I am finding more and more in common; maybe not common experiences, but definitely common philosophies and common ideas about things that matter. The problem with discovering these commonalities at this stage of my rapidly evolving life is that I am exploring possibilities that would remove me from her sphere and vice versa. The same is true of my veterinarian friend. Sometimes, I think life consists of intentionally unfair sets of circumstances meant to test our strengths. No need to test me, life, I already know I would fail the strength test.  She is one of the women I wrote about yesterday; one who’s already attached. It matters not. I will enjoy wine and conversation with her anyway. And I might just give her a mask if she decides she wants one. If I’m going to move, I need to unload a lot of this stuff anyway; might as well give it away to people I like and whose company I enjoy. Yes—to anyone who’s thinking it while reading what I wrote—I have a purpose in writing what I’ve just written, knowing my friend probably will read what I wrote. I sometimes have a difficult time expressing orally my appreciation and admiration and affection. For some reason, doing that causes me to get inexplicably emotional. I never advanced beyond near-adolescence with regard to social skills.

+++

So, am I really considering Iowa and Wisconsin and New Mexico and Michigan and…on and on? Yes. I am. At 67 years old, and only half a year left before 68, I recognize I really don’t have much more time to explore new places. I could live to be 100+, but the reality is that I may not even reach 68, so I need to use my time judiciously. As I’ve told a few friends, I wish my family were of a mind to collectively work to build a family compound of sorts…lots of privacy, but space for group gatherings and meal preparation and so forth and so on. But that’s not something that has been received with universal support over the years, so I’m pretty much giving up on it. And I do not know others who would seriously consider creating co-housing communities. So, I look for a different place. An affordable Mayberry type place on the upper Mississippi, perhaps, or a Mayberry type place elsewhere that offers opportunities for friendship, camaraderie, etc. Or elsewhere. Someplace pleasant and kind and welcoming and open. One of the motivating factors in my musings is that the real estate market in Hot Springs Village is the highest and tightest it has been in many years; if I were to sell now, it’s likely I would make back my investment along with a substantial bonus, which would be a nice addition to my retirement funds. Of course, it’s possible the rise in prices will continue for years to come and, by selling, I’d miss out on all that as-yet-unearned appreciation; that doesn’t worry me in the least. I’ve had that experience before and am perfectly happy that I sold my last house when I did.

I’ve been working on a list of issues to explore with regard to any location I might seriously explore, including the following:

• Monthly temperature average highs and lows (and record highs and lows)
• Monthly precipitation averages and forms (rain, snow, etc.)
• Proximity of geologic fault lines
• Costs of insurances (home, auto, etc.)
• Local “pests” (like chiggers, ticks, black flies, mosquitoes, etc., etc.)
• Availability and reliability and quality of service by service providers
• Cable TV providers (though by no means crucial…cutting the cord with high quality internet is more appealing)
• Telephone landline providers
• Cell phone service providers/coverage
• Land and real estate costs
• Age demographics
• Diversity (race, ethnicity, sex, etc.) demographics
• Openness to diversity of all kinds (which I think correlates with social and political progressiveness)
• Property taxes
• Sales tax
• State income tax
• Could I raise chickens?
• Could I have goats?
• Proximity of UU churches
• Existence/size/proximity of Democratic Party organization
• Voting in last presidential election (Biden vs. Trump)
• Quality and proximity of hospitals/medical care
• Liquor laws (mostly because I find offensive governmental intrusion into my personal habits under the guise of public safety when the intrusion is based, instead, on religious beliefs)
• Many, many more to come, I’m sure

All the foregoing notwithstanding, it’s possible I may decide to stay where I am. It’s sometimes easier to let inertia and comfort control one’s life than to spend the energy on adventure and risk. But I’m leaning toward risk. The biggest risk is that I might leave behind me “my people” and discover they are impossible to replicate elsewhere. But, I’ve been mostly alone, except for my wife and a very few now distant friends, for most of my life, so I have experience with it and know I could survive it if I had to.

+++

As I contemplate the possibility of selling and  moving on, it occurs to me that I have committed to joining friends on a trip to Galveston island in early November. That commitment stands, no matter where I am at the time, just in case there’s any question about it.

+++

This morning, I will participate in a live, face-to-face grief support group. The other times I have participated in such groups have been via Zoom, so this will be rather different. It will take place in someone’s home. I don’t know quite what to expect, as I haven’t participated much in grief groups. I guess I’ll find out in a few hours.

+++

I plan on keeping most of next week open so I can accomplish two things that simply won’t get done unless I clear my calendar entirely: First, I need and want to power wash the front doors of my house and, then, power wash the entire deck, screened porch, and all the windows along the back of my house. Second, I plan to spend a lot of time between cleaning to explore the issues I’ve identified with regard to a possible move (the items bulleted above). Clearing my calendar means skipping a “spiritual practices” gathering next week, as well as a men’s gathering, both church events.; most of my social life revolves around the church and/or people in the church. But, I will shower and shave and become sufficiently presentable Friday evening next week to attend a wine and munchies gathering with my old wine group, which has mostly been on hold since the pandemic began. That group includes only a couple of folks from church, proving my social life is not entirely dependent on the church. (Damn near all of it, but not entirely.)

+++

I feel a sense that I will return to writing more about philosophies soon and make this blog less a journal about my personal experiences. I’ve felt that before, though, and it hasn’t panned out. I hope, this time, it will. The exploration of a possible move, I think, will prompt me to examine both intellectual and emotional matters that lend themselves to philosophical examination. I miss both writing about and engaging in conversation about personal and societal philosophies. Those explorations help me grow beyond the end of my nose. Another friend, formerly of my church, regularly articulates his insistence that he needs always to examine his own thinking and his own experiences if he is to move forward in life; and he feels he must move forward or he will begin to slide backward. That’s the way I feel, albeit perhaps within a somewhat different framework. I have to think about things in ways that challenge my beliefs or my assumptions or my own experiences. Writing. That’s how I think. I’m “quicker on my feet” at a keyboard than in a rapid-fire debate. While I enjoy conversation, when it comes to verbal jousting, I feel like I’m wading in cold tar and wet sand, making it impossible for me to be “quick on my feet.” I suppose I would never have made a good lawyer, given my slow thinking verbosity (does that even make sense?).

+++

It’s almost 6:15, well beyond the time I should have taken the hummingbird feeders outside. And I still have to eat breakfast of some kind. And I need to shower, shave, get dressed, and confront the day ahead.  So, in making my plans to make this day another one that’s as fulfilling as yesterday, I turn to my anthology of Zen quotations, which today advises me to take care of my mind:

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 ~

A public post on Facebook by someone I do not know asked whether there’s music that brings tears to a person’s eyes. I could list dozens of such pieces, if only I remembered them all. But the music that moves me wasn’t on my mind as I read what others had to say.

As I was skimming some responses, I came across a guy named Alvin Ondriezek, who identified one such song in Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Oh, yes, that’s one of mine! I decided to see who this guy is, this guy who shares my sensitivity to that Gordon Lightfoot tune. Alvin lives in Nanty-Glo, Pennsylvania, with his wife, Sandra Bellock Ondriezek. I learned from his Facebook page that he first met Sandra in 1953. He appears to be a fan of Patsy Cline and Jim Croce. I learned through a little more research that the town name where he lives comes from the Welsh Nant Y Glo, meaning “The Ravine of Coal.”

I scanned a few other comments and found several that listed Amazing Grace. A number of others identified Fur Elise. Several others names various other classical pieces. Another popular one, I found, was Bette Midler’s Wind Beneath My Wings, from the film, Beaches. Some others were unusual in that I personally could not imagine why a person would be moved by them; until I read on to learn that “such and such piece of music was my mother’s favorite and we played it at her funeral” or “this music was on the radio when we got the call about my aunt’s death in a car accident” or “I associate this music with the birth of my first child.”

The reasons, when given, frequently were moving.  Another one that I found interesting was Desperado by the Eagles. The guy who identified that song said it was “an unconventional mother/son wedding song but the underlying message was her encouraging me to ‘let someone love you before it’s too late.'” He goes on to say his mother has since died and the music gets to him every time. A woman said she heard Let It Be by the Beatles on the radio on her way to counseling every week for several months; she said “big ole tears would fall” but she believed it was “a message for me to let go of what is not mine to carry.” I read many intensely moving comments, most of which were very short; but they were incredibly moving. All of this stuff could easily be incorporated into a novel or short story.

It’s interesting to me that I took time to read some of those comments. The post and the responses normally are not the kind of things I read; I just scroll past them. But in this case, something caught my eye. I’m glad it did.

Everything happening around us is a story waiting to be told.

+++

Yesterday afternoon was partly cloudy, but the sun that shone through those clouds was sufficient to warm the air to a very comfortable temperature, especially on the waters of Lake Balboa. I forgot my sunglasses, protective headgear, and sunscreen. It wasn’t so much that I forgot them; it just never occurred to me that I should take them along. My neighbors offered me sunscreen. I declined, though, because I am a macho, outdoorsy, über-male kind of guy—the kind of guy who gets his kicks through hand-to-hand combat with grizzly bears and who tracks and hunts deer wearing only a loincloth and carrying only a club for a weapon. Yeah. I’m wearing a pretty decent sunburn this morning. But it was most definitely worth it.

Three or four truly glorious hours on the water (in spite of no sunglasses nor headgear) left us hungry. On the way home, we went by El Jimador, where we picked up three orders of seafood ranchero, one of my favorites. We took the food to their house, where we sat on their deck for dinner. We had a nice, crisp, sparkling Cuvée Amrita with dinner, then switched to Green Fin White Table Wine.

After dinner, the artist in the house (the most prolific oil painter I have ever know, a guy whose paintings are absolutely beautiful) showed me his latest works. His most recent pieces were inspired by the U.S. southwest; spectacular stuff. He surprised me by making an offer: he offered to allow me to pick any one of a large number of his paintings in return for one of the ceramic masks I made a few years ago. I did not hesitate. Though I told him I’d have to mull over which of his paintings I most wanted, I certainly want to do it. And he is free to pick any of the thirty or so masks I made.

Both of my neighbors were, as expected, unhappy to learn that I might sell my house and move. She, especially, was quite distressed. She argued with some fervor that I should think long and hard before making such a decision. She said that I should, of course, make the decision that is best for me, but I should be absolutely sure before doing something that would so utterly alter the course of my life. She made some compelling arguments, but I will do what I think is best for me. I love them for their friendship, their generosity, their compassion, and their constancy. It’s tough to think about leaving people who care so much, but it’s a decision only I can make. And I will plod ahead, intent on reaching a decision before long.

+++

I read several posts I’ve written in recent years on the subject of friendship. My definitions of friendship seem to be more rigid and more demanding than most other people’s thoughts on the matter. Maybe my expectations are too high; I expect others to consider as I do that with  friendship comes an unspoken sacred commitment to “be there” for the friend, no matter the situation nor the circumstances. I’ve written before that I believe a friend would take a midnight phone call and then drive ten hours to bail a friend out of jail (or whatever other demanding scenario one might imagine). I’ve been challenged on that, insisting that friendship is no different from other engagements and attachments—that friendships exist along a spectrum that might have acquaintances at one end and pals somewhere in the middle and good friends near the other end and best friends at the termination point of the spectrum. Maybe. Maybe I am just unable to see through the fog that enshrouds that spectrum. Lately, I’m beginning to sense that I’ve been a romantic far too long. It’s time to shed notions of chivalry and gallantry. Time to abandon the ideas of unwavering commitment to others, who one considers friends, as a condition of admission to the human race. People are just people. They do not magically become knights in shining armor who would slay dragons to protect their friends. WTF. I have been deluding myself my entire life.

+++

I am in love with a woman in Hot Springs, a woman I’ve met only a few times. But I read her hilarious posts on Facebook and know that I love a woman who shares my somewhat bizarre sense of humor. I am in love with another few women here in the Village, women who are unattainable for many reasons, not the least of which is their marriage to their husbands or commitment to their lovers. I am in love with a woman here in HSV, an adventurous woman whose kindness and unbridled honesty seem at odds with one another but, then, a perfect combination. I am in love with another woman, a woman I gently tease about being crazy and living in the wrong century for a person with her sensibilities and conflicting Victorian persona. I am in love with women who are too young for me, too intelligent for me, too married or attached for me, or are otherwise too unavailable for me. And then I go back to friendship and what it is. Maybe I am in love with them because I consider them friends. Or maybe I don’t know what love is. Does it belong on the same spectrum as friendship? Or are they really very different things? If they are on the same spectrum, at what point does friendship merge with love, or vice versa?

My mind not only permits me to confuse myself with thoughts that have no satisfactory end-points…it insists that I confuse myself with those thoughts. Normal people don’t let such things weigh on their minds; they may encounter those conundra but, when it becomes apparent there is no “answer,” they let it go and move on. It’s sometimes often difficult to be abnormal.

+++

My Zen book is at it again. It suggests what might help me resolve some things that seem unsolvable.

Do not seek the truth.
Only cease to cherish opinions.

~ Zen saying ~

Hmm. Well, there you go.

+++

Last night, my neighbors told me about some charges that appeared on a credit card bill. The charges were purchases made at a cannabis-related store (not marijuana…just extracted products that do not make a person high) in Haltom City, Texas. It was unclear where the charges were in-store on on-line. The credit card company responded to my neighbors’ inquiry by investigating and removing the charges. But the credit card company did not explain how the charges got on the account. Were they fraudulent charges? Was it simply a mistake? Did someone create a card with my neighbors’ information? Was it an online purchase in which the buyer had access to both the card number and the card-specific security code? I think credit card companies should be obligated to explain details of erroneous charges to one’s accounts. I advised my neighbors to write to the company, giving thanks for the removal of the charges, but saying the explanation was insufficient and asking for full details. I don’t think they will write the letter. Oh, well. I sure as hell would. Dammit!

+++

My friends in Fort Smith are on my mind this morning. They have suffered a tragedy that I can only imagine. I am conflicted about whether I should give them their time and space to mourn or just drive up, unannounced, and hug them. I suppose the correct thing to do is to ask. But even in asking I might trigger pain from a wound that is in the very early stages of healing.  Friendship is more complex than even I believed it to be.

+++

It’s just after 7 a.m. I’ve been up for hours…again. In an hour and a half, I have an appointment to learn what my house might sell for, should I decide to sell. Instead, I may just roll up in a ball and go back to and endless, dreamless sleep. That sounds extremely inviting at this moment. But, first, more coffee.

It is just after 3:00 as I type this. I have been moderately awake for some time, thrashing around in the bed, trying without success to get comfortable. During the period in which I was not asleep but could not yet claim to have been awake, I spoke out loud to myself, inquiring as to the reasons for a strange form of insomnia that trapped me between unconsciousness and wakefulness. My inquiries went unanswered. No matter. My inability to sleep, while sometimes an annoyance, has not reached the point of being a problem. So, instead of bitching about it, I simply wonder about it. And just cope.

When I got up, I checked my email—a bad habit to get into in the wee hours—and noticed a Nextdoor message from a Hot Springs Village neighbor, claiming to have seen thirty satellites in a straight line about four hours ago (that would have been 11:00 p.m.) and asking if anyone else had seen them. One respondent said she had seen them, but counted only about fifteen. The extraterrestrial invasion has begun.

+++

There’s a possibility that a mistreated chihuahua will find a home with me before long. No assurances, of course, but I’m exploring the possibility. I thought my dog days were long gone with the departure of Bob, the 54 pound Mountain Cur mix sweetheart I loved but could not fathom giving adequate care and exercise. But on Saturday, I came across a dog named Ricky. Ricky seems like a perfect match for someone like me…a geezer who wants a pocket dog. We’ll see. Ricky will visit me on Tuesday afternoon, when his savior will bring him by my house. My friend, the retired veterinarian, has agreed to come to my house to meet with and assess Ricky. Her advice will factor heavily in whether I decide to give Ricky a new home. I did not expect anything quite so soon. But you can’t always forecast the future. We’ll see.

+++

This afternoon, about ten hours from now, I’m going boating with my very nice and wonderfully generous neighbors. They are taking me out on Lake Balboa on their pontoon boat. Afterward, we will stop in at El Jimador to buy three orders of Seafood Ranchero to take back to their house, where we will sit outside on the deck and enjoy the meal, assuming the weather cooperates. Many times, they have insisted that I not even think about moving away; I suspect their insistence has arisen from their secret assumptions that one day, I just might. This afternoon, I will tell them I am exploring that possibility. On the one hand, it’s comforting to know that my neighbors like me enough to lobby hard for me to stay where I am; but on the other, that knowledge makes it difficult to tell them a move is a very real possibility.

+++

I got a call from one of the realtors who came by last week to look at the house. She has done an analysis and is prepared to give me a report that offers her best estimate of the “right” asking price, if I were to decide to sell. I’ll meet her at her office early Monday morning to go over her findings. She told me when she was here that, if I decide to sell, I must have a plan in place as to where I’ll go; she suggested it would be essentially pointless to think I might find a house in the Village because the market is so fiercely competitive right now. Another friend, who lives in Hot Springs, said the same. She is in sort of the same boat I’m in; looking to move, but she has business reasons to stay in Hot Springs, so she is being squeezed by the tight market. And, so, for me, a move would not be simply out of this house, but out of this area.

I have intensely mixed feelings about that.  A move would take me away from a number of people I have come to call friends; more people in that category than I have ever had. And I wonder if it would be even remotely possible to ever find another group of people where I might, finally, fit.  But, in addition to people with whom I feel a deep and growing connection, this area is awash in ultra-conservative, right-wing, gun-loving, flag-waving, uncompassionate, bible-thumping zealots. And even more difficult is the fact that everywhere I turn I am reminded of the good times I have enjoyed here with my wife.  This part of the world is awash in chiggers, too, every summer; that’s one reason I don’t get outside and walk/hike much.  If I were to sell this house for a significant amount of money, that money would be available for me to find a home someplace else. A smaller home that might cost as much as this one fetches, but that could be in an area where the benefits outweigh the costs. I wish I could take “my people” with me or convince them to follow me. I’ve long wished to create a co-housing arrangement. Or even a commune. A place in the country that could become a haven, a retreat away from the noise and distractions of a population center (but close enough to have access to big city amenities…I live in a fantasy world). Crap, I really am a dreamer. “My people” don’t know me well enough to do that. And I doubt they like me enough to want to live with me, even in separate houses. I think, while they may miss me, I doubt “my people” would urge me to stay. Why would they? We’re not really close friends; we’re more like buddies, I think. But I’m closer to this “tribe” than I’ve ever been to any other group of people. Most of them have at least one thing in common; they are involved in my church. I wonder whether that’s a clue as to where I should consider landing?

My ideal place is a dream world that probably doesn’t exist. I could just be gypsy for awhile. I could dispose of most of my possessions and roam, looking for a place and people who would make me feel like I’m home. I exchanged some emails with a friend just a day or so ago, in which we discussed the subject of  where we consider “home.” She said the Village doesn’t feel like home to her. I said I had a different definition. In my words, ” I look at home as the place I can go to every night and feel like it belongs to me. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt like home was a permanent place to which I could always return.” But I understand her perspective. And I wish I felt there was a place where I would always be welcome and to which I could always return and feel safe and secure and love and all the rest…but that may be a fantasy, too.

I’ve thought about moving to Fort Smith, to be close to where my good friends of fifty years or more live. But there’s no guarantee they will stay there. There’s no guarantee of anything. Or I could move back to Texas to be closer to some of my family. But Texas has become a state where I am not sure I want to spend my time; the politics of the state, alone, is reason to avoid it. Or I could consider moving to the Dayton, Ohio area, where my nephew and his wife and my former sister-in-law live at present. “At present.” There’s no reason to think that will change, but there is, again, no guarantee. I have a sister in California, but moving there would be like intentionally emptying my bank account. Or I could look again at Mexico, a place I’ve fallen in love with. But now, especially with COVID, it’s hard to consider. And I can’t be certain my brother and his wife, who live there, will remain there. Would I like it as much if I were really and truly alone? Everything is a crap-shoot. Even staying here. Especially staying here.

+++

Over the past several days, I’ve been poring over maps of the USA, picking out areas I might like to explore. I’ve gone online to Zillow.com and realtor.com to check into  house and land prices. I’ve looked at street-view images of places that look intriguing; hoping to find that small-town America that may exist only in my imagination and in carefully scripted films. A friend, considering her options because she does not feel she is home, has been doing the same thing. It will behoove me to compare notes with her; I think she’s after many of the same things I’m looking for.

There must be some place I could go that would feel, instantly, like an embrace. A place where I would look around and sigh and and say to myself, “So, this is what home looks like and feels like, is it?’ No, such a place does not necessarily exist. I have to keep telling myself it’s not the place, it’s the people. And it’s not the place, it’s me. And it’s not the place, it’s how I feel when I’m in it. But I have to be careful about this. Even though I feel closer to my “tribe” than I’ve ever felt before, it’s not really a strong bond. It’s more like willing and welcoming acceptance than  a powerful embrace. While I may wish for a closer connection that is wise or emotionally safe, I may be living in a fantasy world. I may have unrealistic expectations. Duh, John, you think?

+++

Ignoring the possibilities of the future, I commented online last night to a neighbor down the street about her wisteria. That conversation led her to prepare a cutting for me, which I will pick up in a few hours. She warned me that it’s hard to control, once they start to grow, so I should be careful. Be careful. That’s good advice, and not just about wisteria that grows like kudzu.

+++

I’ve spent more than an hour and a half at my desk, pouring out competing thoughts and ideas. I think I’m adding to my confusion more than coming to a conclusion. I’m trying to decide now whether a cup of coffee or a snifter of cognac would be the best choice as a comforter and companion right now. Maybe a cognac, followed by coffee.  Ach. It’s 4:40; I don’t think it would be wise to drink cognac right now, even if followed by coffee.

+++

I think it must have been a dream that woke me up a few hours ago. But I do not remember what it was about, if indeed it was a dream. Sometimes, it’s better not to recall dreams because dreams can be nightmares.

+++

I posted a photo yesterday’s on Facebook of breakfast. It was an unusual breakfast of pan-seared tilapia and raw zucchini (intended as the previous night’s dinner that had not be prepared). A friend commented that my photo was not breakfast and that I needed to learn what constitutes a “breakfast.” I invited her to come teach me this morning. I await her arrival. But it’s early yet. In the meantime, I may cure my early morning hunger with a few pieces of herring in wine sauce.

+++

What I have done this morning cannot be considered writing. I do not know what it is, but it’s not writing. Maybe it’s self-induced hypnosis as therapy, produced online for reasons unknown to the scribe.

+++

I had a late, slow start to the day. When I woke up at 4:45 or so, I did not feel like getting up. So, I set my alarm for 6:45 and went back to bed (I did not want to sleep beyond that time…it could ruin my day). I get up just a few minutes before was set to sound, so I turned it off and began my day. Thus far, I’ve washed a load of clothes, washed sheets, made a breakfast of tilapia and raw zucchini (intended for last night’s dinner which was delayed in favor of drinking wine and munching nuts and pretzels with neighbors, visiting briefly with my sister-in-law and playing a few Words with Friends games with her, and responding to a few emails to friends. And I accepted an invitation from different neighbors to go out with them for a ride on Lake Balboa tomorrow afternoon, followed by picking up Mexican food from a restaurant and eating dinner on their deck. I feel like I’ve accomplished more today than I actually have. I am enjoying a pleasant life, which does not explain why I am so…what? I dunno. I will try to dismiss that “what” for today.

+++

My gratitude for people in my personal sphere has never been unimportant to me, but I think I sometimes fail to express it as directly as I should. I think people should make a point of lettering others know they are valued and appreciated. Too often, in my experience, I simply have assumed my appreciation was obvious. That assumption is faulty.

+++

I overindulged in wine last night (my neighbor and I came close to polishing off a 1.5 liter bottle of chardonnay between the two of us; her husband, who prefers boxed wine, drink three glasses of his pinot grigio). Perhaps that is why I slept in and why I now feel less than stellar. I’m not in the mood to write at this very moment, so I’ll call it a day with regard to writing.  My head is fuzzy and my gut is telling me I need something like a milk shake instead of a sandwich. I think Sonic has decent shake, so I’ll give that a shot. Maybe I’ll feel like cleaning up the deck when I return home. Or maybe not.

My wife’s illness and then her death shattered both our dreams. I don’t even remember what they were, now. But they were grand. We were going to escape from the nightmare of COVID-19 and live the lives we had planned. We would go places. See people. But, mostly, we would nurture what had been growing for more than forty years. Not so suddenly, all of that disappeared. For five months, she suffered through confinement in hospitals and rehab facilities. And then she died. And I have spent the last five months trying to recover from what seemed like a sudden and catastrophic rupture in everything that was good in my life. I miss her so much that every day I experience at least a brief moment in which I feel like I can’t go on and don’t want to.  But then I come out of the worst of it and I think about how fortunate I am to be who and where I am in the moment. And then I slip back a step, then take another step forward.  At the moment, I’m wondering whether it’s too early for me to think about the future, perhaps with another woman. Just writing those words is difficult and seems crass and unkind and hard-hearted. But at some point, and maybe that moment is soon, I will need to decide whether to settle in to the life we had—but without her—or to create a new one that could, coincidentally, create a new me. As for another woman; I wouldn’t have the faintest idea where to look. And the idea of “looking” for another woman seems ugly and chauvinistic. And, of course, I wonder whether my wife would approve or be hurt that I could even think of such a thing. Ach! I just don’t know. I feel like I’m attempting to replace a shattered mirror, when what perhaps I should be doing is trying to piece the shards of glass back together.

I’ve had two realtors look at my house. One has suggested an asking price that seems to me much higher than I think I could get and the other has yet to get back to me with a figure. But she, too, says the house would sell quickly and for a premium price. I said I would take a year, but it’s been ten months since my wife’s illness took hold. I’m sure I’ve written this before, maybe recently. Or maybe I’ve just thought it. Ach. I’m confused and feel a little like I need help. A friend offered a recommendation about a counselor who might help. I’ve set up an appointment next month. Maybe a session with her can shake me into some sense of decisiveness or, at least, can help me decide on a direction.

+++

“I am who I am.” I hear that, or some facsimile thereof, from people who also say they are not swayed by what people think of them. A day or two ago, I came upon a statement to that effect, made by a woman who, apparently, went to high school with me. She said, in essence, she used to worry about how other people perceived her. Now, she posted (to a Facebook group dedicated to members of my 1972 high school graduating class), “…I don’t give a rat’s ass what people think…I am who I am.” I am thinking of attending the 50th reunion in 2022 (assuming one is held). I have never attended one, though I planned to on a couple of occasions. Something came up. I do not remember what.

As much as I’d sometimes like others’ perceptions of me to bounce off of me like hail off a marble walkway, that’s rarely the case. And I suspect my sensitivity to what people think may contribute to my tendency to “be” a different person in different contexts. I am far different when I am in the presence of someone with whom I am casually comfortable from who I am in a formal environment where I know few people, if anyone. I am not frightened of well-dressed strangers, but I am cautious. I don’t reveal much about myself in those circumstances. In fact, I don’t reveal a hell of a lot about myself even in the company of casual acquaintances in a party atmosphere. I suppose the variations in my behavior arise from efforts at self-protection, whether conscious or not.

The wide variance in my personalities (such as they are) from circumstance to circumstance no doubt influences the way I perceive others. My assumption about others—their statements to the contrary notwithstanding—always is that I am seeing only one of many personalities. I assume they, too, constitute different people depending on context.  It usually takes me quite a while to feel confident I “know” the various people who live inside another individual. Sometimes, that never happens. So I remain cautious about exposing too much.  Except, of course, when I write.

It’s as if I know no one will read what I reveal, though it is becoming increasingly difficult for me to believe that, in that a number of people I know visit this blog, at least occasionally. So they can see evidence of the different people who live inside my head and who reveal themselves only when circumstances warrant. Trying to think of how others might perceive me, as they read evidence of my situational behavior, I imagine they might think I really have different and quite distinct personalities. I think I would be extremely  tense around someone who I believed suffered from dissociative identity disorder (multiple personalities). And so would they. Maybe. Or maybe they just recognize contextually-derived social behaviors as natural responses to one’s environment. A woman who was following my blog for several months, and with whom I traded emails fairly regularly, told me a month or so ago that she was getting away from social media for a while. I haven’t heard from her since and I’m wondering whether she tired of my tendency to be different people in my writing. It’s one of a million “what if” situations that I could dwell on until the end of time.

I could ramble on about this all week. I won’t. Or, at least, I’ll try not to.

+++

Last night, I participated in the third consecutive Thursday-night trivia event at a local pub. There were only six people at our table, but the sound level in the pub was sufficiently loud that I found it a bit difficult to hear conversation. I’ve been in the same pub when live music was playing; it’s then just far too loud for my comfort. I like a reasonably quiet environment; an acoustic jazz trio, perhaps, at the far end of the room and people speaking in low tones so the folks at nearby tables cannot eavesdrop. But not always. I’m up for loud, raucous, energetic vibes, too. But, seldom.

Day before yesterday, I spent a few hours over lunch with a friend who suddenly left the church we both attended. He was in a senior leadership role until he announced his and his wife’s immediate departure from the church. I do not know all the details of his decision to leave; that’s his business. I am glad, though, that he still considers us friends and that the church is not necessarily the glue that binds us. I was stunned to learn that he is turning 86 years old very soon! He looks considerably younger and he behaves like a much younger man. He spoke wistfully of his days taking his family on road trips and camping trips in their RV. Hearing people like him, and another friend who’s currently on the road in her RV, talk about the way an RV lifestyle gives them a sense of freedom prolongs my thinking process about RVs. One day, I’ll decide something. Yes or No. Or Maybe. And then the next day I’ll change my mind. Over and over and over again. That’s my M.O. But not always. I can be dangerously decisive. I can hold on to the rectitude of the correctness of my decision long after it has been obvious to everyone around me it was a bad, bad decision. Hmm.

+++

My writing has become one of the very few “conversational” outlets I have to enable me to engage in serious conversations that last more than a few minutes. For that reason, if no other, I  must continue to write. No one else should feel compelled to read my indecisive drivel. I’m just thinking out loud, without the sound. I try to keep these daily ruminations short, but I just don’t seem to be able to do it. Someday, perhaps.

A couple of weeks ago, I was introduced to a definition of a word I had known by a different definition. The definition, new to me, was “of, relating to, or resembling twilight; dim; indistinct.” The definition I had known was for the same term, but with an additional word, “ray,” thrown in. Crepuscular. Crepuscular ray. A crepuscular ray (the term I knew) is “a twilight ray of sunlight shining through breaks in high clouds and illuminating dust particles in the air.” I like the way crepuscular, by itself, is used in one of the example sentences offered by dictionary.com:

It is blended twilight of intellect and sensation; it is the crepuscular of thought.
~ from The Life of Francis Thompson, by Everard Meyne

It occurs to me that the world would be a more comfortable, less scary place if all humans would spend twenty minutes a day learning a new word or becoming more adept at using a word they thought they knew, but didn’t grasp completely. Those twenty minutes would be unavailable for negativity, emotional attacks, and other nasty stuff that word-play won’t allow. Although, I have to say, my sister-in-law gets really competitive when playing Words with Friends with me, sometimes announcing a devastating move that will ruin my chances of winning a game by saying, “I’m gonna fuck you up!” Hearing that makes me want to stage a friendly card game between four sweet, quite elderly, ladies; at some point, the demeanor of one of the gentle old women would change dramatically and she would look at her competitors and make the same statement. For some reason, when I see that scene in my mind’s eye, I find it hilarious.

+++

Last night, I dreamed I was involved in an affair with a woman I have not seen in at least ten years and probably closer to fifteen years. Actually, that’s not quite right. In the dream, I was attempting to salvage what apparently was an affair that was dissolving. No, that’s not quite right, either. I was attempting to rekindle an affair that had already turned to ashes. At least I think that’s what it was. The verbal interactions between the woman and me were innocuous, but the tension between us was evident to me.

Even though the dream did not reflect reality, it was disturbing. Have I ever actually had an affair with this woman? Have I forgotten it, only to recall it in my dream? Or, if I had never had an affair with her, did the dream reveal that I wanted to? By the time I was sufficiently awake to sort through the dream, parts of it had melted away; I could not remember big chunks of it. What I knew with certainty, though, was that the dream was not a replay of reality; nothing that occurred in the dream has ever happened. But it felt real at the time I was dreaming it. It felt painful that I could not resurrect the dream relationship. I felt rejected and rebuffed by her in the dream in a way I never felt, nor had any reason to feel, in the real world. But only after I awoke and recalled the dream did I feel guilt about the affair and about my efforts to revitalize it. Strange, that. Guilt about an artificial transgression created in my unconscious mind. That’s a little like feeling personal remorse over an action taken by a someone else in a time before one was born.

That dream was the crepuscular of consciousness. I may have a new favorite word. Thanks, Becky, if you’re reading this (or even if you’re not). You’re the one who introduced me to the actual definition of a word I thought I knew. You had nothing to do with the dream.

+++

We only imagine who we are and what we think. Our existence is merely an illusion. The thoughts we believe we think are just ideas planted by the detritus of exploding stars and dissolving meteorites. We nurture those ideas, but they exist only in the abstract, so they are invisible. As is the real person beneath the imaginary façade. But is “real” actual? Or is it simply an expression of an artificial cage intended to keep our ideas and our selves from escaping into the atmosphere we are told exists, but is not “there,” at least not in the sense that our eyes perceive it. Even our eyes manufacture images; they paint pictures of the way the world might look if we could actually experience it visually. But because the images are simply interpretations of refracted light, we do not see the “things” we look at; we only see how light reflects off of them. It’s all imaginary. It’s all an illusion. Even our thoughts about the illusion are just bits and pieces of atoms and molecules cobbled together in a rigidly random fashion so our archaic and arcane brains can make sense of it all. But how does one make sense of a vast emptiness that we populate with imaginary substance that cannot be seen? How does one believe anything, when the only “thing” to which “any” is attached is pure, unadulterated fantasy? Colorless, odorless, tasteless, and without palpable substance. We dream ourselves into existence out of nothing. A massive collective fantasy has given rise to an entire planet; an entire universe, really. We are ideas still being born. Some still-born. The “known” universe is smaller than tiny. One billion universes of the same size would would fit easily onto the head of a pin with the majority of the pin-head remaining a stretch of vacant space. Because, you see, we take up no space (except as we imagine ourselves to be); take up only tiny elements of perception. And those elements rattle around in a place so big there is no word to describe its size. It’s not hard to imagine that everything we know is pure fantasy. But it’s not easy, either. Nothing is as it seems. But everything is exactly as it is. Unless, of course, it isn’t.

+++

I’ve never had a horse. I’ve ridden several (but not for years), but I’ve never reached the point of being completely at ease around them. If I had a small farm or ranch, or just a plot of land big enough to sustain a horse, I think I’d want one of the kind with big tufts of hair around their hooves. Not necessarily Clydesdales, but something similar in appearance, perhaps. But smaller. Gentle horses that would pick up on my moods and would behave accordingly. And I would want a horse that would not be spooked by me playing guitar. I’ve never played guitar, but I’m thinking about buying one and learning to play through practice. No reading music for me; I think people who can read music were left on Earth by alien creatures. There is no natural explanation for the transcription of musical sounds; it’s obviously some form of extra-terrestrial communication. I just want to learn by picking and playing. My horses, Insatia and Starvatia, would be happy to listen to me as I learn. I would play folk music and classical Spanish guitar tunes. And, of course, Stairway to Heaven and Layla and Free Fallin’ and Fire and Rain and The Sound of Silence and Pinball Wizard and Fast Car and Wild World and so many more.

I think I’ll need to invite my friend Larry, a guitar aficionado and player extraordinaire, from NYC to come teach me to play. I want to be proficient to the point of expertise in no more than four weeks. This process will require focus, so I may need to move at least temporarily to a desolate ranch about twenty miles outside of Chloride, New Mexico. Isolation and desolation are key elements to learning, extremely quickly, to raise horses and play guitar. So I’ve been led to believe, by my own imagination.

+++

I once tried writing a story with another writer who lived far away from me (and still does). I would write a paragraph or a page (I don’t remember exactly what), then she would write one. It was all done online, so we could exchange our writing. She was trying to be serious, I think. I was feeling mischievous and contemptible. So her story, which I think began with a train ride that was headed from New York State toward Nova Scotia, turned in my hands into an improbable and very steamy story of sex between strangers on a train. She tried to get me back on the rails, but it was an impossible task. I think she gave up. I think I still have that “story” somewhere. More evidence of me hording stuff I don’t need and probably will never read again. Later, much later, she and my wife and my sister-in-law and I shared a train ride in New York state; I think my writer friend got on or off at Syracuse or Albany-Rensselaer. Memories fail me sometimes. Like a lot, lately.

+++

A few weeks ago, I began to write email messages to people as I happened to think about them (the people). I did not (except in one case) mention that that’s what I was doing; I just started doing it. Then, I made the transition (actually, the addition) of letters. I’ve only written a few emails and a few letters. I am not sure what I expected out of the practice and I’m not sure what I’ve gotten out of it. I suppose I thought I would become more aware or conscious of thinking about people if I made a point of sending them a message of some kind. I don’t know whether it has worked. I know I have slacked off on the process. Its reduction began even before it got started in earnest.  I still like the idea. It has merit, if only I can convince myself to keep doing it.

+++

I lied. This is another long, convoluted, peppered-with-madness post. I’m going to keep trying. This post feels like a Sunday post, not a Thursday post. I wonder what that’s all about.

Cod. I like it. Its firm flesh has both the texture and the taste I like in a white fish. Yesterday, I thawed a piece of cod for last night’s dinner. I seasoned it with Italian seasoning, pepper, salt, garlic powder, and red pepper flakes, then seared it briefly on both sides before adding thin slices of zucchini to the pan. I then added canned tomatoes along with more of the same spices. With the piece of cod nestled among the tomatoes and zucchini, I covered the pan and poached the fish for a few minutes. Both the cod and the zucchini came out firm and extremely tasty. It was a healthy, low calorie meal. I felt proud of myself. And then I munched on pretzels, completely obliterating all the just pride I had in “eating well.” Oh, well. There’s tonight. I can try again.

+++

My right shoulder hurts like bloody hell. I must have slept wrong on it. When I move, even a little, I feel pain in a spot that I cannot reach (not that I’d know what to do if I could). The pain woke me up over and over and over again in the early morning hours. Once, I must have been in a dream-world as I awoke; I felt a soft hand caressing the shoulder and heard a woman’s voice ask if that made it feel better. I started to answer that it did, but suddenly I was awake and there was no hand or voice, just an annoying, piercing pain. I suppose I should look for the heating pad. Or ice packs. I never remember which is supposed to be good for such pains.

+++

Music, I think, is a stand-in for lengthy attempts to explain one’s outlook on life and the way one views the world around us. I spent time last night and again this morning listening to music, following links to several tunes sent to me by a friend. It’s interesting to pay close attention to both the sounds of instruments and, when the music is accompanied by lyrics, to the words that accompany them. Together, those sounds and those words can reveal a great deal about the person who finds them appealing. That’s not always the case, of course, but knowing a person’s musical tastes and, especially, specific pieces a person finds especially captivating can be almost like reading a private diary. Okay. That may be taking it a bit far. But maybe not.

+++

Five months ago today, my wife died. My wonderful, loving wife. The woman who made it possible for me to believe I mattered. The person who convinced me there was a place for me on this planet. Her absence still aches more than I can put into words. The confidence in myself she gave me is no longer intact. I know I can’t keep going on forever marking these awful “anniversaries” with tears and anger and despair, but I don’t yet know how else to acknowledge these painful dates. One does not celebrate the anniversary of a loved-one’s death; one simply marks it and tries to use the occasion to add another threadbare bandage to cover a gaping wound in one’s life. Eventually, the wound will become a scar. And we can live with scars, whereas wounds can become deadly if left untended.

+++

I finished watching Undercover last night. I did not start anything else, nor did I return to any of the several series I have begun but not yet finished. I wasn’t in the mood for television. I was in the mood to have a long, unstructured conversation with someone interesting and interested. But, instead, daydreamed and left the dinner dishes in the sink, where they remain. In a few minutes, I will take care of that. If my shoulder permits. It continues to hurt like holy hell. I wish I had a stash of morphine handy. Or even Advil.

+++

I am making progress. Significant progress. I am spending time with people I like. I am interacting with people with whom I feel I am developing especially meaningful connections. But my perpetual lack of self-confidence keeps rearing its head, insisting I ask myself whether overtures of friendship that I perceive are, instead, expressions of compassion from acquaintances. I sabotage myself by allowing self-doubt to infect even the most enjoyable circumstances and interactions. That self-doubt and its twin, skepticism about others’ motives, prevents me from taking the initiative in building acquaintanceships into friendships. Yet I tell myself I am making progress. It takes time to rebuild. There are times—most times—when I wish I could get a personality transplant.

A friend mentioned a psychotherapist to me a few weeks ago. I decided I might explore talking to this psychotherapist to discuss issues of stress and related “stuff” that I think would be best handled than simply bottled up. I still haven’t called her, though. I am not quite sure what to ask. Maybe that’s where I start. Let her ask probing questions that will  magically lift a veil, taking with it all my anxieties and troubles. Yeah.

+++

Today, I will have lunch with a friend, again at one of my favorite places, Las Americas. I know already that I will order two tacos: one lengua and one barbacoa. I would like to order a taco al pastor, as well, and perhaps a taco de carne asada, plus a few more. But I would burst. They’re big tacos. I have a vision that four or five people would each order two tacos of different varieties and would then share them. That’s the way to experience a broad assortment of food. Too bad I don’t feel comfortable approaching strangers in restaurants and asking if they would share a bite or two of their meal. Or maybe it’s good that I don’t feel comfortable doing that; I could be treated badly if I asked the wrong person/people.  I do look forward to my visit with my friend; it has been way too long. I am interested in learning from him what has been going on in his life since last we visited.

+++

I just moved in precisely the wrong way, causing pain to explode from my shoulder like a volcanic eruption. If this doesn’t get better, soon, I’ll have to ask a doctor for something to ease the damn pain. Typing doesn’t help, so this is it for a while.

As usual, I opened my little anthology of Zen quotations this morning to a random page and read the quote aloud. When I read it, I suspected the Universe had been listening in on my thoughts and was offering advice unexpectedly by picking the page I read. I do not believe that, of course, but the coincidence is more than a little…coincidental.

To gain enlightenment,
you must want it
as much as a man whose head
is held under water
wants air.

~ Attributed as ‘Zen Saying’ ~

That quotation, along with a video I watched yesterday (and about which I’ll write in a few moments), triggered some sharp, self-critical thoughts that, I hope, will generate some much-needed changes in my behaviors or attitudes or daily activities or all of the above.

+++

Before I continue, I want to acknowledge that my posts are too long, too disconnected (both internally and between themselves), and probably difficult to read and follow. At least sometimes. I really never expected people would want to read them. They’ve almost always been for myself…like talking to myself without making noises that might get me committed to places I don’t want to go. That notwithstanding, I’m flattered and appreciative of the people who read what I write. More than anyone, you must be the people who “get” me, to the extent I can be “got.” And I thank you for that. This post is too long, like so many others. But, considering that it’s being written by a monkey, its length is really of no consequence, is it? Can the monkey really have too long a tale?

+++

Most of the last five or six years, a great deal of my time has been spent listening to how horrible Trump is. I spent plenty of that time saying the same thing. And I believed it and still do. But the fact that it’s true does not mean that I have to keep harping on it. A few days ago, I spent several hours hearing the same thing again. The conversation could have been complimentary about how Mother Nature had sparkled up the day or about how we all hope Biden’s leadership will lead us in positive directions. Or we could have talked about music or growing fig trees in northern Canada or learning to create leaded glass art or the alleged threats posed by China and Russia to freedom, democracy, and the American Way. But, instead, it was like a broken record. And, I’ll admit, I threw in a few of my own golden oldies. But I’ll admit, too, I am sick of it. Let it rest for awhile, while the prosecutors do their work. Let it rest, even if Trump and his minions are screaming bloody murder and installing automatons in Congressional slots to do their bidding. Do what you will; write letters, send emails, send texts, organize visits to Congressional offices to argue your case. But do it quietly. Curse Trump under your breath at home. Let me attempt to forget his name and his legacy.  Rant completed.

+++

I am concerned that the CDC may have bowed to social and/or political pressure when it made dramatic changes in recommendations about wearing masks. Suddenly, we can take them off almost anywhere, so long as we’ve been vaccinated. That is at odds with what was being advised (and the reasons for it) just a month or two ago. And the history of the CDC’s advice during the last year is a bit like the history of a ping-pong ball during the course of an international table tennis match. It’s understandable that the CDC does not have all the answers, but it’s own history of backtracking should cause its leaders to give pause before announcing major policy swings. That’s my concern at the moment. Will I wear a mask whenever I am around others? Probably not. It will be a circumstantial decision, based on a number of factors I will assess on a case-by-case basis. So, maybe I am just as inconsistent as the CDC. It’s not the worst thing anyone has ever said about me.

+++

Yesterday was, for the most part, a drab, grey, rainy, coolish day. I left the house only long enough to reach the end of the driveway, collect the mail, and return. Once inside, I was inside for the remainder of the day. Expecting any visitors would call well in advance, I did not bother to shower or shave. And I remained in my comfortable shorts and ragged t-shirt all day, the clothes I put on when I got out of bed. Today, regardless of the weather, I will shower, dress, and become more or less presentable early on. I cancelled a commitment I had this morning to take care of some business around the house. And I expect a visitor sometime around mid-afternoon. Either before or after, I will go to the post office and to the grocery store, where I will pick up some fruits and veggies. I have plenty of protein in the house, wrapped up in various forms in the freezer or awaiting the can opener (tuna, salmon, oysters, etc.). As far as I can tell, I have no other outside commitments. So, I will focus on stuff here at home; there’s more than enough to keep me busy for ten years.

+++

In the first paragraph of this post, I alluded to what I’m about to address. I did not respond well to the traumas I encountered during the last year. Unlike so many people who seemed to have been inspired by the challenges of COVID-19, my energy seemed to dwindle. Later, when my wife became ill and went into the hospital and rehab facilities, my strength ebbed even more. I think I noticed it first in declining enthusiasm to fulfill commitments I had made before the world appeared to begin to unravel. Rather than confront it, I more or less ignored it. “It’s temporary,” I thought, “I will come out of the doldrums soon, after I’ve taken the time I need to adapt.” The time I needed to adapt expanded to fill the time available. And, it seems, it’s still expanding. I’ve given myself permission to stay in a state of moderate lethargy for months and months and month. After a few months, I think I more or less forgot about it; I allowed my new low-energy persona to become normal.

Part of the reason I’ve recognized this state of affairs again is that I watched a video yesterday, which kicked off a new fund-raising drive for church, that called attention to all the volunteerism that grew out of the the challenges of the year. Responses like the ones I SHOULD have had. A lot of people were unwilling to let COVID-19 quash their enthusiasm. Their love for the people who comprise the church was amplified, it seems, by being put to the test by a threat. They jumped in and did even more than they had before. I, on the other hand, let things slide. I drifted away from my commitment to a group who committed to promoting environmental responsibility in the church and the community. I delayed following up to ensure that efforts continued to implement long term plans. I volunteered to undertake a project, then let it slide when confronted with disappointments. At about the same time, I had agreed to assume something of an apprenticeship to take on oversight of a major program. It wasn’t long before I realized I had overcommitted in an area about which my enthusiasm was not sufficient to begin with, and it just continued to decline. I will give myself a slight pass on the latter issues; during that process, my wife’s condition worsened considerably. But while my wife’s illness and death no doubt contributed to my apathy, I am responsible for failing to take action to overcome that dispassionate detachment. It was like I no longer cared as much; at least not enough to actually follow through on my commitments the way I normally would.

Recognition of the drop in my activities in support of the church sparked my thinking about the matter. But the decline in my church involvement is by no means the only result of my response to trauma. Every aspect of engagement seems to have suffered. While I’ve never been much of a fan of telephone chats, I seem to have almost abandoned the phone, which translates into fewer interactions with people I care about. And I’ve virtually stopped writing the kind of stuff I used to love writing, opting instead to devote most of my writing to journaling, as if I’m writing a diary instead of a blog [like this]. I do not even get in touch with old friends the way I used to. My periodic promises to get in touch “soon” often go unfulfilled.

Another response to the traumas of COVID-19 and my wife’s death has been very significant weight gain. I talk about and think about “doing something about it,” but to date all I have done is allow it to continue, unchecked. Instead of taking positive steps to relieve my growing level of stress, I have reacted by attempting to mask it in various ways, not the least of which has involved my consumption of food and booze. I made some half-hearted attempts to replace those crutches with another one, medicinal cannabis, but that has been rare and not especially useful.

All of these defects in my commitments and enthusiasm lead only to one conclusion: I have to reverse course. I won’t kid myself into thinking a quick “aha!” moment will fix everything. It took time for my physical and mental exhaustion to take their toll and it will take time for me to recover from months and months and months of lethargy. I hope my commitment to recover something of my “old self” will take hold; I desperately want to fulfill that one. I intend to be selective in my commitments from here on and more assertive when I decline to take on new ones. I’ve said “no” only a few times when asked and I should have used the word exponentially more. I plan to be more practical. Time will tell if this, like so much else, is just an explosion of words that disappear into the ether. Splash! I’ve pulled my head out of the water and taken my first breath of air in far too long. Now, do I want enlightenment as much?

+++

This especially long post may be one of the last ones that will take up so much space and time. I have things to do with myself.

My mind has been occupied, during many evenings the last few weeks, by watching a Flemish-language/English subtitled crime series called Undercover, a Netflix crime drama set primarily in Belgium. Much of the current season’s action is set on a country dude ranch in the Belgian countryside. The prior season (season 1) was set mostly in what I would call a trailer park, but which was given a more genteel name in the series; I don’t recall what they called it, but the permanent homes among the trailers were called “chalet.” Like most television, especially foreign crime drama television, the plots are impractical. But these plots are incredibly gripping. Yet even with their impractical nature, coupled with impossible storylines, they are impossible to dismiss. I am addicted to them as if they are crack cocaine and I am Casey Jones—the protagonist in the Grateful Dead’s musical masterpiece. Speaking of Casey Jones, I wonder whether people who are familiar with the Dead’s music are aware of the ballad that preceded it or the very real railroad engineer upon whom the ballad was based? I guess I’ll just keep wondering.

This focus on Undercover and, before it, strings of Pine Gap, Good Girls, Schitt’s Creek, Deep Water, etc. has kept me married almost exclusively to Netflix. Another set of reasons to drop Suddenlink cable like a box of rabid rattlesnakes that are high on crystal meth.  As if I know what that would be like. Suffice it to say I need, desperately, to cut the cable. There is no legitimate reason to keep paying obscene amounts for access to television I never, ever, ever watch. My recall of Pine Gap, etc. reminds me that parts of some or all of those series remain for me to watch. I do tend to skip around from series to series over the course of several days, simply because I get a tad bored, even with the most riveting programs.  Strange, that. An oxymoronic idea, is it?

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If I were to leave Hot Springs Village, I think I might do it under cover of darkness. Or, at least, with as little fanfare as possible. I would slink off without saying goodbye because I am not good at remaining stoic in such circumstances. My eyes would fill to overflowing with tears and my mind would insist on expressing my emotions. I would feel a requirement to explain the intellectual framework upon which my decision to leave is based; and that would devolve into an emotional rainstorm. So, best if I just crawl away when the time comes, weeping all the while.  But maybe I’ll stick around for years to come. I doubt that, though. A compelling reason—a relationship to which I was so irresistibly chained that I simply could not shatter it by leaving—would be necessary. That doesn’t not exist, so I probably will slink out without notice.

It occurs to me that a thirst for change exists only because something either is missing or is unacceptably difficult in one’s current state of affairs. Those really are the only legitimate propellants that drive the desire for change. The argument that “nothing is keeping me here” is specious; either “here” is too painful to stay or is missing a strong magnet that exists elsewhere.

Even if the wish to change is driven by a desire to live on the seashore or in a big city or on a desolate, high-mountain peak, something is missing. What’s missing are those environments. Conversely, if the driver for seeking change is personal or emotional or financial difficulty, the desire to leave problems behind is what motivates change.

With those things in mind, I am trying to psychoanalyze my own thought processes; the ones prompting me to consider moving somewhere as yet unknown. Why am I going through those thought processes? Is something missing? Is my current state of affairs difficult, meriting an escape attempt? My efforts to psychoanalyze are for naught; I just don’t know. And “somewhere” may not be another community; it may just be another house. I simply don’t know.

Given my interest of late in looking at RVs and hitting the road, I wonder whether it’s all just an advanced case of cabin fever that might be cured with a few long trips. It’s possible, I suppose, but it feels like more than fever; it feels more like an incurable condition whose symptoms can be quelled from time to time with change. I do not recall whether I wrote it or simply thought it recently: there may be something to the “seven-year-itch” theory. Like the biological imperative that drives cicadas to emerge from their underground protection every seventeen years, maybe the seven-year-itch can infect humans in either a physical or psychological way that drives them to long for change.

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I had another long, convoluted dream last night. I worked in an office. I drove a shiny gold Toyota Previa van; it was nearly new. Twice in the dream, it was vandalized. The second time, it was damaged beyond repair. I tried to call the police, but I could not find the number of the Addison police (a clue that this dream took place in Addison, Texas). There was much more to this dream, all involved in working in an office for at least two different associations. I awoke while unsuccessfully attempting to get the phone number to call the police.

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Once again, I did not sleep well last night. I tossed and turned all night, from the time I went to bed early, around 10, until I got up around 5. In the interim, I got up to pee or to get some water at least four times. This sleeplessness has been going on for most of the last week. I haven’t been able to nap during the day, either, so I’ve been sort of dragging and unproductive during the day. Maybe that’s what I want to get away from; weariness and exhaustion.

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I wanted this post to be less diary/journal and more philosophical treatise, but I was derailed at the first though of Casey Jones. Somehow, the idea of a train’s engineer trying to make up for lost time just grabbed me by the collar and pulled me into a personal conversation.

Last night, I tried to lessen the aches and pains in my joints by inhaling a little medicinal cannabis. I suppose it helped the pain a bit, but mostly it just wrecked my intention to avoid munching on pretzels all evening. It did not have the hoped-for side effect of lightening my mood by a factor of ten. I suppose that would have required one or more similarly-engaged companions with whom I could converse in hilarious half-sentences.

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I have no dogs or cats to feed and I am unwilling to risk getting my feet wet simply to satisfy hummingbirds, so I’m not going outside. At least for a while. Instead, I’ll have more coffee and continue to muse and ruminate, but without letting those thoughts slide out of my fingers onto the screen; I’ll keep those thoughts secret for a while.

.

Significant tension exists between living in the here and now and planning for the future. Living for today tends to reduce worry, but potentially sets the stage for avoidable problems in the future. Planning for the future—and attempting to circumvent those avoidable problems—tends to sow the seeds of worry and diminish the joy of living in the moment. Recognizing the pitfalls of either,  or both, incorporates stress into processes that are meant to do just the opposite.

The “obvious” response to the dilemma might be to seek the proper balance between living in the moment and contingency planning or mapping one’s future. But what is the proper balance and how does one go about identifying, much less achieving, it? I wish I knew. I wish I had the gift of prescience; that might make living in the here and now less dangerous to the future. Or, on the other hand, knowing what’s coming might make living for today virtually impossible. Foreknowledge of misfortune would virtually assure a pointless exercise in worry.

These matters are on my mind as I contemplate today and tomorrow and all the tomorrows that might follow. Contemplation is not the same thing as worry; but they’re blood relations. I can contemplate how I am living my life at this moment, but living for today almost certainly involves an element of recalling yesterday and anticipating tomorrow. Have I recently equated anticipation and worry…right here on this blog? I think so. I think the same relationship exists between the admonition to ” be here, now” and irresponsibility. If all we do is to focus on the present moment, we are shirking our responsibility to adjust for the moments to come. That is irresponsible. Isn’t it?

Depending on one’s personality, worldview, and mindset, the discussion I’ve set up with these paragraphs might be considered either a stupid, pointless worry or a philosophical sphere within which there both are no answers and every possible answer. Some people would laugh off the entire discussion as the rantings of a fool, while others would give it more weight and merit than it deserves. I firmly support both perspectives, as well as an indefinable middle ground somewhere along the spectrum.

The reason this convoluted, labyrinthine matter is on my mind this morning is that I am considering whether to sell my house. I told myself I would wait a year to make any such decisions; I think I lied to myself. I think now is as good a time as any, probably better than most. Though my wife’s death occurred just five months ago, her hospitalization and time in rehabilitation centers began ten months ago. So, in that context, a major change in my life began almost a year ago.  With that in mind, I’m wrestling with just playing it by ear or aggressively exploring my options now. What would I do if I were to sell? I am not sure; that’s one of the horns of this dilemma. Would I stay here? Would I move? If I were to move, where would I go? With whom would I spend my time if I were to go someplace else? Who would I miss most? Who would miss me most? How would I rebuild my life around a new set of circumstances? Why move? Why not? Am I overthinking? Probably. And maybe I’m just reacting to the upcoming five-month anniversary of my wife’s death. Or maybe I’m allowing myself some freedoms to explore ideas I was unable or unwilling to explore before. Should I buy a motorcycle and lure an adventurous woman to join me on a cross-country exploration of the culture in which I live? Or, perhaps, I should give myself a years to explore living in Portugal. This is all such madness. But it’s not, really. It’s not. I need to remake myself. Or I need to try to be satisfied with who I am, though that’s much harder than changing, I think.  Time, as always, will tell.

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Yesterday’s plan to smoke a pork loin went up in clear, tasteless vapor. The bloody electric smoker apparently has a short. After I plugged it in, I went to get the pork out of the garage refrigerator. The refrigerator was not working. I quickly found a tripped breaker. I flipped the breaker switch, only to have the breaker immediately trip again. I suspected the plug on the deck, where I had plugged in the smoker, might be at fault. After a short investigation, I discovered it was the smoker. I then developed Plan B, which was to use the propane grill. I removed the apple wood chips I had placed in the smoker and wrapped them in aluminum foil, put the foil pouch on top of the burners at one end of the grill, and fired it up. Bottom line: inadequate smoke, but at least I was able to cook the loin without making a mess of the oven. The meal was acceptable, if not outstanding. Now: where can I discard the heavy black rectangular box that once was an electric smoker? The smoker was cheap to begin with; it would no doubt cost more to repair than to replace. But I will not replace it too soon; I may not want to haul a smoker around the country on the back of a motorcycle.

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Getting close to people has both benefits and disadvantages. The emotional benefits are numerous, of course, but those same benefits can have a painful side. When one separates from people with whom he has grown close—whether that separation is intellectual/emotional or by way of physical distance (or a combination thereof)—the pleasures of proximity or intimacy recoil into emptiness and sadness. The only way to avoid that emptiness and sadness is to avoid closeness in the first place. But that provides a petri dish for depression. Reality guarantees that, no matter the way  life unfolds, living will provide innumerable opportunities to feel both joy and pain. It’s best, then, to simply accept reality and to wade through it.

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The sky has been light for more than an hour. The hummingbirds probably are getting annoyed that I have not put out the feeders, so I had better go about doing my job.

Contemplating the clear moon
Reflecting a mind empty as the open sky —
Drawn by its beauty,
I lose myself
In the shadow it casts.

~ Dogen ~

There is something about the simple, thought-provoking quotes I find in my little anthology of Zen-influenced quotations that can help calm a day that seems headed toward tumult. If I can just still the ripples in the pond, I feel more confident in my ability to get through a day without cracking wide open. Not a day goes by that I don’t have at least one tearful meltdown as I think of my life with my wife. But starting the day out with at least an effort toward serenity helps. I am more in control than I once was. And I sometimes look toward the future with something other than dread. Of course, I try to focus on now, but practicality insists on looking ahead, followed by a moon shadow.

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For reasons I do not fully understand, I (and, I think, most of the U.S. population) have not been especially aware of or interested in China’s space exploration program. I only vaguely remember news about the country’s successful moon landings (unmanned, but still…) in areas on the “dark side” that the U.S. has not explored. And I have paid little attention to the fact that China is planning to land a Mars rover on the red planet sometime within the next several days. The U.S., when we landed the Perseverance rover on Mars that began sending back photos and when we launched a helicopter from Perseverance, touted the accomplishment with great fanfare. The Chinese endeavor has received scant attention in comparison. That difference in celebratory news is understandable to some extent; we celebrate our own accomplishments more vocally and visibly than we celebrate the achievements of countries we have been indoctrinated to believe are our sworn enemies. But I would think such stunning technical successes would be acknowledged more broadly, regardless of who attained them. None of this is to say that news of the Chinese effort is ignored by U.S. media; it is just not announced as visibly as I might have expected.

I realize, of course, that neither the U.S. nor the Chinese space programs are universally supported and endorsed; many believe the investments in the programs would have been better spent on humanitarian efforts to improve the lives of people on Earth. But ignoring the philosophical differences, I am a little surprised at the relative degree of ignorance I think exists among the American population about both the American and the Chinese endeavors. Especially the Chinese efforts taking place now.

In my opinion, one key reason we do not know much about, or think about, the Chinese program is likely to be deliberate propaganda. In this case, though, the propaganda does not necessarily  feed information to the public. Instead, in this form of propaganda, governmental discouragement of the release of information may be responsible. And that discouragement may well be disguised; a lack of notice by key officials might be taken by news organizations as a suggestion that the “news” is not really newsworthy. So, we do not hear much about it unless we take steps to keep abreast of world news outside our own rather limited media bubble. For example, I periodically scan the online English-language version of China Daily at chinadaily.com. There, the news about the Mars landing is front and center and lauded by Chinese governmental officials.

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I had placed “road trip” on my calendar for next week, hoping to get away for at least a few days. For a variety of reasons, I’ve put that on hold. I may (or may not) try again the first or second week in June. As I contemplate my eventual trip, it occurs to me that the friends (a couple) in Dallas who have offered to let me stay with them are the only people in Dallas I would feel comfortable asking to put me up for a few days. And if I were to go “way” back to Chicago, there’s only one couple I might be willing to ask; and that would be an uncomfortable request, as we were never really close. Fortunately, I think my family will put me up when I eventually visit them, but it strikes me that I have so few non-family connections who I would feel comfortable asking. And that, of course, makes me wonder how I would feel about returning to Hot Springs Village for a visit if I were to move away. How many people would I feel comfortable asking to host me for a few days? The answer to that question, I think, is the gage of where along the spectrum of friendship my relationships with people fall. It’s possible, of course, that there are more people who would be willing to host me in various places, but the issues is my comfort in asking. How close do I feel to them (and how close do others feel to me) in the context of offering or asking for a place to stay? Interestingly, I know from experience that I am willing to host many people who I would not feel comfortable in asking to host me. Odd, that. Maybe I’m just overly-conscious of and concerned about “putting someone out.” Someone mentioned to me recently that she overthinks things. Bingo! I tend to do that.

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It’s Saturday, the day I plan to smoke some pork and have neighbors over to share it. These are the same neighbors who so generously have me over for dinner on a pretty frequent basis. It’s about time I reciprocate. I have done it before, but my hosting does not compare to theirs. I bought a 1.5 litre bottle of one of their favorite wines to accompany dinner. I would have planned to prepare a couple of side dishes, as well, but my neighbor said she plans to make some, so I will defer to her. My sister-in-law, who knows my neighbors pretty well, will join us for the gathering. I am much less formal than my neighbors, but I will try to upgrade my formality just a tad so they will feel more comfortable. It’s good to have such genuinely good people as neighbors; people who, I believe, would do anything in their power to help me if I needed it. I’m grateful for them.

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Once again, for the past several hours, my dreams mingled with my waking consciousness. In one scene from the dream, my wife was extraordinarily upset with a coworker, to the point that she was crying and screaming at him for interfering with her efforts to get her work done. I was angry with the coworker for upsetting my wife, but felt constrained against confronting him. Then, apparently in the same dream, she and a different coworker invited me to join them for lunch. But when we finally got through a cafeteria line, the three of us sat at different tables; I could not understand why she would not sit with me. And in another scene, the same coworker and my wife and I entered a badly disorganized office, where we intended to fax a lunch order, but the fax machine was tied up with an enormously long incoming fax. The entire episode was filled with interruptions and angry phone calls. We finally left the office and entered an old elevator, the inside of which was covered with graffiti. Between these scenes, and in some cases in the middle of them, I awoke and was aware of the dreams and the fact that my wife is dead, but my consciousness seemed to slip in and out of the dreams. I felt the sheets on the bed, I even uttered a few words aloud (regarding the dream), but I then returned to the dream…while partly awake and aware that I was dreaming. During this lengthy dream-wake state, I spoke aloud several times, telling myself I was dreaming and that I should stop. This started sometime shortly after 2:00 a.m. and continued, off and on, until about 4:45 a.m., when I got up.  I was, and remain, exhausted from the dream’s emotional impact. I have to get over that exhaustion, though, so I can do a tolerable job of smoking some meat for dinner.

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For those who took the time and made the effort to tell me why you read my blog, thank you. I appreciate the feedback. And I am grateful that you read what I write, in spite of its jangled, tangled nature, which reflects how I think.

I believe there is a market for RV rentals—a market that does not require renters to drive or drag miniature homes along the world’s highways. While the market would require renters to drive to the markets, at least the damage the drivers do to the highways and byways would be less than the wear and tear done by heavy RVs. What I have in mind might be considered equivalent to “roughing it motels;” RVs permanently positioned and connected to water and sewer connections in RV parks. Renters would drive to their reserved spots, climb inside the RV occupying the spot, and enjoy the comforts of “the RV lifestyle” without the stress and danger of “the RV lifestyle.” Another benefit of “roughing it motels” would be a dramatically-reduced need to build RVs suited to the punishment delivered by travel over bumpy highways. These “roughing it motel” suites would not require roadworthiness beyond simply getting from the factory to their permanent home. Meaning, of course, they would be cheaper to build. Tiny houses, now enjoying a mammoth resurgent in popularity (as I understand it), could be used in place of RVs, of course. My point is that people who love the idea of simply getting up and hitting the road and “camping” in the wilderness or in semi-rural forests or other less populous environs could do it without the bother of taking their little homes with them.

I understand, of course, this market would not spring into being instantly. But I have an idea that might prod the process along. Many (most, perhaps?) RV owners today who do not live permanently or semi-permanently in their RVs must keep their little homes in storage when not in use. “Roughing it motel parks” could take the place of storage, at least in the short term, giving both the park owner and the RV owner a stream of income. Existing RV parks could provide space and management for “roughing it motels,” bringing in revenue with each rental.

The nay-sayers will find dozens, probably hundreds, of reasons this idea will not work. Not now, not ever. But they said the same thing when Al Gore invented the internet and when Robin Hood invented criminal philanthropy. All I ask is for people to let the idea percolate. Then, when its brilliance becomes apparent, I only ask for a $1,000 contribution toward implementation of the concept.

I realize the term “roughing it motels” is not appealing and would not serve the concept well with regard to marketing. So, I’ll need to come up with something sexier, flashier, and more appealing to both the would-be renter and the would-be park operator/RV owner. Give me a few days. In the meantime, be among the first to invest. The first 1,000 investors will receive a complete set of kitchen knives and a slab of thick-sliced bacon.

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My next idea is for a bicycle with a vibrating seat. I’m calling it the Orgasmicycle^TM. Contact me for details and investment opportunities.

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If it’s not obvious yet, I’m in a strange and whimsical mood this morning. Perhaps it’s because I have temporarily eliminated the burden of the impending tax deadline. While it’s only a temporary reprieve, it is enough to make me moderately giddy, at least for a while. A few months, if I delay it to the maximum. But I think I’ll just allow myself a breather, then return to the process. It’s not as complex as I originally thought, but it’s still an annoyance that need not be so intrusive and irritating. I doubt, though, that will change.

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Tomorrow, I plan to smoke some ribs and, possibly, a pork loin, with the objective of feeding my very nice, generous, kind, and generally pleasant neighbors. I will brine the pig meat this afternoon and evening, readying it to smoke for a few hours tomorrow afternoon. This assumes, of course, that the smoker remains useable. It has been sitting inside the screen porch since the pandemic began. I have not opened the door for more than a year. It’s entirely possible its inside metal lining has rusted through, rendering the device unusable. In that case, I will attempt to use the gas grill as a smoker-alternate by heating just one end of the grill and placing the pork on the other end. On the grate at the heated end, I will place a hand-crafted aluminum “sack” filled with applewood chips. Voilá, a smoker-alternative! I hope I do not have to do that, though, because I have no idea whether it will work. It could simply result in burned pig meat with a smoke-laden crust of inedible carbon. Time will tell, I say.

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My coffee is cold, but the house is sufficiently clean and ready for its periodic cleaning by a professional. That means, essentially, the floors will look far better this afternoon than they do now.  Damn! I’ve just torn a scab off my left hand, resulting in a tiny flow of blood. I must stop and either find some Neosporin or call 911.

At the moment, the BBC.com website makes available several intriguing video-shorts on various subjects. One of them, entitled Why Extroverts Have Their Own Extreme Language, would be especially interesting  to people with an interest in language and its relationship with emotions. I found interesting the following statement made by the narrator:

Psychologists now conclude that extroverts require more cortical stimulation from their language than introverts in order to feel any impact, opting for extreme vocabulary such as ‘sweltering’ over ‘hot,’ or ‘tragic’ over ‘sad.’

The piece goes on to say we actually feel (physically) what we say. For example, if we use language that has the most impact, the impact is felt physically.  We feel extremely hot if we describe the temperature as sweltering, versus describing it as simply hot.

What any of this has to do with extroversion remains a mystery to me, in that neither the narration nor the imagery explains the connection. From my perspective, when in my role as an introverted purveyor of words, the connection is tenuous, at best. Selecting more impactful words is a habit that writers tend to develop because those words tend to “grab” the reader more forcefully and they animate the story or the character or the scene more vividly. The use of  “more extreme” words does not make writers extroverts; more often than not, in my opinion, writers are considerably more introverted than most, in part because writing is a solitary endeavor that requires considerable time alone with one’s thoughts.

Something to think about, though. Thinking about the subject makes me wonder: does  the difference between an individual’s spoken and written language vary more profoundly in writers than in people who do not spend a great deal of time recording their thoughts? I suspect it might. While a writer might say, in conversation, “the morning sky was beautiful,” he might write something like, “the morning sky displayed streaks of orange and red and yellow against a wash of blue and grey clouds against the horizon.”  I know, in my case, I tend to use language like that. I frequently break a cardinal rule of writing by using many more words than necessary; the attraction of spare language has never quite made it to the part of my brain that controls my use of words. I’ve always said, with only modest facetiousness, that I find it pointless to use ten words when one can easily use thirty words to accomplish the same function.

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The video-short about extroverts’ language choice was only one of the videos and articles I viewed and read this morning. Another one I found fascinating was an article entitled What Your Colour Choice Says About You. Another article, The Secret History of Angostura Bitters, explores the history of and the lore surrounding the product, made in Trinidad & Tobago. After reading the article, I anxiously await an opportunity to use Angostura Bitters, making drinks I would never have thought to make before reading it. The title of another video, Signs You’re More Intelligent Than You Think, seems designed to attract viewers by stroking their egos. As tempting as it was to view it, I opted to leave it for another time, a time when I’m feeling especially stupid. Another article, which I’ve yet to read but which is intriguing simply because of its subject matter, is entitled Is ‘Melancholia’ the Greatest Film About Depression Ever Made? The article, about the film made in 2011, suggests it is the premiere work about mental illness, specifically depression. I had never even heard of the movie until this morning, but a quick skim of the article sparked my interest. I’ll see, after reading the article in its entirety, whether that interest remains.  My point in mentioning these BBC.com offerings is both to remind myself of them and to again appreciate the diversity of the BBC.com website and the people behind it.

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My interest in RVs is changing. I’ve almost decided the ones I’ve looked at are too big for me. I’m more interested, now, in a van-sized vehicle, I think. But I cannot be depended on for certainty about that topic. It seems I change my mind hourly. I received an email this morning from a friend from church, who included a link to a fascinating article about a couple of RVers who described their experience RVing in the Canadian Maritimes, my dream destination. It was almost enough to make me abandon my abandonment of the larger RVs…but not quite. I’m still hoping to check out some smaller vehicles, something I can feel comfortable driving after getting used to a much smaller car. We’ll see.

Today will again be devoted, in large part, to personal business, but only after the “men’s gathering” at the church. This time, inside the building again, the second time since the pandemic began. Hallelujah! I need not bring a chair and hope I am dressed appropriately for the temperatures. Tonight, I will again join a group of rowdy church-goers for a game of trivia (complemented by food and drink) at the only actual pub within miles of Geezer Village. I welcome diversions. It’s late in the morning for me. I got up after six and dawdled a bit. So, I must now rush to shower and shave and finish my cup of cold coffee.  Off to engage with the day!

Though the number of people who read my blog is quite small, I do not know who comprises those who regularly view my blog posts. I know a few people who frequently view my posts, but I do not know why even they visit. And I do not know the identity of several people who seem to be “lurkers.” (By the way, lurking generally is my style of reading blogs, so I do not consider “lurker” a negative term.) All of that having been said, I am extremely interested in why people read what I write and what, if anything, brings them back.

So, the purpose of this out-of-the-ordinary post is to ask visitors to tell me why they visit and whether they visit frequently, occasionally, or rarely. Please, just leave a brief comment (or a lengthy one, if you wish). You can comment anonymously if you like, too, (although I will be able to see the email address you use to submit your comment…but you can use a fake email address if you like…maybe something like lurking1@puppydog.com). Alternatively and if you prefer, if you have my email address, you can send me your comments by email.

If you would give me just a little feedback as to what attracts you to this blog, I will appreciate it. It’s really just a matter of curiosity; I will be grateful to you if you would help satisfy my curiosity.

A simple question asked of the wrong person can trigger unhinged fury. I know this from personal experience. Lesson learned. Do not give an irrational person possessed of an incoherent animosity even the slightest opportunity to twist reality to suit their insane, malicious agenda. I write this as a reminder to myself, of course. I will not reveal the identity of this raving lunatic, but I will remember her. She tries to present herself as a sweet old woman, but that “sweetness” is artificial. A brutal, poisonous hatred brews beneath her saccharine façade. I saw it long ago in stories about familial and other relationships gone bad, but did not pick up on the clues until I was in her cross-hairs. My wife’s reaction to her long ago should have been ample warning to me, but I persisted in believing the woman was simply a quirky character with a good heart. I should have listened. Oh, well. Fortunately for me, I can simply avoid the maniac from here on. While there may be circumstances in which I cannot avoid her as long as I live in the Village, I can be stoic and silent. That may not shield me from her rage, but I will not utter a word to give her an opportunity to unleash it.

I realize the paragraph above might trigger guesses among those who read it as to the identity of this lunatic. I will not reveal her identity, nor will I respond to speculation about it. Writing about her is simply my way of ridding her from troubling me.

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I spent part of the morning yesterday participating in a Zoom meeting in discussion of Joan Didion’s memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking. The event was the second in a multi-session online class about the author’s memoir style. I did not attend the first class, so did not know the assignment for yesterday’s class was to read the first five chapters of the book. However, I had read the book years ago, so I recalled some of the basics of the book and was able to follow and participate, to a limited extent, in the discussion. I learned quite a lot in the short, 45-minute session. I think I’ll enjoy re-reading and discussing chapters 6-11 next week. Though I’m not planning to write a memoir, discussing writing style is intriguing to me.

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Most of the rest of the day was spent going through tax materials and beginning the process of entering information into my Federal return.  I am of the mind that the Federal government knows exactly how much income I have and from what sources, as well as how much Federal tax I have paid, so I should not have to regurgitate information the IRS already has. My only role should be to identify and justify expenses, etc. that would reduce my tax burden. But my opinion does not matter in this matter. I must simply do as I am instructed; follow the rules, without questioning them. This free society of ours is not as free as we would like to think. We have constructed, or allowed to be constructed, an elaborate, malleable cage that bends and flexes in response to the amount of capital available to individual inhabitants. The more the capital available to an individual, the more pliable the cage; the less the capital, the more rigid and sharp the cage’s bars become.

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I am angry at myself this morning for allowing a neurotic flake to get under my skin. In order to exist in some semblance of serenity, that anger must vanish. I must allow the present moment to wash it away. As usual, I find some insights in the little book I keep at my desk:

Do not dwell in the past.
Do not dream of the future.
Concentrate the mind
on the present moment.

~ Buddha ~

Now is what matters. Now is all there is. And now has no place for anger, nor animosity, nor resentment. Even the exasperation I expressed in the first paragraph of this post and the indignation I sometimes feel for past slights or attacks against me have no place in this moment. Now is what matters. Love is what matters.

Yesterday, a woman friend with whom I am secretly and passionately in love (I guess the secret is out), suggested in a text message that I exhibit signs of “existential depression.” I had never heard the term before, so I looked it up. Here is one psychologist’s way of explaining it: “When one’s depression is brought on by questions about the meaning of life, life itself, or death, this is considered existential depression.” He (Dr. Gregory Estadt) then goes on to describe characteristics that may describe a person with clinical existential depression:

• You can feel and see what most other people don’t.
• You hold yourself and others to high expectations.
• You are kept awake at night because of interpersonal ideas and conflicts.
• You are very passionate about upholding justice and fairness.
• You get obsessed with the things you love.
• You are very curious.
• You must always speak the truth and cannot stand hypocrisy.
• You crave freedom and autonomy.
• You have an independent mind.
• You are strong-willed.
• You do not like explanations that do not make sense.
• You are bothered by the gap that exists between others and yourself in the wider world.

If you answered yes to many of the above, you may be a trailblazer. You have a deep capacity for connection and joy but may have over the years struggled with self-doubt, bouts of anxiety, inferiority complex, and existential despair.

That list does, indeed, describe many of my characteristics. The information about existential depression on his website is much more detailed and extensive. Simply identifying with those attributes/characteristics does not assure that a person has existential depression, but other contextual clues suggest with a high degree of likelihood that I suffer from that mental malady. My reading of the material caused me to self-diagnose, and so I agree with my friend. It’s sort of like reading through the symptoms of diseases on WebMD. “See, there, I knew it! I have rabies!” Whether I have allowed myself to slip from “moody” to “existentially depressed” is something for a competent clinician to verify, of course, but I’m betting on my friend’s assessment. Among other things, she can read minds and can extract from me memories I had forgotten I had. She is a psychologist; lacking the credentials, perhaps, but possessing fully the knowledge and skills.

Despite my flippant treatment of the subject, I really think she came on something important to me. Dr. Estadt’s comments on treatment/therapy are encouraging:

Treatment has to carry us down a path of soul-searching and self-discovery. Many people develop their very own auto therapy such as journaling, writing, creating music or art, and learning from others. This is a learning process that gets better over time as you learn how to nurture, comfort, or console yourself.

I think I’m well on the way. I just need to pay heed and nurture, comfort, and console myself.

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Last night, after joining a Zoom meeting late, I heard one of the most moving accounts I have ever heard of the experience of an infantryman in World War II. The man who described his experiences did so in connection with his discussion of how he came to be involved in the Unitarian Universalist church. It was a tale describing the experience of a deeply introverted young man who had very limited “worldly” life experiences as he confronted the wider world. He faced horrors, the likes of which most of us, thankfully, have not and will never experience. His telling revealed how he matured both emotionally and intellectually when the demands placed on him were simply to “follow orders” in incredibly difficult situations. Though for a number of reasons I do not like to use the word “spiritual” as a descriptor, I have to say he seemed to have transformed his demanding and difficult life experiences into a spiritual journey on which he continues today, in his ninth decade. I hope the session was recorded so I can view and hear the quarter of an hour I missed; I believe the session will be available to view later this week. If it is, I will post a link to it on my blog. The entire hour or so is worth watching, regardless of who you are and what you have experienced.

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I started the day today by picking up an order of groceries from Walmart. I’ve taken to ordering online like a fish takes to water. I’d rather order from Kroger, but Kroger’s online ordering system is archaic and almost impossible for me to maneuver compared to Walmart’s.  Unlike the in-store experience, online ordering is easy, fast, and generally pleasant. And, when I pick up my groceries, the person who delivers them and puts them in my car is cheerful, friendly, and seems pretty articulate, intelligent, and generally nicer than many of the staff inside the store.

I’ve begun my taxes. For the rest of this morning, I will spend time sorting through paperwork on which I will depend to complete the forms for the IRS and the State of Arkansas. But, first, I will participate in (or, at least, listen to and view) a Zoom session on writing, recommended by the would-have-been buyer of my Camry who also is a writer. Then, it will be back to the task at hand. And I will take another mental health break to eat and to write a little more, though not in my blog (you’re welcome).

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Genetic flaws are not unique to Americans. Video evidence of ruptured DNA belonging to Canadians, Mexicans, Italians, Russians, Iraqis, Chinese, Swedes, Norwegians, and Peruvians, exists as well. An example of this video evidence includes a Canadian woman berating a teenaged grocery store clerk for asking the woman to wear a mask; the woman claims to have a “medical exemption,” bullies the girl, demands to see a manager, and otherwise acts like a world-class bitch. Another example shows a man in Italy (presumably an Italian) screaming at a driver for honking at him. Even after being told the driver honked to alert the man that his car was dragging a mangled bicycle from his rear bumper, the man did not cease his bizarre rant. Another video shows a woman with a camera-equipped smart-phone threatening to call the police on a young man who had chased her car and motioned her to pull over; a gas station hose dangling from the rear fuel filler of the demented screamer’s car told the story. Dozens of other such instances of dangerously flawed DNA exist in cell phone videos across the globe. It might be argued that the presence of cell phones is what causes these corrupt genes. I think not. But the one that hurt me the most was the Canadian woman; my romantic notion of Canadian intelligence and civility was badly damaged when I watched that video. Yet it’s not just my disappointment in the Canadian that has me feeling a little low. It’s the fact that human flaws are so pervasive. And it’s not just the mad rants and abusive treatment of their fellow creatures that bother me; it’s that “they” are “we.” We desire a world in which we’re all just one people who love one another, but in fact it seems we’re a global village of people who loathe one another.

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