John Swinburn

Indistinct shapes in almost total darkness. That’s what I saw last night as I watched episode number two of the second season of Ozark.  One of the main characters, Wendy, was driving a car with another character, Buddy, as a passenger. They appeared to be on a highway. Wendy asked Buddy questions. He responded. The scene annoyed me because I could not see the characters well enough to make out any facial expressions. Just voices in the dark. Indistinct shapes. Their voices were not sufficiently clear, either. Indistinct shapes and indistinct voices. A winning combination.

As I sat there, watching and listening, it occurred to me that the writers and directors might have conspired to irritate the audience, just for fun. “Let’s make them strain to see and hear the action, but let’s make sure their efforts are to no avail.” I wonder whether my television is equipped with a camera that records my reactions and pipes the information to the originators of television programming? That’s probably it. I’m a subject in an experiment designed for the entertainment of bored television production staff. They push my buttons to see how I will react. When I perform as they expect I will, they double over in laughter, thrilled at my Pavlovian responses to their deviant stimuli.

Despite my low-level fury at the offending scene, I am impressed with and enjoy Ozark. The writing is good, the acting is generally first-rate, and the story lines interest me and keep me engaged. I may have said all of this before. If so, forgive me the tendency toward repetition that comes with human ripening.

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If your life is equipped with Alexa, I suggest you ask her to define the word “stem.” She will offer a few definitions of the word as a noun and another one or two as a verb (I don’t recall the precise numbers). Then, she will mention that there are 31 more definitions and will ask if the listener wishes to have her speak them. When this experience occurred with Alexa this morning, I asked her to continue. She began speaking, but after a few more definitions, I said, “Alexa, stop.” And she did.

The reason I asked Alexa to define stem was that I was suddenly and inexplicably intrigued that I could see a stem on a blueberry and could hope we will find a way to stem the tide of COVID-19. Stem is such a short and simple little word, but its applications as noun and verb are so utterly different.

It is interesting to me that the word, stem, seems so simple but is, in fact, a remarkably complex combination of ideas that vary markedly depending on context. And the stem of a plant may look very simple, but beneath a relatively smooth exterior exists an incredibly sophisticated and intricate system that allows for the bidirectional flow of nutrients and products of photosynthesis.

Beneath the surface of each of us, labyrinthine webs of complexity hide from view; our eyes and our faces and our mouths offer glimpses, but they cannot expose the convoluted obscure framework within. Just like the bark of a tree obscures layer upon layer of experience that appear as rings when felled by a saw.

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Several years ago, I bought a book entitled When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times, written by Pema Chödrön, an American Tibetan Buddhist monk. Chödrön says many things that give me reason to pause and think. This quotation, which I used in a post more than a year ago when I wrote about her, is one of them:

When inspiration has become hidden, when we feel ready to give up, this is the time when healing can be found in the tenderness of pain itself… In the midst of loneliness, in the midst of fear, in the middle of feeling misunderstood and rejected is the heartbeat of all things.

Suffering begins to dissolve when we can question the belief or the hope that there’s anywhere to hide.

Wise words. Is there any place to hide from oneself? She answers the question.

What makes maitri [the Buddhist practice of loving-kindness toward oneself] such a different approach is that we are not trying to solve a problem. We are not striving to make pain go away or to become a better person. In fact, we are giving up control altogether and letting concepts and ideals fall apart. This starts with realizing that whatever occurs is neither the beginning nor the end. It is just the same kind of normal human experience that’s been happening to everyday people from the beginning of time. Thoughts, emotions, moods, and memories come and they go, and basic nowness is always here.

I must still own the book; I quoted from it in the post I mentioned, so it must be here, hidden among all the other books. I will find it.

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I wondered whether minds tend to wander more extensively, with more elaborate, winding bends, as they get older. You know, like a river. So I asked Father Google. His partner, Mother Google, answered by saying a “…river erodes soil from the outer curve and deposits on the inner curve. This causes the meanders to grow larger and larger over time. The bend gets more and more pronounced with time. The slower side of the river will continue to get slower and the faster side gets faster.”

I decided that response was a parable. The challenge, now, is to figure out how it applies to the aging human brain. I think I’m getting there.

I remember seeing Leon Redbone perform at a little club/venue in Houston, Texas many years ago. Though I’ve not been to a lot of concerts (and this was a very, very small venue, not really a concert hall), this one was among my favorites (after Leonard Cohen, of course, and Leo Kottke). This tune, in particular, has always struck a chord with me. I guess I’ve always wished I was a desirable kind of guy. Hah! It’s a little late for that, methinks.

I checked to see whether I’ve mentioned Leon Redbone before. I have. Once, the mention was among a list of music I found especially appealing on a certain night toward the end of October 2016. The music still resonates, though I’ve added a few since then. Maybe I will return to post those newer ones on my blog, one day. My musical taste is so much more eclectic than this list suggests. Where is the classical, the Flamenco, the cooler smooth jazz, the bit of rap, the opera, the acid rock, the electrica, the evocative Arabian stuff, the Indian chants? And on and on.  My taste in seduction, though, remains constant. 😉

By the way, Leon Redbone died just shy of a year ago. He’s already missed.

• Stranger in a Strange Land, Leon Russell
• Seduced, Leon Redbone
• Lazy Bones, Leon Redbone
• Ojo, Leo Kottke
• Malaguena, Juan Poco
• Zorba the Greek, Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass
• Come Healing, Leonard Cohen
• Cancao do Mar, Dulce Pontes
• I Will Follow You into the Dark, Death Cab for Cutie
• Dentro la tasca di un qualunque mattino, Gianmaria Testa
• Come Away with Me, Norah Jones
• The Story, Brandi Carlile
• If 6 was 9, Jimi Hendrix
• She Came in through the Bathroom Window, Joe Cocker
• Down on Me, Big Brother and the Holding Company (Janis Joplin)
• Sunshine of Your Love, Cream
• Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed, Kinky Friedman
• Turning Japanese, The Vapors
• Mexican Radio, Wall of Voodoo
• Down Under, Men at Work
• Lighthouse, Antje Duvekot
• In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, Neutral Milk Hotel
• Hang on Little Tomato, Pink Martini
• Castles Made of Sand, Jimi Hendrix
• Memphis in the Meantime, John Hiatt
• This Life, Curtis Stigers, The Forest Rangers (theme from Sons of Anarchy)
• My Uncle Used to Love Me (But She Died), Roger Miller
• Adeste Fidelis, The Roches
• God Bless the Child, Billie Holiday
• What a Wonderful World, Louis Armstrong

I thought you might be interested. Yes, you, my lovely friend. 😉 [Okay, doesn’t that make a reader wonder? It’s a writer’s tactic for attracting followers who look for clues about the next item in the series.]

An odd mixture of resolve and surrender seems to have taken hold of my psyche this morning. This unusual alloy, I suspect, has the potential of lasting for an eternity, acquiescing to the force of every hot wind in its face; cracking and bending but never melting, never abandoning its struggle against an undefinable adversary.

I think I’ve described a state of perpetual capitulation and infinite will. Two competing forces, neither of which has the capacity to win in their struggle against the other, yet neither willing to yield. An ever-lasting impasse. That’s the sort of struggle that leads authors to write thousand-page novels so unsatisfying that the very thought of a sequel is offensive in the extreme. No winners, no losers. Unresolved tension that drags on for all time, drowning all its dozens of characters in a quagmire of slow-acting quicksand.

Perhaps it’s the fog that’s doing this to my state of mind. A seemingly endless ground-level cloud that shows no signs of lifting or blowing away. It will linger here forever, taunting me with a dull grey film that dims the world before my eyes with hazy translucence. But I cannot admit defeat against an enemy that, under certain circumstances, might be a friend sheltering me from a white-hot spotlight. Do I fight? Do I give in? Do I stand in defiant martyrdom, knowing my defiance is a meaningless act of rebellion? Crucifixion without a cross, perhaps. A martyr without a message. Drama without the dram.

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Alliteration seems to be on the morning menu, doesn’t it? Perhaps that bit of shallow silliness will wash away the gloom? No, I’ll need wind or rain for that. Or a sun so bright that the haze will burn into a fiercely blue sky that will be unwilling to tolerate even a smudge of grey cloud or a puff of fog. Something, surely, will come along and wash the sky, leaving a pristine, vapor-less atmosphere suitable for deep breathing and infinite vision. Surely. Certainly, Undoubtedly. Assuredly. A thesaurus will open wide, cleansing the language—and, therefore, the mind—of all uncertainty. And all will be right with the world.

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The stream of one’s consciousness flows in all directions. Unlike rivers, the stream of consciousness is capable of ignoring gravity and barometric pressure. Indeed, the stream of consciousness is unbound by physics; the laws of nature do not bind the stream to the physical world, at all. The banks that bind rivers to their channels have no power over the stream of consciousness. And, unlike water, the contents of the stream of consciousness can flow even as they change from liquid to solid to gas…even to vacuums, empty of everything but ideas or emotions. Rivers of fire can fill the imaginary channels attempting to constrain the stream of consciousness. Molten rocks, too, can join air and water rushing past the banks of  the stream.

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I have succeeded, in part, in my effort to clear away the brush and logs and lumber and all the other detritus from past floods; my stream of consciousness is now open to barge traffic. Barges filled with tins of smoked fillet of cyclops and cans of mermaid stew flow smoothly through the locks. Big tarps covering pickled giant bananas, as big as ten-person canoes, are strewn all over the decks of some of the barges as they float past. Mushrooms as big as houses arise from massive boxes filled with growing media created especially for their cultivation; those barges barely stay afloat, thanks to the weight of their cargo. Some of the largest barges are stacked fifty stories high with pallets of a hybrid delicacy, seahorse carpaccio. This stream of consciousness must be near the sea; some of the holds of the largest barges are filled with ice that keeps seventy-ton squids fresh during the trip to market.

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We hide so much behind masks that portray us as happy, goofy, irreverent characters. Torment goes unnoticed when concealed beneath carefully-crafted disguises. The wells of sadness, so deep we’re always in danger of drowning, beckon us to dive in and search for the drain plug at the bottom, in a hopeless attempt to find comfort in emptiness.

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Happiness is just a neuron away. It resides on the other side of hopelessness. It is accessible from any portal, coming from any direction. It’s as easily accessed as flipping a switch. Presto! Darkness is gone, replaced by brilliance and joy so dazzling it makes your head swim. The memory of despair is then akin to recollections in the mind of a very old man of the first moments outside the womb. Memory of pain is never as sharp as the experience itself. But memory of joy is like reliving the moment. Strange, isn’t it, that we teach ourselves to belief the reverse if true.

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This exercise in mental gymnastics brought to you by misfiring synapses, too much sleep in too little time, and members of the human race. Time to go grocery shopping on a Sunday morning.

Today is Saturday, a day promising warmth, extreme humidity, and the likelihood of rain and, quite possibly, thunderstorms. Not a day for sunbathing.

This day began, for me, a couple of hours ago while I was in that semi-conscious state in which one is capable of both dreaming and deciding whether to get out of bed. I remained in that hazy in-between condition, midway betwixt sleep and wakefulness for at least two hours. Finally, long after the light of day had penetrated the morning fog, I got up. Before I got up, though, a dream convinced me that my niece by marriage, who had just received her private pilot’s license, offered to fly me to my job interview. To the best of my knowledge, my niece has never taken flying lessons. And I have no interest in being interviewed for a job. If the employer wants to hire me, fine; but I will not subject myself to the humiliation of being sized up, judged, evaluated, and otherwise assessed. I already know I am perfectly capable of performing admirably in the position, whatever it is, so just put forward an extremely lucrative offer and wait for my decision.

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Every morning, when I sit at my tiny corner desk to write, I see squirrels on the ground and in the trees near the house. Frequently, they chase one another. Occasionally, the speed of the chases escalate dramatically. Often, those high-speed chases spiral up and down the trunks of very tall trees. I’ve always assumed the chases were simply for fun. Finally, investigated by doing some online searches. The high-speed chases involving up and down spirals probably are territorial disputes. Even though squirrels are not, by nature, territorial, when the density of the squirrel population reaches a point at which the food supply cannot keep up with the demand, squirrels begin to stake their turf to protect their food supply. So says a website that, I assume, has no reason to lie. I witnessed such a chase (or six) this morning, hence the exploration and explanation. That’s why this paragraph exists; for no other reason.

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I have a Zoom meeting this morning to discuss updates to the long range plan for the church. The COVID-19 pandemic has upended many activities of the church, so many elements of the plan either are stalled or are plodding ahead in slow motion. The purpose of the meeting this morning is to conduct a quick review of status and to discuss whether the committee should plan to focus attention in the near-term on revising the plan. Plus, I have an obligation to give an update report to the board. At this very moment, I wonder whether I lost my mind when I agreed to chair the long range planning committee and to sit for election to the church board and to get involved in other administrative (or, if you like, administrivia) activities. I think I’d rather carve wooden figures, make windchimes, and cook and sell tamales. Those things are more rewarding to me than “office work,” which is what caused me to retire seven years before my scheduled departure from the work force.

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Humans, by and large, do not understand the animal kingdom outside our own limited piece of it. We seem to think we are the only creatures with critical thinking skills. We seem to believe we, alone, can feel empathy, anger, compassion, grief, and a thousand shades of related emotions that mix and merge with one another to weave an intricately complex emotional fabric. Maybe we are the intellectual and emotional giants; but I think we’re deceiving ourselves. I think we simply do not have the capacity to understand how the minds of other animals work. We assume that, because they do not work like ours, their minds are incapable of “thought” in the same way as ours. We assume, for the same reason, other animals are not sophisticated beings, at least not as sophisticated as we are. We assume other animals’ behaviors are driven more by instinct than intent; more by automatic, pre-programmed responses to their environments than by complex decision-making. Perhaps. But I think it is equally as likely that we simply do not understand an entirely different way of thinking and making decisions. We assume bats that navigate by sonar engage in a purely mechanical reaction to sound; but what if bats’ brains consciously and deliberately process sonic data in ways that are orders of magnitude more sophisticated than our brains could ever accomplish? No, some say, their brains are far too small! We equate size with capacity; do we not understand that today’s microchip has thousands of times more computing power than a room-sized computer of a generation or two in the past? Humans possess enormous, voluminous knowledge; but the volume of knowledge that still eludes us is an ocean, compared to the thimble full of knowledge we possess.

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I am frustrated by the increasingly loud voices of people who want us to “reopen the economy.” What they’re asking is to return to the way things were. That will not happen. And it should not happen. We should have learned, from the novel coronavirus, that we were woefully unprepared to confront such a calamity. Instead of trying to “beat” it, we should examine how we live and work and, in the process, develop better ways of being in the world today. We know, now, that physical distance dramatically reduces the contagion. In my view, the appropriate response as we plan for the future is to determine how best to reconfigure our lives to enable us to quickly and painlessly increase physical distance. At work, at home, in leisure settings. Everywhere. How can work be re-tooled so that workers can be physically separate, yet still get the job done? How can we change our housing so that people no longer are forced to stand shoulder-to-shoulder in elevators in apartment buildings? The challenges are enormous and will (would?) require vast sums of money, time, and creative thought to overcome, but I am convinced that is the right approach. Not simply “get back to work!” Sure, we need vaccines and cures, but we need to anticipate the future, as well. This pandemic should be teaching us that meat processing plants should be reconfigured. It should be teaching us that stadium seating should provide more space between patrons. It should be teaching us that production lines should more readily be adaptable to producing different products when they are needed…right now! Instead, we are learning that loud-mouthed idiots carrying rifles can take over the airwaves. We are learning that self-sacrifice is only for the people who can serve ME, not something I should undertake for  the common good. Frustration. Anger. It’s all there, bubbling up from just beneath the surface of my brain.

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Scam telephone calls. This may seem unduly harsh, but I’m of the opinion that people involved in telephone scams should be subject to public disemboweling. Their vivisection should be broadcast live on all television channels, simultaneously; and, then, rebroadcast during normal viewing hours in areas where the live broadcast took place during regular sleeping hours. That is all.

Yesterday, I read the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the State’s “Safer at Home” order. I read both the majority opinion and the concurring and dissenting opinions made by individual justices. Among the dissenting comments (which, by the way, I found far more persuasive than the majority opinion and the concurring comments from supporting justices), I encountered a word I have never (as far as I can recall) seen before: “surplusage.” The meaning of the word is exactly what I thought it would be: something that is surplus, an excess amount. A second definition stung me like a wasp: an excess of words. Ach! My flaws have been written into the dictionary!

The word was used by Rebecca Dallet, whose dissenting opinion included the following sentence: It is a basic tenet of statutory interpretation that we must read statutory language “to give reasonable effect to every word, in order to avoid surplusage.” That phrase, I learned by conducting a quick search of Google, followed by a search of the results yielded by it, is rather common in legal opinions given in cases before Wisconsin courts. I feel confident that, were I willing to invest the time and energy, it would not take much of either to uncover the origin of the term and the statement from which the quote “to give reasonable effect to every word, in order to avoid surplusage,” was taken. But I am willing to invest neither. So I will go on with my life, unencumbered by that crucial knowledge. I think I can survive without knowing.

Back to the definition. It’s not just an excess of words. It’s an excess amount. Of anything.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s decision will, I feel confident, result in a surplusage of COVID-19 infections and deaths. It will result, too, in a surplusage of shortages of: personal protective equipment, ventilators, masks for the general public, and any number of other recently-emerged necessities. “A surplusage of shortages.” Now THAT shines a spotlight on prolix language, does it not?

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Some moderately good news: my PET scan did not show any “hot spots” on my lungs that would warrant a biopsy. The nodule of concern to my oncologist is too small, she said, for a PET scan to “light up,” she said, so we just need to keep an eye on it. So, another CT scan in three months to determine whether it’s getting larger. If so, a more aggressive follow-up is in order. But, for now, there’s no need for “immediate concern.” That’s not a surplusage of good news, but I’ll take what I can get.

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I returned to Facebook yesterday, after a short vacation from social media. I fear I returned too soon. While it was nice to read some idle chatter of some FB friends, it is a bit hard to find, simply because there’s so much other “stuff” to wade through. I wonder whether there’s a way to adjust setting so that, for example, the posts of people whose volume of posts is excessive can be minimized but not ignored altogether? I’ll have to check. It’s not that I do not want to know what they think; it’s the sheer magnitude of the surplusage of their posts. It’s exhausting.

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Exhaustion. Mental exhaustion. What is causing this sensation of being crushed under the overwhelming weight of simply thinking? I don’t want to think. I want to simply exist; to be sustained without needing to decide or even consider what I need for sustenance. I do not want to make decisions, nor to complain about decisions made on my behalf. I just want to be left alone. I want the world to leave me alone; to stop making demands of me and to stop having expectations that I will engage with the world or anyone in it. I am perfectly (or, perhaps, reasonably) happy to live inside my head, with extremely limited interaction with the outside world. I don’t know what causes this feeling. I doubt it’s the isolation; I’m not really that isolated, after all. And I’m not sure it’s real. While I want to be left alone, I simultaneously want to be embraced and wanted and needed in the wider world. It’s impossible to meet those diametrically opposed desires. Can I want to be consumed by fire and immersed in icy water at the same time? Impossible. I don’t think I really want either. I do not know much. And I know less with each passing minute.

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As I sometimes do, I read a post I wrote one year ago today. It was full of worry and gloom; maybe it’s May 15 that does it. But, then, I read what I wrote five years ago today. I prefer it to what I am writing now. I will try to remember it. Here is what I wrote; unfinished, but as complete as it will ever be:

I watched his hammer slam, over and over and over again, against the white-hot piece of iron. The metal seemed to resist the brutality. Its shape did not change; only sparks. Yet the smithy continued beating the strap of metal without mercy, as if it had done unspeakable things to his daughter. The rhythm of his abusive attack never varied. I discerned no deviation in the constancy of his abuse; the unwavering rage of his hammer was breathtaking.

Finally, he stopped. He looked hard at the piece of dirty iron, as if searching it for answers to unanswerable questions. After a pause, he grasped the piece with heavy pincers and thrust the throbbing molten beast into a barrel of coal-black water. An explosive hiss erupted from the bowels of the cask, followed by the popping and cracking of hot iron reducing itself to something hard and cold.

The smithy drew the defeated piece of iron from the water and set it next to four identical strips resting on a tree-stump near the furnace, each of them perfect silver bands, curved into arcs, almost circles. He pulled his elbow-length heavy leather gloves from his hands and placed them next to his creations, then wiped the sweat from his brow with a grey rag, stained with smoke and rust. “Just twenty more and you’ll have the makings of five fine oak barrels, provided you’ve done your part in hewing the oak.”

The letter Z was removed from the Icelandic alphabet in 1974. What the…?!  No, really, the Icelandic alphabet no longer includes the letter Z. People who learned to read and write before 1974 still use it, according to the Guide to Iceland. The Guide further says the country has about twenty men named Zophonías, the most popular of the few names in Iceland that begin with Z.

For information, and because I am relatively certain anyone who happens upon this page wants to know, here is the Icelandic alphabet (32 letters):

UPPER CASE:  A Á B D Ð E É F G H I Í J K L M N O Ó P R S T U Ú V Y Ý X Þ Æ Ö

LOWER CASE: а  á  b d  ð  e  é f  g  h  i í  j k  l  m  n  o  ó  p r  s  t u  ú  v y  ý  x þ  æ  ö

The letters C, Q, and W are missing, you might note, in addition to the letter Z, which was jettisoned forty-six years ago. But those other missing letters are used in foreign words and the Z is used in a few names, as mentioned earlier.

In spite of learning some moderately troubling aspects of Icelandic law and tradition (like removing letters from the alphabet and forbidding the use of unapproved names for newborn babies), I am fascinated by aspects of the culture about which, normally, I would pay no heed. Burials and cremation appear to be highly regulated. The vast majority (roughly 80%) of Icelanders belong to the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Iceland. Why on earth would I find such trivia of even passing interest? I cannot answer that with truth because I do not know the truth.

Truth. Is ‘truth’ a synonym for ‘fact’? If so, would Kellyanne Conway have us believe there is an alternative truth? There I go again. Off track. I blame Kellyanne; there is so much blame for which she can be held responsible.

Back to Icelandic church membership. I had hoped such an advanced civilization would have evolved spiritually, as well, becoming at least agnostics if not atheists. Hmm. My bias and judgmental nature is showing again. I thought I had evolve beyond such snide remarks. Yesterday’s post suggested I had. Yet here I am again. My flaws are beyond measure.

Speaking of Iceland (as I often will), I read an article that said a former First Lady of Iceland, Dorrit Moussaieff, revealed that she had COVID-19. Thanks to my narrow but quite shallow knowledge of Icelandic culture, I knew immediately from seeing her name that she was very likely not a native Icelander; had she been a native, her last name would have been her father’s given name, followed by “dóttir,” which translates as “daughter.” So, for example, if her father’s name had been Magnús Einarson, her last name would have been some approximation of Magnúsdóttir. Kind of cool, yes? Her first name probably would not have been approved by the Mannanafnanefnd, the Icelandic Naming Committee, either, by the way.

Though I find Iceland extremely interesting, I do not have much interest in visiting the country, at least not as a tourist. If I were invited to visit an English-speaking individual or a small family in Iceland, someone willing to help me learn to converse comfortably in Icelandic, I might go. But I have no interest in ogling the sites of the country as a tourist. My interest is much the same as I have in other countries; I would like to become a native, as if I were born there and grew up learning the language, the customs, and absorbing the culture and social structure. I realize I’ve visited plenty of places as a tourist. And, yes, I’ve enjoyed myself. But despite my enjoyment, I have always felt like a slightly boorish (and that’s being overly kind to myself) voyeur; a hopeless rube. I have always hoped that I would feel like, and be perceived as, an intelligent, curious foreigner who values and respects the culture to which I am being expose; but those hopes were the delusional dreams of a hick.

I realize, of course, I cannot become a native or even approach the knowledge of and familiarity with a country and its culture a native-born person probably has. But I want it, nonetheless. I don’t want to be an outsider, at least not in the cultures I find interesting and appealing. But I am an outsider. And an outsider can never feel comfortable in the knowledge that he is viewed with distrust, even if that perspective is subsurface and unintended.  As an outsider, I make too many social mistakes. I embarrass myself and others simply by being who I am. It’s all a matter of context, of course. I don’t often embarrass myself here in the USA simply by being myself; well, the frequency of embarrassment, at least, is lower.

No one in Iceland has ever given even a moment’s thought to me. Why should I, then, find myself absorbed by Icelanders? I mean in the aggregate; I know very little about individual Icelanders, with the exception of Jón Gunnar Kristinsson. You may know him as Jón Gnarr (he changed his middle name and apparently adopted it as his last name), a comedian who became mayor of Reykjavík. His wife’s name, by the way, is Jóhanna Jóhannsdóttir. See how that naming convention works? Her father was Jóhan; no clue what her father’s last name was, though. Anyway, Jón was a runaway favorite in Iceland, both as a comedian and as a politician. He is, by the way, a vocal opponent of Iceland’s naming conventions (and their accompanying laws), thus a critic of Icelandic culture, in a sense. Despite my ambivalence about the naming laws, I find his opposition to that bedrock of Icelandic culture more than a little disturbing.  Again, I’ve slipped off course; I was asking why I should find myself absorbed by Icelanders. I haven’t a clue. I think, perhaps, it’s because I have to find something unusual to cling to; something that might set me apart from the multitudes. Otherwise, I’m just another gathering of flesh; a piece of living, breathing meat of no more consequence than any other assemblage of fat and muscle. But aren’t we all vital and valuable? Did I not say, just yesterday, that I fervently believe in the principle that recognizes “the inherent worth and dignity of every person?” I did, indeed. But I vacillate with unwavering predictability.

Damn. I have wasted another forty minutes, more or less, writing about matters that don’t. Matter, I mean. I could have been productive. Instead, I’ve successfully kept my mind occupied by forcing it to steer clear of gravitas. There will be time for gravitas. That’s what we always say. “There will be time for that.” Even when that’s not necessarily true. We keep telling ourselves it is.

And so I’ll leave it with this: the Icelandic alphabet, thirty-three letters long until 1974, is now in ruins, having lost its Z. And voids exist where C, Q, and W should be.

Yesterday afternoon, I was standing on the back deck, taking in the spectacular sky, the glorious sounds of song birds, and the sheer magnificence of the afternoon, when I heard a rustling in the leaves behind the house. I walked to the deck railing and looked down; a large white-tailed deer plodded slowly through the leaves, her neck stretched up so she could reach the low-hanging leaves of the trees at the edge of the clearing. Suddenly, she became conscious of my presence, turning her head and locking me in a frozen gaze. We looked at one another for a full minute, at least, before her statue-like stance changed just slightly. She looked away from me, then back toward me. Finally, she lifted her left front leg and held it up for a good ten seconds. Then, she stamped it, forcefully, onto the ground. This stamping continued, every few seconds, for a minute or two. She turned away from me and reached up for more leaves, but the stamping continued. And, then, she snorted or, as I’ve learned through Google, “blew.” The sound from her mouth was surprisingly loud. Accompanied by the forceful stamping of her hoof into the ground, the noise suggested to me she was fiercely angry, ready to charge (she would have been unsuccessful in reaching me, of course, as I was a good seventeen feet above ground and she was at least forty feet away from the deck). Ultimately, with no warning, she turned and raced off through the woods. I think our encounter must have lasted at least three or four minutes, perhaps longer.

During my “interaction” with the deer, I could hear the new neighbors, two doors down, engaging in a rather loud conversation among themselves and with their dog. “C’mon, now, little girl, come over here. C’mon! C’mon!” The deer seemed to pay them no heed; I was the one upon whom her attention was focused. The sound of neighbors was underway before she saw me; she must have been aware they were distant. I, on the other hand, was a visible “threat.”

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Earlier in the day, I had been out with my electric blower, ridding the deck of leaves and twigs and other residue of a couple of days of occasionally high winds. Pollen continues to coat all exposed surfaces with its dirty yellow dust, making any thoughts of attempting to deep-clean, and then paint, the deck exercises in futility. The endeavor will just have to wait. In the meantime, the heavy wrought-iron furniture clogging the enclosed porch will remain in the way and it, too, will remain coated with pollen. And the porch screen will remain hideously clotted with gritty yellow and black evidence that we live in the forest.

Too much maintenance work is required on our house for me to do it all (or much of it, for that matter) myself. I would begrudgingly pay to have it done, to a point, if I could find a reliable, dependable team of maintenance people whose work I find acceptable. But such people are rare and in high demand. Even the ones recommended as “excellent,” I often have found, do work I consider inadequate and completely unacceptable. I need a place that requires less maintenance. I won’t be getting such a place soon, I’m afraid. I’ll have to deal with what I have. I cannot seem to marshal the stamina, or the discipline, of late to do even the simple stuff. Months ago, I bought two new switches to control ceiling fans in a couple of rooms; I cannot seem to get myself sufficiently motivated even to install them. Sometimes, I’m completely and utterly useless; even when I know how to do something and am completely capable of doing it, I just let it slide. I bitch and moan about not doing the work, yet I stay on course, not doing the work. If I were that deer behind the house, I would starve or be slain. I would not have sufficient motivation to reach for food in the trees nor to flee in the presence of danger (like hunters carrying crossbows).

+++

Arkansas restaurants are permitted to re-open today for dine-in service, albeit with restrictions such as distance between tables, requirements for masks of restaurant staff, requirements for masks for guests until their food and beverage is served, etc. I think it’s a mistake to open early. I expect we will see a significant spike in reported cases of COVID-19 within two or three weeks, thanks to the loosening of restrictions. I plan on maintaining our isolation to the extent possible until I have very good reasons (and healthcare professionals’ advice) to do otherwise.

+++

Isolation in the absence of Facebook and Nextdoor takes on an entirely new dimension. Until I deactivated the former and cancelled the latter accounts a couple of days ago, I must have been engaged in commenting or reacting to comments and photos and the like with incredible frequency. Since I cut off those channels, my interactions with the outside world have radically diminished. For some reason, even my email in-box, normally the recipient of a constant flood of messages (mostly marketing, I acknowledge), has all but dried up. It’s almost as if most of the rest of the world assumes I died and, therefore, am no longer capable of receiving communication.

+++

Speaking of dying, I think most of us assume our deaths, when they come, will cause massive ripples in the fabric of life on Earth. We know, of course, those ripples will be limited to a relatively small sphere of people, but we assume the results of our demise will be traumatic, cataclysmic, earth-shattering, upending, etc. In reality, most of that little sphere will quickly return to a slightly different but perfectly comfortable routine. Perhaps a few people will feel the impact with greater consequence, but the likelihood is high that they, too, will adjust, given a little time. The death of people who have a large circle of close friends and family, or who have a significant impact on the larger world of business or art (for example) may be felt more widely. But the departure of those of us who have very small circles of influence or consequence will have brief, insignificant effects. None of this is new; none of this is news; all of it, though, is emotionally challenging. It acknowledges that we are far more important in our own heads than we are in the heads of those around us. Just something on my mind this morning. This mourning. Mourning Becomes Electra. What an awfully depressing play. Lavinia becomes Electra. Mourning Becomes her. A modern Greek tragedy. Really. Oresteia. I would have to read some Greek tragedies before attempting to write a modern-day version. I vaguely remember Agamemnon from high school. I forget which O’Neill character was Agamemnon; Ezra? I’ll have to read it again, but I remember thinking at the time it was terribly long and boring, although intriguing once I got through it. There it is again. Wandering through a rabbit warren, but somehow ending up collecting seashells along the banks of a drying riverbed in Nebraska.

I heard this and read the words this morning. It is incredibly moving. The words were written by Herman Hesse. They are read here by Natascha McElhone.

I encountered this when reading a recent post from Brainpickings and I owe Maria Popova, its creator, a debt of gratitude for it.

Twice before 4:30 a.m., screaming alerts from the NOAA weather radio jolted me awake. Though the warnings did not apply specifically to Hot Springs Village, they applied to sections of Garland County. The radio’s settings, I gather, call for the device to emit piercing shrieks when weather warnings involve even an acre in Garland County.

Though the alerts did not say the “areas impacted” included Hot Springs Village, the bright lightning, growls of storms in the distance, and occasional much louder cracks of thunder close by worked together to convince me I should get up. And so I did. The first cup of coffee sits beside my computer and I sit staring at the screen.

The sound of rain hitting the roof and the deck is constant. This is no light mist; it is pounding rain, occasionally accompanied by wind gusts that cause waves of water to slam into the glass door leading to the deck. I love listening to and watching Nature’s fierce capabilities, despite having first-hand experience of what it can do. When the wind and rain and thunder and lightning express themselves as unbridled fury, I recoil in fear at the same time I am attracted to them, as if they were strong magnets and I a flimsy piece of iron. That same repulsion-attraction drew me to the front door of my parents’ house in Corpus Christi at the moment Hurricane Celia began tearing off the roof. When that storm had subsided enough for us to venture outside of what remained of the house, my family’s brief experience with homelessness began. After a sleepless night on wet church pews, we all found places to stay until my parents were able to rent a house, but I remember the sensation of being adrift for a little while. Crud! I can’t even finish a paragraph without wandering down a path leading to nowhere.

Among the many career paths I considered when I was young was that of meteorologist. A friend of friend, a few years my senior, was a meteorologist. Conversations with him about weather, especially about how storms develop and how (at the time) weather forecasts were made fascinated me. I think one aspect of the discipline that convinced me to look elsewhere for a career was its heavy reliance on mathematics, especially calculus, and physics. Those subjects frightened me because, unlike every other subject I had tackled in school, I did not easily comprehend them. I wish I had been fortunate enough to have had a good math teacher who could not only show me how the logic of math works but also could have generated in me an enthusiasm for the subject. Had I learned to love math, early on, I suspect my life would have taken me in an entirely different direction than it has. Another paragraph, another dead-end path.

+++

I finally got tired of waiting for a phone call to schedule my PET scan, so I called my oncologist’s office. I was referred to the scheduler in another office, the same scheduler who screwed up the scheduling of my lung-mass biopsy in November 2018. She behaved as if she was simply waiting for me to call her. I am on the schedule for mid-day on Tuesday. Nothing by mouth after 7:00 a.m. The day before, I am to be on a high-protein, extremely low-carbohydrate diet. No sugar, no alcohol, no bread, no fruit, no pasta, etc., etc., etc. I should be on that diet every day. My weight would be lower, my face would be thinner, my stomach would be smaller, and my skin might even be healthier. So why am I not on that diet already? Good question. The answer is complex, though, and not without a fair amount of interpersonal difficulty thrown in.  Ah, well.

+++

I just realized my appointment with the pulmonologist next week conflicts with my wife’s appointment with her physical therapist. One of us will have to change our appointments because I do not want my wife to try to drive; her leg strength is not adequate to the task. I doubt the pulmonologist will have anything of any real value to say to me, so I should be the one to cancel, I think. Although, I think I might have a harder time getting another time slot. Little things can wreck one’s schedule and cause heartburn and stress.

+++

Thursday, I’ll go back to the oncologist, who will tell me the results of the PET scan. With luck, they will not show any “bright spots” that warrant biopsy. If there are reasons for a biopsy, my schedule will be further wrecked and the problem of transportation will become more acute because I will be sedated and not permitted to drive. I guess it’s pointless to worry until I know more. On the other hand, it’s better to have a plan than to scurry around at the last minute, causing even more stress.

+++

Monday afternoon, we will have a Zoom video-conference with old friends from Chicago, Don and Val, a couple who I’m afraid we have not kept up with much since we moved away thirty years ago. We have been in touch on rare occasion, but I don’t remember the last time we spoke. Both of them are still working, despite being at least a year or two older than I am. I am so glad I retired early. Well, I’m glad I got out of association management when I did. I really wanted to start something else, but just haven’t gotten around to it. At 66, I doubt I will. But I still have that entrepreneurial ember burning in me. Or it might just be heartburn.

+++

On a whim, I looked at my May 8, 2019 post just now. In it, I mentioned a “soon-to-be-available” documentary film entitled “Recorder: The Marion Stokes Story.” It will be shown on Independent Lens locally on PBS on June 17!

A few nights ago, I poured myself an ounce or two of Wild Turkey 101 Kentucky Bourbon, over ice, which might represent an appalling affront to the arrogancenti who claim to be bourbon purists. Screw them. They stumble over simple instructions fit for idiots; their pretenses only highlight their intellectual limitations. (Here is where I admit to being judgmental, opinionated, and occasionally hard to be around.)

I like my bourbon cold, as if touched by an icy blade of a knife keen to do irreparable harm to someone deserving of vivisection. My mood that night, and possibly this afternoon, as one might guess, was dangerous and unforgiving. The reasons for my acrimonious frame of mind were unimportant; it would have been wise, though, to just be aware of them and steer clear of any scythe I might have had in my possession. My thoughts toyed with the idea of learning to sharpen the implement so that it would easily cut a hair in half, lengthwise. I wanted to be able to swing my scythe with such precision that I could split molecules of air into fragments of equal size. Imagine how deadly such a sweep of that scythe might be to an unfortunate dimwit who stumbles into its path.

But I was talking about bourbon, wasn’t I? Indeed I was. The amber drink in my glass hid behind ice cubes, teasing me and taunting me to take just a sip, a little taste, an arousing touch of the elixir that will turn me into a growling beast, ready to engage the universe in a fierce battle for superiority and dominance over time and space and a thirst for blood. There it is! I’ve revealed the secret power of bourbon! It has the capacity for turning modest desire into a libidinous hunger unmatched in modern times. Only the thirst of Eros, who ‘loosens the limbs and weakens the mind,’ can compare to the power of bourbon when mixed with the right time, attitude, and longing.

Those emotions, though, are pretenses. They are scraps of camouflage that hide the stark, empty, hollow sensations that validate the inadequacy of the man who was holding the glass. They belong to the makeup artist who transforms pasty-faced actors into heroic figures, artificial characters who leap tall buildings and solve unsolvable problems. Emotions are powerful, but they are vaporous. When confronted with facts, emotions dissipate into scurilous mists that leave only wet traces on lips and faces.

Who are we, these men with bottled emotions, who own land and ride horses on the outskirts of well-do-to-cities? We? I am not among the horse-owning class. Nor am I a significant land owner. No, I am a wannabe, a character in a third-rate novel; a detective whose trousers are stained with olive oil and whose aftershave reeks of garlic and fresh fish.

I did not achieve my goals today. I could not keep myself away from the local social media. And I wished a friend’s husband happy birthday. Wait. I think he is my friend, too? Why do I consider his wife more of a friend than he? Ah, it’s only because she and I know one another a little better. Nothing more. I spent more time on Facebook than I said I would. Miserable bastard! You can’t even keep a promise to yourself!

I re-potted several tomato plants today, plants I grew from seeds of tomatoes I consumed for sustenance and pleasure. I hope the transplanted plants survive and give me enormous volumes of tomatoes. I adore tomatoes. I could survive on tomatoes and tomatoes alone. I’d be willing to try, anyway. For awhile.

Dinner tonight will involve the flesh of a dead pig, AKA pork tenderloin treated to spices that will be reminiscent of time I wished I’d spent in the Middle East or Northern Africa. I could have been Moroccan, had I been born in another place and another time. I just wanted you to know.

I’ve not yet started drinking, though my writing suggests otherwise. I promise. I am just in the mood for liquor and libidinous interactions. Hah! I’m too damn old and ugly for that. But I’m not too old for a gin and tonic, forged from cheap gin and cheaper tonic. But it requires the juice of a fresh lime; that is what transports me to a time and place where I can forget the past and strive to conquer the future.

It is possible to recover from job loss. It is not possible to recover from death. Chaotic economic calamities can be overcome; not so, death. Hundreds of thousands of people out of work and in dire financial straits is a scenario from which those hundreds of thousand of people can emerge. There is no emergence from death.

Apparently, though, the prospect of shuttered hair salons, pizza parlors, and shopping malls is far more dismal and depressing to some than is the idea of morgues stacked to the rafters with full coffins or mass graves dug, in an attempt to cope with volume, in lieu of individual burials. Weighing the options, though, might simply be a matter of playing the odds and taking measured risks. “I’m willing to risk the relatively unlikely possibility of dying against the likely possibility of being unable to buy food.” Put another way, “I’m willing to put the lives of people I love at risk in order to take home a paycheck.” Yet another symptom of testosterone poisoning, I think.

Maybe, though, it all boils down to brainwashing and distrust. In spite of 70,000 deaths and 32,000 new cases per day, some still believe COVID-19 is a “hoax.” Governmental actions taken to reduce the number of infections and deaths are not steps to protect the people but, instead, dangerous overreach by a “deep state” dedicated to perpetrating a “scam” on the populace. Paranoia and conspiracy theories grow like bacteria in a petri dish awash in nutritional agar.

I sometimes—often—think it is impossible to repair minds so badly wrecked and fractured that they are receptive to wildly absurd ideas and theories. Allowing these damaged beings to roam free in society is dangerous and potentially deadly, but making it illegal to entertain certain thoughts and ideas is anathema to freedom. So what is the solution? I wish I knew.

Perhaps the best solution for me is to avoid social media, news, and thinking about COVID-19. I sense myself growing angry and feeling hopeless, an ugly combination that can lead to nothing good. It’s not the virus that makes me feel this way; it’s the way I see people reacting to it. Blaming medical professionals and healthcare workers and grocery store clerks. Strutting into state capitols carrying guns and congregating on beaches and deliberately spitting on people whose opinions differ from their own. I am near the boiling point and I dare not allow the red hot anger to turn to steaming rage.  So I will steer clear of triggers. I will avoid reading or listening to (and engaging in) irrational rants.

+++

If I lived alone, I would have a pet. A dog. He or she, in silent adoration, would be a soothing influence on me.

Absent having a real pet, I will create an imaginary dog. Her name is Luna. She is relatively small, but too big to carry around with me, though she fits nicely in my lap. She daydreams while I watch mindless television shows designed to make me laugh and forget the world around me. She follows me out onto the deck and sits near me and watches me as I sip my coffee in the morning or my drink in the evening. When I go into the garage, she spins in excited circles, hoping she can ride with me in the car. When I drive, she places her paws at the base of the window on the passenger side door and puts her head out the window, taking in the wind and all the delightful odors it carries to her nose. I wish I could understand what she is thinking. And I wonder if she can sense my thoughts. She seems to know when to nuzzle my neck and when to give me a wide berth. She reads me like a canine novel.

Luna understands, or seems to, that I am more comfortable talking to her than to humans. She listens to me as if she understands me. When I blather on about bacon or cauliflower, her eyes sparkle and she drools. Yes, Luna is in love with cauliflower. It’s the crunch, I think, and the fact that the florets spray like bursts from an exploding bubble when she bites into them. Bacon, though, is her favorite. She wolfs it down as if it were trying to escape; she must consume it quickly in order to prevent it from getting away.

People tell me pets restrict one’s freedom. They say you can’t go out of town on a whim because you have to make arrangements for the pets. Not so with Luna. I simply give her a set of keys, and leave instructions for her:

1. When you go out in the yard, take a poop bag with you and, when you’ve done your business, tie the bag closed and put it in the poop bag bin; make sure to close the lid tightly.
2. Eat no more than one can of Hill’s Science Diet every day. There’s Purina Pro-Plan dry in the pantry; use your judgement.
3. When you give yourself water, be sure to turn off the tap; no drip, drip, drip like last time.
4. If you take the car out, be sure to wear a fedora so you look more like a human. Be careful and don’t speed!
5. You can binge-watch House of Cards if you like; just be sure not to erase any episodes because I haven’t seen them all.
6. No guests while I’m gone, please.

Who am I kidding? I wouldn’t want to leave without Luna! She would go with me. We would stay only in dog-friendly motels and eat in dog-friendly restaurants. Luna told me about a website that caters to dogs and their people, bringfido.com.

I didn’t mention yet (on this post, anyway) that I attempted to start a city-specific pet products and services guide when I lived in Chicago. Well, I did. I tried. I had visions of a paperback directory that would have, at the time, been the only thing of its kind. I had neither the marketing wherewithal nor the necessary financial backing to make a go of it. I solicited help, through a want-ad in the Chicago Tribune, with the upfront aspects of the guide. A woman, her first name was Sarah but I do not recall her last name, responded. She was a fierce dog-lover and a seriously neurotic creature who had made a practice of suing past employers for perceived discrimination. She had never won a suit. At any rate, Sarah helped me create a business plan of sorts and worked on building a database of prospective advertisers and content-suppliers for the guide. Eventually, after having no success whatsoever in getting either advertising or content support, I dropped it. Sarah was, by the time, gone. I suspect she was busy seeking employment that might one day turn into a money spigot. My company name (the company that never really developed much) was Anthem Group. The only product I ever produced was the Green Book Directory of Industrial Medicine. I produced two or three annual editions before deciding it was not sufficiently profitable to warrant continuing. At least I learned a lot while I was doing it.

Years and years ago, sometime between 1985 and 1990, high in the skies over Wisconsin, I climbed out on the wing of a twin-engine airplane and, when the skydiver to whom I was tightly strapped gave the command, pushed myself away from the wing. The two of us dropped in free-fall for what seemed like a full minute, though I suspect it was far less than that. The air rushing past my ears made hearing him difficult, but I managed to hear him warn me that he was going to pull the rip cord. Suddenly, I felt like we had stopped and changed direction, as if we were catapulting upward at the same speed we had reached while falling. But the sound of the rushing air was missing. The sensation was just a reaction to our sudden deceleration, I think.

The experience of free-fall was exhilarating. I remember thinking, without any fear whatsoever, that the tandem parachute might not open.  I remember thinking, if it didn’t, I would feel no pain when I smashed into the ground. I would be dead, instantly. Why that did not frighten me I do not know. But within the next several days, more than one news report told of parachutists who died when their chutes did not open. Those reports changed my thinking. I decided not to jump out of airplanes anymore. Despite that decision, I felt like the $100 I paid to do that one jump was money well spent.

I wonder whether the free-fall the world economy is experiencing will be anything like the tandem parachute jump. Will the incredible speed of descent slow with such ferocity that we will feel like it is going in the other direction, even though it will still be dropping? Or will its plunge continue without slowing until, suddenly, the economy as we know it will die in an instant? I rather doubt the economy will actually reverse direction, at least any time soon. For that to happen in the USA, intelligent leadership and guidance would be necessary. That is lacking. Neither major political party seems capable of focusing on the issues at hand. And the fervent supporters of both parties seem intent on murder, followed by self-destruction. Demanding freedom from face masks and insisting on re-opening all businesses, including restaurants and malls, offers evidence of both homicidal and suicidal tendencies. And suggestions that votes will be withheld from one man accused of sexual assault, thereby tacitly supporting another man accused of multiple sexual assaults (and publicly guilty of bald-faced lies of unprecedented scope) offer evidence of stupidity and arrogance unmatched in the modern era.

Free-fall. It’s not just the economy. It’s the fabric of American society, being shredded by the rush of hot air emanating from the mouths of politicians and their acolytes during their rapid descent toward our collective oblivion.

It doesn’t need to happen. The free-fall could be stopped if the public at large would simply accept that everyone…EVERYONE…will be required to make significant, long-term, and painful sacrifices so that everyone…EVERYONE…can weather the pain of pandemic and financial meltdown. But, again, leadership would be required. I do not see anyone on the national stage with sufficient charisma, intellectual wherewithal, an unshakable moral compass, and political power to lead us toward a unified effort to confront the problems facing us.

The public at large could do it, even without leadership, if we would just unify behind the concept that WE have to do the heavy lifting. But I doubt that will happen. It would take a spark from a charismatic public figure to light the flame. And who can command the attention and the affection and the respect of people across the political spectrum? Who could turn public attention toward solutions, political affiliation be damned? I don’t know.

I hope my sense of hopelessness this morning is just an after-effect of eating too much scallops provençal last night. Maybe more coffee and a piece of toast will recover my bright, cheerful, hopeful mood.

I’ve been up for more than an  hour. I spent much of that hour writing something I will never post. In fact, I suspect I will delete the file. It will do no one any good to read what I wrote. My words were selfish expressions; they did not even serve me. They represent an outpouring of self-pity; a revelation that need not be revealed. I’ve written quite a lot of such stuff over the years. Most of it either deleted or saved in password-protected files that will never be opened because I did not save the passwords, for fear they could be found and the files opened. I thought I would remember the passwords. But I don’t. I suppose I should delete those files, too. But I might one day, in a flash of new-found memory, recall the keys to unlock those files; I might be able to open them and see whether I wrote anything worth reading. Anything worth saving. Almost certainly not; when I am in moods that prompt me to write such stuff, I am unlikely to write anything of any value to anyone, least of all myself.

My fiction seems to have left me. I no longer have much interest in writing fiction. I’m more interested in writing what I think and how I feel, stuff that is of interest only to me. I return, on occasion, to read my expressions of what’s on my mind. And, on occasion, I like what I’ve written. But I see no value in it. It’s just ruminations, recorded in written words, that will eventually be discarded, along with the computer on which they are stored. I used to think I would organize my writing into some sort of coherent collection and publish the pieces I judged worthy of publication. Oh, I still think about it sometimes but the more I read what I’ve written, the less likely I think I will try. I would be the only one apt to read it. Maybe some members of my family. But no one outside a small and shrinking circle would waste their time on it.

Moods. I certainly have them, don’t I? Moods direct my behavior in predictable ways. Last night, I wanted to do nothing more than sit on the deck and drink wine. I wanted company. But it occurred to me that I did not want to talk to anyone; I just wanted someone there with me. Someone to suffer in silence with me. What a selfish bastard! I’m like that a lot. I want to be left alone, but I want to be left alone with someone else. I want someone else there with me, listening to the whipporwills and the crickets and wind chimes aroused by the breeze and watching as the night sky begins to darken and show stars. I think I want someone else to experience what I experience so that, later, when I emerge from that solitary mood, we can compare notes on our experience. Maybe that’s it. Maybe not. Maybe I just want to feel like I am more interesting, even in silence, than a television reality show.

I’ve had it with writing this morning. Nothing of any consequence has slipped from my fingers. It’s a waste of phalangeal joint energy. Enough.