John Swinburn

I do not know when season three of Broadchurch became available on Netflix; I know only that I stumbled upon it several days ago. The series is one of a few British television series I find absolutely riveting. When I learned season three was available, I started watching immediately. I tried to pace myself because I didn’t want to rush through it and be left bereft that it’s done. It was a valiant attempt, but it failed. I finished watching episode eight, the final one of the season, last night.

The degree of interest I have/had in the series is evident from my viewing habits. I’ve begun a habit of watching the program in the afternoons on occasion, a time span in which I’ve always avoided television.

Afternoon television brings back memories of my mother, after she retired; she watched soap operas and other such swill in the afternoons. Her unexpected habit of watching what I considered mindless crap bothered me. I had always thought she was an unusually bright person whose taste in literature was superb. But then she started watching Days of Our Lives or some other such miserable mindlessness and my assessment of her intellect changed. I hated that I was disappointed in her for doing that, but I couldn’t force myself to forgive her for it. I should have said “to each her own.” I tried. Yet I could not accept the legitimacy of her television preferences until years later. At any rate, afternoon television, to me, long equated to televised ignorance and willful stupidity. That unforgiving and uncharitable has since changed. I now realize television is simply an escape. Sometimes, an escape that requires absolutely no critical thought is just what we need. My wife now watches some television I consider utterly mindless. But, then, so do I. I no longer make the mistake of correlating intellect with television viewing habits. Well, I try to avoid making that mistake, though I sometimes fail.

If I look carefully and honestly at Broadchurch, I can see elements of ignorance and mind-numbing gullibility. But Broadchurch is most assuredly not Days of Our Lives. While I’m writing about non-US television series, I’ll touch on some of the series on my list of “must see television.” Based on what I’ve read and what I’ve been told by my wife, I need to include Dicte on the list. (I’ve already included it, but I’m including it here as a ready place to keep my “list.”) Dicte is a Danish story of a journalist who returns to her hometown from Copenhagen and investigates murders, alongside a local detective.  And I want to return to the Dutch Department Q series so I can refresh my enjoyment of that superb set of programs. Another series I have tried to find but haven’t yet is Borgen. She mentioned the program (though she couldn’t remember the name of the series) yesterday, imploring me to keep looking until I find it because, she knows, I will enjoy it.

One day, but today is not it, I will compile a complete list of “want to see” foreign television series, along with those I’ve seen and enjoyed but the titles of which I frequently forget. It seems to me I should have an easier access point to my memories than the results of a search of this blog using multiple search terms. I suppose that item on my wish list should fall someplace below “finish the deck” and “fix the leaking faucets in the bathrooms” and, perhaps, below the “buy replacement hose bibs before the very cold weather hits.”

My new angle of looking at Broadchurch is this: It’s just entertainment. It is not a mind-expanding experience. It is simply an enjoyable way to pass the time while allowing my simpleton’s brain to be massaged into semi-conscious appreciation of the world around me. It’s much like meditation in that sense, I guess. Or medication. Or alcohol.

***

Yesterday, we drove to Mena, Arkansas. Our objective, aside from simply getting out for a long drive, was to view fall foliage. We saw some beautiful foliage, but I suspect we went a bit early for some areas and a bit late for others. The leaves had turned brown and were falling in high volume in Queen Wilhemina State Park, near the lodge. And the lodge was absolutely swarming with people and cars; we couldn’t get away from there fast enough. But at lower elevations, some of the leaves were gorgeous. And the views of the surrounding Ouchita Mountains, covered with multi-hued trees, were spectacular.

We had lunch at a strange little place in Mena, Chiquita’s Tex-Mex restaurant. You order from a menu above the cash register; they take your name and a few minutes later they deliver your food to your table. The menu was a touch odd, but the food was tasty (if not necessarily “normal” Tex-Mex). My tacos were tasty, but the filling was not the usual picadillo I have come to expect in Tex-Mex places; it was not very spicy and had a “filler” of flour, I think. The beans were good, though, and the salsa delivered to the table with our meals was tasty. The taco shells and the chips were the thinnest I have ever seen; I don’t know how they are able to make chips and shells so thin! And my wife’s taco salad was laced with Fritos. Fritos! But she liked it.

Later, we stopped in at Myers Cruizzers Drive-In, which is an old-style drive-in diner. But it’s a one-of-a-kind place, not a chain. My wife wanted a pumpkin pie spice milk shake, which we saw advertised on their flashing sign as we drove past. I had a plain vanilla milk shake. Both were tasty. And as we scanned the food menu, we decided the place was unique, indeed, and worth a stop next time we’re in Mena.

Dinner last night was spectacular. My wife made a wonderfully spice Neopolitan sauce with Italian sausage which we ladled onto spaghetti. It was the perfect way to cap an enjoyable day.

And today we go to church. Hmm. Do I really want to go? No. Will I go anyway? Yes.

I had hoped that avoiding the topic of food in my blog posts would translate into weight loss. All right, I hadn’t actually thought about it quite that way. But in hindsight, it seems like there might have been a logical connection. Regardless, if there is a correlation, it is the opposite of what one might hope. The calories, directed away from the screen, have accumulated around my midsection.

The last time I wrote about food (at least the last time I labeled a post as belonging to the category of food) was in mid-July, when I mentioned Korean Breakfast Toast and deviled kidney, among other things. Shortly after writing that post, I tried Korean Breakfast Toast; I was rather disappointed that the dish wasn’t the joyous experience for which I had hoped. Not bad; just not especially good. I have yet to try deviled lamb (or any other) kidney.

This morning, I’m thinking about other foods that might merit time in the kitchen.  But, first, we must either repair or replace our oven/range. The damn thing will not reach the temperature we intend. We learned of this problem some time ago when we attempted to cook a frozen pizza. The oven claimed it had reached the desired 400-degree temperature, but when the pizza should have been ready twenty-two minutes later, it had thawed into an almost liquid mess, but had not cooked. Since then, we’ve tried to calibrate the oven temperature to no avail. Long before that experience, I managed to break a knob that controls one of the stovetop burners; the part, alone, is $140 or thereabouts. I almost ordered it, but I discovered I cannot remove the broken knob because I cannot get at the part without the risk of doing damage to the stove. So, we’ve let it sit. Now, with a bad oven and a bad burner knob, we’re thinking about ditching the stove; I’ve never liked it anyway. But I’ve diverged from my intended point: other foods.

If we had a working stove and oven, I might return to a dish I made only once, several years ago (at least six or eight years ago, when we were still in Dallas). The dish is tourtière du shack, an incredibly rich Quebecois meat pie. I recall that it was quite an undertaking, even though I did not include some of the more involved garnish ingredients like calf’s brains and sweetbreads and foie gras. It was delightful, though. I do remember that.

The tourtière du shack was one of about twenty regional main dishes I had planned to prepare during the course of a year. I researched regional foods of the U.S. and Canada, sought out recipes for them, and planned to explore much of the North American continent’s cuisine from the comfort of my kitchen. Spiedie sandwiches, Cornish pasties, oyster pie, Jiggs dinner, and several other regional specialties were to find their way from our kitchen to our plates. For some reason, though, I did not get through the list. I only made a half-dozen or so before giving up on the project. I don’t think I deliberately gave up; I simply stopped making the project a priority and it slipped from my memory out of neglect. Yet another example of my tendency to get side-tracked. I allow myself to veer sharply away from a clear focus and, instead, muddle around with something else that, until that point, was of only tangential interest.

I’ve lost my enthusiasm this morning, already, for writing about food. I’m not even feeling hungry. Bah. I should consider returning to bed. But I won’t. I rarely do. Instead, I’ll wander aimlessly through the house, looking for something that will catch my attention and inflame my interest. But, alas, that something is unlikely to be sufficiently motivating to get me moving. A dull, aching boredom seems to be spilling from my mind. Something will change that. It’s just a question of what and when.

Lightning is the visual expression of thunder.

Thunder is the sonic expression of lightning.

While those two statements may seem either absurd or obvious (or contradictory…or not), I think they merit contemplation. If nothing else, they force a shift in perspective. I suspect thousands of similar observations (or claims, depending on one’s frame of mind and generosity of spirit, or lack thereof) could be made.

Back to those two statements, though. The first one is incorrect. Both imply causation. Thunder does not cause lightning; lightning, the discharge of atmospheric electricity, results in (or can result in) thunder. Thunder cannot occur without the sudden expansion of air in the path of the electrical discharge which must, obviously, come first.

Damn! I’ve allowed pure facts to interfere with the point I was trying to make! Regardless of the physics involved, it’s realistic to gravitate, mentally, to one perspective or the other. I suppose people for whom the right side of the brain is dominant would allow physics to take a back seat, whereas left-brained people would seek out logic. But, wait! The long-held belief that the right side of the brain controls creativity and the left side controls logic is, apparently, a myth! The myth has quite a history of “scientific” evidence, the level of rigorousness of which has for the past few years been called into question. The widely-held perspective among scientists today is that, although different parts of the brain control different parts of the body (and the mind), the left-right logical-creative split is not true.

I vaguely remember writing a blog post a few years ago in which I suggested the twenty-six letters of he alphabet, even combined in every conceivable way, would eventually be insufficient to capture all the beauty of which the English language is capable. The suggestion was tongue-in-cheek, of course, but it held a kernel of real belief. I applied the idea to my own writing capabilities, thinking I would at some point literally run out of anything new to write. Mathematics, on the other hand, is infinite. Not only is there a limitless supply of numbers, they can be combined in an infinite number of ways. The relationships between numbers and the relationships between relationships are so incredibly numerous that even the hint that one might eventually use them all up is ludicrous.

Considering the two sentences with which I started this post, along with the paragraph I just completed, it seems obvious to me that an infinite number of combinations of words and numbers and ideas and relationships constitutes only a fraction of the possible pairings or groupings. So we can merge ideas with dreams and facts with imagination and numbers with fantasy and on and on and on, ad infinitum.

***

On a completely unrelated matter, a friend in the hinterlands of northern Arkansas had a pacemaker installed yesterday afternoon. It was done after a lengthy period of experiencing syncope, the cause of which, until just a few days ago was unknown. A heart monitor finally determined that a recent syncope episode corresponded with his heart stopping for several seconds. Finally, the doctors figured out the cause of the syncope. The obvious treatment was to install a pacemaker. Perhaps we’ll be able to visit them in the next month or two to celebrate a brand-new pacemaker!

When does empathy turn into a target, a bull’s-eye painted on one’s compassion that guides seekers of pity to unearned sources of tenderness and sympathy? It happens almost without the compassionate victim realizing the game is being played. By the time one’s empathy and compassion have been milked almost dry, it’s too late to call foul. By then, it’s impossible to extricate oneself from the claws that grip the soul, the impossibly strong grasp that cannot be broken without emotional bloodshed. The perpetrators of these vile acts seek undeserved mercies and undue condolences that, once given, cannot be readily retrieved lest the victim be perceived as a monster, unfeeling and willing to crush poor, weak, bereaved beasts (who, if truth be known, are the victimizers and the vanquishers).

I’m still processing an experience which will, I suspect, provide a limitless resource for inventing a fictional character whose actions reveal a swindler and a thief, a charlatan whose sympathetic countenance is counterfeit. This creature gets her sustenance from painting herself as a lifelong victim, drinking in unearned sympathy as if it were absinthe and she were addicted to the stuff.

She is a dangerous one, that woman. But she fits nicely into a story of psychosis and demonstrable dementia. I’m glad I never trusted her and, so, did not get pulled in by her stories of woe. Perhaps her life has been just as ugly and undeservedly harsh as she describes; but the description, repeated over and over and over, sounds highly scripted, as if perfecting it has been her life’s work. The story gets her the attention she craves. But my attention isn’t the kind she wants; she wasn’t seeking my contempt, I’m sure, but that’s the only attention I’m willing to give her.

I have nothing to say. Sure, if I were more intelligent and better looking, I might have thoughts to share.

But, absent even a hint of brilliance or a glancing blow of handsomeness, my words are valueless. They don’t even belong on the screen, much less on a page that might one day find its way into a book that almost certainly would be burned for its white-hot irrelevance. So I’ll slink away from the fringes of the far edges of the dimming limelight. And I’ll take my ideas and my assertions with me. I’ll crawl back under the covers that hide me from the glaring spotlight. That spotlight was not meant to inflict fame on me. It was intended only to bathe me in harsh heat that sucks the liquid from the milk of human kindness, leaving only a hard skin of rancid, sharp-edged protein, like burned egg white, cooked to the surface of a porous skillet.

“That’s what’s left of him. A crisp scrap of truculent stench so foul it is visible in even dim light and darkness.”

Some mornings, only the ugliest phrases fit the vagaries of my moods as they ricochet from gleeful to gloomy and back again, detouring to detachment and disgust along the way. I can’t place blame for this odd blend of undefinable auras surrounding me in caustic smoke and smooth vanilla. This sort of thing just happens. Eventually, I’ll find a way out. In the meantime, I’ll poke around in the immediate past and explore memories for clues.

Last night, I did as asked and went to Kollective Coffee+Tea, where I was to announce that I was there to read a poem by our dear departed friend of poetry, Bud, and then to do the deed. To my surprise, only four people (plus two staff) were in the business at the time. They seemed shocked and then amused by my outburst. After reading the poem, we (my wife accompanied me) walked to the appointed place where other readers who had been assigned to read in other galleries (along with many other people) gathered for a procession down the street to Superior Brewery, the location for a celebratory remembrance service. And we listened and enjoyed the experience. My wife and I left early, just after a slide show of Bud’s life was shown.

There’s nothing in that little slip of memory that would have created this morning’s odd assortment of moods.

Further back, but only by a few hours, I exchanged a couple of emails with a one-time acquaintance (I guess we remain acquaintances), wishing her a happy birthday. Nothing there.

Ach, it’s no use. There’s nothing causal in my readily accessible memory.

I think I need more coffee and, perhaps, a flour tortilla enlivened with a few drops of habanero salsa. And, then, a brain transplant, alongside an entirely new (and much younger) body in far better condition than the one I’m in.

Ah ha! I know what did it. I saw a headline when I glanced at the news on my computer this morning, claiming Moody’s is forecasting 45 will be re-elected in a landslide. WTF?! The end of civilization, already deeply in peril, is forecast? Well of course my mood will be strange and dangerous!

My wife made a very tasty chili yesterday, a conglomeration of hamburger meat and bacon, a spectrum of spices, pinto beans, and who know what else. We had it for dinner last night. While it wasn’t especially hot-spicy, it alerted me in the wee hours of the morning that it was spicy-spicy. I felt a slight case of heartburn during the night; it wasn’t sufficient to cause me to get up and take curative drugs, but it was enough to awaken me and express my body’s displeasure with my eating habits. I think it was about 2:30 that it awoke me (after a very, very early bedtime, thanks to I don’t know what). It kept me awake for most of the next three hours until, finally, I gave up and got up.

Coffee isn’t necessarily the most soothing liquid for heartburn, I’ve discovered. In fact, this morning it seems to be having the opposite effect, causing my stomach to growl, bark, and occasionally snap at me for my choice of beverage. I didn’t have many options, as it happens. It was bottled water or coffee made from bottled water; we’re still under a precautionary boil water order, thanks to yesterday’s nearby water main break. We have little else to drink in the house; neither bottled diet tonic nor wine make from a blend of cabernet sauvignon and syrah grapes seems especially well-suited for a breakfast drink.

I am not in the least hungry this morning. In fact, the thought of food is off-putting. But the idea of cool spring water flowing directly out of the ground is appealing. If I were closer to a reliable cool-water spring and could remain comfortably warm without getting dressed, I might go out for a sip or a swallow or a gulp. But the nearest cool-water springs, to my knowledge, are in Hot Springs; I would have to get dressed or risk freezing and/or being arrested were I to seek out the cooling  effects of spring-fed dioxygen monoxide. (Is that the correct chemical formula for water?)

My wife will drive my sister-in-law to Little Rock this morning for a medical test procedure and I will stay home to keep the house cleaner company and pay her for her efforts. Having a house cleaner help with maintaining this too-big house is a welcome but rather rare event and it’s even rarer still for me to be the one to stay home while the house is being cleaned. Usually, I skip out during the vacuuming and mopping and such; my wife doesn’t mind the horrendously loud vacuum noises and the intrusion by a stranger into our living space, but for some reason I do. But today, thanks to medical stuff, I will stay here and suffer through the decibels. It’s probably best that I’m staying home, too, because the heat in my belly seems still to be alive with embers. I have to admit the fire was arson and I am the arsonist. I must make the transition this morning into firefighter.

Obviously, I’m not much in the mood to write anything of consequence. So I will stop writing for a while in the hope my creative juices start flowing again. Or until I can write about something that will make me think and be a bit more satisfied with the state of the world.

U.S. culture treats advanced age as a terminal illness and it treats those consumed by the “illness” as disposable. The quicker the better. Mexican culture, from what I understand, has a different perspective. Age equates to experience which, in turn, forms a foundation of wisdom. People fortunate enough to have survived many years of experience are, in Mexico, revered. This morning, as I was thinking about these conflicting cultural perspectives on age, I happened upon a Facebook post that included a few excerpts from a book by Paul Theroux, On the Plain of Snakes: A Mexican Road Trip. One quote from the book, a recitation of a Mexican aphorism, struck me as particularly interesting: Más sabe el diablo por viejo, no que por diablo. Roughly translated into English, that says, “The devil is wise because he is old, not because he’s the devil.”

I wonder how it happens that some cultures hold the aged in high regard, while others view them as used-up, worn-out, and generally in the way? I wish I knew and I wish I knew how to reverse that perspective.  But I don’t. I suppose the best way to try is to model the behaviors one hopes to see in others.

Yet I feel just a tad sheepish about automatically giving respect to someone simply because he or she has managed to say alive for many, many years. I have encountered plenty of people whose lengthy lives are almost certainly accidental; only by pure chance have these people not stepped in front of buses or drowned in the shower. These people exemplify the concept that: “They do not have ninety years of experience; they have one year of experience repeated ninety times.” That is, they have learned nothing of consequence by living so long.

But more people than not do not fall into that category of old and stupid. More people have, in fact, learned a great deal over the course of their lives, thanks to their ability to associate the meaning of different experiences at many different times of their lives. That may be a hard sentence to digest; they can rely on experiences from years ago to help interpret and give meaning to experiences years later. Maybe that helps explain it.

As usual, I’ve wandered off course. Why do our cultures hold such diametrically opposed perspectives about age? And how can our culture change to be more closely aligned with Mexican culture? I suppose the first step is to change our collective attitudes about our cultures and other cultures. That is, we need to acknowledge that our culture is not always “better” and other cultures are not always “worse.” We need to accept that our culture can learn from other cultures and can improve by adopting some of their perspectives and practices.

I suppose we teach children, from an early age, that older people are not as valuable as younger people. We train people to believe we reach our intellectual peaks around age 45 and decline precipitously thereafter. Somewhere along the line, 50 became the new 99; once a person reaches 50, he is unemployable. His knowledge and capabilities leaked from his head and cannot be recovered.

I have no practical solutions. I just write to complain. I have nothing else to contribute. I’m just sucking in air that should have been made available to someone younger.

If I mailed a letter to the ones who have forgotten me, would they open the envelope? Would they bother to read the words it took me so long to put down on paper? Would the effort I made to retrieve old memories matter to the ones who have forgotten me?

I could ask myself the same questions about a letter I might receive from a forgotten someone. I think I know the answers. I would read their words, feeling shame I had forgotten them. I would feel guilt and remorse I had forgotten a person whose tenuous happiness may have rested in part on the knowledge that at least one other person cared enough to remember them. I would have contempt for myself for failing to care enough to take precautions against forgetting someone who needed to be remembered.

And I would remember I, too, have been forgotten. I, too, needed to know at least one other person cared enough to remember me, but chose to forget. Chose to let our shared experiences disappear, replaced by memories of people who mattered.

The reality of forgetting is that people remember what matters. There’s no room for, no need for, guilt that my brain sorts out the wheat from the chaff. Yet when I remember how I ignored someone who may have needed to be noticed, I realize I did not forget what matters; I simply pushed that recollection to the periphery. I remember, even when I want to forget. It is that class of memory that stabs at me, pokes at me, pries at my sense I am, after all, a decent human being. Would a decent human being allow the memory to ebb?

Distance and time and important matters that demand our consideration allow us to forget. If I were paying attention, I would notice I am allowing people who matter to disappear from my life. It happens slowly, at first, but then one day the rare memories simply disappear like a child’s huge blown soap bubble striking a blade of grass.

When I receive that letter, the one from someone I knew long, long ago, I might recall a giant bubble floating in the breeze. In my mind’s eye, I might see the iridescent surface of the bubble change colors as it spins and changes shape in the wind. And I might hear the laughter of young children, delighted at the wondrous thin film separating air from air and dreams from memories. But when the bubble disappears in a silent explosion, laughter turns to sobs and from once bright young eyes tears flow at the inexplicable loss.

***

These thoughts flooded my mind this morning, for reasons that remain unclear. Perhaps I miss people who matter and fear we will allow ourselves to forget one another. Or maybe I remember people who, long after I forgot them, stumbled back into my life for a brief time and then stumbled back out. I do remember some of those people; and I recall some of them seemed to need, deeply, to be remembered. Yet I allowed them to stumble out. Or perhaps I’m the one who stumbled out, again leaving them to assume they have, once again, been forgotten.

Losing touch is not the same as forgetting, but it has the same impact. It says, in effect, “you don’t matter enough for me to make sure you know where I am.” Or, on the other hand, after giving someone your new address and contact information, you might learn you didn’t matter enough for them to keep it. But maybe that’s just absent-mindedness or disorganization. The fact that it can be confused for disregard should be sufficiently cautionary to change bad habits, though.

I readily admit I’m overly sensitive about too many things. Maybe we all are. There are too many people in our lives for anyone to expect everyone we touch to remember our birthdays. But Facebook insists on reminding even people we’ve never met about our birthdays. I read a quote some time ago that I have tried to take to heart, but have had a tough time doing it:

“You probably wouldn’t worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do.” ~ Olin Miller

The thing is, I realize I am not on the minds of most people much, if at all. But I’m concerned (for reasons unknown) that on those rare occasions I’m on someone’s mind, it’s because they are thinking I’m not someone with whom they’d want to spend much time. Of course, I feel the same way about many of them, so there you go. There aren’t many people I like. But those I do, I generally love with a passion. Perhaps the intensity of my admiration and appreciation is scary. It can be scary to me.

***

On a completely different subject, one of my dozens (or hundreds or thousands) of fantasies is to be able to create an educational institution for people between the ages of 17 and 23. Entry into the institution would be competitive and would be based on tests that measure knowledge in several areas, interests, ability to concentrate, and manual dexterity. Students would be exposed to a rigorous curriculum in which they would be expected to demonstrate proficiency. The curriculum would include mathematics, language and literature, chemistry and biology, social sciences (including sociology, government, and politics), and a range of courses in subjects commonly known as “the trades,” including wood-working/shop, mechanics, HVAC, etc, etc.  As students progress through the curriculum, their interests and capabilities would be closely monitored. Students who excel in “college bound” courses would be guided toward college and the subjects that most interest them; students who excel in the trades would be guided toward the trades that most interest them.

Every student, though, would be expected to complete the curriculum with a sufficient grasp of all subjects to enable them to function as contributing members of society. When a kid come out of the school (and college) with a degree in sociology, he or she would be expected to be knowledge about the discipline but also would be sufficiently knowledgeable and capable to change tires, replace spark plugs, troubleshoot HVAC system problems, and handle household welding and plumbing projects. Kids who move into plumbing would be expected to be able to engage in intelligent conversations about societal change, archaeology, literature, and drama.

Pipe dream. Pipe dream. Pipe dream. I wish my “liberal arts” education had exposed me to more of the “trades” than it did. For that matter, I wish I’d been forced to learn more about chemistry and mathematics and engineering. It’s not that I don’t have the wherewithal to learn about those subjects/activities now; I just don’t have sufficient energy and discipline. If I did, I might go to medical school. I wonder if medical schools would accept 66 year olds? I should hope not; we don’t need to invest the kind of money and time required to become a doctor in someone whose time practicing medicine is so certain to be time-limited.

***

Why do I write so much crap when I know few,  if any, people will read any of it and fewer still will read it to the end? Because I have to write. Just spill my guts and, on occasion, unleash my creativity, as dark and dangerous as it can be. I have to. When I was in the hospital last year and after I returned home and had little energy, I couldn’t write as much as I wanted and needed to. That was a dark time; my writing energy was wasted. It’s wasted now, too, but at least there’s the potential of someone worth reading. I’d better get in gear to write and/or select poems for this Wednesday night’s reading. I have thirty minutes. Enough to arouse and rile up the audience.

Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī was a Muslim mathematician and astronomer whose major works introduced Hindu-Arabic numerals and the concepts of algebra into European mathematics. He was appointed astronomer and head of the library of Bagdad’s House of Wisdom around 820 AD.

Until this morning, I had never heard of him. I wonder how many other Arabic scholars whose contributions to mathematics and science and astronomy and the like I have never heard of?  And I wonder why I have never heard of them? I think I know. I think Western culture has purposely ignored the contributions of scholars outside European and pre-European society. Just like the systemic racism that forms many of our institutions today, systemic “culturism” forms our understanding of the history of science and the other “hard” sciences.

This is just a guess, of course. But I’m growing increasingly skeptical of the common explanations of the foundations of modern civilization. And I’m growing increasingly skeptical of documented history. Much of documented history, I fear, is based on doctored evidence. Evidence manipulated to put Western civilization in a more favorable light and Eastern civilization in a less favorable light.

I’m growing less interested in knowing the truth about the “Big Bang” and the evolution of species and more interested in knowing the truth about what has been done to paint a picture of history based not on facts but on culturism. I know; culturism is not a “legitimate” word. But it’s my word, so it’s legitimate to me. I suspect it’s not a word because its legitimacy would lend legitimacy to the idea that cultures lie about themselves and paint others with ugly brushes.

This subject deserves more thought. And I will give it more thought, though I wish it did not merit it.

When the world seems especially bleak, one can improve one’s mood immeasurably by considering all the horrors to which one has not been exposed. For example, as I sit here at my desk, I am thankful I was not awakened before daylight by paramilitary goons who marched me off to my beheading in a public square. And I am grateful a volcanic crater did not suddenly appear beneath my house, dragging me downward to drown in a sea of molten rock. Is that sufficient? Still need a boost? Well, I’m thrilled that I am not experiencing retribution at the antlers of a deer I wounded but did not kill before it gored me. The latter situation actually occurred to a Yellville, Arkansas man a few days ago. He shot a deer and was, with his nephew, preparing to field dress it when the stunned buck attacked, riddling the man with puncture wounds from its antlers. The man later died. The deer has not been found.

I have avoided too many horrible things to allow myself to feel miserable. The list of potentially cataclysmic events that did not take place in my life is literally endless. When compared to the minor disappointments that befall me—I awake to learn Trump did not die while I slept; I discover that children remain in cages at the border; evidence emerges that confirms stupidity is both genetic and contagious in both rural and urban America—I cannot help but feel a deep sense of deviant joy. It’s a sense that “things could be so much worse,” coupled with the realization that “things are likely to get much worse before they get better, if they ever get better.” It’s strange and disturbing, while simultaneously calming and soothing. Hopeless acceptance, that’s what it is.

***

All right, I’ve managed to climb out of the vaporous chamber that kept me half-awake but deeply sedated in a surreal fog.

I spent a good fifteen minutes, maybe more, skimming thirty-to-fifty-year-old editions of the Guadalajara Reporter, formerly known as the Colony Reporter. Though I learned nothing likely to change the course of my life, I stumbled across some interesting tidbits. For example, the occasional burglary, robbery, and even murder took place in and around Ajijic “back in the day.” Of course, those crimes frightened the ex-pat community, but they were rarities. I think. And I learned that Plaza Bugambilias in Ajijic opened roughly thirty-two years ago (if I remember correctly the date of the issue in which I read about the dedication). Plaza Bugambilias is where El Torito is located, in case you wondered.

Looking through old issues of the publication triggered a brief resurgence in my interest in creating and publishing a newspaper and/or magazine. I love the idea for some reason. I always have. But the radical transformation of the ways in which people access and consume their news makes old-style publishing an increasingly risky business. I’m afraid a publication I might launch, or like to launch, would appeal to an old audience, a target readership slipping away with each passing day. But that reality causes me great concern about the future of humanity in general. If younger generations simply skim Facebook for their news, much of which is manufactured for the sole purpose of feeding misinformation to the misinformed, what can we expect of the future? I can only say I am glad I will not be here to witness the unraveling of society. What am I saying? I’m witnessing it already, every day! Doesn’t that sound exactly like the voice of geezerhood?! “Well, in my day, we read newspapers and drank coffee. Nowadays, these young’uns walk around with their heads down, playing video games and drinking Red Bull. It’s a damn shame!”

***

My wife, who awoke several times during the night and got up to read for a while at some point, is now up for the day. She arose around 7:00, a good thirty minutes (at least) before her usual waking hour. I would have expected her to sleep in, given her unsuccessful state of sleep last night. But, not, instead she is up and has offered to prepare a chorizo con juevos breakfast, which I readily accepted as a good idea. So, while she prepares the ingredients for what promises to be a superb desayuno, I will wrap up this latest attempt at humor and heartache, recollection and reverie. I just wish we had some jalapeños or, at least, jalapeño paste, in the house. Chorizo demands it. Alas, I allowed the cupboards to get dangerously low on a staple. Now, we must made do. At least we won’t be forced to eat rancid roadkill possum off of dirty plates and drink typhoid-laced water from rusted cups. That’s something to cheer about.

I spent the last hour or so revising what I thought was an old narrative prose post into a poem. It was a poem all along, every since I wrote it this summer, but I didn’t realize it. Upon reading and rereading it this morning, its poetic attributes became clear to me; it felt more emotional than my typical prose posts (which often feel sterile and hollow, on second and third reading). But it needed work. It needed much of the excess clutter cleared away.

If the writing had been a wooded lot, it would have required a team of brush hogs to create a path from front to back. So I created an imaginary brush hog and cleared enough of the lot to enable me to wander freely about the land to see what I could see. And there was something to see. I saw evidence of who I had once been. I was a writer before I turned the corner this morning, morphing into an editor. An editor with a brush hog.

If the sounds I hear are what I think they are, rain has begun to fall. The ground, then, is wet and there’s no dry place for a brush hog to go. I think I’ll dry my fingers and have more coffee.

I opted not to read the flippant piece today; it was a miserable excuse for writing. So, I replaced it with another miserable excuse for writing. At least the replacement was fiction. I’m disappointed in myself. Why can’t I produce something of which I can be even modestly proud? It’s not that my standards are high. It’s that my abilities are plummeting to earth, as if I’d jumped from an airplane. That’s an ugly reality.

Today is my 66th birthday. And it feels no different than yesterday and, I dare say, it probably doesn’t feel any different from tomorrow. Just another day of decay.

My mood today has rushed toward the curb, attempting to smash itself against the gutter. I’ve kept away from street’s edge, but only barely. If I can finish a couple of strong pours of tequila, I might be able to go to sleep this evening without encircling my neck with an old necktie. No, I will be able to avoid doing it; I’m in no immediate danger of strangling myself just yet. As long as I can get to sleep and avoid dreams, I will be as fine as fine can be. I just don’t want any more of this damn consciousness until sometime tomorrow. Consciousness tends to be accompanied by sharpness and angles; stuff that makes the brain unhappy to be in the general proximity of awareness. Alcohol is a depressant, I think. At least it works that way when I need hours and hours and hours of unprescribed pain killer. I wonder whether doctors feel strongly about the dangers or, conversely, the values, of alcohol? I’ve never engaged any of them in conversations about it.

It’s just slightly after nine in the evening. That’s late enough, in my book, to try to crash out of consciousness and into a temporary state of suppression. I’ll work on that soon.

Normally, I don’t mind dreams. Tonight, I’d rather not have them. Instead, I just want rest; uninterrupted rest. Eight or ten hours of freedom from the troubling considerations of life on this planet will be most welcome. Tomorrow, I’ll be willing to face it all again. But for tonight, I’d rather just relax and pretend the world doesn’t have any plans to dash my hopes.

Since we returned from our trip earlier than originally planned, I can attend our Writers’ Club meeting today, an informal pot luck affair and read-around. I’m told attendance will be very light, which pleases me in that I have very little luck to put in the pot for lunch. Today, it will be store-bough hummus and multi-seed hard crackers.

I’ve not written a great deal lately, at least not much worth sharing, so I selected a non-fiction stream-of-consciousness piece I wrote early this month for my reading. Reading aloud, even to a small group, will be good practice for my Wednesday Night Poetry reading next week, when I’m the Feature Poet. It’s a little odd that I am on my third night as Feature Poet, in that I am not even remotely prolific at writing poetry. But I do write it and I enjoy both writing and reading/performing it. My challenge for next week is to find some lighter poems to read. Most of my poems emerge from my dark recesses, of which there are plenty. There’s not much light down there, especially of late.

My reading for today is a flippant piece that outlines, and argues for, my plan to travel the country, marketing one-off road-food from a food truck or some such thing. If nothing else, the tiny audience will get a look under the hood of a strange and skeptical (and moderately creative) man.

I’ve been trying, since I arose this morning, to write something of consequence. There’s simply nothing there. Perhaps milestones block my creative path. I’ll lay the blame there, regardless.

I thought it was time to get up, so I got up. That will teach me to think. It was just shy of 4:30. But by the time I realized how early it was, I was beyond going back to sleep.

That was two hours ago. I’ve wasted those two hours on trivial matters that shouldn’t merit any time at all. So it goes. Two hours, irretrievably lost, that could have been spent on something productive, if only contemplative reflection. Instead, they were wasted on worry about things over which I have no control. Madness. Wasteful madness.

Life would be quite different if we could bank hours instead of frittering them away in useless pursuits. I assume life would be different. But maybe not. Maybe we would make the same mindless choices. So, here’s another idiotic waste of time: playing “what if” in a game over which we have absolutely no control. Madness.

The truly maddening aspect of wasting time is that it’s a choice we need not make. We could choose, instead, to pursue our dreams; you know, rather than satisfy ourselves with dreaming them. I think we hesitate and fail to act because we assume our dreams are beyond our capacity to achieve them. Or we are afraid of trying and failing. Or we worry that our dreams might not last; we convince ourselves our dreams are just temporary fantasies we’ll grow out of…or come to realize they weren’t our dreams at all. On occasion, I read about people who invest years to become doctors or lawyers, only to discover the time was spent pursuing drudgery. Maybe that’s why I have always tended to avoid going all out in pursuit of career dreams; I wanted to avoid the realization I invested my life in meaningless drivel. The realization came too late.

The time is almost seven, so I will stop this alternate time waster and drink my coffee.