The desire for solitude competes with the need for company or companionship. Fulfilling one has the effect of making the other unavailable or otherwise impossible to obtain. Those conflicting needs/wants make as much sense as wishing for the temperature to be both lower and higher at the same moment in the same place. Whether nonsensical or not, though, those desires can and do exist simultaneously.
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Neither life nor death can exist without the the other to validate the other’s existence. Yet that makes no sense to me. The definitions of both demand the existence of the other, but if life must precede death, what precedes life? Another way to put it is this: which came first, the chicken or the olive? That calls into question the concept of a “beginning.” What came before the beginning? And what will follow the end? Every question has at least one wrong answer; right answers, though, are not so abundant.
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The perils of blogging—in the way I do (by documenting my stream-of-consciousness thoughts and observations about whatever occupies my mind while I write)—include leaving day-by-day evidence of my fractured mentality. Later, when I read what I wrote, that evidence can slap me in the face, revealing things I’d rather not know about myself; for instance, evidence that I may not be up to the mental challenges that accompany terminal illness. “Up to,” meaning able to remain more or less positive while I feel myself decay. That’s not quite it, but I cannot summon words that successfully describe the indescribable. Some mornings, even the simplest thoughts seem almost overwhelming. Those days begin with wanting to return to bed and sleep for as long as it takes to outdistance the disease. Or to return to a state of mind I remember from “before.” Before my late wife was diagnosed with breast cancer and before cardiomyopathy took its toll on her, before I was diagnosed with lung cancer, and before the progress of my cancer asserted itself by robbing me of a future I want to share for much longer than will be possible. My pity is not limited to myself, but it tends to dwell on my experience, more so than on the ways in which my experience impacts people around me. Acknowledging that self-centered perspective does nothing more than to emphasize and remind me of my egocentricity; which I document through blogging, thereby keeping it in front of me. The concepts of “self-fulfilling prophecy” and “Catch-22” and more flood my thoughts and compound one another in cyclical ways that seem inescapable.
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Not quite six years ago, I wrote the following sentences and published them in my blog. “In a universe so remarkably complicated, chaos and randomness would erupt in the absence of a natural tendency toward balance. I think the universe seeks balance. I say “seeks” not in the sense of intent but in the sense of natural affinity; the way water on planet Earth, thanks to gravity, seeks to flow downward. The concepts of good and bad, happy and sad, night and day, light and darkness, heat and cold, etc., are expressions of balance. Each pairing is enormously complex in its own right—and in some cases the “pairing” is virtually impossible to understand or even to see. Taken collectively, though, opposites represent the universe seeking balance.”
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I’ve been up for well over two hours, but still haven’t had breakfast; nor have I fed the cat nor swallowed my morning pharmaceutical products. The prescriptions are not the simple kind…the “take one a day” pills. Some of mine call for one tablet once or twice a day…or one tablet for five days, followed by 2 tablets for 3 days, then 1 tablet for seven days, then 3 tablets for 3 days, then…on and on. Not a simple set of instructions. I think pharmaceutical cessation may be in order…just stop taking everything. Flushing all foreign matter from all of my systems could be THE ANSWER. Now, I need to think of THE CORRESPONDING QUESTION . Perhaps, Instead, I should just return to bed and, then, after I wake up again, start the day over. that has more than a little appeal. I would be willing to start with a shot of whiskey, but the drugs I am taking should not accompany alcohol. Instead, I may have a gummy to ease some minor pain and polish the sharp edges of my of my thoughts until they become soft, gentle curves. Only by giving the matter time will I learn the outcome of my contemplations. And off I go.
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