Month the Seventeenth

7.25.24 Almost the Old Man’s Birthday

And their anniversary. My parents, that is. I am here fresh from the depths of transcendental bliss. David Lynch to thank for that, L&G. Kiss the muse goodbye there is another world of ideas and fearlessness. We sit and fall into a state of deep bliss, we are simply dissolved in the moment and when you step off the cushion you feel refreshed and energized and ready to do the Lord’s work, whomever that turns out to be. I don’t have a goddamned clue what is going on in the world right now. Kamala, Netanyahu, Trump, etc. There are so many names and the chances of me ever meeting any of them are slim to none. I feel like I don’t know what to do but I suppose that if I meditate and clear my mind of its fears of the Christian Apocalypse where only the worthy are saved, and of course to the victors go the spoils so whomever is in power and decides to enact such a cataclysm would of course get to choose their own faithful. What a trip, based on texts written two thousand years ago and translated how many times?

It is strange that I let it rule me for the last month or so. Even if my worst fears come true and I am on the losing side of whatever culture war I was afraid of and become a political prisoner, then I will write from prison and try for two nobel prizes, in peace and literature, of course, but I think we can expect business as usual for at least another while. Government is not greater than God, in this case the force of what is, coupled with the will of the people to continue to have lives that they enjoy. So us as God in concert with the symphony of being. Maybe that is a tenable philosophy for the modern age. Catholicism is all the rage, and I a lapsed but confirmed Catholic. Who knows man, I don’t think it serves me to worry about the big picture. Keep it small, keep it sober. Take your meds, stay in your lane. There is a lot of fear. But I am not the one feeling it anymore.

I want a cigarette, but I am quitting. Actually this time. There is a craving and a pack on the desk but I am strong enough to disallow myself. It feels like a fundamentally different day then it did a little bit ago, in the best possible way. There is a weight that has been lifted. If Christ is the cooperative spirit of man then let us fly His flag from the highest tower. But do not tell others how to conduct their social lives. Everyone forgets that Roe was a privacy statute for all its legalization of abortion. It is not the government’s place to regulate everything, on both sides of the aisle. That said, failure to control the climate is already wreaking havoc on middle America. Just wait and see what it does to the south. Hurricanes that is. And the caribbean. I haven’t heard anything about Haiti in months. Does that mean there are no Americans left to report from there?

I want to fly away in a fast car, which is enjoying quite the resurgence due to that cover version. Now I am lying on the floor. And we are headed down an inane rabbit hole so it is probably time to cut this short. I love the lot of you a whole bunch. Thanks for listening to me all this time. It feels good to have friends even if I will never meet most of you. We are all in this together and must band together no matter how things go in November. Government is not greater than God, and all of us together, were we to be able to unify, would be the greatest force this world has ever seen. But enough about that. It is probably not possible. I have hope however, and will hold on to the hopefulness for as long as I can manage.

It is a beautiful day and I walked down to the State Street Apartment to get some mail. This is the end for me, I hope, of a long chapter of fear and loathing in America. I want to bring love to the table, to put a smile on my face and make the best of whatever is to come. I’m crazy but I’m sometimes brilliant. There are strange and beautiful turns to my person. But I’m committed to myself from now on not to be ruled by fear. To sit and know bliss and so be released from the neuroses about futures that may or may not be. I want to fly a kite on Tuesday if I don’t have to work. Or maybe go for a swim. Or play nine. The world is my oyster, and I want to shuck and slurp so long as the month has an R in it.

Kiss me misty, we will launch you yet. Misty is the name of my kite, a giant pair of red lips. She’s beautiful, and I let her do what she will. There is a place in this town that is safe for me. There are a few of them, actually. I’m in one now. Need to shower, but I think I’m going to grow a beard. So no need to shave, that is. Now to move on with my day, to peel off the first patch and paste on the second. Better living through chemistry. Maybe I will even have time to sit again before it is time to go to lunch. I love life and all its contradictions, I’m happy and I’m going places.

TTFN.

7.26.24 Happy happy

It’s a new day L&G. Why was I so afraid? Why was I cowering and not accepting that the world is indeed my oyster. Unlike previous revelations this one is simple as inhalation and expiration. Breath my friends, the one true uniter of the living. Heartbeats too, maybe. Still having those. Going to try and prolong the number by actually putting down the cigarettes. I thought about having one before sitting here, before my shower and the start of my work day. My clocks are wrong again. I don’t know what is going on with the computer. I don’t know a lot of things.

But I continue to exist and to smile and to make others happy, at least some of the time. I am by no stretch perfect. But I am trying to be happy. I am trying to be the best I can be. I am trying to put the past behind me, leave the future alone, and live in the present. Hear where the air meets my nostrils. See the hairs ruffle as the wind comes in off the lake. I am in the most perfect place in the world. 

TTFN

7.29.24 It has been over twelve hours since I had a cigarette

And no patches, no replacement, just went for a run and meditated in lieu of the fix. It is getting easier, I believe, and the answer is apparent. I’m going to do better, I’m going to get through my work day and then have my weekend. It is easy, it is easy; it is hard, it is hard. I am sweating bullets still from the exercise, as the temperature here is in the high eighties, and the heat index into the nineties. Enough about the weather, what is going on in the world? I am just focused on the smallest little bubble right now, my life and my happiness and the people I care about and not so much about the big picture that was bringing me so much distress. For I cannot change it too much, can only do my part to ensure our democracy continues beyond the next four years.

But enough about that, what of the joy of this warm weather, this utter halcyon day that has descended from the upper west upon our sleepy little hamlet? There is a beautiful woman waiting for me later on, I do believe, and I will happily oblige the menial drudgery in the meantime. I will smile and wear clothes that accentuate my eyebrows. Will do what now? Will will will. Haven’t seen him in a while, we are through the festival, the crazy occupation of the town where I am employed in the name of Venice. The boats and fireworks and hordes of people and traffic and what have you! I am happy that the worst of it is over, that we don’t need to stay open later than the already late closing time. Long days, long days, and this one shaping up to be so.

I am happy, I think. It is hard to tell these days what is going on with my emotional state. It fluctuates and I am still adjusting to breaking the cigarette habit. Just saying no to myself, not buying any more, and having scraped all that I could from the various old bags I have lying around there is truly not even one cigarette’s worth of shake left in my possession. So I am going to be done. Going to start exercising, going to meditate every day. I’m going to start chasing the big ideas, going to get back on the pommel horse and get after my creative pursuits. I have been so busy living that I haven’t really been working on much of anything. Not even this, which is the simplest, most mindless (mindful?) attempt at creation that I have ever engaged in. To tell the truth here is the best use of this space, and I have been a little bit burnt out, to be honest.

There is something happening inside me however, a going beyond fear that is just beginning, just starting to blossom into the dogwood flowers that will mark my passage beyond my fear of Calvary, or Golgotha, or whatever you would like to call that God-forsaken hill outside of Jerusalem. To think that Israel is vowing revenge is no surprise, it is going to be a full blown war over there soon enough, more than a genocide: a war. Who is to say what is happening anywhere though, the media is in the business of selling papers or rather advertising in this day and age, and there is no such thing as objective reporting in a twenty four hour news cycle. I wish I could live under a rock like Patrick Star. I wish I could have square pants. I wish I wish I wish. Upon a star, upon a flower. He loves me he loves me not. Who knows where I was going with this, there is too much static in my brain to do anything other than string words together in a way that has at least some dubious meaning.

And dubious it is. I wish I had more to say, that I could give thoughtful commentary on the the Taiwan problem, or perhaps give some insight into the forever crisis in sub-Saharan Africa, but I am just a rube from a little northern burg who wants nothing more than to live out a lengthy life in peace free of persecution or strife. Of course there will be struggle and suffering, Buddha taught us that, and if you meet him on the road do not kill him for he is the wisest of us all, if not a god himself. Just a man and beautiful for that fact, as Christ was most likely just a man deified in his remembrance. Unpopular opinion, I suppose, but one I would stand by. No man is God, unless all men are God, and God maybe all of us together and what is, maybe we can figure this all out and get out of here alive. Probably not though, I hope I die someday, that I don’t have to live so long that the aliens come and lay waste to those of us who thought themselves immortal. Or maybe we are alone in the universe, and we will colonize the stars until the cycle starts all over again.

Maybe we are just an image flickering like a hologram above a strip of film. Maybe we have no agency, and only go through the motions that keep us bound to time. Maybe we have never made a single choice in our lives and fate is the only master. That is a depressing reality, or a liberating one depending upon how you look at it. I am happy to be settled today, happy to be at peace, happy to be fed and hydrated and caffeinated and as free as one can be on a monday in the end of July of this fraught election year. I am doing all that I can to better myself and I am having a bit of success in that area. There are no horoscopes telling me what is happening in my life. My life is a challenge but I am up to it for now. I am not so afraid of all the things that haunted the early part of this last month. The fear of persecution and prosecution (though for what, honestly I couldn’t say), of going to prison and being stuck there forever in a black mirror episode of horrific proportions.

Instead now it is make it another couple days without a cigarette and get over the hump of nicotine withdrawal that was making my hands shake as I meditated today. Or maybe it was too much caffeine or the psych meds or just a twitch. Who can say when there are so many complicating factors. I thought I had nothing to say but I have said quite a lot, haven’t I, and about more than nothing. Maybe this project is not lost, is not a blathering nothing. Maybe this is the real work, the real thing. The thing that was led to from the other thing. Who knows, not I, certainly. I do not know so much anymore, where I used to pride myself on knowing a lot. Now I know that there is far more to know than I could ever hope to know and what I do know is not part of me but only a facet of my becoming one with the moment. The present moment where it is all happening, not the future whose imposition on the present breeds paranoia, nor the past that is gone and never to return. No, here and now we seek the beautiful things knowing always that there are no guarantees of anything, not continuation, not an abrupt end, nor beauty nor truth. I don’t like that sentence very much, but I am leaving it because I think I want it to end like that. 2:22, and I don’t like to think too much about that angel number.

Angel numbers and whatnot are all spiritual materialism, finding meaning where there is only sequential chaos. Order comes at random, comes in droves and bunches, but only haphazardly. Mostly it is disorder, and I want to listen to Joy Division on my way to work but don’t have the technology. Instead it will be the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and I am okay with that. I don’t have to go for a little bit yet but I think I am going to leave you with an indeterminate end to this missive, which is to say I am going to conclude abruptly mid sentence before I…

TTFN

8.1.24 Where am I going

I once thought I was going to a grave. Now I’m not so sure. What if nothing is as it seems. What if it is all an illusion. What if whatif whatif. I don’t believe in what ifing any more. I want to deal with the real, which presently is my craving for a cigarette. I won’t bite though, I’m going to bear down on quitting for real I just only hope the damage hasn’t been done already. You can never be too sure. I wish I knew how to spell when I was writing that last sentence. I feel like a wish is a what if in sheep’s clothing. Who knows what is going on in the world, it is all we can do to make it from sunup to sundown without resting our eyes. And then onto into the night as work schedules demand. So demanding this life, I just would like to have a little more space to devote to things like this.

The writing life, like David Lynch’s Art Life™. To be able to wake up in the morning and go and pound pavement and then sit down in front of the screen and dedicate six hours to stringing words together. That sounds like a dream, sounds like the whole thing. And a beautiful woman to share in the success. Be grateful for what you have, all of you, and if you want more know too that that is okay but you might not get it and even if you do it will probably not last forever. Endings are a part of this reality, and it is hard to close the door on five years when you need a signature on a check. 

It is a beautiful day, hot and steamy and yet it is cool in the shade. I hope I don’t stink too badly. I hope my smile does not disgust you, as I sometimes fear it might. I worry people think ill of me when all the evidence is that they esteem me. I do my best and that is not good enough for what I imagine God to be sometimes. The all-knowing judger of all wrongs. So I suffer that failure. But it is imaginary fortunately, and I can go beyond it simply as blinking. As simple as taking another breath, really. Who knows man, maybe it’s all gonna go to shit and then get better or maybe it has already gone to shit and this is just part of the uptick in quality of this existence and hopefully I still get to die and don’t have to live forever. That is almost as scary as dying young to me. Give me 80, 90 years, but don’t let it be a thousand, a million, I’m scared to even posit larger numbers. Thirty-three years has been long. To be an infant to what I might someday be if they can solve the biological death problem is a strange consideration.

I don’t want to consider it. Don’t want to consider any of the strange dystopian fantasies that I keep entertaining. They are keeping me entertained, if a little anxious. I don’t want to live in that place, that fear trap. I want to accept the reality that some of what I fear is within the realm of possibility and not cower before the possibility. To accept the mantle of opposing such actions. Tyranny is not God. God is merciful, kind. They have told us that. And yet is the will of the people that directs us where we are to go. As it was in Germany so long ago. I don’t even know which side is the largest risk of fascism anymore. Anything could go any which way at this point, people are so agitated. And war in the middle east looking likelier every day. Who knows, the place is going to hell and I can’t do anything to stop it.

If you are with me that we are living out a wwe mockery of politics in this country, let’s at least vote in november, and august if that is relevant where you live. It is the only agency we have, and it may sign our own death warrants. It is always a crap shoot when installing humans in power. We know this and yet someone must maintain the status quo. Must make sure that all feel something like protected. Hopefully that will not blow up in our faces, least of all literally.

I say a prayer now to some anything, pick a number, I hold onto all the pieces of this puzzle and concede that it is all out of my hands. I have done little damage, but not none. Here’s hoping that we are a long ways off from the final accounting.

TTFN.

8.2.24 I was going here

Is this it? The promised land? My legs ache, and my lungs feel a good sight clearer than they have in a while. One cigarette since Sunday night and us here on Thursday. The itch is real, but I refuse to scratch. I will miss that guilty pleasure, but with any luck I won’t die young as a result. Maybe the die has already been cast, but I’m doing my part anyways. Anyways I think I will take a day off from running, give my joints a little break. It is all I can do right now to keep from smoking. Maybe it is not so hard as I am making it. Maybe the simple thing is the cessation, and everything else is just smoke.

I meant that like smoke and mirrors. Illusion, in short. Maybe it is easy, maybe I just won’t miss it and I’ll move on with my life like the tens of thousands of cigarettes never happened. Of course they did and there is likely a price to be paid but they say that quitting reduces your chance of smoking related illness significantly. Wow this is a boring entry so far.

How many times will I fall short of what I think I should be? Probably a lot more, only because I think I should be very capable. More capable than I seem to be most of the time. Is that a personal failing or only a fact of living? Do other people suffer from this sense of doubt, of insecurity? We are working on getting over it. We are a work in progress, happily undone and ready to mend. To fold ourselves back together in such a way that there are no seams showing. This is proving to be a struggle today. There is little to say, there is only the morning, only the moment, only the sunshine. I don’t want to go to work later on, so it is another day in a long line of those.

You see, this is something like drudgery, even if there is joy too. A lot of what we find ourselves doing we don’t enjoy. Why is this? Why can’t it all be elephants and rainbows? Er, unicorns. I’m tired of writing for now. This is short and scattered but I guess that’s how I am today. Unsure I want to be here at all. Wishing for a fix, but disallowing. Friction of nicotine withdrawal in addition to the friction of breaking a habit. It will be okay soon enough, just stay strong, Richard, you’ve got this. Sorry to be such a bore this morning, I wish I had more to say, but alas…

TTFN.

8.5.24 Another day, here we go

There is always another day of course, until the termination of life when no more days are granted. That day does not seem to be today though there is certainly still time today for me to kick the bucket. I relapsed on the cigarettes yesterday. Smoked five. But I am back on the wagon, going to go for a run when I finish this entry, I do believe, and from there who knows where my day will take me. My hair is greasy from lake baths and my pants are torn (near the knee) and my coffee is not strong enough and I could use a cigarette. But I don’t need one, and that I think is the distinction between yesterday and today. I was in a fever, literally shaking, not feeling well at all. Not that the five I smoked did much to help that state. Makes you wonder, or at least makes me wonder.

Midway through a mini vacation that will end this Thursday with the return to the job that I am not so fond of. After hearing all about a non-issue yesterday via text on my day off…what am I supposed to do in order that I not feel that my soul is being crushed by my employment. I am keeping my chin up and showing up when I am scheduled and working hard and diligently when I am there, but still it feels like…well I don’t even know what it feels like. Not a good feeling. Not a pleasant one, but one with late hours and meaningless, repetitive tasks. Is that what you want for yourself Richard? Or can you make a go of this, of this writing business? Does anyone care what goes on inside you? Does anyone want to glimpse the inner world? The world that is calm cool waters more now than the raging fires of eternal perdition. What a scary thought or sequence of thoughts that was. You can’t be good because you’re afraid of hell, I guess, you have to want to be good for the betterment of your fellow man. Or at least you should, Pascal be damned.

In any case I am not so afraid of all the things that were bothering me in the early part of July. Now it is, strangely, acceptance of the fact that the world might go completely to shit and release from responsibility for it because I can’t do very much to stop it. I can only live my life to the fullest, can only try to make what difference that I can. Now that I have stopped publishing these on the internet maybe I can say what I mean a little more freely. But maybe not, maybe I need the reserve in order that I keep my neck out of the gallows. Who knows what is coming, truly, to America. Likely it will be status quo but maybe it will be an enormous leap backward into the past. Maybe not though, too. Who is really to say what the zealots will do if they achieve the pinnacle of political power in this country? And who is really to say precisely who are the zealots?

I’m not sure any side is really that much better than any other, though I admittedly lean left most of the time. A lot of damage has already been done to the balance of power on the supreme court, as well as to the federal judiciary. That onus belongs to Trump, though he touts it as a victory. Maybe that is the thing that scares me, the desire to skew everything in one direction with no regard for how it will affect the future of this nation. Or maybe they are regarding regressive policies as a good thing, which is arguably scarier. And on the left things aren’t so scary, more of a continuation of a lot of policies that, while the right seems to fear them, tend to do some good in the community. Religion scares the living bejeezus out of me. Those guys will stop at nothing to get their way, which I guess makes sense because in their eyes they have a divine mandate. But we are past the divine right of kings, hopefully, but I guess if Trump wins maybe that could come into fashion.

I don’t know, truly, though likely I will vote Harris/Whomever in November. It seems better than letting the true zealots enact their far right plan to ruin everything that is great about this country. To make us in the image of the bible. What does that even mean? Has anyone read that book cover to cover? I haven’t, admittedly, but a lot of the Old Testament is just a travelogue detailing the exploits of a roving band of marauders who happen to be God’s chosen people, allegedly. And the new testament hinges on the murder and resurrection (also alleged) of a guy who is regarded as God incarnate. Nobody can be God incarnate, too much power, too much responsibility. Unless all of us together are God, in which case I think the best thing for us to do is to turn our back on the bible and start thinking for ourselves. Also the biggest problem I have with the bible is people using it to support whatever position they want to because the thing is such a knot of contradictions that it can back up just about any point that doesn’t feature modern technology like a cell phone or a computer.

Enough, Richard, Enough! You have blathered on about all these things that bother you and so stuck your neck out in a time when it is unwise to do so. Or maybe they will remember you as brave, and in fact the book of revelation is just another myth and you don’t have to worry about living through the last judgment and subsequent sorting of souls into forever boxes. Maybe those in power won’t strive to make it a priority to make it real. Maybe we can continue on with our world imperfect rather than someone else’s idea of perfect taken from the most flawed but best selling book of all time, the one that is in fact named Book.

That’s all, I can’t continue with this train of thought. I must go and greet the day, must carry my burdens down the hill to where the fountain of coffee springs eternal. Like hope, which I am holding on to that sanity will prevail and we need not let the blind lead the blind right off of a cliff.

TTFN.

8.5.24 Later, as usual

Demagogues everywhere one looks. What I am to make of this news cycle I do not know, but know you that it makes not much sense to me. Is that convoluted enough to throw AI for a loop or is IT now smarter than the smartest man? Is there anything we can do to save our souls?

I posit now that maybe not. Maybe we are really in for it now. Maybe, maybe. Maybe not, of course, as well. Beastly men and women and theybies who can take the stale scent of cigarettes from my breath, who can make me forget the appeal of sucking smoke into my face and then releasing it unto the sky. I hate my job. There, I said it. I am sticking with it only out of a sense of duty. What a stupid thing to do. What a bald faced hornet’s nest of a problem. And here to be saying it out loud. What an equally stupid thing to do. We are here and we are alive but not much more can be said for us. I am tired, on an existential level, of this world and its concerns. Oh to dissolve into a dimension of peace and bliss! Oh to know entertainment that is not a matter of struggle. Oh to be free.

There will maybe come a day when we will know such a thing, but I anticipate plenty of struggle in the meanwhile. It is what I have known. Maybe we are in hell working to get out. But I don’t think so. This is just earth, and we are all enmeshed to varying degrees in the endless struggle for bread and water that keeps the wheel in motion. What wheel? You ask, looking into my eye for some clue as to what in the actual fuck that I am talking to you about. I long to fly Misty again when the wind is high and she soars to eagle-eyed vantages that I can only dream of, attached as I am to this body and its massive constraints.

Where were we going? Where have we been? Has this all been happening all the while? Is this what life is or can we imagine something better? Why do I always think in these elliptical questions? There are no easy answers to these queries, and for that I am grateful. How am I to make (encourage…) you to think if I give you all the solutions right off the bat? Like a pitch fired from center field. I know you read that. I know you have read every word I have ever written, someone, even if only me. For who else could I be addressing here but myself. The mirror is all it can be. I think that this stale cigarette smell is from the lower levels of hell where I spent so many years. Metaphorical hell, as opposed to a literal shackle and demon solutions.

Let us all pray that no one ever see fit to enact such things on earth. Let us all pray that things are not so bad as they often seem to be. I wonder what became of RER. I wonder about DD, and no I am not talking about myself. What does any of it mean? What does it mean that I could see Human Beings being so evil as to assume the mantle of God. To take it upon themselves to judge according to who-knows-what metrics. What a trip, what a fear trip, pray in the language of government (vote) that government is not greater than God. What is, in this case. We will insist upon society, we will insist upon continued commerce, we will insist upon a supply chain that brings us edible food. We will be free at least from the confines of hunger. I love this world and its modern conveniences. Maybe this is it. Maybe this is paradise.

Maybe we need only do the right thing at every juncture from here on out, each of us, and then we will be delivered unto the beauty of the afterlife without ever having to die. But I doubt it. It will probably be fifty more years and then a slow death. Who knows what is going on in the world? Who knows even what is going on with me? With Korshye, with Olivia, with Joe? With Sarah, with Bruce?

We kiss the sky on a monday afternoon as we drown out the street and pray to no God that there is something better waiting for us on the other side of all of this zealous bigotry. Let there be light into the evening. Let there be darkness beyond that. Let things be divided now and come together later, right now, over me. John Lennon said that. For what that’s Worth.

TTFN.

8.9.24 Bought another pack of cigarettes

I’m weak, there is no doubt of that. One burning in my right hand right now, fire that will be the end of me. It would have been easier to never pick up this vice, would have been easier to have never smoked a cigarette. Is this my cigarette quitting journal or is it the failure to quit cigarettes journal or some secret third thing. Here’s hoping it is a secret third thing. Here’s hoping my life will not be defined by smoking, that I can put away the childish thing and move on into a life where the cravings are not everything I can think of. Maybe I will try the patch. Maybe tomorrow.

I have been thinking a lot about the future. Been thinking seriously about what I want, and what I want is to be free of the drudgery of the day job and get on with this whole writing business. I have stopped publishing online, am going to take the website down, if I can figure out how. I’m hopelessly illiterate in the ways of the internet’s back end, just want a life where I can dedicate a few hours a day to my passion and so be fulfilled and fed, wined and dined and happy. I have never been so in love. She is a wonderful lady who fills up my soul and keeps me coming back for more. I would marry her tomorrow if her divorce was final, and if that didn’t seem so hasty. Life is precious and delicate and I want to keep living it for quite a number of years from now. Of course there is never a guarantee, that much I am sure of.

I’m glad that I’m free of the terror that was so paralyzing over the fall and winter, glad I can breathe and that my heart still beats and that there is still plenty of joy and release from the persistent feeling that life is meant to be more than this. This is plenty even if my golf game isn’t living up to its potential and I still have to work into the night when I would like to be sleeping or else having fun with my friends. Certainly I have talent. A penchant for putting together words in interesting ways. Everyone who has heard me read or else read me seems to agree on that, for all the good that does me. It is one thing to be good and quite another thing to make it. What do I have to show for any of the countless hours I’ve spent before the blank page? A lot of words and a very small amount of success. I’m not complaining, necessarily: the work is satisfying, even if it is work, and it makes me happy to sit and type and see what comes out of me.

How many half completed projects, how many completed ones? How many one-off poems that will probably never see the light of day? That said, I am happy and I wish to continue to be that more than I wish for anything. For happiness is a gift, if it is like a muscle that you must use in order that it get stronger. I remember all the times I spent feeling like I wasn’t free to be happy, and think of what a fool I was. When the sun is shining and the wind is in the trees and the wind chimes sounding on the back porch and everyone I love is safe and healthy, what can I find to complain about? I could complain about having to go into work I suppose but it is that job that is keeping me solvent and giving me money to spend on things that I enjoy, of which there are a great number. I’m really, truly blessed by the circumstances of my life (God, in one of the senses that this project has explored, if I struggle with believing in the omnipotent sky daddy that sometimes seems so real and other times seems like a crutch that people rely on to explain the inexplicable in their lives), and for that I am grateful. I guess they were right all those years ago when they told me I had to practice gratitude. Maybe that is the key to happiness.

Of course there is no one way to do anything, to be happy included, and though this way seems to be working fine for me despite the imperfections, there are surely other ways as well. The path is long and winding and likely leads to death. Almost certainly, actually. I can’t worry about the state of the nation, for even if I get a platform from which to comment on it I will just be a single voice in a chorus of millions. There is no way to change it, truly, not even by voting. Who knows if we will see fascism in this country soon; I hope not, but hope only worked for the Obama campaign, and he is term limited out. I think it will be okay, as those older and wiser than I keep telling me it will be, but again there are no guarantees.

Where is it all going? Where is this life of privilege taking me? I’m very fortunate to have a family that cares enormously for me, there is no doubt of that. That I have put them through hell on occasion is one of my greatest regrets. But I try not to dwell on regret, try to face the future with a smile and hope and even pray, though to whom I’m not entirely certain, that life will continue to be as luxurious as this century seems to have been so far for the many. Of course there will always be tragedy and there will always be struggle, the key is just to keep your chin up and keep moving forward as best as I have been able to figure it out. The days go by and we stay more or less the same, it seems, and then sometimes there are big changes that shake the tree of our complacency and bring us at times to our knees.

What a strange world to inhabit, yet it is the only one I know. Thank whomever that solipsism is not the way I see it, that there are many many people who exist and live their own lives with their own joys and tribulations. What a beautiful thing it is that any of this is here at all. C.S. Lewis, who inspired my first entry, wrote of being surprised by joy. He was speaking of a religious feeling, of course, but isn’t it a religious feeling to embrace life in all its imperfections and wear a smile in the face of all the pain? I find myself surprised by joy as I sit here typing for an indeterminate audience wondering if anyone will ever care about anything I have to say. Certainly I am not saying much new, even if it is new to me. In the thousands of years of human society most everything has been thought of, it seems. I wonder if this is even entertaining as I sit here entering the tail end of the first half of the second year of this project. Do I add value with each additional word or am I only keeping myself occupied in the face of the crushing boredom that can be my greatest enemy.

That is what I struggled with for so long, honestly, the feeling that this life should be something more or be more exciting or whatever. That I needed to be F. Scott Fitzgerald, a literary star at 21 and living in Paris on the success of my letters. Maybe some iteration of that will someday come to bear, but for now it is enough to be continuing to produce words, no matter how inane or artless. But what is art? Is it anything other than the expression of self, the truest self we can imagine. There is so much “literature” produced these days that seems artless, that seems to be commercialized and made only for the purpose of making money. Maybe that is all the publishers care about, and maybe that is why I haven’t made much progress with them.

Maybe, but you don’t want to hear me whine here about my lack of publishing success. Maybe you wanted to hear me wrestle with whether or not I was God or a god as I was a summer ago. With any luck those days are behind me, and I can live out the rest of this mortal coil without the intrusion of divinity. Allow myself to be just a man and be happy that I am that. To be exactly what you are completely without a single reservation about yourself. That, it seems is the pinnacle of art. Or maybe the pinnacle of life. Or maybe life and art are more closely related than we have been crediting them, and to live well is the highest art of all. Again, not a new idea but I arrived at it organically with no prompting from outside. Maybe I will read a book again soon, it has been a while. Maybe I will keep running and run a marathon some day.

Maybe these letters are to be my legacy, maybe not. Maybe nobody cares, maybe my earnest attempt to exist as what I am will be met with crickets. There are plenty of talented people in the world and many too who possess the persistence necessary to turn that talent into something more than broken dreams. I wish to join their ranks some day, but for now I will call it a day and get ready for work, as my time grows short. Thank you for listening, I hope you enjoy my grappling with the emptiness of this afternoon. I hope that all is well with you and that you can find something that makes you happy today. I’m happy to be anything at all.

TTFN.

8.11.24 It’s a birthday party, it’s your birthday darling, we love you very very very very very very very much

It’s a strange day, was a sleepy morning. Now I am eating cold steak and drinking a high noon in the afternoon. The world does not cooperate with our whims but so long as we don’t try too hard to force our will on it it seems to be fairly forgiving. Maybe I have that wrong, maybe there is no forgiveness, it is only cruel and heartless, or maybe God (circumstance) does have our backs after all. Of course even those of you that believe in God probably don’t believe in Him as circumstance alone, the force of what is, and instead believe in a guiding force of some kind who makes sure that people get what they deserve, despite all the examples of bad people getting good things and good people getting fucked. Maybe we are just bad judges of good and bad. But probably not, certainly you must give people grace but certainly too there are bad people who do bad things and sometimes these people are rewarded. Did you see Trainspotting?

I don’t know what to think about the world at large. It is all I can do to be happy, and I am doing a good job of that as I explored in my last entry. Love certainly helps, and so does money. I don’t have a ton of the latter but I have enough for right now, and that is all that I require from money. I don’t understand people for whom money is the most important thing. Especially rich people who cling to tax cuts as the only political motivator. Maybe also a fair number of people think they should be able to tell other people how to live also, and that is why Republicanism is so prevalent in the area where I live. Live and let live, I say, and don’t worry about paying taxes, especially if you have a lot. Give it up to the inefficient government, it is not the mother of all evils. 

I remember a kid I worked with who thought that the Federal Reserve was a head of the beast of the apocalypse. He worked with special ed kids too and one of his coworkers there was also one of my coworkers where I worked with him and seemed to think he was slightly abusive to them. I don’t know what to think, but I trust her judgment on many things, people perhaps most of all. I want to get it clear right now that abuse is abuse and anyone perpetrating it deserves to be strung up by their toenails. Not literally of course. I am not so big on Crime and Punishment™. I think a lot of things, but not so much about that. Don’t do crime, that is a big one. Be gay but don’t do crime. I think I have said that before.

That is enough for now because I am running short on time, but I think that if I were to say to you one thing today it would be that I am happy you exist and I think you have every right to happiness if you can manage it. You must practice to be happy otherwise you will always be looking for something more than you have and that is a surefire path to ruination of the soul. Not that I, strictly speaking, believe in the soul, but you all probably have some idea of what I mean by that. I’m going to go and get on with my day, which the free portion of is drawing rapidly to a close. I wish you every happiness, I really do, except when your happiness is evil and ruins other people’s. Live and let live, L&G, I will be here waiting for you.

TTFN.

8.18.24 It is Sunday and my love is away

That just about says it all, at least about the way I am feeling. I wish to be in her arms, whiling away this grey day with warmth and comfort from the only place I really want those things. It is sad, slightly, that I will only get a few minutes with her, if I even get that, but at least tonight it seems we will share a bed. It is these things that are on my mind as I sit here to ply the waters of the blank page once again.

What does it mean to miss someone all the time you are not with them? That is the thing I am wondering as I hawk the location of their car headed north on the endless network of freeways that will bring her to me. 4 hours from now says the app, which must mean there is traffic, but with any luck it will be shorter than that and I will get a few extra minutes before I go to work, which I am not looking forward to. I wish I could have the whole evening in addition to half the night to give love where I want to give it. I wish a lot of things today, as I am feeling somewhat blue. I think I mentioned that.

But the sun is peeking out from behind the clouds, there is a pack of cigarettes on my bed that I am trying not to touch. I want to be free of that vice, to put it down and have no more temptation, but when you are in a low mood they seem like they might pick you up. Of course they do not, and the continuation of the smoking will be the ruination of health, but illusions being the backbone of this world there is a heft to the call. I refuse to listen, refuse to lift up the phone. I want only one thing out of this day and that is a squeeze from my beloved, and maybe a smooch to round out the hour.

What has become of me that I am so lonely when I have every reason not to be? What is this new and hopeful Richard that is thinking about the future, about marriage, children? It is a new world and one I am happy to inhabit, feel lucky to have a chance at. For the longest time I thought I would die alone, without a hint of happiness. And now I have happiness colored by loneliness when I cannot be with her. Is that obsessive, and is it wrong to be obsessed with one’s partner? So obsessed that I want to make her my wife? I think it is a beautiful thing, truly, to have fallen in love in such a way. To want to make forever the only goal, and the only thing worth seeking. Thus I will put down the cigarettes, not smoke any more despite the endless setbacks that keep me running for a puff. I just want to go on living, to go on being happy. To have the only thing I need in my arms when I lie down to sleep every night.

Sad music does little to improve my mood. It is an old companion, and one that has been a crutch I have fallen back on many a time. I want the world to see what I have discovered, what has become everything at times. I see the light sometimes streaming through the window and wonder why I still struggle so often with sadness. She does too, of course, my love is much like me in many ways. There is plenty to be sad about in this world even if the smiles we wear on our faces outweigh it at many moments. I think of all the strife abroad, about all the friends who are no longer with us, the family about whom we can say the same. In finite stripes this world looks like it is wearing a zoot suit to rival Beetlejuice. There, I’ve said it once, two more times and he will appear to wreak havoc on the little world to which I cling so fervently. To damage and destroy my happiness, which, today is proving, is quite fragile at times. 

It is a tired and repetitive trope to be so in love. To feel that the time spent apart is wasted and that the only time I feel most alive is when I’m looking at that face that looks back at me with eager eyes and the slightest smile. It is a beautiful thing but in its absence I feel empty, like there is something missing from this day that has conspired for us to wake with so many miles between us. What a sap I am. To feel so acutely what circumstance is denying me. To look in the mirror and see that I don’t feel like smiling. That I want to cry and then wipe away the tears with the fingers that so long to feel her hair against them. Sap sap sap. I am.

I have never felt this way before. Have never been so needy. I don’t think, anyways. I just want to continue to see the beauty that seems so true it overshadows everything else. It is an eclipse of the heart, though maybe not a total one. See, there is still some sunlight that streams in to brighten her hazel eyes, that lights up the mole above her upper lip, the nose that feels so right on either side of mine when we kiss. I long to be in that car, I long almost always to be wherever she is. I have never felt this way before.

There will be plenty of time, with any luck, but still it seems at this moment that there is not enough. That there could never be enough, because all the time in the world would not satisfy my desire to be near. That is obsessive, that is delusional. Well maybe not delusional, but I think it tells something important about my fragile mood this noontime. To be jealous of anyone who gets to spend a moment in her company when I can not; obsessive, maybe.

But they say that obsession is a window into true desire, and desire, of all the colors I have ever known it, while Buddha says is the way to suffering is also according to other sages the path itself. The thing that leads us to what it is we need. That we must follow our desires to the end of the earth as I would search for her if I ever did not know where she was. My heart is breaking at the same time it is whole. I think I need a change of employment, at least of hours. I can’t work into the night so often and still expect to stay sane. I can’t stay sane when my skin crawls with desire for a hug, for a few minutes to hold her hand even as the workday presses in and I have to leave to earn my bread.

That is enough about my desire, about my longing. I have so often kept it out of this to spare feelings or because I thought you wouldn’t want to hear that I am in love. Regardless of your feelings about it I’m afraid I am, though only as a figure of speech. My fear is only that something will rob me of the time that I want so desperately to have. The time limited by our mortality, the time limited by the need to work. I long to eat with her tonight but I will not be able to. I long to sleep beside her every night, but alas that is not yet our reality. Reality pressing in on all sides, it has helped my mood to extoll the joy that is ringing in my ears. To smell the rose that despite its thorns is the most beautiful flower I have ever seen. Tara, my love, come home to me.

And you are, with your son and his girlfriend and her mother. They are all coming to the little dollhouse where I will meet you as soon as they clear out for a few minutes of bliss before I must go suffer through the drudgery of the workday. It is all I can do to wait. The waiting is the hardest part. Tom Petty said that. But maybe the hardest part is the missing. The absence, the wish. For what is it to be in love, and what is it to be in your room staring at an every lengthening gush about the only place you really want to be? Is there any difference, is there any separation? I think now, as I prepare to conclude, that the only separation is the physical one that is keeping me from what I truly desire. A hug, a kiss, a few hours more.

A few hours more, always. There is not enough time to satisfy my desire. There will never be enough, I don’t think. I just want to see your face. I just want to share in the light behind your eyes. I just want to taste your lips and feel your arms around me. That is where my head is at today, I hope this wasn’t too boring, too long, too anything. I hope it was just the right amount of sap, the right amount of peek into my head. My head that so often seems too big for my britches. Mostly because my britches are small. And besides I’m wearing shorts. Shorts that show off my thighs, in a way that you like. I love you, all of you, but one of you more than the rest. Hurry home to me.

TTFN.

8.22.24 Last day of Leo SZN, and I am having a beer

What a day, what a day to have had a last cigarette, to have pounded pavement, to be drinking a pils in the early afternoon on a patio, al fresco dining at its finest. Of course there is no guarantee that that cigarette will be my absolute last, but I will try. That is all we can do, is it not? Make an earnest effort? They say there is only do or do not but the effort must count for something. It must make sense that this beer sounds perfect with a cigarette. Lindsay Wolf said that the best cigarette was with a beer. Or one of the best cigarettes I suppose.

But that is enough about cigarettes and alcohol, it is a bright sunshiney day, breezy, cool. I wish to be with my love but alas workdays are calling, though not mine today, for some reason. I have no complaint about that, only wish to capitalize on a random extra day off. It is easy to be wishing, easy to be free on a day when no one needs any of your time and you can just let your hair down. Tomorrow my hair will be falling on the floor, snipped off by the lovely Hailey if I don’t oversleep this time, as I did last time. But alas, there are beautiful things in the world, and this moment is one of them. I am blissed out from the exercise and can already feel my lungs beginning to loosen. For all my backsliding I did smoke fewer than normal yesterday, and I don’t remember the day before that. I am trying to smoke no more today, but I might sneak one later, who knows?

Every once in a while I am struck with an idea for something I would like to discuss in here, usually high-handed, lofty ideas about art or culture, but it seems whenever I sit to face the page they have all run away. Maybe I only have them when I’m high, but that doesn’t seem right either. What does seem right? Tara seems right, among other things. Running seems right. Writing seems right. Maybe I will even get back into my fiction. I have two, maybe three projects abandoned midstream, and they could probably stand to be finished. Who knows how long that might take? thought the prospective author. And I just typing away here about who even knows what, about cigarettes and exercise and the beauty of a woman’s laugh, the glory of her smile.

Sirens on the highway, someone going fast from somewhere to somewhere else. A scream that gets under your skin and makes you glad that you are not driving, that everyone you love is safe. That you have a place to sleep at night, that you have food to eat and someone to love at all. There is a song in my heart that I do not know yet how to sing. There are books in my mind that long to be written. There are stories to tell when I can find the time and space to tell them properly. For one cannot tell a story improperly, must attend to the needs of the characters and the setting and—if there is one—the plot. Of course we know that there is not always such a contrivance, there is not always a gear that turns the screw of a narrative. Sometimes the world simply turns on its natural rotation, bringing day in and day out ordinary madness. On the axis, is the world I was looking for, not of evil or Nazis but just the angled plane around which we spin.

That is a lot of ado about nothing in particular. This all seems to be as such. But I do not care. We are singing and we are free to rage and fuck and laugh and sing and dance and walk in circles around this little town in which we are indentured. I don’t know if there’s any truth to that; us being indentured that is. Certainly we are free to leave if we have the means, as we shall soon (ish) ly do. The Mediterranean calls my name, and I must heed the call. Move abroad, raise a family, live forever. Well I don’t hope to live forever, but I would like to do the other two, a relatively new development for me. Never did I really want kids until I began to hear how good of a dad I would be. And saw how good of a mom she is. It is a part of the mystery I have begun to long for even though it is never a guaranteed thing, especially with the age of the prospective mother. I’ve used that word twice now, prospective, three times, where will it end?

Is it too soon to be thinking about children? Some would say so, certainly, but when the biological clock is ticking sometimes one must just take a leap into the vast and unknowable future. Hoping all the while that all involved live happy and healthy and productive lives. That the beauty outweighs the hardship at every turn. That is a lot to ask for from the big G O D, however you choose to stake your claim with that word. For me it is a hope that the genetics of all involved hold on and we are spared the scourges of cancer or the other unnamable enemies. That everyone lives to see ninety, or at least eighty. That we can put down the deathsticks and breathe easy until we take our last breath. And hopefully that is a long long way off from here.

And yet, there is no way of knowing. There is a chance that I will not live to see tomorrow, no matter how slight. There is always a chance of imminent death, but as Dalí put it, every moment he does not catch us is one for rejoicing! And I slippery as a fox on this Thursday when I sit and drink and type, eating tomatoes and cheese and pesto, that glorious preparation of basil. Soon I will transition to coffee, will move on into the late afternoon and the evening with relish and gusto! There is beauty, there is truth, and this is neither, for whatever that is worth. 

The cigarette craving grows stronger, and I resist. Must desist in the light of all the possible ills that could befall me if I persist. See I can rhyme, can make verse out of prose as some have made fiction out of verse. And that just a parlor trick, an illusion not even worthy of Houdini let alone David Copperfield. And I no Dickens, just Dick with a crazy dream. I think of all the people working away at meaningless jobs, as I will be tomorrow. I do not pity them but I certainly do not envy them, not in the slightest, not in the least. This will pay me, damnit, this very sentence will be worth thirty cents at least. Or maybe not, maybe I will always languish in obscurity, never finding the break that launches me to renown and glory! Not that I care so much about those two things, but a bit of cash from the hours spent here, spinning something out of the nothing that howls in my brain, would be nice. And yet, and yet, the work is its own reward, the relief from the anxiety that has so often plagued me, among the other ailments that have stricken my mentation.

I think that is all for today, as the computer is reaching the end of its battery life, and I the end of my thoughts. I know there is really no end to them, that new ones will always crop up and flip the script until the film needs to be run backwards. But only so we can get to the beginning and run it back to the end only to run it back to the beginning ad infinitem. It smells like ketchup and hamburgers I think, and I must admit that I am still hungry. Maybe I will have a pizza, maybe I will fast. I have been losing weight, and I think this is a good thing. My labs were all normal despite going on a bender the day before I had the blood drawn. All is swimming along towards the next phase, toward whatever will come. And today another good day in a decent line of them. Here’s hoping they continue…

Dick