Month the Thirtieth

8.22.25 Early, Early

The sun has yet to rise and here I am before the blank page, another day spent in service of word, or perhaps Word (Big Word), in the service of inquiry and self expression, of making all the inside things to come to light. Inside of me, that is, the things that make me tick that I have been so generous (is that the right word?) with sharing in here. It is cool, the early morning air has a chill that could not quite be called biting, no it merely tugs at my mostly naked frame and asks that it be clothed instead. I wish I could sleep, but alas I am here wrestling with my insecurities on display for all of you instead, as is my favorite pastime.

Besos, Bezos, Bejeezus, Beetlegeuse. I sit here in the mostly dark room and wonder why I am so awake. It is not yet five AM, and my mind races with thoughts of work (potentially a new position which would be very exciting), with thoughts of the golf match I am to play in five hours. I should go to bed, lie down until sleep takes me far away from this sordid early morning scribble. Alas, I have had enough of myself, nothing like an abbreviated entry to kick off a new month. Welcome to Virgo season, I’m going to be practical and get some more sleep.

TTFN,

Richard

8.24.25 This Day is Not My Favorite

It was one of those when I felt like hiding under the covers. Like not getting up to face the day. And now that I have I see why I was hesitant to. This day is cool and breezy, but I feel nothing like the good feeling promised by that Neil Young song. Every time I think about, back home, I wish I didn’t have depression to deal with. I don’t know why it is so persistent, why it comes and stays and festers with the hours that it lingers. Surely I have done nothing to deserve that. Surely it is just a fault in my brain. I will say though, that it is somewhat better now that I have had coffee.

Enough about me and my sadness. Enough about my defeat on the golf course yesterday. Enough of this house where I am passing a Sunday afternoon with an Italian soda trying not to listen to the stupid limited series on the television. Oh how I wish I could hide under a rock at times. Oh how I wish, I wish, that things were exactly as they are. For the way they are is a good way even if I suffer. My suffering doesn’t undo the basic goodness of the world. I look around and see this room with fixtures on the walls from past decor, with plants and candles and my runner up trophy from yesterday, with the beautiful woman who in less than a month has a birthday; with books and shoes and lotions, with towels and pillows and chairs; with empty cups, with pill bottles, with a stray bra. It is this house that is my home, or rather this house is my home because I live here with her.

The people we surround ourselves with inform our every day. They keep us in whatever lane we have chosen for ourself, they keep us moving forward by insisting that they enforce themselves upon our world. That is they keep us from being stagnant by having hopes and desires and dreams that they share (or not) with us and even in that “(or not)” case the silence leads us to speculate. No man is an island, as many have said, which means of course that none of us exists in isolation. We feed on those around us, not in a vampiric sense of consuming and taking only, but in the sense of food giving nourishment and us returning it to the soil as fertilizer. Maybe that is a bad analogy, or at least a disgusting one. I do not think there is a point to this statement about feeding on others. Maybe it is that we are fed, as at a mother’s teat, taking what is given and growing bigger and stronger with each ounce.

Who knows, but I know that I grow by being around people. I grow soft and kind as I can manage, but I do not seek to grow wise. I only seek to see another day in the grace and glory of the sun. Not to be confused with the Son, whose worship I do not condone, even though it surely gives a lot of people a reason for living. I guess maybe condone is not the right word, I do not celebrate maybe is a better one. I am not a worshiper of the Son, nor the Father, nor the Mother, I do not believe in any sort of heavenly family, I believe only in the world as it is. It is this beautiful existence that can take a completely dumpy mood and turn it around with a latte containing three shots of espresso. I am grateful that such benign drugs exist in the world.

As I am grateful that the less benign ones no longer appeal to me. I wasted a lot of years trying to feel better turning over all the wrong stones. And now that alcohol and caffeine are all that remain I wonder why I was ever feeling like things were so lacking. Why I ever needed a cigarette to dull the ache of the haldol. Why I needed the cheap thrills of a rush of marijuana smoke, the bright and psychotic blur that would sweep over me and convince me that my darkest fantasies were bearing down on me with the global political scene. But alas, I am no one, just one man in this vast sea of faces. I sit and watch the shadows grow longer, another day more than half spent. Like a matchstick smothered in candle wax. Sort of. Or not. I don’t know.

What does it take to tame your mind? Does it require meditation, antipsychotics, some combination thereof? Does the mind simply settle down and become less monkeyish as one ages? Or am I special in some way in that I don’t have a lot of thoughts any more? Mostly it is just silence between my ears, mostly it is calm, mostly it echoes with the batwings through the cavern, stone walls and flapping leather, it is a beautiful conundrum to be me who it is rumored thinks such big thoughts. The truth is I don’t think so much any more. I have found it is enough just to exist, to respond to life as it presents itself with no grand design. The need to achieve sweeps over me in emotional moments and makes me feel that I have done nothing with my life thus far, but I do what I do, and at least I exist. Conor Oberst said that.

I think back on all the things that used to matter to me, and that no longer so move me: the fame and fortune, which though I would not refuse if it would allow me to cease to toil in mediocrity no longer call to me as an escape from a life I cannot stand. People have told my mom that they have never seen me so happy. Only one person responsible for that, and don’t try to put that onus on me. Onus is probably the wrong word, but I think that is easy to see what I mean. So thank you Tara for making my smiles more frequent and my joy a constant even when the blues strike like the wildfires that burn countless acres across the world. Oh the world is not a pretty place all the time but my little corner of it seems to be okay for now. And that is something worth celebrating, isn’t it. I’ma let the champagne bottle pop, I’ma take it to the top, baby, baby. 

So if you are out on the road tonight let the mercy of a good night’s sleep not take you before you pull over. Don’t fall asleep at the wheel and have the mercy of the big sleep take you before your time. The big sleep was an Elmore Leonard book? Or was it Dashiel Hammett? I can’t remember, but I think I read it, and I think it was the latter. I look at all the things I’ve read and at how little I’ve been reading now and I smile. Surely there will come another season of letters. Surely there will come another season when I will write something more than these journal entries that have piled up nearly 223,000 words so far. I sign off now with an aphorism, regarding children, that I haven’t written yet:

TTFN,

Richard

8.25.25 Monkey See What I Did There

Today is a better day than yesterday, I did not languish in bed until almost noon, I did not feel so much like dying. Today I look out at the skies and think that fall is almost here, that summer with its infinite promise is fading as fast as my motivation to write “serious” prose. I look at myself in the mirror and wonder why I exist at all, even knowing how silly that query is. Of course I exist because of the action of some gametes some thirty five years ago, if you want to know the truth of it. And maybe I will replicate that event soon with my darling Tara, and have a child of my own.

For a long time I thought the world was too fucked up to be bringing children into, but the truth is it is not much more fucked up than it has always been, a point that has become increasingly apparent as I’ve grown older. Maybe I will pass on my mental illness to any child I might have, but maybe not. And maybe something else will befall our little family. Maybe hardship is just the way of the world and we are doomed to repeat the sins of the past in our little microcosm of divinity. That seems a bit dramatic though, doesn’t it.

As the gulls wheel over the bay and my headphone tells me all I need to know about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, as I watch waves crash over the breakwater, watch the leaves tremble in the wind all while the air conditioner hums and the stillness of this room behind glass reminds me there are many fates worse than the one that seems to be unfolding before me. The beautiful companionship that makes me smile more than anything ever has. The weather of the mind that assures me I am still alive. Mood after mood slipping away into the trailing edge of time as if it were a tide heeding the pull of the moon. As if it were sand being heralded along by an easterly wind.

Why easterly you ask? Because it is coming from the rising sun, bringing the morning to the arid lands where scarcely any human dares tread. Turn away from that bright light and see your own shadow reaching toward the end of the day where rest awaits you. Or at least that is what is rumored. From here it is impossible to tell what is real, from here there is only the speculative logic of dreams. I run low on time, I grow near to the end of my musings.

Tomorrow I will celebrate the end of summer, today is for the grindstone. My nose bent low I am ready to make that paper, as the expression goes. I look at the sparks flying, I look at the milled grain reduced to powder. I am here, I exist, and that is enough. What more could a body want? Body body body. Booty booty booty. Smile a little more. Don’t take yourself so seriously young man, there are many more days to come, and that is something that should bring you joy. Embrace the struggle as it is part of the mystery. And the mystery is the whole trip.

TTFN,

Dick

8.30.25 Lisa’s Getting Married!

My little sister, off to be somebody’s wife. And I feeling much better than yesterday for the eleven hours of sleep I got versus the three of the night before. It is a beautiful day, the sun is shining, there is a light breeze, clear blue skies…it is the kind of day you want to get married on, especially when the wedding is outside. So we will go down to Charlevoix, down the old rabbit hole past the place where I used to work. Down the old highway where yesterday a groomsman got a ticket. It is a beautiful world, dangnabbit!

And I just a part of it all, an incremental link in all the things that are. A cog in this functioning machinery that cranks out days and months and years. The time passing on, the life slipping away. I am still tired, for all the sleep I got yesterday. Is that me showing my age? Is it me feeling the haldol they stuck in my arm just a few days ago, is it a secret third thing? I think it is a big time mood that I am going to need more coffee to get through the day, that I am going to need a little spring in my step as I walk my gramma and my mom to their seats before walking in with the sister of the groom. This strange ritual that I have no part in, that I will never have a part in, for we will go the tiny and intimate, possibly courtroom iteration of all of this. And hopefully soon. Hopefully soon and the thyroid issues will resolve themselves and my fears about them will all turn out to have been for naught.

I look up at the sky, at the contrail up there, at the tall trees down the block, at the dead plants we did not take care of this summer. I feel the heat from my laptop battery on my legs and think that maybe I left something open that I shouldn’t have. I don’t know, either way it makes me want to cry. This strange day of new beginnings and the end of an era. My sister once again beating me to the life milestones. But I am glad I did not marry when once I was going to. That I called that off and then later ended the relationship and moved on so that I might find happiness somewhere else. And find it I did, I looked in the corner of the bar one night and saw a shining face looking back at me, and then I never looked back.

So when I marry her it will be much less a production than this is going to be, it is going to be simple and about us without so much of the baggage that is being lugged around today. I who has little to carry will enjoy my time. We will all have fun today, and hopefully it will all go off without a hitch. Except for the two kids getting hitched, that is. We need that hitch to come off. So let me go, let me move on with my day and forget that I wrote any of this, that anything I said is no more than the sum of what I mean: which is that I wish the two of them every happiness. Stability and love and whatever their little hearts desire. Oh golly, oh gee.

Goodnight sweet moon, that I saw rising over the hills last night. Goodnight bright sun, let me not bear the swelter of your cruel indifference. Oh God, if you are other than what is, let me forget that you are. Let me know nothing but the world at face value. None of the insinuations need mean anything. None of the inimitable asides. Kisses for my baby, hugs for my sister. It’s a big day, and I think I am ready.

TTFN,

Dickie

9.9.25 Sunshine Daydream

The leaves on the trees along the river have not yet begun to turn, and for this I am grateful. It seems these last few weeks of summer are going to show us at least a bit of summery weather, and what greater blessing could I bargain for? But this is not a stage of grief, I am not grieving; the world is showing me its good bits, the bits we hope to see a little more of when we sign up for this life—HA! What a laugh that any of us enlisted to be sent to this planet where societal collapse seems more probable with each passing day. What a joke played on our mothers and fathers who did in fact enlist us to think that we had any say in whether or not we would be born. Even in the Hindu cosmology where we are born and die many many times it is a tall order to escape that cycle, and few ever get off the wheel.

Instead we churn out separateness like it is as common as air, with even that becoming scarcer as large swaths of Amazonian forest are felled to make room for cattle ranches. It is a strange world, I will admit, but it is a beautiful one too, and it is a blessing to be alive on this Tuesday when the sun beats down upon my newly naked face as I partake in the pleasure of a cigar after my workday left me feeling something like whole. How can one be something like whole, you might ask? Well it is a troubling thing to me to be whole in a world where so many identify as broken, and so mostly not broken is all I feel comfortable ascribing to my own being. Is that a hedge against being called ableist, as I was not so long ago? Maybe, but I do think it says something about me that I do not believe myself to be wholly unbroken by the world, which has had its way with my mind innumerable times. Or perhaps someone could number them, but I have not been keeping track that closely.

So let us move on from me and my past miseries to my sister and her coming joys. Like the honeymoon in Hawaii that she is presently embarked on. Like the bernadoodle who for whatever reason hates my guts. Like any children her marriage may bear. Like the home the two of them share in suburban Detroit. It is a beautiful thing to see two young people who love each other and know that they can go the distance. Speaking as a slightly older person who loves a still slightly older person. I am happy with my life and all that comes with it, I am happy to be alive at all. There probably was a betting pool among the alien overlords that had me taking my own life already. I still think about it sometimes, sometimes for days on end but I am too stubborn and will die of natural causes someday in the future without any help from my own hand. Except the hand that held the cigarette, I suppose. I have still been struggling with those.

But I am resolute that I will smoke no more. I will have cigars sometimes, and maybe that is as bad or worse, but I will not get the Mrs. Jones shakes for the little death sticks that I love so dearly. It would be easy if I didn’t like them, I suppose, but the problem, as I have probably discussed in here many times, is that they are a great pleasure with no short term downfall. I know they will kill me if I do not cut them out. That should be enough of a reason, but still I go to the little rush of flame that sends smoke down into my lungs. It should be easy, shouldn’t it, to say “No more!” and set them aside indefinitely. But they are so easy to get your hands on, they are so easy to smoke, and such a nice feeling. A habit, truly, not unlike those who pray.

Each cigarette a prayer to lord Shiva that Mahakala come for us and take us home to that land beyond the stars. That is a metaphor of course, the only home I seek is to be ash scattered on the breeze, to be my biblical credential completely. But for those of you holding out for the heavenly planets do not forget both that the Earth is in the heavens and that the sages skirt the heavenly realms so as not to atrophy their compassionate impulses. Here in hell (heaven) I sit and contemplate why I am so happy with the way that I am. I am finite, a wave breaking already on the shore that stretches itself from peninsula to peninsula. From isthmus to isthmus. I like those words because they are geographical. I like my life because it is complicated and yet very simple at the end of the day.

For you see I wake up and go about my day and then go to sleep beside the woman I hope soon to call my wife. I have never had that privilege, and it is not something I take lightly. I will do my best to be the husband she deserves, my damndest in fact, to be everything she desires in a partner. I am far from perfect but I do my best to be good, and I think that is all a body can do. Shouldn’t that count for most of the good things we find in our life, an earnest effort to embody them? I wish I would’ve been better this past week, I have made some mistakes, that much is known. I am doing my best to make amends for the problems I have created. Problems that are fading fast as I demonstrate myself to be the same fundamental person she thinks I am. The person who loves her as he loves life itself, which is to say greatly. Which is to say enormously. Which is to say it is the thing that brings sunrises and sunsets. That gives me breath each morning and each evening. It is all, in short.

And we go on into the bright and illustrious future simply praying to be happy. Who do we pray to? We do not know but that does not stop us. We who don’t believe in a personal God, for whom what is suffices as the deity watching over us. For whom we see the flowers budding and thank the sun for bringing light and also, indirectly, the rains that nourish the plants. It is a miracle that we can exist with so simple a user interface that we can smell the soil and taste the water. That the wine tastes like a pleasure and not a pain. That the cow who died to make my ribeye lived a bountiful life on the range. Where was I going with this? To the point where consciousness is a computer program? Surely not. These soft machines carry us on into the future with each beat, beat, beat of the heart. With each breath in, with each breath out. It is a beautiful thing, and I can’t imagine another world. Or rather I could, but why would I want to?

So let us go on into the midweek stretch feeling grateful. Grateful that I have all that I do, and nothing that I don’t. It is a good world, for all its flaws, and one I am happy to be a part of. Maybe that is the optimist rearing his head, maybe that is the man who has survived more than he ever would have anticipated when he was a boy. Maybe this is the man who has arrived at a place of renunciation where simple pleasures like wine woman and song are enough. It’s coming dusk ladies and gentlemen, and it’s almost five o’clock here. Time to pick up a bottle of Mexican wine and get ready for the enchiladas my parents have promised us. I love you all so much, and that should be enough for you. For those of you wanting more, write your congressman. That is enough for now (BASTA!).

TTFN,

Richard