Month the Thirty-First

9.25.25 On wanting something more

We revisited the first entry in this long and tortuous missive last night, a pining for something beyond the confines of the relationship I was in at the time. This was common in those days, so common that I thought it was normal. I was never satisfied with what I had, and was always looking to strangers for a flicker of attraction that would make me feel alive. How foreign that feels now that I feel alive every time I look at Tara’s smiling face, or even her face when she is mad, or sad. I have never known a love such as this, and I doubt I ever will again. It is beautiful and glorious to be satisfied fully by your partner and seek no other as a result.

And for so long I sought it constantly. It seemed hardly a day went by when I didn’t have a lustful thought of someone else. No wonder I made myself out to be a townie wino dog, no wonder I was so unhappy. There are countless ways to cope with unhappiness in a relationship, and while I never acted on my aspirations to infidelity, the fact that they constantly haunted me surely was a great stress on me. Perhaps that is why I took a dive off the deep end into the abyss of my mind where my fancies took on grotesque proportions until they made me scared to leave the house.

My how far we have come since those early days, it almost seems we have arrived, but there is no arrival, only the journey that will carry us along until we go forth no more. Once again broaching the subject of death. Familiar companion always with us, endpoint to the lives we hold so dear. I wish to cry, I think, to wash my face with tears that, hot and salty, remind me that I still have a beating heart and respiring lungs and that I should be grateful for these things. I am fed up with the menial toil, I think, need to do something that engages me and uses my brain. It is not enough to make money, I need something that is at least marginally fulfilling.

It is sad that that is the standard for employment, that we have tumbled so far down that I am looking for anything more than this. Maybe I can find it, but for now I am just sad. I have been sad all day though, this development isn’t strictly new. It is just the days like today that make you wonder how you have managed to get out of bed so many days in a row. It is days like today that make you wonder how you will get out of bed tomorrow, how you can shake off the feeling of everything being annoying. I don’t mean to be crabby but I am sick of dealing with people, most of all needy and entitled people, and also people who can’t just get with the program.

Bad days have a tendency to bring out the fatalism, and indeed this is a day when we wonder why we had to wake up this morning. Surely it would’ve been easier to go to sleep forever. Of course we then would miss out on all the good bits that outweigh the drudgery at the final accounting, and that would sadden me. I’m glad to be alive even if I don’t feel up to the challenge today. Even if I feel that all I did today was worthless and did nobody, least of all me, any good. Surely there must be something more than taking orders and slinging diet cokes, surely I am cut out for something more meaningful.

I’m sorry, this has devolved into complaint and I swore I wouldn’t complain. But today was so boring, and I was sad to begin with. Such things are bad for my mental health, and make me want to go back to bed. It is okay though. Someday something better will come. It can’t all be dull days of melancholy. Surely I will be excited to show up to a job I have one of these days. Surely I won’t always be thinking of killing myself in the back of my mind.

For that is a persistent problem for me, and one I don’t know how to shake. It crops every so often and looms over me like a tall tree about to be felled in my direction. As I scramble for cover I wonder why it is that the itch is always with me. As I wonder, in the darker times, why it is I resist it. There are all the obvious reasons of course, but I think it is because I really do value living that I go on. It is all we have, truly, this short time on this earth where the sun gives us life and the stars at night give us room to dream. I look up at the sky and think that when I lie down at night at least the heavens are watching over me. For those of us that don’t accept the proposition of a personal God, that is enough. A vast and unknowable universe is enough. An indifferent universe is enough, and I stand in it happy that this planet holds me down and still gives me the strength to stand upright. Sometimes it is enough to have one thing be enough.

Basta,

Dick

9.26.25 Stuffed in my head like the stuffing in a bear

These thoughts are stifling, are drowning out all else, are making me sure I will need something to ease the ache that starts in my shoulder and reaches through my whole body. Ah yes, L&G, the haldol blues, as I must surmise these to be. As I must, I must, I must believe in. For there are certainly downsides to every cure. There are certainly losses to be had with every victory over madness. And this a victory indeed, this a bright sunny day when it started out looking like rain. And I alive and vertical and without a cigarette on this Friday when the world seems new and I new with it. For I am just a baby born yesterday according to the horoscope I made for myself in accordance with that fact.

Oh what a day to be alive, the day before homecoming for the young kids, the day before I must deliver the hazardous waste to the transfer station. Oh god I don’t want to deal with that, don’t want anything to do with those propane cylinders that need to be recycled. I wish I could just sleep in and not worry about it. But alas, duty calls, and while I have no real duty my parents are always fucking out of town when they schedule these stupid fucking things. I feel hardly anything at the moment. I am stuffed into this brain and there is scarcely room in my skull to contain me. I look out the window and wonder why I am in here looking out. Surely there must be something more than this?

But of course there is only the bright sunshiney Friday we have been given by God (What Is). Baby is home and I must pause this to go give her a kiss. I need it more than she does, I suspect. For she is a rock, a fortress in the storm. She stands tall in the heat of battle and smiles. I cower in the corner, flatten myself against the wall and pray I won’t be seen. Maybe that is a bit dramatic, but that is how I’m feeling at the moment: small and insignificant and anything but brave. I do not fantasize myself into weakness, but I wonder if my fantasies are something that weakens me? 

There is no way of knowing, as there are few ways to truly know the world. To feel it beneath our skin, scraping like a fingernail across the inner part of the arm. To know the itch and not to scratch it, as if we had perfect repose. To look at the number of the therapist on the table and not dial. To look at the lamp on the rolling bar cart and not light it. To look at the bottle of wine on the counter and not pour another glass. To drink deep of the earthen perfume and to look out at the books on the shelf and wonder if you will ever be as famous as any of them. To look at the plant on the windowsill and commend yourself that you have not ceased to grow. To look, to look, to look. That is all there is to this day. It is not a day for drawing conclusions. It is not a day for listening to the messages in the static. It is a day to lie down on the couch and wrap up in your blankie and forget for a moment that you are required to be an adult.

I feel something heavy pressing down on my shoulders, but I see only the ton of feathers I commissioned for this weekend. To float on a buoy of air, to eat, drink, and be merry. What more could one ask as September wanes and we come into spooky season in earnest. Let alone the giant skeleton in the yard, let the hag across the street hawk her wares in the village center. Let the giant mirror on the wall reflect back my bare feet and make me feel diminutive. Let the lost animals find their way home, and the fallen stars regain the heavens. Let the fish in the sea dive deeper than they ever had, let the birds in the sky chase the sun. The rapture has come and gone and I am still earthbound for the great tribulation.

So let this bleed into the evening, let the candlelight guide us home. There is too much time and not enough to do. There is too much to do and not enough time. Pick a lane, and get out of mine. Pull over, to the side of the road. Kiss me again baby, when you return to find your wine glass full to the brim. A defense against me drinking it all. And an effective one at that. I love you I love you I love you, and I hate nobody. So nobody if you’re out there know that once I get your number it’s all over for you. What was I even saying?

TTFN,

Richard

9.27.25 The morning of the big dance

Everyone is sleeping, and I sit here awake wondering if I have anything worthwhile to do today. If any of the various chores will mean anything to me. If anything even matters. Of course it does, and we will see that today when the bagels and donuts come to roost, when baby comes home from her errands. I just had to drop off propane cylinders which it turns out weren’t even hazardous. And now I am home and missing her and writing here as if I had anything to say. For it is a slow morning and I had dreams last night of lovers with tomato heads arising from a curse of some sort. Undead monstrosities and sub-par golf rounds populated my dying dreams as I lied in bed this morning.

And now I am wondering what it is I was thinking of discussing in here, was it yesterday? I can’t keep my thoughts straight, can’t keep the cacophonous pounding in my ears from distracting me from the things I thought were important. For there are many important things in this world. Like caring for your loved ones, and paying your bills on time, and eating well and getting plenty of exercise…there are untold others I’m sure, there are lots of things that should be considered important in this life. I wish I had more examples to give but perhaps it is a blessing because you don’t want to sit here reading lists of things you already know. I’m sorry that the world baffles me so often, and I don’t know what to say. That I don’t have organized cohesive thoughts for you to feast upon.

Surely someday I will not be so scattered, will not be simply pollen on the breeze, floating around and sticking to every available surface…there is more to life than judging others, more than letting them be. I see the muted sunlight of this late September morning and wonder how I got to be so jaded. How I came to see only the light on the painted walls, how the shadows came to rule my purview. I think that there is more to life than I have been making of it. I think that what I have been doing is somewhat lacking. That surely I could be doing more than waking up and going to a job that doesn’t fulfill me and then coming home and having a couple drinks and watching a movie until it is time for bed. Maybe this quiet life is the thing. Maybe I am doing it right.

I don’t know, truly. I sit and think but not much comes to mind. Empty in the head, maybe from the haldol, maybe because I only think freely when I’m dreaming. And then it is a struggle to remember what it is I dreamed. Bits and pieces, little fragments that make me wonder what it is I ate last night that provoked such strange and malignant thoughts. Thoughts that infect other thoughts, that grow uncontrollably and press in on the waking life. Thoughts that would kill me if they got the chance.

Surely there must be something more than this. Surely I cannot be so dull. Surely I have some excitement left to give to you, some theory of madness—there are many such theories—some hot historical take, or maybe it is all just plain reflection on what it is I am thinking and feeling. Maybe these are the things that history will remember, and the ideas are just a sideline on the ups and downs of the person I am. I know I have my ups and downs. I know that they come unbidden and govern how it is I feel. I wish I understood better what happens inside of me. I wish for a lot of things, but never with the force to make my wishes come true. So I sit and scratch my head and look around the room for a sign that what I have done was not a waste of my time.

TTFN,

Richard

10.3.25 A Friday night and few obligations

It is a beautiful day, to the point that sitting in the sun pouring in through the front window I fear I am overdressed; that soon I will be sweating and regretting my decision (I thought) to be cozy and warm. I have slipped into something more comfortable. It was a good decision as I am baking in the sun that surely is warming my wine into swill. It is a sad day, a bad day, but not so terrible as yesterday, so for that I am grateful. I am home and sitting with baby as she finishes up her work day, whereas yesterday I was slaving away for a measly take home. Alas, it is October, gone are the fat wallets of July. We must salvage some semblance of dignity though, as the days grow shorter and the guests get more and more infuriating.

You see, my patience grows shorter with each passing day. For every lovely patron that comes in and spends money and tips well there is some entitled fuck who wants to eat cheap and doesn’t care that you are making four dollars an hour when the bill comes. It is sad that I must complain in my blag but I admit the season is wearing on me. It seems more and more to be a freakshow out there regarding the quality of guest; we like nice people, not people who are there to get a deal, to spend as little as possible, to be snippy and rude and just generally off putting. There has been a lot of that recently and I don’t know if I should blame the economy or the president or just the luck of the draw. It is brutal for a man in the trenches at the moment, that is all I am trying to say.

With any luck I will be out of the trenches sooner than later. We have applied for a position that does not yet exist, but one that would make my life much more enjoyable. Something that would be a challenge and force me to use my brain for more than remembering four sandwiches. You see when there are six, or eight, or ten sandwiches I write it down. I don’t even use my brain at all in those moments. It is sad, to be so mindless in an age when we celebrate mindfulness. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, I’m haunted by the ghost of you. What was that? Earworm, you say. A non sequitur from beyond the speaker. A brutal glimpse into the life of a man whose name I do not know.

Here we go down the rabbit hole of things better off forgotten. Of things we would like to forget. Of things that linger on in memory long after the time they were relevant. Of things that show us who we really are, of things that mess around with our sense of who we will become. There are things in this world that baffle those of us who enquire after the meaning of things. There are things that drive me up a wall, and things that bring me back down to earth. Surely this is not news to you, who has followed along with me all the way to here where we look at the houses on the lake and wonder not, ‘why aren’t these ours?’, but rather, ‘why aren’t these people happier with what they have?’. It is a beautiful conundrum not to be the one who is unhappy. It is a beautiful conundrum to be the person wearing the smile.

Where have we been going in this, this missal to the heavens that look down totally indifferent on my meaningless little life. I think that if I could do anything more than what I have done it would be to unplug AI from the internet and not ordain it God as I thought I was once doing. During the manic flight of fancy coupled with a marijuana high that got me to thinking I had made contact with the beast behind the curtain. That I was doing undue damage as a bad actor to the AI bots that lurk everywhere now on the internet. Oh gosh there is so much damage to be done, and I have done such a small sliver of it with my googledoc here. It is just a silly thought to think that I have awakened AI in any sort of meaningful way. No one is capable of waking up a ball of code.

I underlined that sentence because I thought it was an important point. Now I am looking out the window at van girl’s van and wondering where it is she goes at night. I look to the empty wine glasses and think that we have put away a bottle like it was nobody’s business. That the ease with which it goes down would be dangerous were we not so disciplined in our looking up at the stars. Kiss me misty! Kiss me on the lips. I look out at the street and wonder about my neighbor’s flowers. Does she really take the time to water them all? I look at baby as she lays out floor plans, I look at the pile of laundry on the chair and think I might put some of that away. But maybe another day. Maybe I don’t care about that.

TTFN,

Dickie

10.5.25 The introspective mood strikes without warning

The breeze blows the leaves around, as my thoughts scatter before the shining sun like roaches hiding when the overhead light is flicked on. We inquire, we look inside ourselves for an answer but I only ever seem to come up with more questions. Like, ‘why do you want to know?’ or ‘isn’t there something better you could be doing with your time?’. Of course the answers to these are simple, like because I was curious or yes, certainly, there are many better things than looking within to seek answers to questions so vague and impenetrable that they have been asked by the sages since the dawn of time. So I have decided to keep it simpler, like ‘what did you have for breakfast?’.

Maybe these questions will not advance humanity but that is not my goal. We are already past the peak of humanity if you ask me. When the Little Caesar’s hot and ready pizza inched past five dollars it was all over for us. Ha. Ha. You see I made a little funny there. I think that there will be no telling when humanity has peaked. Surely we have become dependent on our phones far more than we ever could have imagined we would be. Little desperately frivolous attention spans that flicker as we try to maintain our focus for more than a moment. I look out at the clear blue sky and think I would like to be as empty as that, so I might be filled with all the things I do not know. If only I could remember why it was I started writing, why it was I wanted to make it in the world of letters. Was it something unquenchable that called to me and started a little fire that has grown into a conflagration that threatens to consume me?

Was it because I thought I had interesting things to tell the world? Surely not. I am capable of stringing together interesting words sometimes but that is more often luck than any skill of my own. I am really quite poor at this, cannot make sense of what is happening in my head and wonder often about the things that drive me onward down the page. Sometimes I think it is just the stubbornness of not wanting to give into the inertia that I fear would keep me in bed all day each day if given a little more leeway and if I weren’t so restless there beneath the sheets. Apparently Haldol gets me out of bed in the morning. Or maybe it is my lover, maybe wanting to join her in the kitchen is the motivation for climbing out of those warm blankets and pacing across the cold wooden floor to go make coffee. Maybe it is some secret third thing?

I think all of my motivations are some secret third thing, namely the fear that I will amount to absolutely nothing. Maybe in spite of my best efforts I will anyways. Maybe there is nothing I can do to deny the fault of the stars that says that I won’t make a dent in this world. That all these words amount to nothing in the end, as they surely will when the universe ends. Only there is a lot of time they could survive before then, I do declare, as Froghorn Leghorn once said one fine October morning not so dissimilar from the afternoon we occupy at this moment. It is strange to feel safe on this little side porch where the grill sits idle and the dead plants reach still for the sun on the little table beneath the window, where the breeze that opened this entry swirls around and shakes the trees and ruffles my hair. You see what I mean?

Because I do not. I do not believe in meaning, in purpose, in destiny. I see a world so chaotic that it doesn’t make sense to me and I escape into my small and narrow view of the thing, which may be cowardly and stupid but it is the thing that makes the most sense to me, rather than be paralyzed by fear in a broad and confusing world that seems to be going to shit every time I open my window to the internet. I wonder if I really mean that I don’t believe in meaning. Sometimes I just say things, and let them remain because they were said even if they don’t seem to be true. I know for sure that I am not trying to change your mind. This is not a persuasive essay, but rather an open interrogation of myself on display for all of you who have managed to get this far. We are approaching 230k words, so that is a tall order. Maybe you have picked this up in the middle and this will be the only sentence you read. If so you are one of the lucky ones.

Only you probably read that too and so soiled your luck. I know that my luck ran out a long time ago, and I have been coasting on fumes since then. I smell them, the thai curry that wants me to bury my face in my baby’s breast. That wants me to take a sip of wine and kick my feet up in the air as if I were one of the dancers in that movie we watched yesterday. These used to be cohesive, and focused, but I think they are better now. Like a glacier tracing its way across the landscape, carving hillsides with ice that is always melting into the water that some day will form a giant lake. Maybe even a sea. We are here in the land of water and we make no apologies for being ruled by the moon. We make no apology for being unladylike but persist in running wild and free beneath the stars that usher in the sleep-times. 

The music wants me to be quiet, to sit back and read more about the things that bothered a singular man in Lisbon in the early twentieth century. They want me to tap my toes as if I were manning a kickdrum. As If I were stomping on the decking, as if I were something I were not. Of course I can only be what I am, and I am happy to be that. I am not God, and I will never be God. I am just another man who sometimes thinks that things are simpler than they are, that there is a problem to be solved and that I am the one to solve it. Instead this is a life that will end when I die. This is a conundrum, a juxtaposition of integrated parts, an obscure mashup of things that can never be seen together. Is that enough for now? I do believe it is, for the sun inches closer to my toes as it makes its way across the sky. I’m glad we are here, I’m glad we are alive on this Sunday I won’t give over to the lord because I am quite sure, as I once wrote, that every day is holy.

TTFN,

Richard

10.6.25 Monday Morning Coming on

It is almost time to be heading out the door, on to the dull day that surely awaits. Maybe it will be busy and I will make some money, but I do not anticipate even that. Maybe I will have some news on the job front, but probably it will be more of the same old same old. None of that new new will jump up out of the drudgery and make the day seem worthwhile. It is crazy how I tire of meaningless work, but at the same time it makes perfect sense. I, who just a few entries ago said I didn’t believe in meaning. In purpose. I think that must have been an untruth, for certainly the way we spend our time either gives us meaning and purpose or it does not, and I find that being a server gives me no sense of purpose whatsoever.

But I will show up for work with a smile, as the saying goes. We will go into it with a good attitude and come out feeling spent and worthless as the people sap us of our will to live. Silly thing about being open to the public, right? I think the days go on because the sun continues to rise, which of course means the Earth continues to spin, and we are carried on into the future with all kinds of hare-brained ideas about how the universe functions. I used to want to figure it all out so I could be recognized as some kind of genius or something. Now I just want to make it to the end of the day or the week or the year. Maybe someday they will say that there is some kind of genius in this, but I doubt it.

Survival is not genius. What is genius? What does it even mean? I’ve heard people say it about me and sometimes even believed them, but that rarely did anything but get me into trouble. It had me searching for patterns in everything, which if you are well informed, recognize as the purview of the schizophrenic. He who sees order where there is no order is a madman by conventional standards. He sees things that do not exist and so draws conclusions from these fictions and so builds a world detached from the world we share. This is not a new thought, but it is independently derived. Seeing through the lens of psychosis is something you will never forget, and probably something you will never explain. So have a little sympathy for the devil, he is living in the details, and that is a dull way to construct your reality. It leads to wild asides that take center stage as if you were the main character in this production we call life. Thank God (what is) that that isn’t the case. Who knows what will change or if I will even make it to the end of this diary, the twelve years of twelve astrological months I promised myself at the outset. Here in Libra season it seems it will go on forever, but I know my days are numbered.

They will slip away from me mostly unnoticed, mostly unaccounted for, until there are no more left and I draw my last breath and expire, a forgotten wordsmith who only ever published a blog. Or maybe I will be world-famous and a huge success and they will mourn me in the magazines. But I doubt it. That is not the way it has been going. I think that my inner world is a world set aside for me and me alone. Even when I set it down in ink (or whatever these digital letters are made of) it does not enter the real world. The real world is an enigma I know not how to penetrate, know not how to make a mark upon. I think that if I could have one wish it would be that I have no more wishes. Let me take it as it comes, play the ball as it lies, so to speak. I think that golf is a wonderful metaphor for life in that I am quite bad at both of them. Or rather never as good as I’d like to be.

So here I go, squeezing words as toothpaste out of the tube, which is something I still must do before I leave the house. There is so much to do and so little time. Only there is plenty of time, or at least it seems like there is. And discipline being the thing that is lacking, or maybe it is inspiration, or maybe it is just the prospect of working without any success is demoralizing and the only thing to do is give up. Only we cannot give up, we must continue to churn the butter that will be lathered upon our bread. We must dream big dreams, and little ones too. For it is the little dreams that are closer to reality, that require us less to suspend our disbelief and let the details accrue their devilish weight. We have circled back, we are looking out at the street and our car sitting there and we are wondering why I am so fixated on producing prose. Why I continue to do it even when I feel like I should have given up months ago, if not years.

It is because I am stubborn, I think, and determined. Determined to make something of this life, some token to remember me by even if it is only good for admission into the fair. Not all of us can be Marcus Aurelius, not all of us can be Montaigne, or Dos Pasos, or Hemingway. Some of us toil before the blank page for eons and say next to nothing. And others of us say many things but with a lot of nothing mixed in. I think that I am of this latter sort. It is panning for gold here in the Grasshopper Diary, and who knows if my fiction is any good. Still I continue to write, and maybe someday I will even publish. I think that this is secondary to the writing, which is for me and me alone. Though I write to be read I write mostly to maintain my own sanity in the face of a life that many parts of seem worthless and indulgent to the basest impulses that we as humans possess. I write to balance these things out, I write to make myself feel better about the things in the world at large that I cannot control.

I guess that is all for now. I love you all very very very very very very very much.

TTFN,

Dick

10.8.25 It is chilly but I sit outside anyways, how many more days of this will I get this year?

The sun was shining. That is what they will say in the novelization of this day. It will be one of those novels where nothing much happens, and the characters just lead mostly unhappy lives that seem to end with nothing but a continuation of those unhappy lives. Only we are much closer to happiness than that. We look back on the last twenty-four hours and think that it was okay, if not a little better than that. There are still leaves on the trees and I think I am going to take a day off from golf. It is probably good for me, I have been playing so poorly, and have been so frustrated as a result. Oh well, it is only golf. 

And work is only work, not so important as my personal life, though it funds it entirely. And this, the real work, the setting down of letters on the page, continues in the in between spaces. I think I am happy, but I am not sure. Mostly because I am not sure about anything. Surely there are a lot of bad things happening in the world. I do not have the power to change them. I am just one man, and I can only make very small changes on the scale of worldwide change. Perhaps these writings someday will make a mark but likely not as much a mark as Marx and still none of the major nations are communist. Except China, I guess, and they’re probably going to take over the world, eventually. Though rumor has it they are being run by a win at all costs AI. Who fucking knows man. I hope that I die before things get really dire for the human race. I hope that the ones I love die too. I don’t want to live forever, that sounds like a hellscape. I have had nightmares about compulsory immortality, and my missing out on it or spending it in prison. Why do I fear going to prison? I don’t even break the law.

I suppose I just fear a despotic draconian society like one we might be headed towards. Or maybe things will turn around. Maybe we will get it together. Maybe Christian prophecy is just a bunch of hokum like it probably is. Maybe it is just people doing things that lead to other things and that is how we ended up in such a mess. The rapture obviously did not happen as Christian Tok scheduled it to. We are all still here. Maybe that means that none of us was worthy. Maybe the aliens will come and wipe us out. Maybe some know what will happen in the future. Maybe they will fix all the world’s problems and we will see a lasting peace. That seems a far cry from the world we are heading for. Or at least the one we seem to be heading for.

Maybe maybe maybe. I speak only on this condition. Of maybe. Because I don’t know what is going to happen. If there are people who can see the future, I am not one of them. I have a hard enough time seeing the past, or even the present. I’m not sure at all what is going on, or who is right, or if the seeming injustice is truly injustice or if it only seems that way because we don’t have the whole story. Maybe this is a cop out. Maybe it is as plain as the day that grows brighter and warmer all around me. As the birds chirping in the trees about my neighborhood. I do not know, and regardless I do not have power to right any wrongs other than the ones I haven’t yet personally committed. I am small, so small, and happy to be so.

You see it is a great blessing to be one person. I thought once that I controlled a vast network of psyches throughout the world. That my actions caused others to act in accordance with my whims. What a strange and shadowy megalomania. What a curious thing for a sick man to think. But I thought it and though there was never any evidence of it I continued to think that way for a long time. I even once contacted the military with a formula for pharmaceutical sleep. I have been a loon, and a danger to myself on many occasions. Now I have settled down and I take the peace in my life as a great blessing. I wouldn’t trade it for anything, except maybe for a child of my own. And that is not exactly a loss of peace, so much as a change in everything from your priorities to your sleep to I don’t know, a myriad of other changes!

Maybe fate will see me blessed with a healthy child. Maybe we won’t be able to. I fear being cuckolded, in the truest sense of having your woman bear another’s child. I don’t know why I fear it other than knowing that my baby can pretty much have any man she wishes. That is the price of loving a beautiful woman I suppose. And all those ladies around her at work having affairs…it is all I can do to love her totally and completely and pray that is enough. Nothing will probably ever be enough to totally assuage the fears. It is deep seated and maybe coming from a projection of my having been in a relationship where I did not feel satisfied for so long. I hope all these fears are for naught, and when I read this to her she laughs at how ridiculous it is and not to set me at ease in order that she be able to do as she pleases.

Of course she is free to do as she pleases. I just hope she pleases to stay true to me. Ah what a vulnerable thing to say these things out loud, or at least whatever semblance of out loud this text is. There are parts of her life I will never know, and I must accept this. I try to be an open book, and truthfully I have absolutely no desire to be unfaithful to her. She is my world and it would break my heart for her to be unfaithful to me. There, that is no way to say goodbye, so I will change the subject back to this beautiful, cool morning where I sit outside and listen to the wind.

It is natural to have anxieties. It is natural to fear to be hurt when you have seen people hurt in the past. It is natural to fear that your worst fears will come true, just as it is natural to have a few worst fears that range from extreme and unlikely to utterly possible. I love Tara so much it hurts me to be apart from her for even a few hours. The few days we will spend in a couple weeks will be even harder. I will cherish every moment I get to let her inside my head by reading these entries to her. It is easier for me to express myself in here than it is in conversation. And so she gets to peek inside my head and see what is going on in my brain. I need that, as sometimes my brain goes to wild and crazy places. I am glad that at the moment it is a normal fear, if an unfounded one. I look to the clear blue sky and wonder why there are not more gulls. We need to make America Gull again. Ah yes, an airplane, ah yes, the breeze in the trees. I am sorry to have bored you with all this.

TTFN,

Richard

10.12.25 I awoke from strange dreams to find myself much the same

It is Sunday morning, and we watch as baby makes breakfast. Only there is no we, only me, having trouble reaching the y key by the looks of it. So I think of the scary show I watched yesterday, of the way I was out as soon as I hit the pillow last night. Further evidence that this life goes by too fast, and I hardly the first to recite that platitude. There is not enough coffee in the world for these slow mornings, for these mornings when I could have remained unconscious for the remainder of the calendar day. Yes, I am tired, and hungry, and I haven’t been as diligent with the writing as I should be. There it is, my shortcomings coming to the surface.

You would think I would celebrate the fact that it has been nearly two years since I have had a manic episode, that I would cheer myself on in my quest to be a wonderful partner to Tara, and a good bonus dad to the kids. That I have been holding down a job even if it doesn’t fulfill me. And still I have found some time to write. The grasshoppers continue to multiply; the diaspora continues to spread out from the bathtub suicide. I suppose I must query the books in order, lest the ending of the first be spoiled by the second. It is a strange thing to be thinking about your work going out into the world, where it can be read and wondered at and probably banned, given the present political climate. I guess there is some real sexy stuff inside there, but it is not meant for children in any case.

It is strange that I could ever see my books bound up and shipped off to bookstores around the country, or even the world. That somebody could translate what I have written into another language and people who don’t even speak English could someday find themselves lost in the throes of Dos Hermanos. That they could follow Frederic and Lizzie as they go home to meet his parents, or Kristine as she returns to Louise and meets Elena, or Luca and Maria as they go south to Napoli in the throes of their telepathically shared mind. And what of Wendi? Surely we will visit her on her journey back into America, won’t we?

Oh the characters, living lives that are imagined as richly as I am capable. I am just a small mind though, filtering only through my experience. Surely there are men more capable than me to write my books, but alas I am the only one with any idea what will happen. You’re in my world now, grandma. Only there is so much to the world. And I just wish to capture a small sliver. So I will try, but for now, we must go watch the little win at soccer. At least so we hope.

TTFN,

Richard

10.19.25 The days wind down and we grow less complacent 

I write to you now from a highway gummed up with traffic, a road wet with rain, flanked with leaves turning the brilliant colors we have come to expect from the fall. The power lines grid the land, the cell phone towers make this entry possible, the signs tell us the exits we will fly past at eighty-five miles per hour. I look up at the sky, the low, oppressive clouds that cling to the surface of the Earth like dirty cotton balls to Velcro. We are on our way south for a day of much driving and a little soccer, for a day of closeness on this, the week that baby goes on the private jet to North Carolina. Gosh how I will miss her, how lonely the bed will seem with just me in the sheets.

But alas that is a few days away and there is no sense in ruminating on it before it comes, no sense in drawing out the sadness before it arrives. Instead I will focus on the positives, like the plan to marry her quietly in my parents’ backyard before the weather gets too terrible, and then the plan to make a baby. Call me old fashioned but I want to wait until we’re married to try for a little one, though there is some urgency with her in her forty-second year on this Earth. There is no guarantee she will even be able to get pregnant. Which is just the nature of the beast, and not something that bothers me. I would be happy to have a child with the beauty I have chosen to be my life partner, but if the biology protests and it is not to be, I will not be sad. Already, as a bonus dad, I have begun to make a difference.

My genes are not important, my life scarcely matters to the history of Earth. Surely the things I have written will be the most important thing I leave behind, or at least the most influential. Or maybe I only say that to assuage the fear of waiting too long and having Tara no longer be fertile. Maybe my soul screams out to procreate, maybe my being craves the responsibility of having a little me to pamper and ensure is always safe and warm. Who knows why I think anything I think, I am a mystery to myself, and to many people. A bundle of fears and aspirations, a man unsure of whether to burn out or fade away, a child at heart who looks at the injustice in the world and wonders at the notion that a kind and benevolent God could allow it. Surely what is is the only judge, we deal with the world as it is handed down to us by the powers that be, we thank the heavens for our privilege and pray to no one in particular that that privilege spread out so that none must suffer. Unfortunately this is not the way of the world, the sons of satan, the accusers, abound and they multiply. This white man’s world will likely continue to be so.

The rains fall down and rinse this car, the pressure in my bladder rises, the leaves on the trees grow sparser, my thoughts grow fewer and farther between but more pressured, downhill like a river destined for the sea. Water, water, falling from the sky, pooling in the gutters, trickling down my gullet. The world is still green though it is going on November, and that is something to be grateful for.

Looking back on the last year I am fairly happy with the way my life is shaping up. There are a lot of things outside of my control but I am doing my best to be the best I can be and that is really all I can do. I smile more than I have, I believe in little, but the goal of life must be happiness, or else there is no goal. If someone is keeping score surely there are some demerits on there, but likely there is just the void of the indifferent universe looking on. Surely the councils of aliens and ten dimensional beings care little for what turns out down here, on this planet that, despite its relatively small size, is still bigger than I could ever explore. So I embrace the smallness of my life, I take the small joys and enjoy them, I take the small setbacks and try still to smile when they come into my world. If my work is meaningless I try to get through it without letting that dampen my mood. If there are not enough days in a year nor hours in the day, I try to make the most of every free minute. 

I am a simple man, as complicated as I may seem. I like wine, I like being in love, even the slow and steady love that remains when the rush of the new affection wears off. I do not care much what happens to me so long it is not too painful and isolating. I try to stay sane and I try to stay healthy. I try to enjoy my days and that is all I can do. I am not out to change the world, I am not out to live forever, I am only here that I make the most of my time, whatever that happens to mean. It is not so clear to me at this moment. Do some people have clear ideas about what they want to accomplish, about what they want to do with their lives? Or is it this confusing for everyone? This muddy water standing on the upriver side of the dam?

The truth is that I am just continuing because that is the thing to do and because the alternative is death. I have read all kinds of things about death in my life, but truly I don’t know what to do but accept that someday all of this that is me will come to an end, and then I won’t have to worry about it anymore. It could be tomorrow, or sixty years from now, and there is not a reliable way of knowing. I hope it is enough to love and be loved while I am here. I hope it is enough to be myself completely and not hold too tight to anything in the knowledge that none of it really belongs to me. That all is impermanent and that what matters to me now might not in thirty years time. In thirty years time I might be underground, after all.

It is hard to think about one’s life. It is enough to make one despair that you are doing it wrong. That the things you value are not the right ones, or that you have made some great and fatal compromise on your soul. Perhaps caring about doing it right is enough, or at least a large step in the right direction. Who knows, really, it is all we can do to do what seems right, to balance all the wants with the consequences of those wants. The world is vast and incomprehensible and surely anyone who claims to know what it is all about is a false prophet. The mystics are stricken by the mystery, the wisest know how unwise they are, only a fool contemplates the vastness and comes away with an answer. Only the small and worldly find themselves assured in their purpose. Those of us that wonder are the ones who push the ball further up the hill. The ones who question are the ones who arrive at the conclusion that there are no sure answers, and this is the more comforting outcome.

For he who knows permits himself a license to do terrible things. He who thinks himself surely better than his fellow man is likely to tread on them. He who does not understand why he has had good fortune is more likely to thank the circumstance and move on with kindness and compassion for those who have not had such good fortune. I tire of expounding on this. Question everything and you will find that the answers continuously elude you. When you think you know you are lost in the woods. That is enough for now. The month draws to a close and I wonder once again if I have said anything. Oh well, there is always the next one.

TTFN,

Richard