Month the Thirty-Fourth

1.12.26 From the middle of January

Oh what a month it has been. Truly more than a month since my last entry. Busy busy busy, as a bee in the heart of spring. I see all the flowers at the florist and think maybe I should get a bouquet for my love. It is an easy gesture if an expensive one, but I don’t mind the money. In fact today seems much brighter than yesterday if it is a grey and gloomy day outside. There I go again writing about the weather, as if any of you cared about what it’s like as I look out the picture windows at the lake below, where the ice floes that were drifting around just yesterday seem to have melted back into the deep. It is a sad reality for those who want the bay to freeze.

However, as one indifferent to the vicissitudes of solid water, I think it is a day for smiling. You see, even when the weekend is a flurry of arguments, of annoyances and even of panics, we can come out on the other side feeling like the future is cause for optimism. We stand by each other’s sides and for that we are grateful. Grateful as Bobby Weir no longer is, having assumed the latter half of the band’s name. But he is on to his rest beyond the rio grand-i-o.

The hills are white beyond the bay, and the day approaches its midpoint as I sit here and contemplate the last month. While it seemed to crawl as it happened, it now seems to have raced by, and we are more than halfway through the next month. To think, two years ago I was lamenting my mental illness coming off a period of intense terror that lasted for weeks if not months. Now I look back on the last month and think that maybe I could have been more social, but other than that there is not much I would change.

You see I have grown something like shy as the years have gone on. I don’t like to be the center of attention, I don’t like to talk about myself. Is that because I am not interested in the things that I’m interested in, or because privacy is important to me, or some other, even more private reason? I think it is because I feel myself to be utterly boring, as a person. I do not care much about most of the things that interest other people, or at least it seems that way to me. I feel little common ground with most people, but maybe that is an illusion perpetuated by the lack of self esteem that sometimes rises to the mark of defining characteristic. It feels like no one could be interested in me because I am scarcely interested in myself. I wonder how anyone could love me, find me anything other than a dial tone. Oh to be invested in anything, oh to be a well adjusted man who finds anything other than despair in the ways of the world!

That was dramatic. Maybe it is not all despair, but with loud voices in either side proclaiming (to me at least) that truly no one really knows anything of what is going on in the grand scheme of things. We have our echo chambers that reiterate to us what we already think, and any challenging belief is propaganda. Of course there is a fair amount of propaganda out there too, don’t get me wrong. Silencing opposition and whatnot. Who knows, maybe we are on track to be the next nazis. Certainly the fervor with which some of the MAGA set approach things lends credence to that idea. Things are crazy right now, but really they have been crazy for a long time. What is different now is that the people in charge are no longer pretending that the rules of the game as it has always seemed to have been played are still in effect. That is, they have started to do as they please, or else they are following an agenda that doesn’t make much sense to me.

Of course none of the previous agendas made sense to me either if I’m really being honest, and as such I’m glad that it doesn’t fall to me to make the decisions that those in power find themselves forced to make. Certainly I would make as much a mess as any one. Who’s to say what is right, after all? Only in hindsight do we have any chance of parsing out what the proper course was or should have been. At least we are not mired in another Vietnam, or something like that. It could certainly be worse, if that I am certain.

So on that note, which underpins my optimism, I look out at the blue waters and think that I would like to live in a place where my love does not shiver when she crawls into bed at night. Maybe someday we will make it a reality. Maybe someday we will find ourselves released from the cruel demands of winter. Maybe we will even find ourselves living in a land far away, where the trout streams flow and the air is nice, to quote the bard. In just a short time it seems likely that everything will be different than it is now. In just a short time we will be married and life will enter yet another phase of continuing.

The light on the snow blinds me, or maybe not full blindness but at least an uncomfortable squinting that makes my brow furrow and my head ache. I smile at this inconvenience and minor pain. I smile because soon baby will be getting the flowers I sent her this morning and I will have assured her smile for the rest of the afternoon. It’s a beautiful day in paradise, which is to say here on Earth where gravity keeps us pinned to the ground and the air is not so polluted we can’t breathe it, where the water is clean and cold and I can’t complain too much for fear that if I do God will take His revenge and make an example out of me.

Thank What Is I don’t really believe in all that,

TTFN,

Richard

1.14.26 Maybe All I Need…

The day yawns as I sip my coffee, praying for energy to stave off the doldrums that come with this time of year. It is another grey day, but this one not working and for that we are grateful. The outflow of Gratitude like when a river meets the sea, it goes with my breath and returns to me as peace. Oh what a boring life I must lead, what a life of piecewise quiet that I once raged against. Oh how the times have changed from when I thought I must squeeze every bit of juice out of what life offered me…now I am prepared to let the fruit rot on the vine, to sit back and wait for whatever comes, which I will greet with a smile and maybe even a handshake, should that be appropriate. Oh the folly of youth.

For I am still young but not so young as all that desperate unhappiness that defined my twenties. Now I can look on my life and think that it is okay that I am not a literary superstar. Maybe those days will come, but it will have little to do with me if they do, I have now realized. There is as much luck involved in any of this as anything else, though just yesterday I overheard someone discussing some overnight literary success. So it does happen. People do hit the big time. Put it up there in lights. In 8.5”x11” mimeograph. That is the ticket, and you can only punch it once. Oh if only everyone knew how affected I have been by their flippant colloquialisms. They have haunted my dreams, guided my life along delusional railways into despair that has swallowed whole years.

But still I inspire, expire, the heart beats on despite my best efforts. Which is to say how many thousands of cigarettes. How is it that I am still alive, truly? And looking to live quite a long time yet, if the bookmakers will allow it. You see I do not want to die, I want to see a lot more of this world and of this life. It has been a rather limited trip through the upper midwest for the most part, these cold winters and wondrously short summers that have engineered my biorhythms slowly but surely into a less depressive phase. It is a brief and catastrophic despair that strikes me in my weakest moments, but most of the time things are pretty alright if they are a trifle boring. I suppose that is the price to pay for stable adulthood.

As the hours tick off the clock this morning I look around the room at the piles of things. It is nice to have things, I think, even if we perhaps have too many of them. I do not mind the clutter, you should have seen the state of my room at my parents’ house the last time I was living there. Oh goodness the world seems dire on the foreign shores even if here on the streets of the P there are only the lurking drivers going slow. I look out the window and smile that that is all I have to worry about. That there are no gunmen out there, nor knife wielding hooligans, nor even anything more than neighborhood kids building snowmen. Goodness this had collapsed into benign drivel, hasn’t it?

So let us examine a familiar problem: the meaning of all this living business. Surely there is no singular answer that will concisely define what it is we should be paying attention to. I do not believe that there is a personal God above, and so that crosses out a lot of the things that it is said you should live for. Instead I look to the dignity of my fellow man, to the creature comforts that make me rest easy at night. I look to the wines that make my days special. I look to the love that inspires me to get out of bed in the morning. To the music that fills up the empty space in my afternoons. Surely there is more to life than all of this, though anymore this limited meaning falls short less and less. It seems I have found some things worth living for, haven’t I? And these explorations of the mundane to record it all even though the rapturous inquiry into God and His dignity are gone.

Where does that leave us? Firmly in Dante’s Dark Wood, wandering around and waiting for the bard to come guide us down to hell. Surely we listen to the singers and wonder why we can’t come up with such revelatory phrases. Benedicite, can’t we say? For blessed are they who look upon my works and smile, said somebody sometime. And I don’t really believe in blessings beyond the figure of speech they have become. So I look out on the sun beginning to shine and think that I don’t have too much more to say. The world is your oyster, comrade, so try to smile a little more, understanding that your attitude is one of the only things that you have any control over. It is a blessing that I don’t have to do too much these days. These days I sit and think a lot.

Says the bard. So give a kiss to the one you love and set out on the open road for pastures that may or may not be greener. Maybe at least they will not be snow covered. And for that we can count our blessings. Huh?

TTFN,

Richard

1.17.26 Looking Forward, Looking Back

The potatoes sizzle on the stove, the bread rises in the stand mixer, the music plays loud from the little speaker and baby comes over to give me a little squeeze and some lovin’. It is a calm morning, one we will never get back, as all of them are, truly. Unique to their time and place, all of the times we share, and even those when we are apart. The world spins on and we go on undeserving of the sweetness that comes with these doing nothing mornings when we just as easily could have been still asleep. It is a beautiful thing to be alive at all, isn’t it? The more I reflect the more grateful I become, the more wonderful the ordinary things seem to me, like the orchids blooming on the windowsill, though can a tropical flower growing in the midst of the northern Michigan winter be considered ordinary?

And still, as we grow older, as our bodies begin to show the signs of wear, we can find things to complain about or to smile at. How you deal with it is your prerogative, isn’t it? You see we can find the aches and pains to be all consuming, can feel that we are dying each time we have a little discomfort upon waking in the morning, or we can take it as the blessing that each new day is, even if the day is not quite what we would have wished for had we absolute control over our bodies. But of course only God (what is) has control over our bodies. The world is full of whims that we cannot fathom, from viruses and bacteria to atmospheric pressure changes that drive us to feel differently than if things were constant. I hope to God that that is what ails me this morning and not the failure of my internal organs.

I am being dramatic, as I am wont to do, and though my potatoes near completion on the stove we are fixated on the quiet things. The ones that creep up on us and frighten us with their sudden closeness. The wildcat’s snarl, the whistling of the tea kettle. And to think, it was I who lit the stove. Alas, the snow drifts lazily down outside and the trees continue their bare naked impressions of what they once were, though of course the cedars still wear their prickly green robes…alas, alas! The advent of breakfast potatoes is one of the quiet things. Soon the smoke will clear and the crispy tubers will be in my belly. Alas, it seems there is very little to say about this morning.

But maybe important things, maybe the incipient possibilities of our imminent marriage, of the talk of trying for a baby, or any of the other myriad relationshipisms will spring up and surprise me on this lazy Saturday. I suppose I could go for some more coffee, I suppose I could go for a midmorning nap. I suppose, I suppose, that something might heal my aches! If I could go to sleep again I think I might, but the fact is that I am resolutely awake, listening to the KitchenAid mixer spin round and round as the troubadour sings out in this kitchen over crowded with recycling, with totes full of tupperware, with all sorts of random odds and ends. I guess it seems I have devolved into direct description, having no fancies to describe. That is fine, there is no reason or requirement that anything be a certain way. In fact that is one of the beautiful things about this space.

The beautiful spacious things about which I started to rhapsodize today. Simple and delectable, like the humble potato. Our lord and saviour, if you happen to be Irish, or vegan. I could sing its praises for eons, could make my breakfast out to be the hero of an epic poem, but I think I will spare you instead. The day climbs closer to noon and I wonder why I have such simple things on my mind. It is a quiet day, and one that will continue as such unless the universe conspires with what is to change that. Seems obvious, don’t it?

TTFN,

Richard