Month the Thirty-Twoothe

10.23.25 Alone for the weekend

The world is upside down, baby is on a private jet bound for North Carolina and I am here in the P waiting for her to return. Of course I will have some engagements in the meantime, firstly the double shift I will be working today until who knows when. Hopefully time for a telephone call home though that home will be some hundreds of miles away. For now it is a breakfast sandwich and a double espresso, a lonely heart and an hour to kill. How many hours to kill will there be before she returns? I am too lazy to calculate, but it is more than I would choose if I had the choice, but she will have fun and I hope I will too, that I will earn some trust back with my good behavior and that I can manage not to worry about her either.

You see, when you love a beautiful woman, knowing that she can have anyone she wants, it can be hard to trust that she wants only you. A special bond indeed, but that only makes it scarier that it might be broken. I think maybe I am silly to fear, but fear I do still. She will be true though, I have faith, and she should have faith in me. We must repair the wound caused by when I was careless in the past, and I know that I want no other but I have done some stupid things and I must prove that I am worthy of her in her absence. It shouldn’t be hard, I am too consumed with missing her to get up to any bad behavior. I will be the model fiancé while she is gone, having a couple drinks at the bar and keeping male company. I do not want anything but to be in her arms come Monday. All the other cheap thrills are just that: cheap.

And I want only the lasting companionship that has brought me so much joy since I stumbled upon it a year and a half ago. I want to have her on my arm forever, I want to feed the love that has been so enriching these last months, I want to continue to grow together until we grow old and there is no more time. It is a beautiful conundrum to miss someone so dearly. On the one hand it is a beautiful thing to have someone to miss so, and on the other it is a pain like ripping your heart from your chest each time it beats. Oh for it to be a few days from now and have her safely back in my arms. I will struggle to wait, but given no other option I will be forced to.

I never thought of missing anyone so dearly. Not since my adolescence have my feelings been so intense. The world seems so big and so small at the same time. I am such a feeble man, aren’t I? Or is it strong to so value another that their absence pains you so severely. I look around this crowded restaurant and feel the pit in my stomach grow stronger. I stare at this screen and watch the letters pile up and still she is gone. I can only imagine what it would be like to lose her permanently. I shudder to think of it. So many hours to kill, at least today, the first day, I will be engaged all day and not have to think of it too much. That is a little blessing I suppose.

For everything with her seems like a blessing, something I was gifted by forces far beyond my little faculties. I never could have dreamed to be so fortunate, that fortune would smile to give me a love that continually surpasses my wildest expectations. I and my little self are no match for the feelings that course through me each day. It is more than the thrill of a first love, it is a love that comes to me with the perspective of all the previous loves and is all the more valuable for that. Gone the psychotic fantasies, this life is enough for me as long as she is in mine. It makes me smile to have that thought. It makes me smile to think of her at all. In any capacity. She is the light that rises each morning in the east, she is the stars at night. I see her rise to take her shower, and I smile at her naked form in the light from the bathroom. I am too lucky, surely it cannot last.

But maybe it will. Maybe I don’t need to fear that she will meet some handsome stranger and be tempted. Surely this is just the knowledge that she could have any such handsome stranger. But what we share is solid, we are great together, and we both know it. If it is enough to keep me from the barflies surely it will be enough for her too. I have not been tempted since I met her. Even that time when I did the foolish thing at that restaurant up north I never had any intentions. I was just not thinking clearly of what I value. For I value her more than anything else in my life, and no floozy could change that, not in the slightest. I must go to my working day now, so I will cut this short. More to come, surely, I will need to write to calm my nerves as the weekend progresses, of that much I am certain.

So on to the day, and then the next, and then the next, and then the next and then the next she will be home. Oh goodness that is too many days. But I will be strong, I will not falter. This life with her is a precious thing, and nothing could make me squander it. I know she feels the same. And I am something like happy.

TTFN,

Richard.

10.27.25 Homecoming

Today is the day, the day that baby is returning from the southlands, the place where she has been and I have been aching to have her back in my arms. Today is a happy day, just a morning shift and then the afternoon to wait for her little private jet to land at our little airport where I will scoop her up and give her a squeeze and a kiss. To think of all the hard times I have had these last few days you would think I would never want her to leave again. But it will happen sometime, and I will survive, as I survived this time, though hopefully with less turbulence.

Yesterday I got to thinking about aliens, because of that interstellar object that is behind the sun. Needless to say that was not a productive line of thinking, and got me all worked up about all my psychotic history, all the things I have thought and believed over the years flooding back in and ruining my Sunday morning. So I sat and wrote something, just a small poem that made me feel quite a bit better. It is strange that writing it out can take away the nervous tension, that putting down a couple hundred focused words on the page can rob the scary things of their fear factor. Fear factor was Joe Rogan’s big break, don’t forget that.

Now it is early morning and I am drinking coffee and listening to music and in a little more than twelve hours I will have the object of my desire back here in northern Michigan where the days grow shorter and the nights grow cold. Gone the lonely nights in our bed, back to having a warm body beside me to remind me that everything is all right. Back to my preferred reality of having a love around to keep me honest and on my toes. I am happy, doggone it. And that is something to celebrate, isn’t it?

As we begin the week I am looking up at the stars and seeing constellations I recognize. I see the big dipper hanging low over the house, see Orion somewhere up there with his big swinging schlong. And here inside I am warm beneath the blanket, I have a few lights on to keep the monsters at bay, and I am almost due for another cup of coffee. I feel safe, I feel loved. And that is a big change from a couple days ago when I almost had a panic attack. Tara is afraid to leave me alone, a little, and I do not like that. I want to be self-sufficient when I have to be, and I am mostly, except when I have freakouts like I have the last few days. I need to work on that I guess, or maybe work on managing them when they happen. So I can be trusted to be alone. I hope we worked on some of those trust issues I mentioned in my last entry, though I was just a homebody, sitting in this house and drinking wine instead of going to the bar and putting myself in a situation where I might be tempted, so maybe I made no progress on that front. I know that I am dedicated to her though, so maybe it doesn’t matter.

I grow tired of this entry, so I will cut it short. In short, it is a happy day for baby’s return. It looks like it will be a beautiful day otherwise. And I shall toil and count down the hours and soon that little plane will be landing here and all my troubles will be far away. Yesterday, yesterday, that day of big thoughts and strange troubles. Today we are back in the straits of normalcy, sailing smoothly along with our sails unfurled and catching the stiff breeze that also scatters my thoughts. I’m glad this weekend is almost over, now just for safe passage for baby and then the last of my worries will be dispelled. I love you I love you I love you. That is enough for now.

TTFN,

Richard

10.31.25 All Hallow’s Eve

Here it is, the culmination of spooky season, the kids in costumes, the free candy, the poor huddled masses. Wait, that’s a different thing, and they are not faring so well, with the news of the miniscule refugee caps coming in. Oh gosh I am feeling big feelings this morning, big sad and otherwise, as baby tells me about her work troubles, as I think of my own. Where do we run to as this weekend comes on and we forget about it all. As we seek our pleasures in the bright lights, as we try to forget our troubles in the coming free time.

I don’t have a lot of free time right now, as I must take Tara to work (we are currently sharing a car) and then ready myself for my own work day. The days pile up like cars behind a jackknifed tractor trailer on the interstate. I get hardly as much as I want accomplished, I am hardly as fulfilled as I want to be. You see, the mindless toil that has been paying my bills is just a job, and I would like to have something resembling a career. I had a dream last night that it came to be, but alas, that is but a dream and real life resumes upon waking. I will go in and do the same thing I did yesterday, but hopefully be a little busier.

Enough about the basics, surely there must be room in my brain for lofty ideas. Ideas like what is happening with AI displacing white collar workers. Or with the escalations in Venezuela. Or with my thoughts about the end of the world as a grand comedy and me at the center of it. What of the massacres in Darfur, what of the carnage wrought by the hurricane in the Caribbean? And life goes on here as if nothing has happened. There are the news reports but little outward change, if inward I bear a scar for all the bad things happening in the world.

It is easy not to be affected. It is easy to turn your head the other way. Not to be confused with turning the other cheek. And yet the things that go on in the world bear down upon all of us in their own way. Though surely it will not be refugees this time. I don’t know what the impact will be. I don’t know much of anything, honestly. This head is empty of ideas at this time, it is filled with scenes from the romcoms we watched yesterday, the smell of coffee, the feeling that I ought to be getting ready for work. I do not want to go, but alas we must all do things we don’t want to from time to time.

So onwards into the day, with a smile. A smile that is genuine if not from ear to ear. The birds flit in the trees outside, the vines creep up onto the porch, the leaves pile up in the gutters; it is fall, and with fall comes the difficult mental times for me, some years worse than others, and this year has been particularly bad so far. I have struggled even without the things that drive me to paranoia. I have thought of things that do not exist as if they were bearing down on me this afternoon. I have thought of the world ending in the last judgment and me being on the wrong side of the line. I have thought of so many things that disturb me, but this morning there is only music and coffee and baby on the other line keeping me appraised of our plans for the evening.

Oh Halloween, that day when things have come unglued for me in the past. That day that was the beginning of the end for Aaron Rahms. The day that means more and more as each year goes by, and less and less at the same time. What does that mean, you ask? Well it means that the youthful joy of the day strikes me more and more each year, while the otherworldly “thin-veil” things strike me less and less. Two different aspects shifting in importance as the years go by. And with the years I grow older and more tame, less inclined to rapture and more inclined to rhapsody, to sing out when the urge strikes me. There is beauty in this world, and danger too, but I am one to focus on the beauty to the exclusion of the danger. The world goes on, hardly skipping a beat.

So we move into the next calendar month under the sign of scorpio, watery loners not so far divorced from my crab sign. I think I don’t pay much attention to these things anymore. I think I am happier for not being glued to the astrological tables. I think that if I had one wish I would wish for my good times to outweigh my bad. I think, I think, and no thoughts come. It is an empty room upstairs, just an old couch covered in a sheet collecting dust. No one to even sit on it. There is a phonograph there too but with no one to wind it it sits silent. A single window lets in the day outside but there is no one to appreciate the rectangle of light migrating across the floor. So let us go into the day with something like joy. Let us remember that this is a day to celebrate. Let us remember our lovers, let us remember our friends.

TTFN,

Richard

11.3.25 Approaching the end of the calendar year

It is a blustery day here, low heavy clouds that bring the sky closer to the surface of the Earth, that make us feel that we are in danger of being swept up into the sky and away, away from all of this. Of course this is what makes our life, and only a fool would wish to be swept away from their life. Or someone desperately unhappy, but still then the total sweeping away is not the best practice. Stick to incremental change, let us see what blossoms when we make room for things that make us happier. Where was I going with this? Here we are, rooted in Scorpio season, that time of year when things here in the north start to look a little more like winter. We are due for our first snow. The skeleton, that twelve foot behemoth the kids named Sebastian, is down out of the yard. Oh gosh I still am not ready for the snow to fly.

The desire for a cigarette is real, but I must abstain in order that I do well on that front. Doing well being not having any, and I had enough that weekend Tara was in North Carolina for quite a while. I must really be a quitter, as I have professed to the medical professionals that I am. I must be stronger than the urge to run to the store and pick up a pouch of roll your owns, my preferred brand. Talking about it makes the temptation grow stronger, makes me want to get in the car and run to the store right now…I could be home in five minutes. But instead I behave. I sit here and I type in order that my fingers can’t roll another cigarette.

It is a tall order to disobey my physiology, the thing that cries out for a smoke. But it is possible. We can do better. We can do hard things, as we are fond of saying. So I sit and I type and I forget the craving. I sit and I look around this room and wonder why I ever wanted anything more than a quiet home life to admire. Why anything ever tempted me to want a starbound life of fame and fortune. Isn’t it enough to be able to say you are happy? Because, really, truly, I am happy, and everything else is secondary. All the desires, all the things that fall short of my expectation for what they should have been, but footnotes on the happiness that blossoms in the quiet music playing from the speaker. 

It is easy sometimes to be grateful, and this is one of those times. With any luck I will grab baby from work and we will pass the evening in preparing a meal and eating it, in watching silly tv shows or scary ones, if that be the vibe tonight. Oh goodness I am reduced to being a simple creature, aren’t I? I look at myself in the mirror and wonder at the stubble, the incipient beard. I look at myself and think to myself that there is a man who can stand to smile a little more. Because he deserves to be happy, because he is a good man and all his fantasies about his life going horribly horribly awry are just that: fantasies. Instead good things are coming for me, that is the reality I invest in. That is the thing that will get me through to the end of the year and through the year coming after that. 

So I relax, I sit here and hit these keys wishing that I was working on my novel, or at least that I had more time to work on it. It is okay, it will write itself out in its own time. You can’t force these things, you must let it all come to you. You must sit and type meandering inanities for days before the killer instinct to work on the thing that actually matters comes back. And when it does you must strike that iron fresh from the fire in order that the sword that absolutely does not feature in that novel be forged. It is coming to me, it is coming back to me and I am ready, or I will be ready when it comes. I love you all so much, I seem to have lost the thread of this. I think that is my cue to step away and maybe have a glass of wine. Or maybe I will save that for when baby comes home. Decisions, decisions…but not too taxing in that department. It is a beautiful day out there for all the wind, and I am glad to be alive. Here’s to ensuring that streak continues.

TTFN,

Richard.

11.14.25 Are the aliens coming?

I read another article about that interstellar object. Man that stuff freaks me out. I try not to think about it but the thoughts are intrusive. And the clickbait is everywhere. I see the emails about Trump this, Trump that, Liberals This, Liberals That. What in the world is happening, that they get off on decrying every single action of everyone? That the AI produced emails just fill up my inbox and nobody seems to care. I know that I certainly do not. I am not prone to panic about big things. Maybe that is not true. Maybe I am not prone to slow panic, it is the high-toned rapid heartbeat panic that seems to strike me sometimes. I do confess to that.

So I continue on into the year, waiting to see if our demise is really coming. I wait and I wait and ask Tom Petty, that’s the hardest part. I drink my water and my coffee and I watch Tara get ready in the morning, I go to work and then come home and sit on the couch and watch tv. I even find some time to write in the middle of all of that. I am happy with my life and I would be sad if the world ended. I surely am not alone in that feeling. Surely there are others who hope that this continues for at least a little while longer? Surely some of us are glad that we exist, and that the world, as messed up as it is, exists along with us. I feel a creeping anxiety that things I can’t control will spell an end to the world that I love. The world that has wine and ice cream and the love that inspires me to get out of bed in the morning. Surely it will continue beyond December 19th?

Who knows though, for all my unease about aliens coming to judge us there are plenty of terrestrial reasons for worry. I try to shelve it all, to be happy in my world and to spread that happiness to anyone who will have it. If it all goes to shit I will make the most of that. God knows I am due for some good news, maybe that will come in the form of a new vein of employment. Maybe I will win the lottery. I could do with $965 million. What, honestly, would I do with that much money? Buy wine, start a charitable foundation? Definitely those things, probably buy a house as well, get out of this rental situation, but none of that is very likely. Probably about as likely as that aliens are coming, if I’m being honest.

So let’s hope we hit one and not the other. That I win the lottery and the aliens don’t come, that is. Not that I don’t and they do. Because that’s a nightmare. Or maybe not, maybe they come in peace, and to bring us the gifts of technology beyond our wildest imagination. Who knows what the future holds. I hope nobody. I hope it is as much a mystery to the wisest sages as it is to me. I hope I hope I hope. I hope that the hippos at the zoo have a fruitful thanksgiving. I hope that Christmas this year is good to people all across the land. I hope that those who promulgate clickbait get all the views they were hoping for, and that nobody who clicks takes the articles too seriously. I hope that I find peace in my mind one of these days, and that I find prosperity and even sell a book.

Life continues to continue, and I am along for the ride. I buckle my seatbelt and prepare for the last day of my work week, which will hopefully cement this as one of the best November weeks I have ever had. Not that it is that much money, overall, in the grand scheme of things, but it is better than making $250 in four days’ work. I look around this house and am glad we have a place to live, and I look at baby on the couch working from home and smile that we both have gainful employment. Life is pretty good when you don’t think too hard. It rewards us for taking at face value the things that bring us joy. It encourages us to peer deeper into ourselves to find out why they bring us joy. Joy is the word of the season, and in a way that has nothing to do with Jesus. There is beauty in simply existing, with no thought of afterlife, with no thought of salvation. What is there to be saved from? Death is the great equalizer, the great release at the end of a life of toil and reflection. Thank God (what is) for that.

TTFN,

Richard