Month the Twenty-Eighth

6.20.25 Maybe Maybe Maybe

Here I am almost marking another year. And the blues here in this season of sun, this solstice day of the longest hours of daylight. Oh to be young again, but then again I was mostly miserable. What keeps me from being miserable now? Not much, not much. But the days go by being busier than I would like to be. Seeing less of my loved ones than I would like to. The inherited sadness of my spiritual lineage. The sorrow for the state of, the weight of the world. There is no escape, but in love, and I fearful even to take that leap.

What is happening beyond the windows, what is happening on the streets of this sleepy little town? Is there a life that I am missing, or is this it? This, this life where I am fighting off my depression as if it is a bear and I am armed only with a tiny sharpened stick. What type of bear, you ask? A baby bear, that I can cuddle and lull into a false sense of security until mama comes along. I want to feel differently than I do, for a couple of days now. I’m sorry to those who have to deal with me moping. Am I moping or am I just sad. Have been sad, don’t want to be sad anymore.

I’m trying my best to be all that I can be, but I have not been as dedicated to my craft as I should be. I have not been taking time out to sit and face the enormously blank page, to put words down even when it feels futile and useless. I did not protest the newborn king the other day. I have not been motivated to do much of anything. It is all I can do to get out of bed in the morning and show up to work. The days drag on, I feel the same. Surely there is an end to this ill-feeling, surely this cannot go on forever.

Of course not forever, someday you will die, and then there will be no more continuation of this, not the good parts or the bad parts, though it seems the good parts have been somewhat lacking recently. Little memories cropping up in my mind, reminding me of times when I felt differently. Or the same, for there is some of everything in the memory bank. When it hits me that it isn’t going to change, or even when it hits me that it’s always changing, I think I’ll go back to bed. I think I’ll look up at the stars and wish the cigarettes weren’t bad for me. I think I’ll look out the window and think about throwing my body out after my gaze. Fortunately we live on the first floor, so it won’t hurt too badly.

I wonder sometimes why I have such a hard time making my way through the days. It is just the affliction that comes with being a writer, or was that the egg to the chicken, so to speak. Does this temperament make it so that the blank page seems like a good way to cope, or is it my identity as a writer that…that seems ridiculous to say out loud. Certainly the temperament came first, I have been feeling sad since I was a little kid. I have always wanted something from this life that it seems ill-disposed to give me. I have always found real life lacking and my attempts at fiction only a shadow of that real life. I wonder if any of it is worthwhile. Is it enough to exist? Is it enough to get some fleeting happiness from the days that pile on and seem like they will go on forever even as we grow nearer to the end with each passing moment?

I don’t like to dwell on death, I don’t like to dwell on feeling blue, but when your heart is down in the dumps it can feel like there is nothing good enough to keep living. Not that I am truly suicidal, I just want something to give. Something to give me a reason to not feel like I am wasting all my time. Like none of this is worth it. Worth the trouble. But what trouble, what even is this discussion of worth. You exist, your parents bore you into the world. You bore through the world like a drillbit through the paneling. Making your way as if the obstacles were no match for the cold, grooved steel of your person. You will one day look back on all of this and think, ‘hey, that’s no way to say goodbye.’

Maybe I don’t know anything about anything. It often feels that way. I think of how confident I used to feel in my knowledge, I think of the way I used to feel about myself. Compared to those ideas I am weak and feeble and nothing worth writing your loved ones about. Or maybe that is just my low self-esteem. Maybe I have value and am a good person. Maybe I will even contribute something to the world. Maybe none of it is worthwhile and maybe even I am going to hell. Who knows at this point, I think I’m going to sign off, get dressed, go to work. There are worse things even if I won’t get to see my lovely best friend until quite a bit later. I hate these weeks of extracurricular activities. I hate that I can’t have everything I want. I hate I hate I hate. Without an ounce of hate in my heart. No, it is just sad, it is just heavy. I want to move this love, I want the world to know that I am not yet giving up. I have tears in my eyes but I will not weep, nothing is going to make me weep.

So forget that I wrote this rambling, sorry-for-myself diatribe about nothing. Surely we can do better, this month will bring better things. Why do we get so down, why do we hold the bad feelings tight against our chest until we feel our heart beating through them. Why can’t I just be happy? Is anybody really happy? Or is that just an illusion brought on by Big Sad™. I don’t know anything, and that is all—

TTFN,

Richard

6.25.25 Hey, who’s to say anything has changed

It is hard having a partner who you think is better than yourself. It makes you feel like they could always do better, like they are settling for you even despite their assurances that that is not the case. I think my problem is that I don’t think very highly of myself. I used to think I was better than other people. Now the opposite is true. I feel like I am worse off, that I don’t contribute much and even my good moods are fleeting and interludes to the crushing depression that seems to be always with me. Just saying that out loud makes me feel a little better. The first step is admitting you have a problem, right? I guess that might just be another junky credo to make us feel better and give us a touch of agency in the face of the things we can’t control. And there are so many of those, aren’t there?

I am so sensitive. It is a cross to bear. I feel everything deeply, and though that can be a beautiful thing it can also be an enormous burden, especially when the feelings are of inadequacy or insecurity. Like thinking your lover could do better, that she’s not attracted to you anymore, that you have lost the spark that made things fun in the early and exciting stages of the relationship. Now you live together, you spend every night beside her and you lie in bed in the night thinking that surely she could do better. But people seem to love you too. They say you’re smart, that you’re funny. Only you don’t feel smart because you can’t figure out how to make it from one end of the week to the other without feeling like you want to die, or that you don’t care if you die. Only that isn’t true, it only feels like the days are too long sometimes and that you are adding nothing to the world. That it wouldn’t be any different for anyone if you were gone. That is a sad, heavy feeling, and one that is with me more often than I care to admit, even as I admit it now.

It seems the only times you are confident are when you’re manic. Even alcohol seems to bring out insecurities now. Always feeling like you are not enough, that people are annoyed with you. And wanting to talk about it but feeling like that will only add to the problem. That they will be annoyed with you for not knowing your worth.

It is summer, finally. Seventy degrees and sunny. This is the kind of day off you dream of. A day to do the things you love and to enjoy every minute. Only I am quite a few minutes into my day and wondering if I enjoyed any of them. At least this feels constructive. This putting down of the pain into words. The world is a cruel and unusual place, and even released from the delusional fears of hellish outcomes that plagued me a year ago when this time of year rolled around, that election year stress that has amounted to not a lot. That is to say that my life hasn’t changed all that much with the regime change in Washington. Which is more than a good number of people can say, so maybe I should count myself lucky.

The dogs are barking at the neighbors’, but I do not mind. I see that other people have bigger problems than the ones I imagine. That should make me feel better but it does not. I see that people love me, I see that I have value. But still the doubt in which I placed my faith in, with the mantra “I place my faith in the certitude of doubt” on that long lysergic night all those years ago. The world collapsing, and expanding, the universe ending as my grandmother thinks God is going to enact soon, all of it means nothing to me. The world goes on, I am in the world. I am of the world and for the world. Certainly this must be better than if nothing existed at all, and in any case it does exist. And there are some cool things in this world, like wine, and golf. And soccer, and love, and kissing, and fucking. And birds, and trees, and people.

For people are not so bad even if they do suck a lot of the time. They are probably trying their best, or at least the best they know how to do. They are not perfect, but neither am I. And neither is the woman I love. She is busy, and often tired, and has some baggage. I have my fair share. It is no joke to have bipolar disorder in this year of our lord 2025. Perhaps that is the source of all the ill feeling. It is simply a chemical imbalance, and nothing more. Only it feels like cognitive distortions must play a role as well. Surely the things I think are not helping me. I wish I had the blind confidence that would bring me eternal happiness. Only that would surely come crashing down when met with adversity. And yet I have done nothing with my almost 34 years but written six books, none of which have met with any publishing success. Maybe there will come a day when I am a household name, but that sure seems far off.

The world turns, and I, bound by gravity to its surface, turn with it. I look out at the street where not even my car squats (it is in the shop). I am here in the hood without a vehicle, without the means for a quick jaunt downtown for my coffee. And today we are getting new living room furniture. Today we are looking out at the street and seeing only the reflection of ourselves in the glass. I am fat, and stupid, and have body odor. HA. Ha. There is much more to me than even I realize. Maybe the meds tone me down into something flat, something that while palatable for the people around me, isn’t what I’m meant to be. Only I don’t feel I have any choice in that at this point. The last time I tried to go off them was a disaster. Now I just look at the squirrels and birds and plants, the grass and trees and low lying creeping plants, and think that if I can make it just one more hour I will be a success.

Because persistence is our resistance. I really wanted to quarrel with my voices on that one. I am here churning out my hot garbage and it is nothing but creative genius in other quarters. Maybe I will never know success, and this is only for me. Maybe this is my shot at relative immortality, and these words will outlive me by many many years. I hope at least that I get through the twelfth year of this project, this green grasshopper diary that has kept me busy all these months. These interminable weeks made of days that have me wondering why I am so sad so often. I have good things in my life, I just do not trust that they are there to stay. It seems all things do indeed go, Sufjan, it seems that nothing gold can stay, Ron. And I don’t know if I’ve ever written a good short story. I don’t know if I’ve ever written a good novel. Certainly I need editorial help. Certainly something has to give.

Give me life, the sweet breath of life that keeps anxiety at bay. The sweet breath of baby as it catches in the throes of orgasm. The sweet breath of a baby nine months later as it exits the womb. Oh joy, oh how I wish I was well adjusted, but alas we must play the cards as they are dealt to us. How do we go about living when it seems that everything we value we hold by a tenuous thread of hope. Hope that they will not tire of us as we tire of ourselves. Hope that we can keep from stepping in it too often, that our little slips and things will not lead to devastating falls. Can’t we be happy, for a minute? Can’t we be happy, for an hour? How about a day, a week, a year? Is that too much to ask? Asking for a friend.

TTFN.

7.2.25 Another year and not any the wiser

Here we are, in the wee hours. The birds flit around the yard, doves near the lonesome rose on my neighbor’s side of the fence. I think I will have a good day. I am due for a good day. I want to smile a little more, though the last few days have not been bad, I suppose. Soon I will go get coffee and will shake off the chill that is bothering me at the moment. I’m tired, but I have been awake for awhile. Maybe it is the excitement of being another year older.

For that is exciting, to not have expired between this birthday and the preceding one. There is never any guarantee of that, though I know I have said that many times. I fear to become a broken record, repeating and repeating the same old platitudes as the years pile up behind me. 34 years old, and only sure that I know very little. Or at least very little of importance. I think, and therefore I am, but that is solipsism in a pointy veil. I think and therefore at least something exists, maybe. It could all be illusion. The mystics say it is, don’t they? And I was reading about Qi as an infrared electrical signal this morning. I am no master, I am no sage. I am just a man who is genuinely curious about the world. Who wants to be happy, and to see what he is meant to see. What is mine, will stay, I do declare.

Froghorn Leghorn said that. I look to the sky and see a seemingly endless blue. I do not remember the last time I looked up at the stars. I’m not trying to get ahead, or to figure it out. Some would say I am unmotivated. I would say I have found something like peace. Something like stability in the face of an endless madness that raged in me for a decade. And now, looking out at the windowless van across the street, at the cars and buildings and trees, I think I am grateful that I made it out alive. The world is a strange place, and the world we can imagine much scarier than the world that is. Not that the world that is isn’t scary, because it is. Just yesterday we lost track of a teenager when her phone died. Strange that now everyone knows where everyone else is all the time.

The world is much different than the one I was born into three and almost a half decades ago. Good golly, it has changed. Who knew that I would be a bonus dad to teenagers and thinking about becoming a dad for real. I think I am growing boring, and I am okay with that. I don’t want to be cool, I don’t want excitement. I want quiet, and smiles, and kisses, and love. Those are the things that make me feel like a rich man even though I do not have a lot of money. I am lucky to be alive, to be sane. There is no telling where I would be if I did not have such a wonderful network of support. Probably dead, honestly. And to think I quit cigarettes this year. It has been a journey, and with any luck I will be blessed with many more days.

Even when the days drag on and I wish it would all end, then I do not wish for what I wish. I think of the people who love me, I think of my reciprocal love for them. The world is a curious place, and I curious within it. Not wise, and not exactly stupid either. I see so many people living so many different ways and am happy I exist the way I do. My life is good, and that could change, I know it, but also it could get better. Or at least different. That is likely, even guaranteed. I look at the future and see only clouded glass. And the past the same. It leaps up and does not drown me. It lashes out at times in flashes of recollection that paralyze they are so piercing. I look to the present and see only the calm morning of my birthday. A day where I might break 80. Where I will have nice wine and a delicious dinner with the love of my life.

She is sleeping peacefully, as I could not as the morning dragged on. I figured this was a better use of my energies than scrolling on reddit. There are so many distractions but the distractions are all part of it. Everything that is is holy. I look to the street, to the long shadows cast by the rising sun. I look to the plants growing tall on the table. I look to the blankets piled high on the corner of the couch. The day is young. The air is cool and crisp. It is time for coffee. I love you all so much, I hope you have a day full of good news. I hope you have a year of the same. Up and up and up and up. Forget the bad things, love thy neighbor, Jesus at least got that right. God people are annoying, but I don’t care, I love them anyways. I love you all so much.

TTFN,

Richard

7.6.25 There’s a pain in my head and an ache in my side

Maybe that is a little dramatic. I do not want to whine. To Whinge. To sigh, to fathom, to despair. All of those things don’t quite match, but I should note that I am relatively happy. That things are better than they were a few days ago. That I’m feeling better about things, that we are getting along okay even despite the speedbumps along the way. For we are not perfect, we make mistakes, and then seize upon those mistakes sometimes as if they were the only thing that mattered. Alas, we are beyond, into the space of missing each other though we will be apart less than one whole day. It is a quiet morning here, with baby absent to be flitting around the house in her morning ways, with only myself for company as I watch the rain fall down outside.

The ceiling fan spins, the violins play on the speaker. I spew verbiage out onto the page and wonder if anything I have ever said means anything to anyone. There are great things to come, I can feel it, but I am not sure they are coming soon. You see, the world turns on its axis, it zooms in its ellipse around the sun, and I make no orbit. No, instead I fly like a bumblebee, up and down and around seeking out the substitutes for flowers that make up my reason for existing. Isn’t there a French phrase for that? I can’t remember, and anyway there is no reason I exist other than a sex act my parents performed almost thirty-five years ago. We continue on our rounds as if there was something driving us onward other than the seeking of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. It is these things that shape our habits, or at least most of us, for there are those rare birds that seek out pain and avoid pleasure. Que Strano!

When I look back on this week I am surprised that so much sadness cropped up. That I spent so much time wistful and blue. Wishing for a brighter birthday week, wishing for more joy than what I had. And that strikes me as silly. Why shouldn’t I just enjoy the extant joy? Why shouldn’t I cherish whatever feelings come, be they good or bad? For there was a time when I felt myself unable to feel. When I felt that emotion would never visit me again. I suspect I was just pouting. That I could in fact feel and I was just mad about being medicated. The wayward youth of a twenty-something who is mentally ill. And unwilling to be helped with his illness. Certainly there are a lot of those out there. This world is full of sick folks, ain’t it? This world is full of mad folks, though what it means to be mad is different to each mad soul.

There is no one way to be, as many have said and I simply repeat here, hoping against hope that you will know me to be something more than a repeater of platitudes. That I will add something to the discourse other than to say that there is really only one way to end up. That baby and I want to be ash scattered on the wind. Who knows what happens to your soul when you die? Is the soul just the electrical activity of your brain? Is it something more that allows humans to exist in so many different ways while they walk around this beautiful planet where the trees grow tall and the grasses grow green, greener still across the street where the hostas squat in the window box. Where the rain puddles in the gutters and splashes up with the descent of still more rain. This morning is boring, I have not a lot to say about how I have been feeling. This season has been dicey, this season has not been as fun as it deserves to be with the sun so close.

Alas we must deal with life as it is dealt to us. We must take what comes and not even bother to transmute it. Transformation comes most readily with acceptance. We see what is destroyed and rise from the ash as the rain washes it away. Let yourself rejoin the earth, let the elements reclaim what you have taken from them with your comedy of breath and heartbeats. Let the world know that you are willing to be reabsorbed into the whole, that you no longer require the separateness afforded to the living. And then once rejoined to the whole, the metaphor of heaven and hell, of being back in God’s arms, all of it will be insignificant to you who has ceased to exist individually. Finally something easy, something lucky, something free.

TTFN,

Richard

7.7.25 The crossing of swords as we are crossing the street

The wind in the tall grasses speaks to me, reminding me of my errors as I sit here, home sick from work (because I went in and then vomitted in the public toilet) and with nothing but the sunshine to keep me company on this warm afternoon. The errors, the errors, the things I shouldn’t have done but did. That seemed innocent to me and proved to be anything but. Oh how I need to think my actions through a little more it seems! Oh how I need to stay in my lane and let the days go by without me having done a thing. It seems more often than not that when I act I get myself in trouble. Can’t I just see in advance how these things will be taken, can’t I intuit the disconnect before it becomes a dissonance?

If I could do that I would be perfect. Instead I am stupid, and sitting here on this sunny afternoon feeling sorry for myself, for my actions, for the way I made my baby feel. I wish I could wrap her in these arms and make it all go away but it is not so simple. Last night we started the night in separate beds. That hurt, and then I had bad dreams. Nasty dreams that made me feel small and scared and alone in that double bed where we have spent so many nights together. She did come to bed but didn’t much care that I was there, at least it seemed. Things a little better in the morning but still the stupidity of my actions hanging over our day, our week. Why must I be dense, why must I do these little things that are not so little in her eyes. Why can’t I anticipate that they will not be taken as little things.

I guess I will have to do better. I guess I will have to think long and hard about what I am going to do and say at every juncture. For I have another’s feelings riding on my actions. Is there a greater privilege? Does anything matter more? I think not, and truly I am lucky to have one who cares. Even when I squander the good feelings and have to deal with anger and sadness. I am not one to rise to anger much so it always seems like it is my fault when we fight. Is she really so perfect or am I more willing to let things go. I think she is so perfect, does not do things that upset me, or at least I don’t find out about them. I don’t know, I am not perfect, that much is clear. I do stupid things, and am not even allowed to write them off as a momentary lapse of reason. No, they are taken as willful more often than not. When in fact they are just momentary stupidities.

I am rumored to be a smart person. I don’t often see much of that. I look around at the world baffled that any of it exists at all. I make my way through my relationship stumbling from one mistake to the next, always hoping that I can at least forestall my next misstep. Only I do a lot of things to make her smile in the interim. I am not so hopeless as to always be making mistakes, I just feel the weight of how much she cares each time I do, for the disruption to our harmony is greater than I wish it were. I wish we could laugh about the little things I do. I wish I would stop doing little things that upset her. I wish I wish I wish. I’m no good sometimes, but not through any bad intentions, I’m only paving a hellish highway with the way I handle myself. With the way I handle her, not with enough care sometimes.

I’m doing a bit better for having taken a nap, at least physically. I only hope she can forgive me, that she can trust I don’t need anything, emotional support or otherwise from any other women. That she can understand that she is my world, and that there’s no one else in the world whose opinion matters. I’m glad that she woke up beside me, that she let me pack her a lunch. That she kissed me goodbye. It is these small victories in the face of the great stupidity that allow me to keep going. That allow me to write this as if I had a way of fixing the mistakes I have made. As if I was able to be the perfect partner I can only imagine. I am sorry, and I am sad to have made you sad, my love. I am sorry you wanted to be alone last night. I am sorry if I made you feel you are not enough. You are everything, you are the thing that gets me through the day when I’m feeling like the day goes on too long. When I feel like giving up.

But I won’t give up, not on you, not on me. I will fight for the things I care about, which are few but the amount I care is not small. No it is a great and noble care that drives me on into the afternoon. It is a beautiful thing to love deeply and without reservation. To see you get up in the morning and smile at me makes my day complete before it even starts. To see you lie down to sleep beside me means I have done something right that day. I love you, I care more than I can express in words. I want to be a source of happiness, I want to never be the thing that causes pain. Maybe that is more than I can manage, but I know I have to do better than this past week. Need to be a better love for you lest you tire of me and move on to loneliness instead. I am tired and sad but not lonely. At least I have you coming home in a few hours. At least I will have a chance to talk to you about my stupidity. At least you are not gone forever.

TTFN,

Richard

7.9.25 New Year, one week on

What to make of the time spent in this year, time golfing, time at the lake! It has been a beautiful start even if there have been some bumps in the road. For what is the point of being alive if it is smooth all the time?! I think that I am glad to be alive and that I wish for this living business to go on for a long time. Of course I do, when times are good we want them to go on forever. And times are good, we have recovered from whatever issues we were having, at least for now. And for that I am grateful, eternally grateful that I have love in my life. For what is life without love? A shell of what it is with it, that much I am certain of.

And now as the wobbles set in, this tremulous mood that cannot be shaken off with mere vices. With mere meditation. With much of anything, these moods come and resist the attempts to right them. I am nothing without my moods, I am nothing without the weather in my mind. There is so much in this world to be sad about, and so much to be happy about as well. I think I will focus on the happiness, will inhabit my small little bubble of bliss and peace. While war wages all over the world I will focus instead on my life and the things that make me happy. For what else can we do other than resist the tyranny and so stick our necks out. I am too cowardly for that, too afraid that the big bad tyrant will find me in his gaze and bring down the fist of governmental retribution. So instead I make myself small, run with my tail between my legs, or rather carry on knowing that so far at least, government is not greater than God (what is).

For here on this little side porch with a cigar and the dregs of yesterday’s high noon, I shave an hour off my life and watch the sunlight dappling the leaves of the tall trees that are all around. The light does not reach me here in the corner yet and so the heat of the day is forestalled, or at least has not arrived yet. I look up at the clear blue sky and see the promise of tomorrow. Another day of this is all I ask for at the moment. And beyond that another week and another year. Small increments of future is all I can manage to want right now. Though certainly I do not want to leave baby alone in the world. I would like to outlive her if I can, which is possible but certainly not guaranteed.

There I go again with the not guaranteed business. The only thing guaranteed is the death (and the taxes, right?) that will come for me some day and make all of this moot. I think I dwell too much on the fact that my day too will come, and think I make it grow nearer too often with my inimical habits. Smoke and drink and sex. Though much less smoke than before, and less drink too. And the sex isn’t likely to catch up with me as I only have one partner. It is a beautiful world and I will enjoy every ounce of freedom that is afforded to me by this bright and sunshiny day. Golf and celebrating the 21st birthday of Tara’s son, on the town with the young kids and the beautiful babe who has so honored me with her company. Oh what a joy to be me, despite the low moods that plague me sometimes, the stable medium ups are worth every ounce of the summertime sadness.

This world is a beautiful place if you don’t mind the strife. If you don’t mind the hardship and the pain. The bombs in your upturned faces. And of course the smiling mortician. Oh Larry, what would we be without your wisdom, what would we be without your laugh. Laugh loud and hard boys, this day will not come again. This day is here for a fleeting knife edge moment of present and nothing more. Seize it, grasp its tiny heft in your hands and hold it tight. I am looking out at the future and knowing there is less of it than I desire. And knowing too that day by day is the way, the path to fortitude in the face of the bleak and hopeless big picture.

Maybe humanity will survive another few hundred years. Maybe a few thousand. It has been a long road to here and the road forward looks narrow and steep. I think I will not have to be around to deal with that. I think I will have to make it to the end of the day, maybe posting a low golf score, maybe not. Maybe maybe maybe. I think that the world is a nice place most of the time even if it is a bitch some other times. And with baby on my arm I can face anything. With love in my life any mountain can be summited. So I summon my strength and take the first steps up the trail. Onwards, ho! Onwards!

TTFN,

Richard

7.16.25 I don’t know why I am, the way I am

Here I go going to interrogate my personality. What makes me tick? Is it the simple pleasures I am always talking about? Is it something deeper and more subtle? I think it is the latter. I am more than a vessel for the inertia of not being yet dead. I think it truly is a love of this life that gets me through the bleak days when depression rears its hideous mien and stares at me from all the walls until I feel my skin crawl and my motivation freefall. Oh what a thing it must be not to suffer that burden. To think that some people are just happy, or at least not feeling hopeless and unwilling to take another step towards anything, except maybe the grave.

I have written a fair amount about the suicidal itch in here. I think it bears mentioning that there are no second acts in American life. I am all that has brought me here, all the pain and misery, all the joy and hope. There may be no second act but I seek not to become Jay Gatsby, do I? I don’t want to be rich with closets full of beautiful shirts that my long lost love can toss to the floor in order to satisfy her whimsy. To have libraries full of books I haven’t read. I see the world crumbling every day and yet it all goes on as if it weren’t ending. Maybe it isn’t, maybe it is just another phase of existence for us. Maybe this society isn’t so fragile as to be nothing more than a social contract. Certainly there are a lot of moving pieces, but maybe that lends to the stability more than to the frailty of our systems of living. I am just thinking out loud.

So yes, no second acts, but I am in my third act, truly. I went through the “successful” adolescence when I excelled in school while always pining for something more to make it all feel worth it and not just what I was “supposed to do”. How many youths jet through the first eighteen years of life on a track of “should be doing” without investigating anything deeply? It can be said that that is a simpler way to be, I suppose, but the reality of inquiry, if it catches them, or they catch it, I suppose, will shake the foundation of everything that has formed the foundation of their existence. And then they will have a crisis. That was my second act. The madness, and the floundering with the downstream beliefs inculcated by the manias, about being a secret agent man, and stealing the nuclear codes, and building a quantum computer. Thank God none of that was true.

For my life is once again simple, or at least relatively simple. I have a love, I strive to make her happy. I have a job, I do my best. I have my art, and though that seems to come sporadically, other than these inquiries into value that I don’t know if anyone will ever care to read, I still have it. I am not as diligent with the writing as I should be. I don’t exercise as much as I should. I love to golf, and truly, to write, but trying to wrap my head around a work of fiction is something that I don’t have a lot of space for upstairs right now. Maybe one of the finished ones will catch on. Maybe I will get a book deal, and will be able to go to part time work so that I still have money coming in but can focus a few days a week on my next book. Is it going to be the mystery I have started, in a first person narrative style with guitar licks for chapter titles? Who knows, I think I have a long way to go before I can figure out how to do that.

Anyways, it is another beautiful day in Petoskey, and for that I am grateful. That I get to golf with my dad (one of the great joys of my life, to play with my father) only ices the cake. One day both of us will be gone and with any luck I’ll bear a son to carry on the name. I have had a lot of delusions about my son, that he will be someone other than a brand new person whose worldview I will have an undue influence on. Of course he will be brand new, reincarnation is a trick to get you to live well, and to get you to not focus too dearly on the suffering this unjust world inflicts upon us all. Hopefully I live long enough to see my son marry, or my daughter marry, should it turn out to be a girl. That is my goal, but first I must have a child, musn’t I?

It is a bit premature to think about any of that. I must quit smoking. Cigarettes, cigars. I need to put tobacco on the shelf and leave it there. Or else my baby will outlive me by thirty years and will take how many lovers beyond me! Oh gosh, that that is the concern, surely when I am dead I will care nothing for who she sleeps with. It just bothers the living ego to think of her with anyone else. And to think that I know she could have nearly anyone she wants while I am living. The burdens of being with a beautiful woman I suppose. And beauty she be! I see her rise in the morning and want to hold her tight! When we lie down to sleep I want to be with her forever. Or at least what that means to me, as I once wrote.

For forever is not infinite, as even the universe will die. I will be long buried by then, or rather my ashes long scattered. I hope I do not leave Tara alone. I know she loves me, as I love her, and I would have her die before I would leave her to face the world alone. I have been alone much of my life, while she has always been married, for the most part. This is a fruitless discussion. It does not matter, we do not get to choose. I can only choose to marry her and have a child should the biology allow it. Oh lord I have gotten a long way from interrogation of self, or have I?

Is not the thought of how you would like your lover’s life to be an interrogation of self? Is not the outlining of the things that get me out of bed in the morning a way of telling you what is important to me? Is my job, one that many would consider dead end, and maybe one that I even consider that, my reason for existing, or is it the love of my love and my family? Surely that question is easy to answer. Do I exist to write or do I write because I exist? Surely again the latter. So these queries get more and more inane with each passing sentence. I think I will cut this short, will look up at the sky and hope the wind blows my troubles like the clouds above: Away, Away!

And to those of you looking for me to go deeper, I will. I will talk about some of the traumas that made me, my first and second acts. The things that are always with me even when I have buried them out of reach of day to day operations. For they are always with me, beneath the surface, giving empathy to those who maybe don’t deserve it. What a laugh, everyone deserves empathy. Even me when I misbehave. Oh gosh, Oh golly, Oh GEE. Where was I going, are we there yet? I think so, I think that the world looks down on me and laughs. And I laugh right along, wishing only for a song to sing.

TTFN,

Richard

7.19.25 The world spins madly on

I don’t even like that song. I don’t like a lot of things in this world. Active dislike, as opposed to passive lack of like. I guess that is just my nature. Only there is also the passive lack of like. There aren’t many things that really start my engines, so to speak. That get me excited, that is. Because I am a cool cucumber most of the time. I let the world slide by and don’t engage too much with all the static. I don’t know if that is good, or otherwise. I try not to think too hard about the value of things. Certainly things exist as they do without our value judgments, and I’m content to let the neutral world devoid of human bias be. Because things exist regardless of what we think of them, that much I know for sure.

There is a lovely lack of sunshine today. There I go with the value judgments, if they are counterintuitive. You see I do not like all the things that other people like. In fact what other people like means very little to me. I’ve got my wine, I’ve got my woman, I’ve got my books and my pencils, and I keep them sharp. I’ve got everything I need to make my way in the world, even if I’m not sure what I want to be. Even if the potential of myself is limited by the scope of my stilted imagination. I do not see a path to anything but frivolous happiness, and that does not disturb me.

You see, the world is silly, in that it is overly serious. It thinks that we as humans are individually and collectively important. We are tiny, tiny tiny, and what matters to us matters only to us. Even God is indifferent, being of course only what is. I saw something that Chat GPT told someone that the biggest human misunderstanding was that we didn’t matter, indicating that we did because we were the universe experiencing itself or some gobbledygook. What Chat GPT fails to realize in that equation is that the universe doesn’t matter either. It can be beautiful and wondrous and enormous and even all that there is and still not matter. And yet things do matter. We care to do as well as we can. What makes it not matter is that we cannot judge what is right. We can think we know and find out that we were wrong. Or we can willfully do what is wrong, and find ourselves flirting with evil. Only retrospect gives us any idea that our actions were even consequential.

We make choices, those choices lead to consequences. We live with the consequences and make more choices. More consequences. All the way in a branching tower of babeliciousness (read babel, not babe) that leads invariably to the grave. We miscommunicate, we make actions, we wonder if the choices we made were right. We will never ever know, because we can only choose and then hope, or pray if that is your bent. Some would argue that we never even choose, that the universe is deterministic and all the dice were cast in advance. In which case it really doesn’t matter.

Not that I am a nihilist. I care deeply about humans and about the humans I care about especially. I hope we can figure this all out, and find a way to a future where harmony and peace reign supreme. But I also don’t have much hope of that, being a realist. We are more divided than we have ever been. We look at the other side of the political spectrum and see lunatics. It makes me apolitical to see the fervor with which people get up in arms over what the other side is doing. The reality is that the ruling class are the wealthy, who care mostly about maintaining their wealth. For wealth is power in capitalism. And most of it is held by very few. And I have no plan to change that. I have no qualms with a plan to change that. The government is inefficient, but gutting it is no solution either. I don’t know, we’re probably fucked.

On that note, I’m going to get on with my day. To leave these ruminations, these cud-chewing thinking exercises that get me nowhere, to the birds. They chirp outside my window. Certainly they are wiser than I. Oh to set aside the delusions of years past and deal with a world that exists, as opposed to one I imagine. I am lucky that my imagination has wilted. I am lucky that I no longer fantasize the ridiculous things that made my life very exciting and also terribly horrific. I’m glad that my life is now boring and predictable. May I never be blessed with an interesting life. Thank the lord. (What is.)

TTFN,

Dickie