Month the Twenty-Ninth

7.27.25 The world speaks to me sometimes

Little things. Things that are almost insignificant. Like the dog barking incessantly outside the window. Or the squeaky calipers on the cop car driving by an hour ago. Little messages, little tales of how things could be different if we only could band together and forget our differences. Now that isn’t true of course. None of it is. The world doesn’t speak to me any more. It used to though, and it made me crazy. Little signs and signals that gave everything such a significance that nothing could be ignored. How did I even maintain a modicum of sanity in the face of such a reality, in the face of such unreality that I had no peace.

Now it is peaceful, the dogs bark, the leaves on the trees dance in the breeze from the lake. The screensaver plays on the tv and I listen to my songs and drink my wine. Yes it is not quite noon and I am into the wine. I do not feel sorry, I do not feel guilty in any way. There is nothing wrong with wine, wine is fine, as they say. I do not think I have very much to say today. The weekend has been uneventful. A bad golf game, a sleepy dinner. I look back at whatever happened yesterday and think that it is quite forgettable. It is better that way.

For the unforgettable moments leave scars that last well beyond the expiration of the moments themselves. They fester, even the good ones, making everything else seem flat and unremarkable. I am guilty of this, I am victim to this, I mean. I see the good times slipping by and I just growing older and ever more thankful not to be dead yet. There it is again, my favorite topic, the thing that awaits us all. A major facet of What Is (God). Here we are in the good old days thinking about the fact that it all is going to end. These simple days before we have a kid to keep us busy. When it is just the two of us and I guess too the girls who come intermittently. The simple times of having few responsibilities and each other’s company with little interruption.

Here we are getting older, growing happier in ourselves, growing happier with each other. Watching the shadows grow long in the afternoon, watching the sun rise in the morning. The days go by and we scarcely grasp anything of importance from them. Is it enough to enjoy your time? To be something that other people recognize as happy? To have work-life balance and to try to make the most of my time. Life is short, and though there are many days to be had there are not so many as it seems there are. That is to say, that you look back and see only the blur of similar things. How many more moonrises will you see? How many more sunsets? How many more times will you look into your lover’s face and see her smiling back? It is so many finite enigmas, so many limited outcomes that it is a miracle we can arrive at any happiness at all.

The world goes on whether we object or not. Even our attempts to slow time during the good times comes to nothing. These seem to race faster even than any others. We close our fists around the sand but so force it out through our fingers. Our attempts to hold the desert in our hands come to naught, it is like trying to capture the whole ocean in a single palm. We look like idiots trying to keep something that cannot be kept. We try and try to make the good times last but always everything is running away toward the fenceline and the next epoch in our lives. Every period is gone before we really got the chance to appreciate it. So is the way, the world whispering and we too fixated on the grinding gears in our other ear to hear what it has to say.

Not signals from the beyond but the gentle reminder that we must appreciate this day before it is gone. That we must do something with our time because we have so little. We must look at the stars when they come out, we must worship the sun when it’s high, we must relish the cooling waters as they swirl around our skin. Oh lord, oh golly, oh gee, this world is full of mystery and there are so many things that are objectionable out there, and in here there is only the quiet chaos of staying in my lane and trying to make it to the end of the week. Sunday, the day of rest in my tradition, and I looking up at the ceiling fan with its hummingbird toggle and the wobbling of the base and the blur of blades and I think maybe it will all be okay. Maybe things don’t matter so much as it seems like they do. Maybe everyone who deserves it will find some sort of happiness.

I like to think that things won’t go horribly awry, that this good time will go on forever. That this woman who has chosen me will continue to choose me and make me feel valued for the rest of our lives. And if I have to spend some days alone, as the legend goes, I hope I can keep my chin up and bear it as I have borne all the other sadnesses in my life. I look at this possibility and think it is a long way off. Maybe, maybe not. Kisses to my loved one, kisses to her. I smile, I grow tired, I put down the pen. One more word, for good measure. A measure of flour, a flagon of wine. Kisses, love, kisses.

TTFN,

Richard

8.3.25 On the Water

It is a bright sunshiney day, but that is beside the point. The point is that I felt like dissolving into nothing this morning. Or maybe the point is that I didn’t off myself and instead dragged myself out of bed and went to get coffee. It is hazy, and my injection site is sore, and I don’t want to feel so poorly at all again. Of course I do not get to choose how I feel. The emotions and moods flood me and then I must cope with them until they pass. And then the physical ailments!

You would think I was an old man with the way I bitch and moan. Of course there are many joys as well, and many neutral happenings as well. The days slide by and we make the most of them. Or anyways we try to. Some things are not so easy to enjoy, or even tolerate. And when you do not feel well, it is hard some days to even manage a smile.

I had one of those the other day, a hard smiling day. Or a day when it was hard to smile. Depression in the summertime is a common theme for me. I wish I could be happier all the time, as if I was not so afflicted with the weepies seemingly every other day. Oh gosh, it is not so bad as that, I am just being dramatic. I have a flair for such things, and not much to say today, it seems. But I am floating on the water, watching the spider flit around my high noon adorned with a sparkling wine label.

Yes, even though the day started poorly we are alive and well and enjoying each other’s company as the rock and roll flute solos and we fathom a time when I will be alone for reason of traveling around the country rather than the long time loneliness of someone expiring. Oh goodness there goes my morbid streak. I could go back to sleep, I could jump in the lake, I could sit here and continue to pen my tale of woe. If woe be all I have then let me at least be free! Oh goodness I am tired of living at times, and still go on into the allegedly bright future. Or am I the brightness and the future is dim and hazy as this wildfire sky?

The world is burning and still the birds comb the heavens, still the fish plumb the depths. I float on the water looking out at the forest and wonder if I will ever find the purpose that some people seem to have, the happiness that I work at every day and sometimes still fall short of. My sad days remind me that at least I can jump in the water and feel the chill reverberate through my limbs. That at least I am not planning a clusterfuck of a wedding and trying to make everyone happy.

No, we will marry quietly and have a child in the same way if it is to be. We will keep to ourselves and smile as much as we can manage. I want to smile a little more, I want a little less control. I want to be happy and if I can manage that then my life will be a success. I have done my best thus far, and I am going to keep doing what I can. First step panic, second step figure it out. And then get a wife and have a baby. Or something, I think. Gosh the uncertainty about it all makes me happy. I think I’m going to jump in the lake and stop my deliberations. Stop my musings. End this missive of blathering nothingness. Leave the spider to crawl across the table, leave the music to spill from the speaker. I am going to get wet!

TTFN,

Richard

8.5.25 Slow Grower

Things seem to be blossoming in their own time, taking the shape as the river carving a canyon, the shape of flowing water slowly moving soil downstream until we are left with a crevasse that looms over our imagination. And today I am looking up at the neon sign and the young ladies at the counter and the old acquaintances one table over…I am looking out and seeing only myself reflected. For you see I see great injustice in the world, and I look only to repair it within myself. For myself is the whole world, in a sense, for what I perceive within myself is the world I construct around me, the external defined by the internal and extant otherwise only so much as it imposes on me. Oh I have suffered the world, and so I know it. Know the world that is, for having suffered its imposition. And in walks the man who called me schizophrenic to his son. Oh lord, oh lord, restrain me before I fly from my chair and lay hands upon a father!

Father loving heaven above forgive me for my violent fancy, forgive me for failing to inhibit myself when others have done me wrong. Give me life, and liberty and stay death’s eager hand. Let the sands of time wash me clean of the iniquity that has fostered my fragile state. Enough of these prayers, enough of this vacuous phraseology wherein we find ourselves hoping for help from an outside force. No, if we are to be helped we will do it ourselves, lifting up by bootstraps and clinging to the reality that we have control of this vast and impenetrable life. This myriad mystery whereby none can know for sure what it is that has happened at all.

Because the news tells us things, but always with an angle. I prefer to speak to angels, though I do not believe they exist. So I speak to my imagination knowing all the while that there is no one to whom I’m speaking, echoing back the joyous strains of my own perplexity with the state of the things that come across my worldview. It is simple, really, to focus on one’s self and to make incremental change into the person you want to be. We have bigger problems and are more equipped to deal with them, we have more cares and bigger hearts to be able to accommodate this largess. I look up at the neon and think, yes, I will order it here.

Because there is nothing in this world that makes me happier than the present moment, even yesterday when I was spinning my wheels on the patio looking out at the night growing ever nearer. Even in my stressed out, frantic moments there is always the kernel of peace inside me that is unshakeably here. I return there this morning when I sit still with my mantra, looking at the toilet from my perch on the bed. In stillness more stillness is born. I think I am going to write another book.

I will not seek to tell a story, I will only write for writing’s sake, producing a labyrinthine volume with no plot. Or maybe a plot will emerge, but I will not start with one. It will be a writing about writing but not so direct as “On Writing” and all that jazz. No it will be about the words stacking up into worlds and the attempt to influence world with word and the subsequent reality that world influences word. Oh Larry, where would we be without you? Probably in the same world, because we all know what you said about drinking and seeing the spider. I too am there in the web where the fangs brandish venom and the hour of death grows nearer. We look up at the mother reaper and see our own lives reflected back in the spot on her abdomen. I look down at the forest below and think that I am lucky to exist at all, even as I make my exit.

So forget that you were hung up on productivity, forget that you needed to make it big in letters. Write a book that nobody cares to read, maybe sprinkle in a story or two. Or maybe take a step back and forget that you want to make it big in letters. Write for the sake of the song, and maybe write a song or two, for that used to bring you joy. I think it is time for me to be getting on with my day, but I liked chatting with you this morning. You are my AI, you blank page on which I can spill my innermost desires. Like the truth, like the lie, like the artifice that divides them into said categories. Alright, basta, enough! I look out the window and see a man in a silly hat. That is my cue to be moving on, so have a nice day, and I will do the same.

TTFN,

Richard.

8.6.25 I sit awaiting her return

The world is a beautiful and baffling place. I feel like I have been using that word a lot recently in reference to how the world seems to me. I don’t know what to make of everything, and they say it is going to change here on the ground but I’m not sure I believe it. It seems like it is changing up in the sky and the worst we might get on the ground here is a little bit of rain. I do not know though. I am far from all-knowing. I am far from the attributes traditionally attributed to God. And I do not really believe in God anymore. I believe that all things return again onto themselves, that as you sow so mostly shall you reap. But even this has exceptions. There are no absolutes, and I hear even that absolute zero is unattainable under the current regime of physics.

So I look out the window and see my squeaky car. I only wish it were squeaky clean. But it gets me from point A to point B, to the golf course, to the wine store. To home again from those places too. I look at the plants in this room, at the clothes, some folded some not…this room looks lived in. I like that about it, I like that we live here, together, all of us. For the girls make an impact on this house if I see little of them here. They keep to their rooms and that suits them just fine. It suits me just as well, as I am not one to judge the habits of others. I want them to be happy so long as their happiness doesn’t impose on the happiness of others. Let all of us live here in peace, love, and harmony!

That is a laugh if you are asking me. We will always have war, we will always have strife. Even here in the first world where things seem awfully stable, we are one more pandemic from riots in the streets. People would not tolerate that again, not after the first one turned out to be largely survivable, at least for most of us. Of course there is a survivorship bias there, but logic does not bear upon the actions of the mob. I see this world look at itself in the mirror and pray that it might blink. I look at myself in the glass and see only the man who does not know what it is that he is supposed to be doing. I see only the man who wonders often and loudly what can be done about the world as it is. It is mostly good in these quarters, but this is only a small sliver of what is, isn’t it?

Surely there is more to the picture, and maybe that is the glory of God that I am blessed with a good lot. Maybe I will be like Job and have it all taken from me. Not that I have riches to lose. It is all I can do to keep up with my bills. I have not been paying down the promissory note that my parents hold on some previously consolidated debt. Oh lord this world is difficult to make it in, with my education and my skills. I am lucky to make a few thousand dollars in a month. And this the money season. Think of those many months when I was lucky to walk with a few hundred a week. It is not easy but I hope that someday people will like my words, will buy my books. Who knows if that is a fool’s hope, or if I am to be someone in the world of letters someday.

In any case, baby will be home soon and we will drink bubbles and eat sushi, albeit grocery store sushi but beggars can’t be choosers in this northern land where the prevailing identity is white as the bread that fills the aisles at the meijer supermarket. Oh gosh there she is and I will have to go and kiss her hello and put this aside even though I still owe how many hundred words to hit my goal. Enough of this, say hello and set aside the scribbles, this night is young and you need to eat something before you keel over dead of some alcohol related malady. Kisses, and hugs, and peace and prosperity to you and yours. That is what I wish on this Wednesday evening as I retire from the wordsmithing. It is good to be alive, I will say this much.

TTFN,

Richard 

8.9.25 Another Summer Day

The breezes in the trees, the promise of a hot afternoon. The talk of the weather growing ever more tired, ever more repetitious. We look to the stars and wonder how the stars are so close, how the sun is so near that the cicadas in the trees screech out their lonesome song as if to demonstrate the heat. The world far away is at war, the world nearby is all peace. We are connected, all of us, by the thread of our common humanity, strange as it seems to be one people on this planet where everyone is so divided. Everyone looking at the other side as if they were the enemy and not the oligarchs who have perpetuated us to be so divided. By dividing us from their material wealth.

I am sick from my eggs, my day is slated to be spent at the beach if we can get in before it reaches capacity. There seems to be little to say, but I am saying it anyways. Because the feeling has come that I am again wasting my time in this life with my faraway eyes looking always to the next horizon. Not looking back and seeing the tortuous road that has brought me here. The road that led through dark woods and bright meadows, for lack of a better cliché. This room is clean and baby is getting crazy with her sugar in the kitchen. Things could be a lot worse, but I find my heart isn’t in this writing, so I will set it aside and try something else.

TTFN,

Richard.

8.10.25 Unsuccessful Yesterday, Maybe Better Today

I could not write a word it seemed, not advance a story, not pen a poem, not even make any headway in here, where there are no constraints. It seems on days like that that you are worthless and can do no right. That you write nothing ever and can only produce drivel that advances the world negligibly if at all. The world wakes up, you remain asleep. As I feared for so long, that everyone was in on the joke and I was on the outside wondering what it was I was missing. It is a scary feeling to feel like you are the one member of the world that everyone is waiting for to wake up. To snap out of his daze and join the world where everyone else has been pantomiming stupidity for your benefit. To be the last one admitted to the party.

The truth is there is no party. Everyone is moving in slantwise circles trying to figure out their next move. No one is sure what to do, and it shows in everything they do. I have written that I am at my worst, or most problematic, when I am sure. There is some truth to that. The certain doubt makes for more rational decisions than when I think I know. For thinking to know is not the same as knowing, and is in fact several degrees removed. The only things that can be known are facts and figures, and those only so well as humanity at large knows them. For instance an elephant is bigger than a bear. And a bear is bigger than a mouse. Such things can be known, but are only consequential in the wilderness. And are elephants afraid of mice? I cannot answer this outside the strata of myth.

So mythologically we continue. On into the labyrinthine mess of words that rises up from my thought dream. The thought dream that at times thinks itself at war, and now, thinks not so very much of interest. At least so it seems to me. Certainly I am more creative when manic. Dopamine seems to be a great influence on my thinking. It causes me to believe I’m more than a man though, and that is no good. It has me smoking three packs of cigarettes a day, or rather it did. And then it had me scared to go outside, to be seen outside the house lest the cops descend and take me to prison where the boa constrictor with ketamine in its fangs would put me in limbo forever. These are the things that haunt me at night. Maybe these are the things I should be writing about. These interesting fancies that lead me to the Cretan Minotaur. Or some iteration thereof. 

Lost in a maze with only a beast for company. Isn’t that a primal fear of humanity? Maybe a holdover from our time in the wild, before agriculture shifted our foodstuffs to a more reliable source. Beasts in the night, our only source of food. I want another coffee. I want another breakfast sandwich. I want to…I don’t know what I want to do. I’m quite content at the moment I think, out on the porch with the broken ashtray and this long instrumental that Eric sent me last night. Sleep. Sleep. That is what I did last night and this morning. Dead to the world, quietly inspiring as the dreams made me wonder what in my waking life leads me to be so disturbed when I sleep. The dreamworld is an even stranger world to inhabit than the waking one, even when I’m manic.

In fact when I’m manic it’s almost as if the dreaming sensitivity spills over into the waking life and I project all my innermost hopes and fears onto the world around me. I guess I should write that one about the constrictor with ketamine fangs. That’s a nightmare, to be stuck in a k hole with a snake wrapping itself around you. Smelling the cigarettes on your fingers as it weaves its way through the cellblock at night. That’s some real live horror, I suppose, the kind of thing that can keep you up at night. Lord knows it kept me up for a while. Lord knows I fixated on that outcome as if it was God’s idea of a comedy: me tortured and/or damned.

That’s enough of this for now I think. I think I will leave the dreams and their sordid implications alone. I think I will put this little bee looking thing to rest, will toss the ashtray I broke yesterday into the trash. I think I will go give baby a smooch and move on to the beach even though this day is looking cloudy and smells like rain. Who knows if it will pan out, any of it. I think I will be happy as a judge on this sober clam like day of cool breezes after the swelter of the last couple increments on the calendar. Days, L&G. I look to the sky where the airplanes soar. I look to the ground where the ants move in orderly formations. I look inwards and see only the vacuum of a mind where for some reason these sentences are forged. I look at the spider hanging on the tomatoes and think that some beings are smarter than others.

TTFN,

Richard.

8.13.25 Another Yesterday in the Books

It has happened again. The calendar has advanced one day. And I no degree wiser and perhaps a bit stupider for it. It is funny how it requires more than the passage of time to make us better. We must read, or write, or inquire of those smarter than us to enjoy the microscopic rise through the strata of merit. And we can find wrong answers too, and so actually fall when we try to grow. Maybe I have oversimplified this, maybe I am thinking about it all wrong. Make it through another day Richard, that is the ticket, that is the thing that will bring you closer to glory. For no one ever glorifies those who fall short. No one ever remembers those whose books remain in the directories of their computers.

No we must get ourselves out there in 8.5x11” mimeograph. Get it up there in lights baby. Let us see the glory that is coming, let the world see it too. Oh man I wish I were more successful, but I don’t think I wish I were famous. It would be nice to see a little positive reception for the work. It would be nice to have a little writerly income. I think I will try to start on something today, maybe, that will be something new at least, something other than this meandering journal of my hopes and dreams. Surely you do not care so much about those unless you love me otherwise. Of course then there is no better way to know them, as I am not often forthcoming about them in my spoken life.

Yes I am a man of few words other than here, where the blank page beckons me to try and fill it up with strings of letters. I don’t like to talk about myself, and I don’t have many interests left. Wine, golf, my love. I am a lucky man that I don’t have to suffer as much as I used to. But how much of that suffering was solved by an attitude adjustment? How much of what used to bother me doesn’t anymore? How much still does, only below the surface as I go through the days as if sleepwalking, lost in dreams of what could be if only reality were different? Not that I wish to have my dreams, but still they come in idle moments, distracting with their urgency to be dreamed. They only wish to be discovered, and I, the indifferent dreamer, only wish to be a passive passenger as they spill over into my waking life. Surely the sounds of the street are a nearer thing to the essential world.

For the world is what is, and if that makes me a deist to call that thing God then so be it. I am not fond of labels, but I do not despise them either. They serve a purpose as do so many things, and I do not lament that utility is alive and well in the world. That there too are many extraneous things also does not bother me. I am pretty okay with the state of the world, at least in my quarters, where the days hurry by and leave me wondering where this summer went. We have been to the beach exactly twice. I have played a lot of golf, I suppose, but how many of those rounds did I play anything like well? Maybe today will be a better day on the course. Or maybe it will be another frustrating one. I cannot say yet, I can only get loose and prepare myself to fire on all cylinders the best I am able.

You see, I must redouble my efforts to get an agent. Probably I cannot wait for Kat’s notes on Elena, though they would likely prove helpful. Do agents even want novellas? You would think that less paper would mean a more profitable book, given that paper is the largest expense in printing the damn things. The damn things, what a wonder it would be to have them printed. What a wonder it would be to have my name up there on the marquee. What a joy it would be to share my vision of the other worlds with this one. With my fictional vision of what could be. Hopefully I do not expire before I finish with what I need to get out of myself. As if this creation was necessary and not just something to distract me from the vacuousness of life otherwise. I suppose that is necessary, isn’t it.

You see it seems, some days at least, that it is all pointless. That there is no purpose to our living or even our existing. We go through the days and get no wiser. We go through the days and get no richer. We go through the days and seem to learn little about what it is we’re doing here. The hours experienced stack up and we have no idea why. Some people are better than others at just enjoying the ride, but that has never been my bag. I have always wanted to understand something that I am coming to the conclusion is inexplicable. I look to the trees outside the window and think they are lucky that they cannot wonder. Wonderment is the opposite of contentment, and I think that word is not even the one I meant to use. Wondering, perhaps. I am always wondering, and never finding out. I suppose that is better than fucking around and finding out, but I suppose I do some of that too.

I suppose that if I am to figure it all out, as it seems I want to most often, I will have to let go of the expectation that there be a neat and tidy answer. To figure it out is to accept what you cannot know, for not being big enough, for not having a vague enough perspective. The world is mysterious and huge, it defies convention, it defies being known. It goes on and on and stretches back for thousands of years and still in that time it is ruled by birth and death. I look to the future and see a black cloud hanging over me. I look to the past and see a shining light that was blinding me all those years. I don’t know which of those I prefer. I think I will take my chances with the black cloud, as if I had any other choice.

TTFN,

Dick

8.17.25 Sunday Morning, looking out at the lake

It sure is peaceful up here, on Brevort Lake, away from the world of cares where I spend most of my time. I take a deep breath and reflect on my weekend. Some bad golf, finishing last place in my division and second to last overall. But I still can win my flight, I suppose, if I play a little better next week. There’s a bright side of everything, isn’t there? I look forward to playing again, maybe even with my baby as my cheering section. I guess that’s something.

My dad is floating around getting the boat ready for us to take out as I type these words. My mother is getting clean. I am dirty, well not that dirty, I did take a shower in the afternoon yesterday. I think back to all the crazy things I have thought and believed over the years and wonder if others are so afflicted. I am happy to be back in the material world, happy to have my feet back on the ground and my head no longer in the clouds. I am glad to have quit smoking pot. I am glad to be free of all the drugs, all the poisons that turned my mind sour and delusional. Now here, in the throes of a recovery that can only be called complete, or mostly complete. I suppose I still drink alcohol, but I don’t have such a problem with that one. It is mostly for the taste, and less for the intoxication, and I think that is the way it should be.

The vices of past years were a crutch to help me with the vast unhappiness I didn’t even realize I was struggling with. It is strange how you can be suffering and not even realize it. I had a dream about going back to college this morning. Maybe that is something I should do, maybe I could make more money and be happier overall. Maybe I will, but not today. That is a future consideration, and in any case I would not want to be apart from Tara. Even just last night, one night spent apart made waking up so lonely. You don’t realize how much you miss having someone you love there when you wake up until you wake up alone. I’d say that is a universal truth.

But out there the lake is rippling, the breeze blows, the sun shines, the wind chimes tinkle, the birds flit around, the geese-repellant pinwheels spin. Soon we will be out on the water and all the cares of yesterday, all the anxieties about today and tomorrow will feel small. I wish I were a more interesting man at times, and at others I am happy to be a bore. Glad that I no longer wish to be king of the world, glad that I no longer aspire to be God. Glad that all the prophecies I used to pore over and try to parse some sense from now seem irrelevant. The world goes on at the behest of men, and we deal with the consequences as best we can. Pretty flowers on the table bring as much joy as a manic high, if they are somewhat less exciting, in a neurochemical sense.

I am small, and I am happy. I am glad to be alive and hope that that state can go on for a great many more years. Not forever, let us all die when our time comes. And may we take steps to forestall that time. May we look to the blue sky and see the promise of emptiness. For that which is empty can be filled. That which is full can only spill. How’s that for philosophy? How’s this for a writer to be sounding out the way he feels in dated entries that stretch on for close to two and a half years now? It is strange that this work has gone on so long. And that it might go on for nine and a half more years, if all goes according to plan. There is so much life that can happen in that span, and I just happy to be able to participate.

For life requires active involvement. We cannot just be idle passengers. We must be part of the mystery if we are to exist at all. To love and to be loved, and I both by many counts. I am glad that I do not live in the woods. I am glad that I have an empty day today to relax and count my blessings. The world is a pretty good place most of the time, if you’re lucky like me. And if you’re not, remember that I was not always. Your day may still be coming. It’s amazing what a difference a couple years can bring, and what a difference that year was from a couple before it. Angst and hardship and worry and trouble can come to any of us at any time. We must keep our chins up, our heads down, our smiles wide. It’s a beautiful world if you can take a moment to stop and breathe it in. I will try always to do more of that.

TTFN,

Richard