Month the Twenty-Sixth

4.19.25 Wedding today, Easter tomorrow

As I sit here and listen to sad songs, I wonder why I am the way I am. Surely it is all the things I have experienced that have made me this way, but surely too there is some essence of me that remains unchanged by all the different experiences. I must have an essential self, but why then is it a stranger to me? F. Scott Fitzgerald ended his first novel with the phrase “I know myself, and that is all—”, and he was just a twenty something punk when he wrote that line. So why is it that the way that I am remains mysterious as I enter the middle section of my thirties? Already with the questions Richard, already with the queries that come when you have had too much coffee. Or maybe they come regardless, maybe you are just a curious creature who poses questions to himself lest he leave a stone unturned.

Am I anxious from too much coffee, or from something else? Is Tara in the shower, and I on the couch listening to sad songs? That was an easy affirmative, and we in my sister’s house in the suburban lands. I’m bored of myself today, and anxious, and self-conscious, and just want to be on with the day. I would love to have some champagne this afternoon but I doubt it is in the cards. I will settle for a sandwich, for relief from my itchy scalp. I’m sorry if this is dull, I feel like a brick thrown through a window at this moment: made of stone but still capable of busting up a perfectly good day. Why does the malaise strike most often in the morning, can’t I enjoy the early part of the day when I rise to greet it?

Alas it is the way it is, and I am stuck with it. I am stuck with many things in my life, but most of them are pretty good, I suppose. I am not unhappy most of the time. That is enough.

4.20.25 Morning after car ride

Here we are headed north, the blessed motherland of this young man who shook a tailfeather last night to the hit parade at what was the most fun wedding I’ve been to in a while. Now I know that I am in love, and that I am glad she is driving so I can perform my ablutions. Of course I am not actually bathing in the car, just watching the miles fly by as I race the battery on this macbook to its end. My I am tired, ready to sleep, but we need to go home and make dinner for the kiddos, celebrate the Easter even though the party we were planning on fell through. It has been a strange week, and I not a stranger to being strange. 

I see the rushes in the ditches and smile at the sun shining all around. I am happy, I am free. I wish that everyone could know the joy of looking across the front seat at this beauty, of course I don’t wish for what I wish for that would mean I would have to share, and that is something I don’t want to do. What does love mean? Is it the only thing worth living for? Maybe not the only thing, but the thing I think means most to me. It means giving of yourself, it means affection and care and putting someone else’s needs before your own. It is what I have been waiting for all these years, truly. Now that I am not strugging to be in a relationship I didn’t want to be in.

My that is how this started. With the barista with the shock of red on her forehead. Me as townie wino dog. Now I look at others and don’t see so many opportunities. Instead I look at baby and see everything that I want. It doesn’t seem fair that there were others who didn’t inspire this in me. But life is not fair, as my father has always been fond of saying, and I do not get to choose how I feel. Feelings come and go and my thoughts about them are another thing entirely. And committment something else too. I feel I am ready to make it.

Thank God nobody reads these things. That I can just write whatever I want and someone will only discover it much later. Or maybe people have been reading and my secrets are known to the world before I tell them. Or maybe it is the telling them here that unleashes them to the world. Maybe I have few, if any, secrets left. I do not know the truth of the matter, I am just glad to be watching her drink coffee across the front seat, to be watching the billboards and trees go by while my battery runs itself out. I’m glad that last night was fun, that if we return to the north and resume our routines I will not have to pretend anything. That I can just be myself. That wasn’t always the case.

I suppose a lot of my life has been spent trying to be something other than what I am. And what am I? Who am I? Am I these words, am I the man who types them? How will I be remembered? What indignity will I have to suffer to make my mark on the human race? I suppose there is no guarantee of indignity. I suppose there is no guarantee we will make it safely to our destination today. And in spite of this uncertainty I smile, laugh even. We met some fun folks yesterday, and today I am tired and ready to lay my head on the pillows even though I, like Jesus Christ, rose this morning. Easter is a strange holiday, if you think about it. Conquering death is a tall order, one that will be only accomplished through science if it is to be accomplished at all. Miracles are by definition uncommon, and myths are a lot easier to create than miracles. So don’t think of me as a believer, nor even a skeptic, but rather one who lives within the world I know. One where magic and God are not causalities that are acceptable. But through God all things are possible, so write that one down. Of course I can’t fly without the aid of a machine of some sort, so maybe all things aren’t actually possible. Maybe there are actually limits to what we can do?

That’s a thought, isn’t it, that this life is grounded in the limited material world. That all though everybody hurts, we can’t know unlimited pain. That the black mirror dystopias I sometimes imagine aren’t real. That we live for a while and then we die, and what we do with that time is important but not overly so. It matters, mostly to us, but once we are gone what we have done won’t be so important. Even the most evil, vile humans have only made a very small impact on the universe. And now we are in the midst of who knows what. The world is messy, but my world is small. I look around at all the things I see and they are not so bad. Maybe I am just sheltered. Maybe I am selfish. If that is so let it be. I can’t change myself any more than I can change the world. Maybe neither of those things are true, maybe both are more flexible than I’m giving them credit for. Maybe I will change the world. Lord knows I have already changed myself, many times.

But I like this version, if it is imperfect. I have stopped striving for perfection, have stopped trying to be anything other than what I am. I am happy, and I am small, and that is what I am sure of. If I ever become big I will deal with the consequences of that, but will try to remain a good person inspite of it all. So many big people have turned out to be bad people, and that is sad. Maybe we are all just flawed people, but if we can be good to others, treat them with kindness and respect, shouldn’t we? I think that is as good a place as any to leave off, to lean back in my seat and watch the wind blow the large American flags over the freeway. I love you all, and I hope you have a lovely secular Sunday, or if you celebrate the big guy rising from the dead, that you are having a swell time with that as well. I don’t know what else to say.

TTFN,

Richard

4.25.25 From the other side

Of the work week, that is, that glorious limit on schedules or anyways the ones I put on mine. I will not be caught working myself to death, I like too much getting to spend nights and weekends with baby. Even if I might mix it up in the summer and work some nights, but keep my weekends. Not that you care about any of that, surely you are wondering when I am going to get on with it, with the engaging content. Too bad, you’re stuck with me, stuck with my meanderings through the hours that continue to come and will do so until they don’t any more and I will be forced to reckon with all that I have been. And on that day I will not be ready, unless of course I am, for some reason.

I can think of a few reasons why I might be, the first being excruciating pain. I suppose it is possible, but I hope it isn’t the case. There are probably other reasons why I might be ready to die, but I don’t want to think about death. It makes me sad that we must grow old and die. As I get older I wonder if I will ever lose my youthful spark, if I will ever grow crotchety or grumpy as the years pile on. I am still a young man by most every standard, and I intend to remain young at heart for all the years I have on this Earth. And they call me an old soul. Make sense of that if you can, I never could. Never could understand how I could feel old and young at once, never understood how I could maintain a youthful demeanor in the face of the hardship I’ve had to weather. I don’t seek pity, don’t seek even sympathy, I am not that kind of man. I just want you to know that bipolar disorder is not the easiest storm to ride out, that mania comes calling to cash the checks you wrote when you were flying high.

We started to watch that Timothee Chalamet movie about the son with bipolar yesterday, but it was too close to me to stand. Not that I have all those issues exactly or anything. But watching the parents struggle made me think of my parents struggling with me, and that cut through the thick skin that I wear most of the time. The skin that allows me to walk through the world as if I didn’t have issues that crop up in all sorts of situations. As if I were completely normal. As if I didn’t want…there goes the dead horse, there goes the pity party. Instead let me look out the window at the rain coming down and turn my lens inward, to the field of flowers I’m visualizing where my heart is beating. Roses and Dahlias, Daisies and Daffodils, Poppies and Petunias, the list goes on and on. And I just imagining it, it, strictly speaking, doesn’t exist. What a trip, what ride. What an excursion into the mind, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.

Of course that is a joke. Nobody even bothered to get me a t-shirt. I just sit here in my warm flannel looking at the clutter around my room, listening to the song that was popular when I was in the first half of college the first time. I think about all the time that has passed and think about how I don’t seek to remember. How I leave the past alone, let the painful moments be dead and try to only live with what is happening right now. And planning for a future that will certainly be different than all the things I am planning for it to contain. Who knows, maybe we will have a child, maybe we will be unable to. Maybe we will marry, maybe one of us will die in an accident that renders it impossible. Maybe I will get cancer, maybe she will. Maybe we will find a difference irreconcilable and split before death makes one of us leave the other one alone.

I do not know, but I hope we get a lot of years. If I was a man of God I would pray. Instead I have quit smoking. It has been over a month, almost five weeks, since I have had a cigarette. I think that will go farther than any prayer for longevity. Still probably something will fail. Still probably I will die before I want to. And Tara thinks she will live longer than she wants to. Who knows? I don’t know what is real half the time. I only go through the motions of day to day life trying not to suffer too much. Trying not to cause problems for others. Trying to create something lasting that will matter to someone I care about in a couple of generations. Maybe there will even be an Earth for them to inhabit in that temporal window. Maybe the planet will not burn out, maybe we will survive to fight another couple of centuries out from now.

I think that all that can be said about the future of humanity has already been said. Still we continue to muddle through days that seem to last as long as I can stomach. Still we look in the mirror and see a featherless biped. Still I wonder if all of this is pointless, if none of us will ever do anything that has any lasting value. Of course those who have had near death experiences, who have gone down the tunnel toward the light, say that what was revealed to them as important in those moments were the little moments of kindness that had transpired in their life, the little moment when they did something nice for someone else. And of course also, this conversation is God adjacent, the personal God that I do not believe in. As in it is God that is judging what is important. Or maybe we are the judge, and that makes each of us God. Maybe the new age spiritualists are right. Or maybe I am right and God is an illusion, a ghost that lives within the back of our minds and gives extra significance to the things that we do. The things we see and the things we hear. That provides context clues that are unnecessary, and at the final accounting, false.

We have come a long way in this journey, and we have much farther to go. Surely I can’t be the same person when this finishes in ten years or so. Surely I was different in the second year than the first one. But here I am in the third one feeling similarly to the second one. Debating my evolution or lack thereof in a vacuum chamber dedicated only to my public-most thoughts. My least scintillating discussions, my most inane preambles. For what is this if not the thing that comes before something else? Surely I have more creative work than this left in me. Surely I will write another novel. Or maybe I will not, maybe I will never have another good idea, never have an experience that needs to be extrapolated into eighty thousand words. Maybe that good run of writing is behind me and I will have to stand on that limited legacy to make my way in the world.

But what about when the twelve years of this timesuck are finished? What will I write when I can no longer freewrite in a dedicated creative enterprise. An entire twelve volume set of my morning pages, and someday you all might be fool enough to buy it. Think of it! Twelve books of journals always designed for public consumption and thus without the personal details that bring interest to the journals of writers after they are dead. I have shot my wad, and given you this bowdlerized version while still alive! There ain’t no cure for Love! When you have it you will suffer from it until you die! It is comparable to Schizophrenia in that there is no cure! And they thought I had that for a while, didn’t they, if there was a mood component. I wish these evils on no one, I wish this light and airy state upon everyone. May we all forget for a moment how heavy our troubles. I gotta couple habits I could lose if I wanted to live forever, but the beauty of this whole secular thing is that you believe when you’re dead, you’re dead, and everything that happens after is none of your concern.

I like that. It’s comforting. I think I could live with that if that’s what was revealed at the moment of passing. Total oblivion. Nothingness. It’s all about the nothingness, as mnBen once told me. And so in this empty room where the nowhere else to go sort of afternoon unwinds, I look at the jar of misspelled compliments, the unused nicotine patches, the lottery tickets and cashed-in gift cards, the derelict headphones and the self-addressed-stamped envelopes. I look at the family photo and think that my Grandpa must have had one foot in the grave already. Is that what I have waiting for me? Or will it be fast and furious? Who knows baby, but I love you and I’m coming to scoop you up in my car after work and then in my arms when we get home. Tonight will not be the night that it all comes to bear. Here’s hoping I can say that for a while.

TTFN,

Richard

4.29.25 Revelation

I fear the Christian Eschatology. The division of the world into worthy and unworthy, the notions of eternal afterlife. The judgment of the living and the dead. It all scares the hell out of me. What if I’m on the wrong side of God’s Judgment? What if, what if, what if? I can accept on a rational level that it’s all a bunch of hokum, but that still doesn’t prevent the primal fear of my Catholic upbringing from casting its shadow over me from time to time. Maybe we are all going to hell together, or maybe some of us are going to live forever in these bodies. Who knows, I am neither seer nor sage. I know what I know, which is mostly how little I know. It’s a bummer that these things preoccupy me at all.

How would you feel if you were scared that all the people you loved got to go on for thousands or tens of thousands of years after you died at sixty, a few years before the technology to repair all genetic faults and reverse aging were invented? That is something that haunts me at times. Maybe it’s a ridiculous fantasy, maybe it matters. Maybe that is to be my fate? I hope not, hope I don’t have to be the holy ghost, loved and missed by all but never coming back, dead before the party started. I love this life, and there are times I wish it could go on forever. Alternatively there are times I wish I was dead. Surely if I were to live forever I would still struggle with the depression, wouldn’t I?

Mostly I worry about the people I love moving on and living lives many times longer than what we had together. I worry about Tara living forever, possibly with one who has wronged me in the past. Someone she will like better than me. Ridiculous as such a fear is, that is how my insecurity is presenting itself today. That is how my morning is going, that is how I am feeling at this moment. I just want to be the best for someone. Just want to be chosen as a forever love. I want everyone else to have to die too. I want us all to be equal in that. As it has always been. I hope the future doesn’t invent such an inequality. I have even had fears about it being mandated. That death would be outlawed and everyone would have to live forever. Or who knows, these fears are not rational, are they? I am just spiraling through the same old story that I’m going to die and miss out on the afterparty.

Maybe that is not the case, maybe death will keep the playing field level. That is what I am praying for, right now, as I type out the rest of this short entry. That baby will not have to move on from me and find a man who can equal what I offered her, or at least a warm body with which to pass the nights. I am a sensitive man, and an insecure one. I always feel that anyone who cares for me will find something better after I’m gone. That after I’m gone the age old problem of death will be solved. Amortal humanity, and I gone too soon. Maybe that will come to be, but if so I will be the lucky one. Gone too soon but spared the pain of being a man, having made a beast of myself. Oh Gosh Hunter, you took the easy way out to ease the pain of living too hard for too long. And Ernie, at the same age, shaking off the electroshock therapy with a shotgun shell. Fortunately, as Kurt Cobain said, I do not own a gun.

Besides, as the saying goes, here for a good time, not a long time. I hope I’m here for a good time and a long time, personally, but I am not the arbiter on that one. God (what is) will determine what happens to me, and I am just the passenger on that ride. Surely all that lives will die, even if they makes it the billions of years to the end of the universe. I think it would be unlikely that aliens wouldn’t wipe us out before then, or enslave us, and I would rather be fed to a tree after having died a relatively natural death than to deal with all of that. I’m just as well left out of the Christian eschatology, after some reflection. The holy ghost is the only one of the trinity that gets any rest, right? Alas, I must be getting to work, and so will cut this short with a simple message: I love you all!

TTFN,

Richard

5.1.25 May day, May day!

Here I am, rocking in the turbulence that tosses this airplane to and fro! On International Workers Day no less, the birthday of the one and only Botchkiss, and I headed to California with an aching in my heart. I could use another bloody mary, that is for sure. We are off to celebrate the bachelor who will be marrying my sister in just a few months. Off to California, where I have not been in I don’t know how long. I’m excited to be traveling, to be on this plane even if the only window is too small to properly see out of in this exit row.

I have begun the retelling of a turbulent time in my life, finally writing out the story of my ill-fated trip to Montreal, to Burlington, Vermont when I disappeared for a few days. It is a story of wayward youth, and I am telling it as such. In fact it has taken quite a while to get into the telling, and I hope that I can manage to make a coherent story out of it at all. There is no guarantee of that, so far it is a scattered menagerie of impressions, cautions about the pitfalls of the spiritual path, the follies of youth. But there are a few things I remember from later on. Maybe I won’t be such a distractable storyteller. Maybe I will get it together.

For now I am thinking I might take a nap, as it was an early morning and we have a few hours left until we touch down. OR maybe I will read. The thing I’m sure of is that I’m tired of writing, that I want to rest the output a little before continuing on with my Travels in a day or so. So here we have a short one, just a little note before I put away the computer and rest my eyes. I’m sorry if I didn’t say anything, I’ve got a long day ahead of me, and a decent chunk of it behind me already. That is all for now, maybe we will see something more fruitful come out of a later date.

TTFN

5.5.25 There will be no tequila today

It has been a ride. A marathon of drinking that leaves me spent and sad. Sad that baby and I have had the drink drive a wedge between us, in our normal, everyday lives. But with every struggle comes an opportunity. We will try to drink less, to be happier, to be more together in the times we occupy the same space. Who knows why we are drowning our feelings, if that is even what we are doing. I think maybe some of it is boredom. Or maybe there is a pain beneath my skin that threatens me if I don’t beat it back. I suspect that is the reason why I smoked for so long, maybe.

I do not know, but I do know I would rather be crying in her arms than sitting in this kitchen in Southern California listening to sad songs that bring a feeling of melancholy over me as I await our departure. It has been a long time since I have seen my baby, though actually not all that long. A few days, but it feels like ages. Feels like a lot longer than it has been, anyways. The perils of love: being used to falling asleep beside someone makes the bed seem awful lonely when they’re not there. And I in strange beds across the country, while she held down the dollhouse and had sober nights to think about how I’ve been drinking too much. I don’t mind. I have been drinking too much. I’m not sure why I’ve been compulsively consuming alcohol, but it has been happening for a while now. So we will make a change, we will drink less and enjoy each other’s company more. That should be easy to do after having to go a few days without each other, shouldn’t it?

I can’t wait to smell her smell, and feel her lips soft and pressed against mine. I can’t wait to feel the curve of her hip in my hand and the tickle of her hair on my face as I lay behind her in the night. All of it is a pleasure I will never take for granted. Have I been taking everything for granted? Not realizing how tenuous this grasp on normalcy and health, on bliss and companionship? Maybe. I can’t say for sure that I haven’t been grateful, for truly I have. I’ve never known a love like this, and I’m quite sure I never will again. It is easy, and slow, yet passionate and mutual. We feel the absence of the other even when we are only across town for our workdays. It is even more pronounced as this weekend, when I am across the country, in another time zone, staying up until all hours of the night and commencing to drink far earlier in the day than is socially acceptable. Oh lord I am ready to be home.

Am I a weak man to need love so desperately? To feel acutely each minute that I can’t reach out and take her hand? Is it bad that I have a hard time enjoying where I am when I’m not with her? Maybe so, but I wouldn’t trade the feeling of reuniting after a few days away for the world, at least I think I wouldn’t, if it is what I anticipate it to be. Who knows, maybe it will be a disappointment. But I doubt it, likely we will share a squeeze and a kiss and then snuggle in to sleep, assuming I make the drive into tomorrow’s hours after my flight lands at DTW. There will be nothing like reunion, there will be no greater joy!

But I am going to let you go, going to stop boring you with my sappy need to have companionship. Going to pack my suitcase and prepare to be inbound for Michigan, that state that has been my home for most of my life. Who knows what the future holds, but I hope that it holds good things for me. That I can make good on the love that has graced my life, that keeps me bouyant in the face of all the hardship in the world. I love I love I love, and I won’t ever forget it. Tonight I will have all that I desire. That is enough for today.

TTFN.

5.10.25 On the road to find out

Here we are, rolling down the highway towards who knows what, hopefully another victory for this girl’s soccer team to which I have become attached by way of the soccer mom I have fallen in love with. And here I with too much coffee in my veins as a Cadillac leads our Toyota down past the potato fields that line the roads, singing along to the same old tune about that plane crash all those years ago: Reese Witherspoon was right, everyone is still dead. Only we are alive and well and basking in the sunshine that rains all down around this car where we are wishing for an increase in the speed limit, as I resume these musings that require me to remove my sunglasses in order that I might better see the screen.

So what does it mean to be a bonus dad? To try to be a positive role model to the young kids that inhabit our little house every other week? I think it means that I have to quit smoking (I have!), need to drink less (with the exception of yesterday we have been doing quite a good job of that), need to keep my feet on the ground and my head out of the clouds. It is holding down a job and finding time to compose the words that someday will make my mark on the world. It is showing love to the woman I intend to marry, showing kindness to her children even if I am not sure what they think of me. I guess I have never been sure of what anyone thinks of me, have I?

And yet we swim through the life where so much is empty space spent alone, and the remainder is making sense of baffling interpersonal interactions. Of course maybe there are other things, maybe even some of the interactions are not baffling. Maybe some of you even know what is going on? As for me I am lost in the anxiety that grips me as if I have just gone over the hill on a rollercoaster and am holding on for dear life as if the danger was real and not only simulated. Still, the pine trees here have not lost their tops, the dust from the dirt roads that branch from this mainline fills my mouth through the open windows, the traffic races towards whatever destination it is seeking. It is a Saturday and I don’t have to work, it is a sunny day even if I am on the shadowy side of the car. These are good things even if they are simple things, of this I am quite sure. It is good sometimes to be sure, even if sometimes that is indicative of a problem.

Of course right now the chief concern is the growing pressure on my bladder and the quaking anxiety that threatens to push my muscles out through my skin. Maybe that is an exaggeration, but it is not the most comfortable feeling to be over-caffeinated and have nothing in your stomach. I could stand to eat something, to enjoy a sandwich the way Warren Zevon said I should. Instead I will settle for a piece of sugarless gum to at least give my jaws the illusion of food where there is none. Oh lord you do not care about my bodily functions. Certainly there is no shortage of things in the world I could be talking about! I could harp on any number of geopolitical boondoggles, but the truth is, none of that has yet come to bear in a material way upon my life. Maybe it is only a matter of time, but for now life goes on, happiness persists, we grow fat and sassy beneath the various phases of the moon and enjoy the sunshine when it decides to grace us with its brightness.

Of course it is not a decision of the sun, that fucker is always shining. No instead it is the vicissitudes of the clouds whether or not we get to see what is perhaps the single greatest simple pleasure on this earth: the sun on your face. Or maybe it is cool water in your mouth. Or maybe any of a million other things. Certainly I am not worthy to judge absolutely what the best simple pleasure is. There is no telling how this will greet you, what your day will be like. I saw some friends yesterday who were having bad days, or at least one of them was. Maybe that is you, or maybe you are riding high on the crest of a manic feeling. Maybe maybe maybe. That is all for now.

TTFN,

Richard

5.16.25 Date night tonight

If you can believe it, it is Friday, once again. And we are off to that new I-talian joint tonight (read: eye-talian). And yesterday I relapsed on the smoking. So today is day one without cigarettes, and that is not ideal but I am motivated. Motivated by the disgust that baby wears on her face when she smells them on me. And I can’t say I blame her, they are pretty gross, conceptually, aren’t they? But they are very pleasurable, very pleasant, and I do love them. But I must give it up to get it all, even if there is no guarantee that I will get anything, that the damage hasn’t already been done and I won’t die too young for my fitness otherwise. But alas, the only thing to do about that is to quit smoking, isn’t it, so I will.

Gosh, sometimes this thing reads like a smoking cessation journal, doesn’t it? But there are other things going on in this life. Golf season has begun in earnest, we are off to soccer again this weekend. Next weekend will be the memorial, the weekend after that we will be moving into a new house. It is all happening, or continuing to happen, and I am trying to grasp hold of it before it slips away. Slippery thing, time, and there are no guardrails to make us observe it rather than just pass it idly. Each minute is precious, every fleeting moment indispensable, every heartbeat to be cherished. We must love everything we do, we must enjoy every sandwich. I just had a bagel, which is practically a sandwich, and it was gas, as the kids say. I am doomed to be unhip for the rest of my days.

But that is not such a bad thing, is it? Who can keep up with the endless conventions, the new lingo; who would care to try? I’d rather be a mid-thirties gentleman than a teenage dirtbag, even if that meant I knew how to use the word “chat” in a sentence. In its slang, vernacular sense, that is, I know how to have a chat with chatGPT. Not that I have ever used chatGPT, I am woefully behind the curve when it comes to AI, or really all technology. I am not an early adopter, I am not even a middle adopter, I just have enough stuff that I like that makes me happy. Like this computer, which is a faithful word processor among other things. At this moment my alarm would be going off on a late wakeup day, and I am already at the bottom of my coffee, my second cup, if you must know.

Of course it is Friday and I will soon to be in the shower on my way to work, will soon be on my way to serve the old ladies (among others) their lunches as they take in the views of the bay. It is not such a bad gig, honestly, and I am mostly satisfied with what I do, at least for now. Still, it would be nice to get some traction on the writing front, to make some headway into the public eye. I read like a broken record, the same thoughts over and over and over. Surely you must be bored of me, surely I cannot be interesting to read. Or maybe in the dull moments we find a little light that shows us something we cannot deny. That we are compelled by to persist at least in our day to day struggle to be happy. It is not so easy as it looks, I thinks, and it is a noble cause.

I need to get going but I need to say that I love each and every one of you, that no one is excluded from the boundless and radiant compassion that emanates from my being. I am not God and I am not a saint, I am just a flawed man who knows that it is more important to love and be kind than just about anything else. So I persist in my kindness, in my smiles, in my attempts to overcome my addictions. It is not easy to be me, a lot of the time, I am riding this bike with training wheels but down a steep hill. Depression is most always with me, and mania rears its head sometimes and makes a big mess that always takes a long time to sort out. I’m not asking for sympathy, just letting you peek inside the head of mine that makes these words come into existence. It is not the most interesting head, I don’t think, but I also don’t think it is entirely without value. So I give it to you, a gift to read on this Friday or whatever day you read it. It is given with love and that is enough for me today.

TTFN,

Richard

5.18.25 The world astounds

It is not so simple as I once believed, or maybe hoped. Instead we have a complex knot of how many billion people coexisting on this rock, assuming the modern scientific model of the Earth and Universe is correct. Who knows man? I think that as I prepare to go watch soccer in the rain, driving past orchards with muted blossoms and tall deciduous trees that line the road as the lake unloads its water unto the skies and the skies drop it here on us on the highway. It seems that all these recent entries have been from the road, doesn’t it? Alas, we continue to add to these pages that are approaching the 500 mark.

I am at least reasonably prolific, even if often I have nothing to say about the world and its mysteries. Even if I have little to add to the discourse that seems to be growing more and more divided on the big stages every day. Everybody is fighting about everything and mostly it seems they are fighting about money. What else is new? Thank god we have not decided to fight about money yet, that we share with each other in this house and both like to feel we’re contributing. Here’s hoping that continues.

For now we struggle with the crushing boredom that threatens to drown us with its ubiquity. And yet we realize too that a certain amount of boredom means misfortune is not befalling us at the moment. And so we count our blessings and wonder why they are not enough. We look up at the stars and wonder why they are so many. We look down into the waters and wonder why we cannot see the fish, we look into the night and wonder, just wonder.

I wonder where we would be without wonder? Without that questioning sense of overwhelmed that creeps up and hits me over the head every time I think I have it figured out. Of course I am not thinking that way too often any more, as I’ve realized that existing in this world is to accept that you cannot understand all that is. Still we go about our days and all make tiny changes to this planet, to each other and to the environment, though those might almost exclusively be for the worse, now that I think about it. Maybe we can do good things for each other, maybe we can make it to death without a major catastrophe befalling us or those we care about. Some days I feel that is all I can ask for.

Because I have spent a lot of time worrying about bad things. That much you have probably realized. I am trying to do better, to accept my smallness, to accept that the powers that be don’t want to punish me for my imagined transgressions, and if bad things happen otherwise, if our health fails or if an asteroid wipes us out in a blinding flash of light, I guess I will take solace in having lived my life in order that I cause as little pain to others as I possibly can in pursuit of what is right for me. It is a balancing act and not hurting others is impossible, I thinks, but we can only do our best. 

So with my best foot forward we look at the things we cannot change and do our best to accept them. As the price of gasoline rises and the waters turn bluer as the sun climbs higher in the sky. The trees leaf out and remind us that half the year is green. Fog and rain, the hills and the bays, the low oppressive sky, and beneath it, with a smile, I.

TTFN,

Richard

5.20.25 Under the wire

There is a stiff wind blowing from the east and that was not a good thing for the golf scores today. Alas, we soldier on into the night, me missing Tara greatly as she takes some time to be alone with her kids. It is okay, I think, provided her interpretation of the complaint is accurate. I fear of course that it will be something more than that, but that is my own fatalism rearing up and threatening me with anxiety over what is probably nothing. Not that there should be any complaint more than what she thinks it is. I am just a nervous nelly, and my own self-esteem issues are the root of my nervousness.

But people mostly like me, it turns out, mostly find me to be a reasonable and good person most of the time. I have my moments, as we all do, when I fall short of what I would like to be. I like to think that most people don’t even notice this, however, and see only the illusion of perfection I strive to maintain. That is a laugh. I am far from perfect. I am but a man, and a man who is nervous at the moment because of things transpiring outside my control. I wish I could crawl in a hole and die, as I said I wanted to the other night. Or at least be on the other side of what I fear is a critical meeting of my partner and her kids, at least knowing what is being said about me in my absence, at least secure in not being thought a scumbag by those teenagers. I have a tendency to dream of the worst case scenarios, and that is a major fault of mine.

But I have done nothing to deserve the worst case scenario. I have not done anything untoward, and as Tara said, if they had serious objections to me as a person they would have raised them to their father and he would have gone all papa bear in the protective sense that is his prerogative. I just fear, have always feared, that people will judge me even harsher than the harsh eye I turn on myself. Maybe it is that harshness that engenders the fear. Maybe it is something in my past. Maybe it is Catholicism. Who knows, but it makes moments like this, when I am waiting to hear how things went this evening, waiting waiting waiting and here alone with my dad with only beer and not cigarettes to calm the nerves, a-ha it is a brutal kind!

But today was not a great day as it was, with work slow as it could be, and then golf not what I had hoped it would be. Tough conditions, tough wind outside driving everything about our ears, buffeting us with its ferocious and persistent direction. I wish I could sail away on that wind. Could take to the sky and never again return to earth, feasting on pure oxygen and nothing else for the rest of my days. Of course those days would be few on that diet. I would not last long without sustenance. I will not last long today without some dinner to eat, as I pretty much skipped lunch. So it goes on a boring Tuesday.

Oh gosh I can’t wait to hear how things are going, to not be left in the dark with only the swaying branches on the trees outside to comfort me. I hate waiting, hate it more than most anything in this world. As Tom Petty put it, it’s the hardest part. True words Tommy boy, too bad heroin got the better of you. I will never try heroin, will never really try any more drugs than the ones that got the better of my wayward youth. It’s been a long road to get to this mostly sober life, and if I drink more than I should know only that I do so responsibly. I look to the stars and see a pinwheel spinning and then I know I am too drunk to drive. So I call for a ride, or walk to where I am going. It is a simple thing in this small town, harder in other places where things are sprawling and the sidewalks seem to go on forever.

Where was I going with that? Where am I going with any of this? Why do I continue to write when I know I have little to say? Is this only an outlet for my neuroses, will it all come crashing down around me today? Is there anything I can do to ease my ailing nerves, the uncomfortable anxiety that creeps up and threatens to drown me as I wait to hear anything from the conference of the mother and children. And there it is. Judgment, of our choices to join our lives together. What I had feared, only to a lesser degree maybe than my imaginings. You can’t make everyone happy but when the offspring take a dislike to you in any fashion, whether that is having moved in too soon (oh if they knew how their mother felt about spending nights alone!) or some other imagined transgression it smarts. It smarts I tell ya! I just want to be accepted by them, who don’t know how long we have been seeing each other, nor the reality of how serious we are about the other, nor what it is like to be in an adult relationship—something that in fact that will elude them probably for many years.

That is enough, I am a little sad, and not quite angry but experiencing something in that family of emotions. I can’t make everyone happy though, and I don’t want to spend a single night away from my baby. It is a tall order to make teenagers happy, and the small house is doing no one any favors. Maybe it will be better at the new place, or maybe they will continue to resent my presence. I cannot afford to care. I will continue to be friendly, and to love that beautiful gorgeous woman the way I have for so many months. I will not capitulate in any way. I love her, I love to sleep beside her. When we have more space it will not feel like such a burden I hope. But alas, here I have failed to be perfect. I just love Tara enormously and that is the important thing to me. More important than her daughters’ objections. I think that is all I can say about this. I am a lover, and not a fighter, so there is no fight here. I am just going to call it a day, and be the guy who moved in before the kids were ready, I guess. There are worse things to be.

TTFN,

Richard