Month the Twenty-Third

1.20.25 Donnie’s Back

But that’s not what I’m here to talk about. Not even in the slightest. Here’s hoping that government is not greater than God (what is). That’s as good a place to start as any, but I like to think that we have places to go, people to see. That the shepherd’s pie that baby is making is all it’s cracked up to be. Of course I don’t think I’ve ever had shepherd’s pie before, so it will be singular in things it could be compared to. And that just a footnote on the week we have had.

There is so much to say, and so little I feel like saying. This has been a trying week, of anger, and recovery, into sweetness and care for each other. There is a Blake Lively film playing in the other room. Beef browns on the stove. There is wine in my glass, and a mess of groceries arrived today from the delivery service. I have a stiff neck, and I am hungry. Maybe I will have a piece of sourdough, compliments of the lovely woman I hope to call my wife before the year is out. Ah yes, the loveliness that is bread. Ah yes, bread and wine, that old chestnut. And no chestnuts to be seen, or even found. Do I need water? Certainly. A lobotomy? Unlikely but there are probably some in the world who would argue in favor. What does one do when one has nothing to say? Why, ask questions, of course.

Heaven holds a place for those who pray, so it is said, but where does that leave me, who thinks only of what is in front of him. Or maybe that is not an accurate description either. Maybe I am more of an enigma, a man who thinks only when he is forced to. A man who thinks, sometimes? But what is the value of a thought, what is the value of a train of thought? What is the value of the stream of consciousness? Do we have any value at all other than our spending power? Is that all we are? Dollars to be harvested? Sometimes it feels like it.

Fortunately I am not terribly poor, not terribly broke, though I don’t fit into the category of Wealthy Men™ who have the hots for Tara. No, I am just a middle class come on, a plebeian interested party. And yet I stand to win her hand when the chips fall on the table. To be the one who takes her hand and says the words ‘til death do us part. Maybe for the second time in her life, I don’t know what her first set of wedding vows were. I’m glad that I get the honor of calling her mine, glad that I get to kiss her goodnight each night and good morning every day as it is beginning. Glad that when I look into her eyes more often than not I see her smiling. I’m sorry I don’t have anything to say today. I’m sorry this has been half baked withering drivel.

But that is the way it goes sometimes, and if you have nothing to offer because you are tired, go to sleep. I might take my own advice at the moment, and squeeze a nap in before dinner. Or smoke another cigarette (the bastards are still hanging on). Or else just eat a grape and pretend it is the wine that we are leaving aside until it is time to pair it with our shepherd’s pie. Oh golly, oh gee. We must go down easy sometimes when life gives us boredom. We must stand up and punt when faced with unforeseen challenges. That is all I can manage today. That is all that I can say to you, who prolly didn’t want to hear any of it. Prolly.

TTFN.

1.22.25 Water Bearer

Oh Gosh! The phrase of the day, the exclamation at the sound of an exhalation, the bountiful sigh that the beautiful gorgeous woman with hair freshly blonded lets out at the sight of her beloved. Oh Gosh! And I just here looking out at the snow coming down, at the flashing of the answering machine’s answer counter (none of them are for me), the piles of mail and packages since my parents are still out of town and almost all of it is for them. I am happy to be here, happy to exist on this day when I smoked some cigarettes but am refraining from buying another pack. Surely you are tired of hearing about that struggle, certainly I am. And yet it is hard to quit. Especially since they are such a great pleasure. A twenty minute pleasure, per unit? Maybe not.

And so on into the future, to the slopes tonight to test ourselves against ourselves. To see if we can be just a bit faster than we were last week. And in first place, how are we to live up to our past week selves! We surely will do something this week! And that better than nothing, by definition, almost. Of course it is possible to do something bad, and doing nothing can be better than that, I guess. Of course, but of course! We see this every day, see bad things come down from above, see bad things all over the place, from below as well, for that matter. And the things that matter to me are holding on for now, the world at large being none of my concern, being just a small fish in this enormous ocean of humanity. A drop in the bucket as far as all the humans that are are concerned.

And just yesterday somebody called me a genius. I have gotten that a few times but I don’t know what it is worth. Even if I am what good can I do when my preferred beat is the word. Words don’t change the world, even if they change our individual worlds immensely. What I mean by that is that the way we talk to ourselves frames our world, gives it the context and meaning that make us act the way we do. Surely this is not news to most of you, self-talk being the hot button topic that it has been for the better part of several decades. And yet you can reinforce the narrative you have been telling yourself, or tear it down and rebuild it with your words. Remember your personal power, know that circumstance can be a bear, or a teddy bear, depending on the whims and vicissitudes in the moods of those around you. It makes sense that the things we say to each other make a big difference in how we feel about ourselves.

So I try to be positive, try to spread love and light with every action, and with every vocalization. For we are crazy complex creatures, us humans, and so many of us, each with our own values and things that are important to us. I like to think that I am a good one, that I cause more harmony than I cause discord, that I bring people together and make the world a brighter place. Of course that is a tall order, and I not such a tall man. Taller than my partner, I suppose, thank god, as she wouldn’t date a shorter man. But not taller than a lot of the people I am around regularly. And that’s okay. It’s fine. Believe you me, it’s fine.

But there is so much beautiful world I would like to discover. I would like to live in Rome. Would like to travel to Germany, to Belgium. The Scottish highlands. The Irish countryside. Dublin, London, Prague. Oh the Europe of my ancestors calls to me, asks me to make an appearance. Maybe someday I will have the funds to do so. Will make a go of this writing as a business and not just something to occupy my time. Will hit the big time in publishing and go on to have bestsellers galore. Or maybe not. Maybe obscurity is the thing that will dominate my influence. Surely the work is good. Maybe I need a female pseudonym, as Eric suggested. Or just to keep on querying, to follow up on the queries I do have out. Who knows, really, surely I am slacking at the moment.

But I am distracted, and losing steam. Needing to head off at the pass this indigestion that has me running to the toilet at every occasion. I need a lobotomy, and nobody has a saw. And there is a mound of snow on my driveway that I have been putting off shoveling. Not that now is the time for that, but surely it is weighing on my attention. I wish for the music to get real quiet and the lights to come up and the curtain to come down and then I’ll walk offstage and smoke a cigarette and everything will be hunky dory. Or maybe it will be Ziggy Stardust. Or maybe Station to Station. I think that is enough for today. The season of the water bearer is off to an unhinged start, not entirely worthless but not entirely worthwhile either. I wonder why I continue with these ramblings here that leave me wondering if they deserve more than a once over from me before being consigned to the rubbish heap.

I love you all so much,

TTFN,

Richard.

1.25.25 I wished for something good

It is a snowy day, light snow falling down to complement the many inches we have already gotten this week. I would ski this afternoon but we don’t want to leave the girls alone on the last day Tara has with them this week, so alas, maybe tomorrow. The crows caw outside, and in here the potted plants get a second lease on life. I think this day is going to be a good one, a day off with the one I love, maybe something stronger than this coffee coming to blow away my blues. That is a lie, I do not have the blues. I do not feel badly at all, feel pretty good actually. And that is a blessing, isn’t it?

I think that it is, as I have been so blessed these last few months. Never have I smiled so big or so often, never have I had so many gut-laughs, never so many sweet and powerfully tender kisses bestowed upon my face. I am a lucky man, a man who knows what he has and is only slightly afraid to lose it. Lose it to death, mostly. But with any luck there will be no death any time soon, not for either of us. Many years to come of happiness and bliss. Many years to come of joy and the beautiful delight that comes from having one who checks all your boxes for a partner!

I think that this entry may be abbreviated, as we have to go collect a check from a client of Tara’s, and that is quite alright. I am glad that she is excelling in her work, and that the work fulfills her. I am glad too that I am enjoying my work more, for I was losing my mind at my last job. So bored, so sad. So many complicating factors. So many unsavory elements, I am lucky to have found something else so quickly, so lucky to have people around that I enjoy. I’m a lucky man, truly, to have such a good life even if I am not rich as I expected to be by this stage of my life when I was eighteen. When you lose ten years to madness there is not time to become a worldly success. And there is still time for that. Maybe I will query more today. Maybe I will seek out the few agents who handle poetry and send off Dos Hermanos. It is possibly the strongest of my works, by some measures.

Who knows what the future holds, who knows if my literary legacy will ever be what I want it to be? I would love to be a best-selling author, would love to count a large royalty check among  my income every month, but alas I have had such a hard time getting traction with agents. I have said that here a number of times, I know, but it is the truth. Is my work not good or have I just not put it in the hands of someone who wants to represent it yet. I have had no response from almost all of the people I queried, both with the first volume of this project, and with the novel. Maybe I should query the novella in the upmarket category, maybe that is the ticket, and I am silly to query the slow burn novel to so many audiences without the context of the poem to go along with it.

I’m signing off now, letting you go with the things on my mind. There is not so much on my mind as when I started this. Maybe because I am not smoking pot anymore. Is that the reason for the stilted repetitive meanderings becoming all about domestic bliss? Or is domestic bliss just an overwhelming feeling, one that drowns out all other feelings because it is so wonderful. Tune in next time to find out.

TTFN.

Richard

2.13.25 Snowy day, bright sun

Where have I been? Not here, sitting before the blank page with my meandering thoughts as your guide. This piece has accrued its second rejection since I began to query it to the world. What a joy to get a response at all. That is more than I expect from the world of queries, especially for oddball nonfiction projects with no uniting narrative. Maybe I will get some traction with the novella, maybe that will be my ticket to the big time. Maybe I will be rich and famous in a year’s time, or maybe not. Maybe rich and not famous, which would arguably be better, wouldn’t it? I don’t care, truly, what happens, so long as I continue to have love in my life and my health, as well as enough money to buy the things that bring me joy.

I’m glad to be sitting here at 4:44 on this afternoon when the music plays from the speaker and the flowers I got for Tara to celebrate the finalization of her divorce throw their shadows on my screen. Thank the heavens that there is still life left to be lived, that life goes on for most of us despite the fact that many are struggling with this new regime. I can’t say that I like that so many struggle, that the hardship falls hardest on those that were already on the margins. But that is the way of the world: it is a cruel place to be born into, and remember the smiling mortician. Thank god for Ferlinghetti, that he came and wrote and that we have his words to live by. For I too have drunk and seen the spider, have known that my many contradictions are just the evolution of a writer who is not so sure that the world isn’t the pits, and on the other hand, pretty good.

There is a beautiful woman coming to take me to her daughter’s basketball game in just a few minutes, so I will try to squeeze out the toothpaste tube of my thoughts here in that limited window and maybe just say something worth remembering. Like that we have only one life to live and if we are not expanding ourselves, allowing ourselves to cherish our joy and embrace our sorrow and knowing all the while that we will not live forever, that our days are numbered and that we must strive to be adults and take responsibility for the world which grows crueler every day, it seems, or maybe brighter, depending upon the lens you use to look at it, and that this magic of the shifting perspective might just be the ticket to the paradise that so many have promised. Bad things have been happening in the world since before I was born. Bad things have happened to me. This moment is standing on the shoulders of an unearthly, ungodly struggle. I have suffered, and my suffering has made me whole.

Make sense of that, along with the fact that I continue to suffer. Periodic flashes of pure psychotic fear that wash over me in a panic until the most comforting words from the people I trust most will do nothing to ease the sting. And yet I am here, smiling at these flowers, at the snow outside the window that is piled high on the patio furniture. The key, you see, is focusing on what you can control and understanding too that you will make mistakes, and having grace with yourself about that. Being a good person is enough. Say it with me. Say it with yourself. There is something to be said for being kind and forgiving, and for the seizures of hate that squeeze your heart and threaten to stop it. We must look in the mirror and like what we see, even as we grow older and develop smile lines. Better than frown lines I suppose.

And yet all the news seems to me to be horrific. Things that once would have made me angry have just invoked the numbness to it all that comes from knowing there is no stopping the freight train that is the current administration. We are at the mercy of the fates on this one, and there will be reckoning, or not, or for some and not others. I truly do not know what to think. Many around me are alarmed. I think that I am not. Government is not greater than God (what is). “Your life doesn’t change by the man who’s elected,” to quote Seth Avett. Unless of course you’re an illegal immigrant, or trans, or any of many other classes of people who seem to be being affected. I don’t know though, I don’t trust the media, and am just glad that I wasn’t implicated in an assassination attempt on inauguration day as I feared I would be. My clone did it, I thought, but of course no one would bother to clone me.

I am not that important, and that is a blessing. A gift from God (what is) that I can just go about my life and make what little money I make and give the love that I have to its objects. We have come a long way from the start of this, when I was thinking big thoughts as a precursor to the mania that completely derailed my life. Now it is quieter. Cold coffee on cold winter mornings. Numb fingers from exposing them so I can smoke. And of course the lovely nights spent snuggled up beside my beloved. That beautiful woman who is coming for me shortly. Oh gracious me, I can’t wait to marry her. To call her my wife and so bring a permanence to this thing I hope goes on forever, or anyways what that means to me. I love, I love, I love you. That is all I have to say for now, but don’t forget to count your blessings even if you are raging at the state of the world. It will be okay, or it will not, and there is little you can do in any case. Breathe in, breathe out, and remember that you are so small that no one cares about you. Or maybe a lot of people care about you, and you are lucky for that. Don’t forget to smile.

TTFN,

Richard.

2.16.25 Fender Bender

Oh geez, what a strange day! To be out in the wild and have your vehicle struck by a nasty little woman in a subaru. But alas, it is over and done, police report filed, we will see what the outcome is. But enough of that for now, for now I am listening to a jazz tune and drinking a high noon and watching the beautiful flowers that I got for baby shake as I type. I am happy to be back in this little dollhouse watching the snow drift down and pile ever deeper. We spent most of the morning removing an ice dam from the roof, boiling water and then pouring it over the damn thing. Ha, the damn dam. What a day, for an uneventful Sunday!

I am glad to be alive on this beautiful day, even if it did not go as smoothly as we anticipated when we left the house. There is no shortage of unforeseen things in this life, I am reminded of that every day. It’s a blessing and a curse, to be alive and to have to navigate the world of men. And so much of it as unpleasant as sucking on a lemon. Where was I? Oh yes, the beauty and tragedy of the world at large, its pressing importance and great inconsequence at the same time. So much of what happens is not your fault, has nothing to do with you, and yet you will encounter shrewish women blaming you for things that they do. And men to boot, in the blame game, that is. How are we supposed to get through the day with no one insisting we have done wrong?

There is no way, truly, no one is perfect, though many act as though they are. I am astonished often with people who act as though they are God’s gift to what is. You see what I did there with my current usage. What is’ gift to what is. And I just my own gift to those who see me as beautiful. And I guess a scourge to those who view me as ugly. I am not really ugly, not in any sense, but still some find a way to make me out to be the bad guy. I am at peace with this, to the best of my ability. Of course I am not perfect either, but I try my best to be good, and to share this goodness with others at every opportunity. It is a small thing, but it is a tall order. We can only do so much to set ourselves and others free from the petty squabbles that engulf us on so many occasions.

We’re all just a little bit broken, and we’re all just a little bit hurt. Likely that nasty woman lives a miserable life, and this was just piling it on. I do not care that she had to be at fault, there was no apparent damage to my vehicle and hers got the brunt of the collision. That I had to be in front of her only confirms that she was going too fast, or not paying attention, or on her phone, or all of the above. It is silly, really, the way she treated us when she got out of the car. But poor thing, she probably is lonely and unwell and not at all happy with the way life has treated her. I know I have been there in my life, and if I am doing better now then that is all the more reason to be thankful. That no one was hurt, that the cop said we got t-boned in the police report. I am glad to be safe at home writing about it rather than any other iteration of possibilities.

And after the morning’s excitement of melting the damn dam. I love that phrase, I will not lie. I’m glad that nothing terrible happened today. Just a minor accident, and that most likely not even my fault. What a strange thing to be made to feel at fault for something in which you had a passive role at worst. I do not blame that sad, stupid lady, even if she is sad and stupid. What a ticket to ride, what a beautiful thing to be sharing breakfast for dinner with my baby and her family. What a beautiful thing to be happy and in love and on my way to a beautiful life. That is where I’ll leave you, that is where I will resume next time. Thank what is for what is, is all I have to say!

TTFN,

Richard

2.17.25 Cold Cold Day

It is frigid out there, and I in the warm house where I spent my childhood, having read a couple chapters of the book that seems somewhat incomprehensible. I am tired, and achy, and wish that I had stayed longer in the bed that was so warm and cozy this morning, but alas, the day called and I answered. But at what cost, doesn’t it sound nice to still be horizontal as the morning wanes and day comes on in earnest, even when you have spent some time freezing in the tundra that this winter has been? Doesn’t it seem like that would be better when the day brings constant reminders that you must spend a few hours without your beloved?

Of course I am happy, if feeling slightly ill. Is that the product of the drinks I had last night or the cigarettes I have been smoking or the little touch of virus that has been going around? There is no way of knowing, truly, and no benefit in knowing either. You see this week has been not so bad if I have a rogue day off and so am forced to fill up the empty day with something, some anything to take away the restlessness that strikes at the behest of the needle in my arm. There are so many things I could be doing, for there are not enough hours in the day, except when there are too many, as there are now. I suppose I could return the headlights I bought and never installed in my car. I suppose I could go get another coffee, as if that would ease the malaise I feel. Always this stifling blanket of a feeling.

That is a lie, for most often I feel okay, even good. I don’t know what my issue is today, but maybe it has something to do with this bitter cold. For you see the winter has come in force this year, after a few years of mild seasons that left so many wishing for more cold and snow. I do have to shovel the driveway, and that will consume an hour, or at least a few minutes of one. Later, later, I will handle it later. For now it is this, this beautiful passage of time conspiring to make order from the sentences that rattle around my brain. The ones that wonder if we are all doomed, if we must repent for the end times are coming. I do think that the end of the world is far off, but I have been wrong before. Or anyways once I thought I was wrong, and I was wrong about that. HA HA. You see there, I made a funny, and have been trying to tie on the shoes that don’t seem to fit quite right. They are a trifle too long in the toes, and I heard yesterday about some abandoned children who had five year long toenails. I’m disgusted at the thought that someone could treat their offspring so badly. It, maybe, is the reason I feel sick.

For if I ever have a child they will have nothing but love and attention from me. I will cherish them as the blessing they are, and keep them safe from all the harms I can manage. Of course they will still have to grow up and I can’t protect them from everything, that much is certain. This world is hard, and especially hard for children and adolescents. School is a minefield, one we have had to cross and they will too. And friends often are not so good as we wish them to be. Why must the world be such a cruel place, I wonder often, as I sit here ignoring the request for my insurance carrier’s phone number (could not such a thing be found online?) from the rude lady who ran into me in a parking lot yesterday. Is that little bit of conflict the source of my little bit of ill feeling?

I think instead that it is a combination of things, as it most often is. Is it ever only one thing that makes us feel badly? Isn’t it always more than one thing that brings on the aches and nausea, or is it just a virus and that singularly can be blamed? I wish I had answers for all the questions I pose, but I do not wish for what I wish. I am glad to not know everything, glad to be here in the dark grasping at straws. What a burden it would be to have omniscience, to be forced to understand the true nature of man and his role amongst the animals. For we have appointed ourselves overlords to the rest, and have decided that to mangle the planet is a necessary consequence of that superiority. I do not truck with the divine right of kings, and neither with the elevation of man as the pinnacle of evolution. Surely bacteria hold that title, as they will survive long after the rest of us have perished. Surely we cannot be the greatest of all time, if anything maybe latest and greatest, and that up for dispute by me.

There are so many things on my mind that I can’t seem to extract anything from this big sick head of mine. It is a flurry, a squall, a haze of ideas that want to be heard but remain muted for the static. To be or not to be, the question, to be the answer. To be me, to authentically represent myself as I go through life trying to make sense of everything around me. For I am lost at sea in this scenario, trying to keep my horizons limited and my sense of self grounded in the fact that I don’t really know who I am. Some would say I am God, and others would say I am just another human among the multitudinous hordes that have infested nearly every corner of this planet. I think I’m me, a ghost in a flesh prison bound to time, for whatever reason. That the supernatural dreams of my early adulthood were just fantasies and I am a human among the many able only to process so much of our collective grief at the planet we are hellbent on rendering inhospitable.

The wind whips around the eaves, the snow flies off the roof, the sound from the speaker sings out its lonesome strains. I am here, and I am alive, and mostly healthy, for now. Who knows when my luck will run out, maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe thirty years from now. But for now I am lucky and good, and happy to be alive even if I am uncomfortable. It is a small price to pay for being able to be upright and breathing. How many have perished in pursuit of that small victory? How many lost to the ages, how many subsumed by the mantle of death?

What a morbid turn for this innocent entry to take. What more could I think of when the cold air makes my hands ache just from being in it for the few minutes it takes to smoke a cigarette. Doesn’t the world care that we love each other, and that we require many more years of happiness? The world (what is) is indifferent. Cruel and merciful, in that it will bring death to us eventually. We are not ready, will never be ready. And so I am going into this day scoured, ready to be happier than I was when I started this entry. It is nice that I can turn my day around with something so simple as assembling words. It makes me smile to know that I can accrue credit with the future just by entombing my passing moods here in this document. Get it together Richard, quitcherbitchin.

TTFN.