Illogic 2

Seven fifty.

I got a nasty surprise in my mailbox this morning: a green notice saying “vacant” with a brief explanation that my mail is on a ten day hold for not emptying my box every day, and a request for me to call the post office. My paranoid imagination tries to make more of this than there is to it. They simply drew the wrong conclusions from the fact that there’s no car in my driveway… Or maybe they really are punishing me? But I seriously don’t think that people are the instruments of God’s will, to either reward or punish others according with his pleasure. This idea is very superstitious and unreasonable.

Nine twenty. I got it straightened out on the phone… The high clouds outside make the sky look white. At the store a while ago I heard L— using foul language with a customer who probably knew her. I thought it was weird for a clerk to swear like a trooper with the public. I guess I don’t care for her very much. She is not like Michelle by any stretch of the imagination, but rather a rough old blackguard. I’m tempted to generalize and say that society is going downhill at a rapid rate since the time I quit going to church. And I am just a camera eye for everything going on. I feel inclined to dust off my Riverside Chaucer and review the “General Prologue” to The Canterbury Tales. From the Knight on down to the last two characters shows a steady decline in morals that may be compared to our times today.

Noon. It turns out that the mail carrier really is being bitchy with me, without saying anything about it to me before. The unreason of people nowadays is rather breathtaking. Is it from the pandemic or what? Why are people acting so childishly and rudely to one another, and cutting no slack? 

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To a Friend and a Therapist

Eight thirty 🕣. After a power nap. A friend of mine said I am kind and open. She values these things, hence it flatters me to have them. I remember that the bad therapist a year ago didn’t presuppose the value of kindness. She had this brute vision of people dominating or submitting like cavemen, especially in sex. But I’d learned a long time ago from The Wife of Bath that sadomasochism is irrational and sick. The alternative was spiritual love, the equal rational love that comes to us from God. Thus I was not in the wrong when I fired this woman. My memory goes back a very long way, so I am not bamboozled by capricious fads and things that won’t stand the test of time. I think Chaucer is an eternal verity, and his vision of love is kind and far from troglodyte. This therapist person wasn’t rooted in much of anything except what was new and trendy… So when my friend remarked my kindness and openness, I knew she was sincere and I felt great. Some people can go their whole life and not get a compliment like that. I feel sorry for those people because I know how unhappy they are. When people are disliked, it’s a tough thing to turn around. Perhaps if someone offered the therapist a little random loving kindness?…