“Something”

Seven thirty.

I guess I’m bound for church this Sunday morning, though my motive for this is obscure to me. Logic tells me there’s nothing before or after the physics, and yet my imagination can conceive a nameless something. Maybe it’s a meaningless thing, but doesn’t imagination have an evolutionary purpose? And when all efforts at philosophy fail, look at the practical consequences of belief or unbelief. Not just practical but ethical, as when the bastard brother in Karamazov kills the old man, reasoning that everything is allowed if there’s no God… People have the power to grant or deny God existence. Now you see him, now you don’t, according to our whim, and whatever’s convenient for us. I just miss those days in the autumn a few years ago when I’d go to worship service. There was no shame or disgrace in doing this. Perhaps I wasn’t so self conscious at the time, and maybe I wanted to believe… I gave Aesop an oversized cookie before his breakfast; he’s still chipping away at it as the sun illuminates my magnolia in back, and I contemplate giving my sister a call today.

Advertisement

Autolycus & Gillyvors

Quarter after six.

There’s nothing really on my plate for today except the daily trip to get food for Aesop and me. Daylight will not dawn for another hour, yet sleeping any longer was out of the question. I dug out my beautiful Arden copy of The Winter’s Tale and considered it again; finally I went on Amazon to order The Tempest to read this spring. WT made me think of the church, a little community of Christians kind of like a Shakespeare reality, while my existence there was as a minor character, for example Autolycus, the peddler of bawdy songs and all around reprobate interested only in himself. Or anyway, that’s how a Christian sees me, which may be rather unfair and inaccurate about me. It’s hard to say. The breaking point for me was to realize that my parents were sinners according to church, when I knew I couldn’t condemn them for anything. A very difficult decision for me. Since a year ago I’ve written huge volumes of notes on my feelings about the situation, but I think the conclusion was quite foregone… It was last summer when I read WT the third time and applied it to my life somewhat unwisely. Shakespeare also says that the truth will out. In the end, I’m not “like” Autolycus or any other fictional character, as no one is really like anybody else. Life never imitates art but in our imaginations. So it makes you ponder the role of the half world of art and music and poetry. All in all it’s a didactic thing and something to please the senses… Just now I see the first gray light of day. It’s looking pretty overcast, maybe with some sprinkles, which doesn’t break my heart at all. 

Victorian No More

Ten o five at night.

The sun appears brighter now that I’ve separated from the church, as if no longer through a filter of piety. As long as I maintain my recovery I want to continue on this adventure, a game of seven card stud in the words of Tennessee Williams. It’ll be my last frontier, the search for a love interest in my life, because I know that love won’t come looking for me. Some people just aren’t interested in romantic love at all, maybe because it’s safer not to get involved. But to me a loveless existence is flat and two dimensional; and even a huge literary figure like Goethe bids you come away from the books in your moldy old study and go out into the world of experience to find your Gretchen and beyond to Helen of Troy. My sister will probably say I’ve lost my mind. Let her think so. A pious life of chastity is not for everyone, however self righteous you feel about it. And no one has the right to lord it over others. For me, the new Victorian Age has come to an end. 

Metamorphosis

Quarter of midnight.

Although the weather was beautiful today, sunny with big white clouds like cotton balls, my mood took a dive from too much caffeine. That got me thinking about physiology, whether I like the idea of determinism or not. In turn, I vaguely remembered the Italian play by Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author, and how it touches on the problem of freedom and determinism. I should read it again… Life appears to be in transition for me, with the future a big unknown, but hopefully taking meaningful shape soon. I feel like I’m changing, being transformed into something new and different. I’ve outgrown my church and really need to move on, but where am I supposed to go from here? I need a counselor to point me in the right direction. In the real world, it seems that there aren’t many options for smart people who happen to be poor and down on their luck. The recovery game I had to figure out for myself and do my own way. I found that humility and surrender to something invisible could never work for me; instead it was the opposite, freedom and responsibility, that helped me pull it off. A philosophy without gimmicks was the best solution in my case… I still have to suss out what happens next… 

Nice Guys…

Eight thirty five.

It’s a dense fog again today, rather tiresome. A low energy day so far. I’ve gone to market this morning and been accosted by the neighbor who lives next door to Kat and Corey. He remarked that he sees me going to the little store every day and I must be a hungry dude. I answered that I don’t stock up on groceries. He said he got it. This neighbor is the one who flies a Let’s Go Brandon flag on his pole. I didn’t think to ask him what happened to Derek, who used to have a job with him. It’s an HVAC business… Heather told me that someone had broken into her car and stolen her registration card and something else. I told her that I wasn’t feeling as good today as yesterday. Life has become an onerous hamster wheel, punctuated by fewer and fewer pleasures and joys. But it’s up to me to seize the day and maybe permit myself the indulgence of a fantasy that doesn’t self destruct. Everyone needs love, though people don’t give it very often these days. Sometimes I forget that I’m a guy. No one validates my masculinity except perhaps one person I know. The world is going in an unnatural direction, from what I’ve experienced since I quit drinking. I think the world needs to wake up and smell the flowers and hear the hum of bees. Delight in a birdsong and learn to sing along— as long as such things remain. But then it’s more difficult when you are older and not so pretty anymore. It feels like a conspiracy… yet it was my decision to be an honest person with everybody, what might have been a mistake to a Machiavellian. 

A Little Plan

Ten thirty.

I feel much better now than I did before four o’clock today. I knew I felt well enough to play my G&L bass, so I did that for an hour or more, and then I sat down and analyzed my feelings in writing, concluding that therapy is not for me. It was like throwing a millstone off my shoulders, and immediately I felt better. I think I’m capable of navigating my own ship. Sometime this month I want to take my other bass guitar to a technician for modification. I have the part I want to install already: a Di Marzio Model P hum bucking pickup with ceramic magnets. I love these pickups for their milky tone and high output. I hope the weather cooperates next week so I can walk over to the bank to cash my check. This will be my transportation money. I think everything will work out just fine.

Until now I’d forgotten how I love January, and you know, it doesn’t matter if I get mystical with the zodiac; I might take a peek at my new astrology book, indulge my curiosity and contemplate the thing called fate, even like Thomas Hardy, once my favorite novelist.

Decisions

Eleven thirty.

“Those who know what’s best for us / Must rise and save us from ourselves.” Maybe there’s more I can do for my church, and maybe there isn’t. Lacking faith in Jesus Christ, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. The problems we’re having are human problems and have nothing to do with the divine. What’s the responsible thing for me to do? Should I just resign from the church and be done with it? This would make two of us who want to leave. The wheels are coming off of everything, so it seems. No one bothers to make each other happy. Instead, we harbor resentments and give each other hell. But everyone knows the problems; can anyone offer solutions? Does it really help us to believe Jesus will come down from heaven to end life on earth as we know it, or should we take responsibility for our future together and do something practical? Whether we acknowledge it or not, we really are free and responsible for what happens to us and our world, so it makes no sense to defer this responsibility to a Holy Spirit that nobody can see. Throughout human history, there has only been humanity making decisions and acting on them. Some people propose reading the Bible as history. But why don’t we see miracles happening in our time the same way as in the Bible? Yet I observe myself falling into the same trap of arguing with someone on WordPress, when nobody cares anymore anyway. The discussion is pointless. I think I’ll resign from the church and stop worrying about it. The worst part of it is the feeling of indecision, but this has been going on for over two years. Facing myself now, it was always me with a problem, a crisis of faith, perhaps. I don’t know anymore. It’s totally up to me to terminate my relationship with the parish for good. After that, maybe I won’t have anything left to say. 

Letter to a Friend

It was a pretty good day today. I got my account set up at Genoa pharmacy this morning, and the people there were very nice. I saw Darcy and Todd for my appointment. The cab driver was kind of a grumpy old man, yet he was rational to some extent. He didn’t like technology such as tablets and smart phones; and he really hated going online with them. Kind of funny. He said he didn’t like traffic either. I thought of asking him why he decided to become a taxi driver if he felt that way, but discarded the idea! What a moron. Maybe he couldn’t get a job anywhere else. At least he thanked me for guiding him back to my house. It’s interesting to consider how people do such illogical and inauthentic things with their lives. Maybe sometimes it’s because they’re paying lip service to a job they believed they just had to do in order to please another person. Somewhere they choose an option that was wrong for themselves, which takes them completely on the wrong track. Life can be very fascinating from an existential perspective of actions freely chosen by an individual. I find myself in a situation with the church, something that isn’t very genuine for me, and my options are to keep going there and compromise my integrity or to resign from it and be alone but at least okay with myself in conscience. That is, I won’t be a hypocrite anymore if I leave the church. But it takes a lot of guts to do the right thing for yourself; and sometimes it’s not clear which choice is right for you in the long run.

I didn’t do much else today except to play the bass guitar for an hour this afternoon. It was my G&L bass, the one I bought last April with my stimulus money. It’s the best sounding bass I’ve got, by far. Maybe someday soon I’ll have the nerve to look for other musicians again. Guitar Center definitely has a bulletin board for musicians seeking others at the back of the store. Last spring and summer I made some very gut wrenching decisions concerning my music, perhaps the wrong ones. Time will tell, I guess.

Culture is another strange thing. How do certain behaviors get associated with certain jobs or roles in society? Come to think about it, I don’t know what my own role is in this society, but I tend to critique it a lot. Bob Dylan did a song that ends with, “You’re invisible now / You’ve got no secrets to conceal,” and then the chorus goes: “How does it feel / To be on your own / With no direction home / Like a complete unknown / Like a rolling stone?” And I wonder if these lines apply to my own life in a significant way. It depends on how invisible I really am and how persuasive my posts are on WordPress. Or maybe everybody is invisible to a degree?

Writing can be seen as a struggle to get attention to what you write. Some authors go to rash extremities to do that, but it’s probably not worth it to me to join them. It’s better to leave it to the hands of fate than to calculate it too much. So many people are aspiring or disappointed writers. A lot of them end up on WordPress, blogging their lives away. I wonder if I should be planning my next move at this point.

Morning Moon

Quarter of eight.

I had been divided against myself on the subject of sobriety, but now I’m back to feeling whole and healthy. I decided that I love language and the pursuit of truth more than getting drunk and being euphoric temporarily. It’s not possible to read and write or to think clearly when I am drunk.

When I stepped outdoors, the first thing I noticed was the gibbous moon in the blue morning sky. It seemed a long distance off, unlike the moonrise during the summer, when you could probably peg it with a hurled rock. And then as I got to Fremont Avenue I observed a different Dodge truck next to Kat’s house. Rather than red, it was navy blue. Wafting from the front door I smelled their breakfast and moved on. I felt pretty cheerful when I entered the store and saw Michelle. The old aches and pains that had got me down I didn’t acknowledge at all. My energies were concentrated in a unit again. So I bought a peanut butter cookie for Aesop and my usual foodstuffs, plus my Snapple tea. One other customer purchased biscuits and gravy and a tall Mountain Dew, all of which she balanced carefully in both hands… On Fremont again, I took a last look at the moon before turning up my street. But in fact, the moon followed me all the way to my driveway. 

Rochester

Quarter of five.

I feel liberated from a friendship that had become rather toxic to me. All of my energy was sealed up in my head for a long time, but now I feel more whole, reunited with my body. I can’t be a Puritan like some people, and that’s okay for them. It’s like the character St John in Jane Eyre, sort of; a Christian stoic with no real feeling, no passion. Jane finally exclaims to him, “I scorn your love!” All his feeling was in his head, his intellect, his reason. And at last she finds her way back to Rochester, who loves her from the heart and soul. A very valuable lesson from Charlotte Bronte and literature, with very real applications… It is still dark outside, yet I’m ready to start my day. I have an appointment by Zoom at nine o’clock with Rebecca. This might be kind of fun. I also need to get ahold of Darcy regarding my Vraylar. The first light is appearing above the trees and the store opens at six o’clock. A new hope kindles in my heart.