A Flowerpot

Quarter of nine.

The fog started out high but now has descended to earth, with a peculiar yellow taint, rather hideous. Nobody was outdoors when I trudged to market this morning and business was slow due to the holiday; I was the only customer there. I noted how slow the daylight was coming. Everything just feels foreign or alien to me, even nature, the skyline of winter trees. The wind has decayed to dead stillness. No rain currently. You can hear freight cars clashing together a few miles away. It’s a struggle to make small talk with the neighbors across the street; we look at each other in long awkward silences— then she says something about the weather… One of Karen’s hanging flowerpots had fallen face down on the pavement, I saw as I passed the salon homeward bound. I gazed at it stupidly, unsure what to do with it. So I just left it there. She’ll find it Tuesday morning when she opens shop. Strange to think that we could be having a heaven on earth right now. The garbage truck comes in the yellow mist like a bizarre dinosaur. Such a long way to go…

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Paranoia

Noon hour.

I’m getting an overdose of society today, and I’ve got Gloria tomorrow morning. I just feel besieged and I worry too much all the time. I want the world to go away for a while, so maybe I should go off the grid temporarily. Unplug everything and take a holiday from people and their conflicting opinions. I don’t want to deal with this anymore. And the fucking news in my face every time I use my phone or tablet is driving me bonkers. It’s too much like The Central Scrutinizer of the record by Frank Zappa; so totally Orwellian and intrusive in our individual lives. Am I just paranoid? Meanwhile the clouds are clearing way for the sun to shine through. If nature were all we had to deal with! But instead we have The Monster, this disembodied octopus in charge of all human beings, thinking in ones and zeros, calculating our destiny with no mercy, no heart, and no soul. If we could just conquer this oversized brain, this cyber Messiah, with the will to love one another like humans and not machines… but it will never happen. There will be no Human Revolution during my lifetime, short of a cataclysm: an asteroid collision with the earth. The next Ice Age. Be careful what you wish for…

Tyranny

Six thirty.

Today I’ll focus on the things that are going right for a change. I like these cloudy mornings with afternoon sunshine. The temperature is kept mild this way. I won’t even worry about divine intercession or how this is expected to work. If it rains fish on us then there’s probably a logical way to explain it. Gloria comes at nine o’clock and we’ll go to Fred Meyer to look at the furniture. Hopefully they’ll offer a delivery service. It seems like years since I went inside that store… I still plan on church tomorrow morning, though the thought of it intimidates me a little. Meanwhile, the market has just opened, but I think I’ll only get myself the Snapples today. Or maybe I’ll do without caffeine altogether. For food Gloria can take me to Carl’s Jr. because I’m out of food benefits anyway. This justifies a few burgers totally.

Quarter of nine. I feel like people like me are being painted into a corner. I don’t believe in Christianity, yet the day may come when nobody has a choice in their beliefs. I just hope I’m gone before this happens.

Streaking and Shrieking

Seven thirty.

I hate politics. Biden’s vaccine mandates force me to be political, however. I didn’t know how to respond when our church musician said he had no tolerance for the unvaccinated, but now I can say that he was too extreme. For more than one reason, I want to boycott the church, and Biden’s action makes this decision even stronger for me… Last night I took my medication, and a few hours later felt worse than I’ve ever felt in my life… I don’t know. I don’t care what I say anymore. Life really sucks for everyone right now, so I guess anything goes. I feel like throwing off all my clothes and running screaming through the streets until I get arrested; but chances are that nothing would happen to me… I just trashed the daily church email without opening it. Aesop is whining for his breakfast. At least dogs are apolitical and innocent. I wish people had as much sense as my dog. 

X-ray Eyes

Ten thirty.

It was kind of a hectic morning, but I got the X-rays out of the way. The nicest people I dealt with were the actual X-ray technician and a young girl named Ophelia who helped me with the lockers. The rest were rather perfunctory. And the cabbie on the return trip was also kind. On the way to the hospital, we passed the park under the Washington-Jefferson Street Bridge, where I saw a number of homeless people camped in particolored tents. I hadn’t been to that part of town in many months. It was an alarming sight, quite a shock to see it suddenly again. I got a sense of coldness and apathy from the general scene beneath an indifferent gray sky. These were the dispossessed and forgotten, but still not invisible. The feeling of coldness extended to the waiting room of the imaging place. The clients in their masks eyed each other with mistrust, and the receptionists were either dull and impassive or else obsequious and fake. I ran into a Black man from Belize I had met in church riding the elevator. He didn’t recognize me, nor I him until I thought about it later. Evidently he was employed with P—Health; he and a lot of people. All in all, it felt like consorting with a bunch of robots except for a few who were more personal and organic. In every way possible, the scenario was one size fits all, right down to the chaplains. It was so much like a scene out of A Wrinkle in Time, where the suburbs were run by a huge ruthless brain called IT… 

A Rant

Hello. Just a test. Yes I guess this app will work ok…

One thirty seven. The ads on this app are making me a little crazy. No wonder it was free. I hear The Song of the Nightingale in my head. Damn machines. I wish I could reverse time and progress but it only goes in one direction, and we have to do it together. If I could emigrate from the human race, sometimes I feel that I would. I feel terrible this afternoon. I don’t have time to take a nap. We can only grow the way the wind blows. I feel an invasion of privacy by using this tablet. Aesop is barking at other dogs in the neighborhood. Well let me express myself intelligently and then maybe the world is an ok place. Since when is the whole world my family? Being connected means much more than it used to. No one has any privacy at all. And it will only get worse. It’s like George Orwell ‘s worst nightmare come true. I had believed that my family was the only problem, but no; nobody can be an individual anymore. This is my impression from using my tablet again after a long hiatus. The world is bound to get a lot louder and the inner realm of silence, the subjective experience, will simply go out of existence. Only the public shall prevail while the private goes extinct. And then there won’t be much more for me to do…