The Joneses

Six fifty five.

The day has the potential to bring something good. The moon still is in the heavens, low in the south, obscured by haze. I thought I saw my neighbor James drive past me in a new electric car, black with Kendall dealership plates. The cost of an electric car just boggles my mind when I can barely afford to eat. I’m not the only one. Can I turn my writing into something lucrative? Perhaps five cents a word? But this would cheapen the quality and ruin a beautiful thing. Like putting a dollar sign on every drop of blood in my body: every cell accounted for. “We matter more than pounds and pence / Your ‘economic theory’ makes no sense.”

Seven forty.

But I’m fortunate to have shelter and enough clothes to wear, and a small empire of books to read. I’m quite comfortable. I don’t need my own electric car for getting around. The postal and parcel services bring stuff to my door. How did the ending go to “The Shoemaker and the Elves”? I only remember that he was impossibly overtaxed with work and at night the elves came and finished his work for him. Where there’s endurance there’s a way.

Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz

My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends…

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A Los Celosos

I must’ve slept five hours this evening, and I dreamed about my mother, a little sadly. I’ve got a song in my head by Wang Chung, but if it’s significant to what I’m thinking, then I have no clue what it means. It hasn’t been a great day; kind of a time for feeling doubt and regret. A very old song by Petula Clark ends with the lines, “To question such good fortune / Who am I?” And I think this is the same question I ought to ask myself. Now is a time when, as I keep saying, good things are falling in my lap. The system is taking excellent care of me, “So why on earth should I moan?” Is it only because other people on WordPress are jealous and envious of me? It reminds me of second grade, when the kids would jeer at me when Mom picked me up after school, and then she took me out to ice cream at Dairy Queen. We’d get the cones, usually dipped in chocolate. Other times she’d take me to the store to buy orange creamsicles. And you know, I don’t regret that one bit! The other kids probably went to an empty home and let themselves in with a latchkey.

Jealousy is the oldest and most wicked feeling in human experience. It’s what motivated Lucifer to revolt against God and start the war in heaven; and with his miserable defeat, he became Satan, the leader of all the demons in hell.

Therefore I have to say screw other bloggers on WordPress for being conservative capitalists, or whatever drives them away from my blog. And that being said, I’ll think about posting this message to my domain.

John Knowles

Wee hours before Friday.

With a little love from somebody, what might I not be? With an unconditional blessing for who I am, what might I do with my life? Yesterday I got myself a two liter of Coca-Cola and between then and now, drank the whole thing. The experience was rather rejuvenating, and now a few memories detach themselves from the background. I was with a friend on the Downtown Mall during the Christmas season 34 years ago, and I looked for a gift for my mother. One empty building had been converted to a book fair, so we examined some of the titles on display, ranged about on tables. Empty handed, we moved on to the locally owned Book Mark, where I found a modest hardcover of the paintings of Claude Monet and picked it up.

Somewhere that same day I bought the paperback edition of A Separate Peace by John Knowles and began to reread it. The story was about the envy of an intellectual nerd in prep school for his friend who was athletic and charismatic; about the unaccountable irrational in everyday life and how it intrudes on our awareness. Thinking back, were you supposed to like Gene the intellectual or not? At the time, I sympathized with his character, even though he was guilty of a strange crime, while Finny was his innocent victim. I don’t remember the ending very well, except I know that the truth of the incident between them is found out in a mock trial. Envy and jealousy are odd emotions, often destructive. I’ve known a few people consumed by these feelings. They don’t lead to anything good. 

A Little Sad

One o’clock. The caffeine from the Coke was toxic to me again. It was very difficult to breathe, and I felt like I would have a stroke or heart attack. I should be smarter than to do anything self destructive…

It occurs to me even more clearly that my brother was never on my side. If anything, he would have liked to murder me to puff himself up. He is not a terrible person; only terrible to me. I hope he doesn’t try to call me again. To hell with him. It must be because Mom was better to me than she ever was to him. His motivation then is sheer jealousy and resentment, as I picked up on starting at age 16 or so. I put my observations into my creative writing in high school and college. At 31 years old I was fully conscious of his hatred of me, but Mom never did realize how he despised her. Today, my brother’s hate consumes his body and his soul. He told me that he would never forgive Mom for neglecting him. It’s not hard to infer that he will never forgive me either for benefiting where he missed out… It’s a little sad to countenance it, since I grew up adoring him. Maybe one of these days Polly will call me with the news that Jeff is dead. Then, gone with him will be Tarzan, John Carter, Conan, and all my heroes from childhood.

A Quirk

I guess what Derek the cabby said yesterday really disturbed me. It came from a place of malice, possibly. There will be no second American civil war. I’m not just a Democrat, I’m a person with a disability, and a personality aside from all that. Who was the jerk that said something about using the system in reference to me? It was a long time ago. Like I was some evil genius or something. Well there’s one whose devotion is undoubted, and that’s Aesop’s… Satin Love ended in disaster for me because I held onto my secure situation. That included my income. And then Chris went and got himself diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, just a bullshit category. Polly did the same thing. And Jeff went to a psychiatrist, hoping for something terrible. I guess he got PTSD out of it. It’s hard for me not to shoulder the blame for the behavior of these others who were envious. It’s just a bizarre quirk of human nature, but it shows a lack of empathy. Therefore I think the cabby’s remarks came from a similar place. He didn’t really like giving Ride-source rides.