Theodicy

Ten o’clock.

Doing my best to stay awake. Meanwhile, some people are just getting up. This isn’t much fun. I’m killing time but there’s nothing ahead for today; I might as well go to bed.

Eleven o’clock.

I just got a duplicate package from my health insurance company, a kit of odds and ends in the interest of wellness. I don’t need two of them, so I don’t know what to do with this one yet… Yesterday I saw a mourning dove feeding on the ground under the magnolia: the most beautiful sight. Milky and gray with a small silky white head and long tail. It was there again this morning and a little junco stood nearby, while the sparrows kept busy about their birdhouse. Clouds have moved in since early partly cloudiness and they said rain for late this afternoon. My dog Aesop has been sulky and bored the past few days and his mood gets me down as well. Tomorrow I should get Gloria again and we might go out to lunch. Till then I’m sort of treading water and marking time. It’s become a gray day, rather glum and cheerless as I wait on the high sea for the ship to come rescue me. I can give the other wellness kit to Gloria. And to stay awake there’s hot Lipton tea. 

It all works out for the best in the end (although I waver on that point). And then you begin to wonder about theodicy: the existence of evil in a good world. Maybe life is tragicomic in itself, before we try to figure it out and shape it the way we like. Maybe there’s no endpoint from which to judge the meaning.

I still haven’t solved Aesop’s problem. In the meantime, my friend will be reading Pollyanna… 

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Lion & Ox

Five ten.

Of course it’s still dark outdoors, but I was done sleeping for the night. I wrote something about memories and regrets before bedtime. I concluded that because I decided as I did, I am still alive, safe, and writing today. In other words, I made good decisions, so those regrets are useless. It’s sort of like Pollyanna or Pangloss, reasoning from what is optimistic, looking on the bright side, the glass half full. This made me feel better before I went to sleep… I reread my letter to a friend from yesterday and remembered how I felt at the time of composition. Not only were there no regrets, there was no guilt or shame whatsoever. I believe that being remorseless is the key to solving depression. And if a person wields guilt as a tool to manipulate you, then you should probably blow them off. Life is too short for feeling shame. The experience of pride is our ticket to joy… The “mild yoke” that Milton refers to is the yoke of shame, in my opinion. Under the burden of guilt, your whole perspective is darkened as long as it remains to plague you. Therefore it is desirable to liberate yourself from it.

…All Possible Worlds

Well, tomorrow is another Gloria day, and we said she would take me to Bi Mart for the fun of it. I guess I can make a little list of items to get while we’re there. Things for hygiene, maybe. I’ll think of something. But the real reason I want to go is to see some familiar faces at the store and kind of take a stroll down memory lane. Bi Mart is like a time capsule, a place that resists change if it can help it. The same staff has been working there for years and years. Many senior citizens go there to shop, or anyway they used to. My parents and I moved here in 71, and the Bi Mart was already a business. When you think about it, old people are quite amazing because they have such a long memory and have seen so much in their lifetime. This morning I looked back 40 years to when Rush was still on the radio. I was on the sidewalk of Maxwell Road trying to visualize the old days of being a teenager, but it wasn’t easy to do. Changes come and they are incontrovertible. Reality is implacable and doesn’t give an inch before an individual’s imagination, his dream of happier times. Then again, long ago Carly Simon sang that these are the good old days. We could use some of her optimism today.

The same thing is happening today on WordPress: just no enthusiasm to read stuff whatsoever. So, naturally my mind wanders back to when I actually had fun with my life. The last time wasn’t so long ago; it was when Aesop and I lived in the trailer after the fire, and in the fall I’d go to church with my heart full of hope and optimism, and not an ounce of cynicism. I had trust and faith that everything would be all right for me. Also it was before covid came along, and then a series of disasters. And Pastor’s mood grew a lot darker, and the wheels came off of everything after that.

The question is how to restore that old optimism and faith that sustained most of us up until the time of the pandemic. I can remember some of Pastor’s sermons from before the dark times, and they were really pretty good. Once he talked about the “glad game” of Pollyanna, which was like Pangloss in Voltaire’s Candide: everything that happens is for a greater good down the line, and events are always for a purpose. Another expression for this is “teleological,” a belief that Aristotle held, and also Hegel much later. Leibniz argued that “this is the best of all possible worlds,” and God always chooses it for us from his infinite goodness.

So I wonder what happened to all of that in only three years’ time? And I think it’s a case where remembering the past can be quite useful in picking us back up again…

Volonte: A Letter

Today was very nice overall. It got up to nearly 70 degrees and the sun was mostly out in a sky with high clouds, white blent with blue. My maple tree shows some leaf buds and I’ve seen other trees blossoming. I opened three windows in the house to let in fresh air, and towards evening it smelled very sweet. Aromas can do odd things with your feelings and thoughts, though I felt comfortable enough just sitting in the family room. Gloria came at nine o’clock and cleaned the kitchen except for mopping the floor. She also fixed the wall outlet for my microwave, so for lunch I heated a Hot Pocket. Probably tomorrow I’ll go to Bi Mart for a mop, a bucket, and some floor polish. In the process of putting away stuff from cardboard boxes, I found four guitar straps colored black, white, and royal blue, plus a few men’s belts. The guitar straps are nylon and I was kind of excited at the discovery. I can put a white one on my pj bass, which also is white with black.

No reading today. I thought about the Baudelaire biography by Sartre again. The blurb on back says that existential psychoanalysis is an alternative to Freud’s determinism, an idea that I had figured out myself, and it’s such a cool concept, that of freedom of the will. It’s also a rather unscientific one, a device of the humanities, of philosophy. But does that render it any the less true? To begin with, the determinism of biology was an idea that Darwin stumbled onto, and before him, it was part of the philosophy of David Hume during the eighteenth century. If it were possible to rewrite the science books from a libertarian point of view then I think Sartre comes close to doing that. At least, Sartre contributes something to psychology. As everyone ought to know, every branch of knowledge originally began with philosophy, so that pure thought is the driving force of human history, or perhaps I’m feeling a little optimistic.

On the other hand, I’m not the type to fall for quackery. British empiricism is a very commonsensical and grounded attitude to what we can know. Maybe it’s just that determinism offends my reason in some way.

All of this from an armchair, a philosopher’s pipe dream. But then, look at Darwin again, and the voyage of the Beagle. All it took was an idea.

It’s Raining Pennies

Seven thirty.

I’m feeling kind of grumpy this morning. Outside it’s a cloudy twilight before the dawn. I half wish I could skip the store today because of the person who works on weekends. But we all have to get along with each other. I feel like a fish out of water, like Hotspur or like Rip Van Winkle, trying to survive in a world that has changed. The world doesn’t really speak my language. It’s similar to talking Middle English in the modern day: misunderstanding on both sides… Aesop just gazed questioningly at my shopping bag, looking for chicken strips. Meanwhile, the rain has stopped until again this afternoon, so I should be able to get to the market okay. The grumpy mood is improving as I anticipate a Snapple tea. It might clear my head somewhat.

Eight thirty. The forecasters made a mistake, for it’s raining right now and the backyard is gloomy dark. I’m sitting it out and then I’ll make my trip… The music I hear is “Kicker” from Chick Corea. At one point in my life I wanted to be like John Patitucci on bass guitar, but no one in Eugene seemed to be doing jazz fusion. I even got myself a beautiful Yamaha 5 string bass and was burning to play it with someone else. It didn’t pan out and two years later I sold it to a music student at the university. I heard that he used that bass all through his schooling.

Nine thirty. I only got rained on going one way, so my timing was pretty good. The raspberry tea tasted fab, and Aesop got a peanut butter cookie. If you can’t always get what you want, sometimes you get what you need, like pennies from heaven. 

Benefit of the Doubt

I just remembered something from two years ago, around this time in October. It was occasioned by paying my utility bill and having it be no sweat. Two years ago I was still living in the trailer with Aesop. What got me through the whole fire disaster was a Pollyanna kind of optimism and belief in divine providence. But in October, Polly and her son came looking for me. And then a few weeks later, she made some cynical remarks about my remodeled home, after which I began to lose my faith in the same providence. I never recovered this optimism, and then in March, Covid hit us. But now I’m thinking that there’s nothing to prevent me from being an optimist again, even though it’s hard to maintain in the midst of a pandemic. Pastor himself has been very gloomy for a long time, giving sermons about the devil and such.

Maybe a revolution in thought can help restore the church to the happy thing it used to be prior to March of 2020. I mean, maybe it’s up to me to change my thinking and bring this back to my church so that everyone will be happy. If this is true, then what do I do with my sister and her family? Or perhaps I’m trying to take too much responsibility.

I used to believe that the good things that happened to me were a heaven’s reward for not drinking anymore. There’s no evidence for this either way, so why not give it the benefit of the doubt?

It looks like I have two families: biological, and the Lutheran church. I felt a lot happier before Polly came back into my life. The circumstances around all of us have changed a great deal with the pandemic, yet the way we think about it might make a big difference in our power over it. Now I’m thinking like another William Blake. I think it’s necessary to change our attitudes in general and to exclude no one from the global community. Consider it one big church of humankind.

Those are my thoughts for right now. They might be different tomorrow.

Progress

Everyone has to make their own mistakes and learn from them, and I doubt if there’s a perfect way through life. All of the warnings from others in the world are wasted breath. And I think that to a great extent individuals live out their genetic blueprint, and this is the basis for the force we know as Fate. Wow, when I consider the tragedies of the Ancient Greeks, so religious with the Chorus and the characters interacting on the stage, having a primitive yet civilized understanding of natural forces completely out of their control: it’s an awesome thing. I guess all traditions in the world have the same natural conditions to reckon with, plus the peculiarities of their region. Like if you lived in Hawaii with an active volcano, a power of nature beyond human comprehension, this thing becomes your god by its very mystery to a primitive intellect. So it makes me appreciate the state of modern science and the wonderful achievements of human reason over the centuries, and what a pitiful sacrifice if we ever lost all that knowledge and wisdom. Perhaps the existence of religion really depends on humble ignorance of how nature works, as you can even read in Job, where God hurls down challenges to the state of Job’s knowledge. But what if Job had possessed that knowledge of nature? What would’ve happened to God?

I think that religion depends on mysteries, the information that people simply don’t know. We invent gods to explain the phenomena we don’t understand, just as the Greeks did before they dispensed with their pantheon and philosophy replaced religion.

Is there anything really so heretical about knowledge and wisdom? I tend to think that God is a boogeyman for the things we can’t explain rationally. Edith Hamilton wrote that mythology is a primitive kind of science: people make up stories to explain what they don’t understand.

This is the kind of stuff I learned in high school, before I started drinking alcohol and going astray. Now I’m thinking that there’s no substitute for knowledge, especially scientific knowledge. And even Mark Twain was a real optimist about technology and progress. Merlin and his magical tower are no match for modern sophistication in A Connecticut Yankee… I should go back and read that book again. The attitudes are very cocky and irreverent and yet very hilarious.

The Best Thing

Quarter of eight.

Ahead of me in line at the store dilly dallied a young blond girl in a red hoodie, tight jeans, and sneakers with a US flag kerchief to cover her face, although she kept letting it down. She bought biscuits and gravy and acted like a loopy clown. And then, when she was finished at the counter, she did the most remarkable thing: she looked at me and said humbly, “Thank you for being patient with me.” A little astonished, I said sure. And who was I to feel nettled with this young person with honest blue eyes and an all American bandanna?… It is clear and a bit chilly outside this morning. I should just surrender and be passive to the change of season, seize and enjoy the day, not worry about anything. I might let myself off the hook the same way I did the blond girl. I sent an email to my musical friend Mark last night. Maybe I made a fool of myself trying to persuade him to do a project with me, yet I can put aside feelings of guilt and shame. The worst that can happen is he says no. What’s the best thing that could happen? I hadn’t thought of that… As I walked west on Maxwell sidewalk I looked around for the moon out of curiosity, but I wasn’t rewarded today. There were sublunary things and events more interesting to see. Michelle told me that she’d been selling a lot of biscuits and gravy this morning. The white shirted dairy distributor guys were waiting in the wings to do inventory when the customers were gone. I was the last in line. 

Azure

One forty.

Last night I raised the dose of my medication to 3 mg, as I was supposed to do, but as a consequence I got up feeling terrible, with the blackest of thoughts. The only logical thing to do is reduce the dose down to 2 mg again at bedtime tonight. If I still feel this lousy by this weekend then I’ll stay home from volunteering and from worship on Sunday. At best, I’ll do only one and not the other. Schizophrenia is a frustrating mess. I hope tomorrow is a better day than this. I’ve got my eye on the sky out of my window: it’s still white instead of azure, the celestial blue that it ought to be. I guess sometimes you have to look upon the world with blue colored glasses when the reality falls short of perfect. 

The Fountain

Seven forty.

I saw the sun as I walked outside, a big crimson coin in the gray east. Masks are required again at the store as of yesterday. They posted two signs in the glass of the door. I got my new book of Keats in the mail today, making a stark contrast to the dirty reality of the neighborhood streets I am prisoner of. I’m considering going to Barnes & Noble someday soon to hang out for an hour and try to meet some people. A much more refreshing atmosphere than psychiatric rehab or church, replete with the scent of new books and new ideas. It would be an oasis in the intellectual desert everywhere else, at least I hope. All I can find around here are the butt ends and debris of Christianity, the dust of the sidewalk. The world is ready for something better than the old trash— or is everything recycled and repeated endlessly?… The air outside is amber or umber, a glowing orange like the atmosphere of Mars. People don’t notice it much, or they don’t say anything. And now it’s time to feed my dog.

Quarter of nine. I opened the mailer with the book inside: a little shopworn, from the printing of 2003. The book is not immaculate, but the verse it contains is. I don’t know; maybe I’m just a fool for trying to transcend a world of ashes and old Snapple bottles. Can the old be young again? What was it that Ponce de Leon was looking for? It seems to me that the whole world needs rebirth and renewal; a reveille… a Renaissance.