Sunday Morning Coming Dawn

This is the last image I have on my work computer. I wiped everything recently as part of a personal audit of accumulated digital behavior. There was nothing wrong with all the personal data on my machine. It just might not be easy to explain all ten years' worth of it. CS texts me some pretty crazy stuff, etc. 

Is "years" supposed to have an apostrophe? Seems like it should. What has worth that can be possessed? Years.

The apostrophe is probably the least useful grammatical punctuator. If you remove it from any phrase that is meant show possession the intention of the writer and the meaning of the phrase is still apparent. When used to indicate the omission of letters, there are only a few examples in which its absence might cause some fun and well-deserved confusion. 

To keep in spirit and step with the times I am calling for the abolishment of apostrophes as a hangover from illegitimate colonialist supremacy, though I'm not sure if it's the white-devil British, Egyptian, Spanish, or Portuguese kind. Sounds like it's probably Greek, yet another colonialist monstrosity. What could be more telling than a little dash hanging over a word that is meant to indicate "possession"? These are the very marks of oppression. What you are seeing here is the literal enslavement of one word by another. 

Where I do like to see them used is when a noun needs to be pluralized: Mistake's are liberating. 

To reclaim what is rightfully ours perhaps the oppressed should start adding apostrophes where they do not belong, to show just how much has been taken from us: 

C'a'l'l'i'n'g' i't' y'o'u'r' j'o'b' d'o'e's'n't' m'a'k'e' i't' r'i'g'h't'...'

I took a screenshot to demonstrate the one word that spell-check had a problem with above:

Fixed it: 

Well, moving on. I spent more time than I should have explaining the tyranny of possession, and I didn't even get into the demonic kind, though I covered that in part a few days ago. 

Weeks of rain now, weeks of rain to come. This is what happens to a person's mind when drenched in perpetuity. 

I have part of the day free to myself; the boy has spent the night elsewhere. 

The morning is mine and the rain's. 

.

Q6 Family Update

Oh yeah, I forgot to write a post yesterday. I meant to... I thought about it... but then I just went on living my life. 

How do I expect any therapeutic benefits if I'm not going to write every day? To spill my guts, as they say. I'm here because I need some outlet. Or rather, I feel as if I need some outlet. Just agreeing with my gay friends that White Lotus is a great series isn't enough. I need more than just consumable enjoyments. 

This is the part of the post where I break out into song. Anything at all from Mamma Mia. 

I will try to avoid oversharing today. That's something that happens to me at work. Somebody will ask me a simple, innocuous question, a softball is what they're called. I'll begin a monologue that somehow ends up several paragraphs later with me buying amphetamines in the dangerous neighborhood near the stadium back in '94, and that's how I ended up meeting the ex touring guitar-tech for Foghat. Interesting guy with lots of problems. 

Speaking of rock-n-roll.... I bought the birthday boy a monitor for his electronic drum kit. Now we are real rock stars. Becoming a star is pretty easy. Natural, even. Much easier, in fact, than life might otherwise suggest. There are a few elements of being a rock star that one should keep in mind. Like: you deserve this.  

"The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." - William Blake

Robert Hunter's Ten Commandments of Rock & Roll:

1. Suck up to the top cats

2. Do not express independent opinions.

3. Do not work for common interests, only factional interests.

4. If there’s nothing to complain about, dig up some old gripe.

5. Do not respect property or persons other than band property and personnel.

6. Make devastating judgments about persons and situations without adequate information.

7. Discourage and confound personal, technical, and/or creative projects.

8. Single out absent persons for intense criticism.

9. Remember that anything you don’t understand is trying to fuck with you.

10 Destroy yourself physically and morally and insist that all true brothers do likewise as an expression of unity.

Written by Bob Dylan and Robert Hunter:

I'm not sure if today's post was therapeutic for you or not. You should derive some comfort from knowing that anybody can write better than this. 

.

Gargoyle, I

Woke up, the witches were gone, am standing guard against them now. The evil fire-breathing chimeras will have to fight their way back inside today. 

The pic above was taken when Raquel and I went to France. This is from the now partially destroyed roof of Notre Dame, looking north to the hill of Sacré-Couer. Our hotel was right around the corner from the Basilica of Montmartre. Well, it wasn't a hotel, it was like an air-bnb, if I'm remembering it correctly. It was an apartment. I remember having the place to ourselves. At the time it seemed, of course, that we had all of Paris for ourselves. We were on our delayed honeymoon, though we were not getting along very well at the onset. When I look back on our relationship I recognize now that there were a number of key moments that we were not getting along. But have a baby anyway, we sure did. Things sort of worked out. The boy will be an adult soon. Or rather, not soon for him, but pretty soon in 54-year-old years, next year he'll be 2/3rds of the way there. He'll go off to college; I'll retire. Right?

I didn't start today with a subject. I just chose an image and voila!, here we are.  I've used the same image before, many years ago. I'm sure of it. 

Perhaps it is the unceasing rain in Sonoma that has me feeling this way. Remember "acid rain" from the 1970s and 80s? I spent the first few decades of my life playing in it, without shoes. I may have contracted ringworm somewhere along the way. 

 

.

Beckoning the Reckoning

I'm having a voiceless breakdown of sorts. I can admit it here; we're all friends. I've been announcing my psyche through crisis actions - erratic in new ways, sentimental in others, teary. I can hardly speak. My throat is clenching up as if my mind is choking me, reminding me that it's choking me. I'm not breathing well, or enough. It started last week, during an important call. Then, it continued over the weekend when talking to friends. My eyes are filled with swirling specters, principalities of the air, the messengers of darkness. This is the witches' sabbath. Some foul thing chants my name in the forest while dreaming. Awake, I hear its breath in the vacant dark. Always far away, I'm afraid of what I've known or become, what I've thought I've known. What had I thought I would  become.

.

An imageless world

I told you that I was running out of images. Why would I lie? That would not be in line with the therapeutic nature and intentions of this site.

The rain let up for a few hours yesterday. The sun even came out for a bit. Still, I stayed in bed and read and watched movies all day, humped my pillows, etc. The forecast shows rain every day for the next ten. That's as far as they'll predict. I might start limiting my predictions to the same. The earth is a complex place. Or, that's what the "argument" has been among my conservative friends against the idea of climate change. I regard everybody's opinions as amateur meteorologist predictions now. 

It doesn't matter what they say, it'll probably keep raining. 

I have been thinking a lot lately about political differences. I'm reading a book about the ideological underpinnings and assumptions made by different people. It is yes - gasp! - written by a black libertarian that most of my friends would consider a conservative. I'm not even sure if the word conservative still exists any more. Everybody is either far-right or alt-right now. At least we know which way our enemies are positioned. 

To do my part, I am taking a break from most social media and all of my newsfeeds. I'm ready for the new life, smartphones are built for dopamine hits. News apps are useless. It's news with a condom on. I mostly only scan headlines, though not for the reason that you might think: to stay informed of current events. It is only to mock the phrasing. 

.

 

Driver 8

I only have about six images on this computer, and have used four of them already. Perhaps not writing here is the cause of my slow loss of interest in photography. I have some digital images around here somewhere. 

I became sidetracked with another pos yesterday and never finished this one. I thought that I had figured out what happened with the "lost" post, but a common state of confusion has left me still wondering. Did I tell you that I have a minor case of long covid? I guess that I wouldn't have. All of the symptoms except menstrual, though barely noticeable.  

The boy and mom went to a wrestling camp in Sacramento, so I have been trying to play along with R.E.M. songs from the 80s. And a cover of the same. It's a fun and challenging song to play along with. The riffs and chords are clever, as is Peter Buck's playing.  

Raquel and the boy bought me Dylan's book, The Philosophy of Modern Song, for Christmas. I suppose he is trying once again to buck his current fans again, particularly those that might choose to read him as a result of the Nobel prize. It's not so much a philosophy as an ossifying man talking back to the radio and television of the past. I greatly prefer it when I can intuit his opinions from lyrical suggestions within songs. 

That's my opinion. 

There is some occasional wit and charm, and I haven't read all of the excerpts, or even half of them. But it's not the kind of book in which I necessarily would.  There are some curious selections as well. It's difficult not to get the feeling he was working with the publisher or some advisors of some kind on a few of the pages. 

It is that tone that I wish to avoid, the knowing whine of the aged. 

Okay. Let me publish this post now so I can start working on today's. I relayed to a friend yesterday that if "anybody wants to be a writer" they have to spend a minimum of an hour each day dedicated to writing. These unrelated sections here took me about fifteen minutes. 

If anybody ever asks me what type of writer I am, I'll say: fractional. 

.

The Band: Public Hair

These are the only images I have right now. You get what you get. So much has happened in the year since I wrote here last. Where to even start... 

Much has happened but nothing has changed. Perhaps I'll write about it. Odd how that works - if I had been writing about it every day I would care more about it all now. You get what you keep. 

My son turns eleven years old tomorrow. I bought him a monitor for his electronic drum kit. This allows me to free up my guitar amp to use some more electronics - a few pedals and maybe some sampler trickery for loops. The drum machine can run through the below monitor also, and I can use the midi time clock from the drum machine to reset the LFOs on the filter pedal in pulsating rhythmic time. 

There's very little else in the world that's quite like jamming. With a little patience, luck, and grace you can really oversimplify your life. 

.

Time for all of that, King Solomon

What next? I simply get back in the habit of writing here every day? Seems easy enough. If I can keep this site from becoming an unintended invitation to correspondence then I should be okay. 

The subtitle of this page is "Emails Without a Home..." Etc.

Sometimes it is nice to know that someone out there in the darkness is reading what you have written. Sometimes it should only be darkness out there. 

This is a time of notorious California rains. We're in the national news again for yet another biblical curse. There has been flooding throughout the state.  I have been using the word deluge to my friends, because I'm a twat. The skies have been gray for more than a week and they will continue to be that way for the foreseeable future. Rain seems better than fire. Any plague, Oh Lord, that these old bones can bear.

I have been building an ark in the back yard, to god's exacting standards. I will stock it with two of every animal that tastes good or has a nice ass, and all together we will ride this out. 

I think I stole stole that from a Beatles song. 

 

What else? Should I catalogue my relationship problems, the difficulties of being a parent, the experience of not drinking after the holidays, my job? Or maybe I could post my favorite recipes. Hopefully there will be time for all of that. 

.

My Mandala

It's true. I wrote a post last night, but Google deleted more than half of it and also removed the posted image. Then, they sent me a message telling me that this post was going to be put behind a sensitive content warning banner. I read the post and can not figure out what is sensitive about it. If anything I came across as possibly too unconcerned about my son's bicycle accident. It was terrifying, truly. I'm sorry, Google. I should have been more explicit about that. Or is it less explicit?

I can't tell, and how are we to know. Increasingly, we live by arbitrary standards, imposed by machines, or humans that hide behind machines. Maybe somebody lodged a complaint. Elon Musk is trying to save us from the many tyrannies of technology while also peddling them. He is trying to show us the light of enlightenment. But we are a stubborn yet proud indigenous people.

Maybe it was the imaginary name I used: Mandala Gangbang.  I guess we'll see when I post this one.

I just hope Google doesn't decide to read any more of my blog for the purpose of announcing editorial protocols. There are a few posts in which, well, they very well might have been sensitive, even by my poor and unexacting standards. I was not always as careful as I could have been, you see. I was born a poor blogger, destined to blog the land with my own hands.  

Perhaps we are all cursed, and these little mysteries and inconveniences are the penance we pay for doing business with the universe. 

.

A personal record

It is of course sobriety that has soured me on parenting. Time chants its flat imprecation, without dreams of baboons and periwinkles. There will be no catching tigers, no red weather. I may not seem sober right now, but I am. It is a horror. That is perhaps part of what a divorce can do. But it can do the other also, old sailor. It is a simple matter, enduring a reconciliation. Without drinking I often lack adequate access to my impulses. One must put effort into inconsistencies when alcohol is absent. Otherwise, chaos arrives in its own time. 

I kid along a bit, mostly to belabor the point.

I am bored and it is Sunday. Three days left at my current job, then a Florida vacation. I have been on a diet for about two weeks and have not lost a single pound. I believe that's a personal record. 

.

DJ Memory

Here it is - Sunday. Rachel and I drank champagne last night while we watched television with the boy, which was pleasant. We started watching Apollo 13 but it upset the boy when things started to go south for the crew. Perhaps the idea of somebody's father dying helplessly in a cold and isolated place was too much for his nine year old mind. That could just be me, projecting my fears and desires. 

We're good parents. 

CS said something to me the other day and I suspect that he is right. Being a father has done something horrible to me. It has stripped me of my sense of humor, my verve. Well, being a father and being in a relationship.  You end up losing whatever audience you had and gaining one that only finds you funny if you're relaying pre-endorsed humor. Dad jokes, etc. 

Keep in mind that I didn't blame the boy and his mother in the paragraph above, that pornographer CS did. All that I have done is to relay his wisdom here. He phrased it differently, emphasizing the things that I can no longer write about, blaming their absence for my sober times. He encouraged me to re-kickstart my dj'ing hobby and to focus on targeted corporate events that cater to the leaders of the home, the buyers of all things domestic. The idea is to start at Tupperware parties then move them to more of a TupperWareHouse© concept. 

I go to a three hour coaching camp this morning. I will discover some best practices for being an assistant coach of a boy's 4th grade basketball team. My pre-game speeches, I hope, will propel these young boys into a lifetime of victories. Some will say that my coaching style is too barbaric and cruel, focusing on my emphasis of the perpetual shame of loss rather than on perceived positive qualities like sportsmanship and good old-fashioned hussle. I have a speech already prepared for this eventuality, focusing on why Simone Biles was such a disappointment to America and ending with a fact-free prolix on the "spiritual innocence" of Kyle Rittenhouse. Then, I'll ask them all to donate money to his defense fund and to join me in an "All Lives Matter" team chant.  It should be fun.   

She was married when we first met, soon to be divorced.

I helped her out of a jam, I guess, but I used a little too much force.

.

Cities

We won't be moving to Denver. We got the news today, oh boy. 

I have mixed feelings about it. I can make my way towards a paralyzing ambivalence on most issues. It has helped protect me from being decisive, indemnification against certainties. 

The boy told me that he was glad. We bought flowers at the market on the way home. 

I'm checking them out

I'm checking them out

I got it figured out

I got it figured out

There's good points and bad points

Find a city

Find myself a city to live in. 

.

This Broken World

I can not decide what book to read next. Soon I will have no more books by Houellebecq left to read. I may try to re-read him, but it is too soon. The first book of his that I read was only a few months ago. I have ordered books of his poems, some thing about H.P. Lovecraft, and his observations on Schopenhauer... because the well is running dry. Such is the contour of the coming crisis. It has been a while since I have discovered a writer whose complete works I read almost uninterrupted. It feels good. It reminds me of the enthusiasms of youth. 

Bukowski was probably the last writer whose works I read with this sort of appetite. I should be cautious. He provides rich examples, yet perhaps remains a poor model on which to base a life. 

Every day at work I inch closer to departure. The strength of the feeling that I have around this gives me some indication just how far into a comfort zone I have backed myself. I passed off one of my accounts to a friend today, a very big account. It was sad and sweet. There were congratulations all around for me and the warm smiles that one gets when "moving on." I imagine it feels a little bit what retiring might feel like. Though of course there will be a lot of work to do when December arrives. So only the sense of departure, not in the paralyzing openness of the future. 

That is, I think, why I started writing here again: the feeling that I might not be able to soon. It is curious, the function of feelings. Sometimes we want what we can have. 

.

I've always depended on the instability of strangers

I've discovered a word that, if I repeat it a few times and let it echo around in me, can sometimes prevent me from writing a poem: cenotaph. I barely know what the word means - some sort of monument for the dead - but the word reminds me of some of the poetry I read when I was younger, mostly bad stuff from the mid to late 20th century. It's the type word that only someone who believes themselves a poet would try to use poetically.  

This is my incantation (there's another!).

.

... anything worth expressing

Raquel Garterbelt

What an absolute sucker I have become for late middle age. I do all the things that retirees wish they could still do. The envy of the elderly. 

I'm reading a book by Lawrence Osborne - The Ballad of a Small Player. The descriptions of compulsive gambling make me feel uneasy about other compulsions. The book has made me want to die young, a little bit, though it is getting to be late in the evening for that. Only halfway through, so who knows, perhaps in another hundred pages it will make me want to live forever, though that narrative trajectory seems unlikely. 

Between two jobs, I am in a type of limbo. Awaiting the time at one role to expire before I depart for a three week vacation, returning to the new job with much training and learning to get through at the onset. My usual, comfortable pace will need to quicken. I am trying to return to good better study habits, but my mind is fragmented from the work that I have been doing for many years now. The new job will require new skills, patience, and attention. 

Chatting with CS today through text. He has me wanting to go out with a 24mm lens and just shoot and shoot and shoot. Real film. I have ten rolls of Ilford HP5+. He is also trying to get me to buy a medium format camera but that is perhaps part of another story. He is always trying to get me to spend money.  He will not rest until I live in desperation and squalor. Though the idea of getting out and shooting film excites me. I love and miss the feel of shooting a manual film camera. Those ten rolls of film aren't getting any younger. 

The picture of Rachel above was not shot in film. It was a digital image that I removed the color in Apple's Photos app, which is a complete waste, a turd made of code, all zeroes and no ones. Apple has succeeded in making most all of their software useless or worse: common. Their new phone software has "convenience" features that can not be disabled, which is antithetical to the very idea. My hatred for them motivates me to hate others like them, also. 

Thanks For Your Corporation! 

This marks two days in a row now that I have not written much of a post, but have instead offered three or more unrelated paragraphs about anything that pops into my head. It is not therapeutic the way that writing can sometimes be. Instead, it is having a poor effect on me. I am saddened lightly by my inability to express and my lack of having anything worth expressing.

 

.

Murk

I'm having a bit of writer-shock. I finished reading a great book by a great writer and then started reading a mediocre book by a sometimes gifted writer. It's hard to let it go, how disappointing it is that the book should be better than it is. 

I saw The French Dispatch today. I will hold most of my reactions though probably not keep them. It was pleasant to see Anderson indulge his unique storytelling style once more, in a theater by myself. The parts sometimes exceeded the sum - there were scenes that were compelling, smart. The framework of the foreign reporting office was perhaps not strong enough. Or, maybe I was expecting something more complete to be the result, even though the film made no hint or promise of that. I will want to see it again at home. 

I have a week and a half of work, then three weeks of vacation. Two of those weeks will be spent in Florida. The traditional family beach vacation. I may buy a beach hat. We will all wear sunscreen lotion. We will take him to the beach and to amusement parks. I wanted my son to see where I learned disdain for things. 

This is a list of paragraphs. Setting down in form things that can not carry themselves. Too bored to fly, too sleepy to dream. I have nothing clever to say, though all day I have had clever thoughts. They have abandoned me, as my luck in the sequence of books. This paragraph does not belong on the list of paragraphs. 

Tomorrow will be earlier and earlier than that. 

.

Modest Promises

That's right - dog pics. I don't have anything else. I had believed that reading good and great books would result in something for me in life. Of what, I am not sure. I thought there would be an actual reward. Turns out the world is full of readers. There are people who have succeeded wildly and yet still find the time to read. I've met some of the well-adjusted. 

I had a chat with the boy about drug addiction. I'm not even sure why. I was the one that brought it up. He has been asking about pop stars. He has a fascination with Michael Jackson, so I had to explain that he was a pop star with problems. From there it was a short leap to Kurt Cobain, heroin addiction, and shotgun suicide. You might think I'm kidding, and I wish that I was, but that's what we talked about as we went to pick up lunch the other day. 

To help balance that conversation out I told him about the artist Bill Plympton. He, Plympton, has done the introduction animation for the Simpsons several times, being among the animators' favorites. So, I tried to find any of his shorts on Netflix or Hulu, and perhaps I just don't know what I'm looking for, but I couldn't find anything. I'm certain that there is a service out there, with a monthly fee, that would provide for me everything that I might wish to watch, yet it is always just out of reach. There are illegal ways, of course, and that is what one must resort to if they wish for the internet to fulfill even its most modest promises. 

.

Other people's air

It is impossible to say what love is. This can be said for others only slightly more than for oneself. The constant speakers will, of course, always disagree. They will tell you what something is and isn't. Their truths needing to outdo yours. Their insistence is reliable - the tedium of certainty. They contradict themselves if left to speak for too long, or when interrupted for any time, but who can blame the for never noticing. When one is so full of thought it is a wonder they never burst. They are like the joke about socialists: eventually they run out of other people's air. 

I feel as if I am running out of time to write, and I am. 

.

The Warwick - Denver

I am sitting in a hotel in Denver, drinking a Stella Artois. That is why I took the picture above. It is among the worst of all of the images I have posted here, I hope, but I had the sudden impulse to write something and did not wish to be delayed by finding an image, or the right image. What you see above is a man in need.

There is a chance that we - the Q6i -  will move to Denver. Raquel is interviewing for a position, a role. I have accepted an offer for a new role that will take up more of my time and intellectual energies. I invite it but almost as one who invites music lessons only to play the guitar. I will need to learn many things that might seem dry at first, but it is in having knowledge of them that I am hopefully able to synthesize them into something more meaningful. You must sometimes have the pieces, and know them, before you can work above them.  Other things you can just fake with intelligence. This new role will require research and attentiveness. 

It's more fun for me when I write about Raquel. Am I a shallow man? Her interviewing for this role has made her very sexy to me. To see her getting ready in her underwear has done this little magical trick in which I want to move to Denver with her now. 

Well, I hadn't said it until just then, but I suppose now I've said it. The idea of moving has suddenly taken on an appeal that is affecting other parts of what I can still call me. 

.

... to separate the afflicted from the well

(The 4AD album cover of my son)

I am listening to some of the most powerful chick-rock I've heard in a while. There is lots of it, now - so much, some say more than ever! The Bands: Crumb, Dry Cleaning, Goat Girl, Liz Lawrence, Penelope Isles, Squid - to give you more than just an idea, but actual real-chic examples, with some great chick bands in there, also. Don't hate me if those female bands aren't Vega for you. Don't hate me at all. It's all anybody can ask with their variety of substitute verbs. 

Don't blank me. Don't _ me. Don't  me. 

The river is rising. It has breached the bank on the opposite shore. We are prepared for overnight flooding. We seem quite high on the riverbank, but it can and has flooded here before. They were giving out sandbags at the local park where we used to go and hit tennis balls back and forth at one another. Or, not at, but towards. Sometimes over the net, other times not. 

I have not been writing here, I guess, because I can't. Or, I can't seem to very well. It was maybe a mistake not being anonymous, by believing too much in the aegis of meaning less through jest, regarding too lightly those things which people hold dear and sacred - above all else - most of all those precious things held loftily above others. 

Oh, I'm not a victim. I didn't mean that. I can always just choose to be the thing I hate, to escape. People never know what to do when you concede anything other than defeat, but they hate you for becoming what you have been announcing all along. Well, they may know what they believe they're supposed to do, but they don't know what to do with, or about, you. These new ways we speak to one another have ossified more quickly than the malleability of the language can prove itself flexible enough to function, yet language survives. 

Funny, that. 

.

 

Champagne Supernova in the Sky

How many special people change?
How many lives are livin' strange?
Where were you while we were getting high?

Someday you will find me
Caught beneath the landslide
In a champagne supernova in the sky

.

Sugarloaf State Park

And camping we went - two nights, three days of satanic heat, day hikes, cooking exclusively over an open flame, bike riding, walking dry creek beds, chatting around the campfire late at night before drifting off to our tent to read Harry Potter.

I took the first portrait of the boy that I have taken in a while. My interest in photography has lessened a bit during Covid. Or rather, my main subjects deserved a break from often having a camera pointed at their faces. It is the first portrait of the boy that I have liked in a while. 

That's about all that I got out of the weekend. The rest was work, lots of it. Setting up and breaking down a campsite with a nine year old boy is a lot of work, though there's really no need to mention the boy in that sentence. He spent most of the time playing with a bouncy ball wondering why it was taking me so long to load the car. 

That's it, I'm beaten by the chores of it all.

.

Viagra Falls

Alec Soth

The boy and I leave today for a couple days camping. Or, that is the plan. We go this morning to put our names on a waitlist at a state campsite about 45 minutes from here. It has been booked solid for many months, but they keep a few sites open and release them to those on the waitlist as they see fit, or as they become available. This plan has always worked for us in the past. So, fingers crossed in wanting witchery. 

Some people don't like camping.  That's okay, even understandable. The activity seems to work best when there is some partnership in completing the various burdens. A significant amount of the pleasure derived from the proceedings, I believe, can be found in just that: partnership can be satisfying, even when the specific leisure time involves labor. 

That's what I'm hoping for: that the boy and I find a pleasant way of working together and being buddies. The Covid-sheltering has been difficult on our relationship. It is challenging to be a parent, a teacher, and a friend, with very little clear delineation between those roles, all while trying to have some sense of space to yourself. 

Watching how our local school board has allowed teachers to call pretty much all the shots about how and when students will be able to return to school has somewhat soured my feeling of benevolence towards them, though I have no wish to live in Florida right now, either. It will be difficult for me to ever talk again about how hard their jobs are and how hard they all work and how much they care about the kids. The reality of Covid has disabused me of most of those unchallenged notions. 

Teachers are just like everybody else, you have no idea how hard their jobs are...

Cops are just like everybody else, you have no idea how hard their jobs are...

Etc, etc. Ad nauseam. 

Yes, they are like everybody else: incompetent when they're not too busy being lazy or corrupt. 

Sometimes I'll have Raquel get dressed up in a nurse's outfit just to reaffirm my faith in the working class. 

.

Survivor

I survived another night. I awoke again this morning feeling relatively well. We'll see how I'm doing by the end of the day. That has been the pattern so far - feeling okay in the mornings, then feeling drained and weak by evening time, with chills and floating phantasms. Perhaps I was bitten by a vampire - I crave life's essence as the night descends. My body has been shapeshifting for a couple decades now. I should probably read more inter-sectional feminism. If you have not already read my exhaustive post on the subject then do a Google search for: Succubus, come hither. Or: My succubus likes to ride on top. 

They were both written with the intention of being published in academic journals but all of my rejection notices were of the same kind: Dear Sir, Again we must remind you that our organization does not publish supernatural pornographic fan fiction. We ask you again to please stop sending draft revisions. 

Telle est la Mort.....

.

Beatitude

I have the strangest sickness. It arrives and departs approximately every 12 hours. This is its third day cycling through my life. Fatigue, chills, soreness, other maladies that I need not catalog. Tomorrow I am supposed to have an appointment with my dentist. I fear if I relay my condition I will be told not to come in. The next day I have plans to go camping with the boy. My wisdom teeth feel sore. If I press the sides of my throat they are both very tender, though it is not difficult to swallow. Earlier today the feeling in my chest made me suspect a heart attack. Though, if so, it was a very minor one. 

What do I know? Perhaps people die from miniature heart attacks all of the time. 

I slept an extremely long time last night - eight hours. That is nearly a miracle of my nights. Had a priest or nun blessed me the evening before I would be arguing right now in front of the Vatican cardinals for sainthood. Maybe it was only a normal night's sleep that made me feel as if the sickness had subsided. Fatigue has a different set of symptoms, though. I looked them up, along with those of the heart attack. I am nothing if not curious concerning the suspicions that will one day assert themselves upon me as more than intuition, refusing all offers for negotiation. 

.

My Supreme Opinion

Life is far more simple than people allow it to be. 

One should:

- Get lots of rest

- Drink lots of water

- Work hard

- Get married

- Don't beat your children or their cousins

- Have many strong, male offspring

- Pray every morning, every evening, and before lunch

- Handle poisonous snakes to demonstrate faith in God's power

One should never:

- Dawdle

- Affiliate with strangers

- Befriend neighbors who walk too close to your land

- Fall asleep with one hand below the covers

- Drink alcohol, do drugs, or receive anal sex

- Take the Lord's name in vain 

- Blaspheme the Holy Spirit

- Covet your neighbor's wife's ass, or that of the maidservant

If you can manage doing, or not doing, those simple things then you will be mostly fine and your rewards will be waiting for you after death. You will be stockpiling something that this world can not take away from you, in a faraway Kingdom of praise and joy and songs in major keys. If you choose to instead follow the path of the wicked then your rewards will be few and temporary. Every righteous soul already knows this. Only the wicked lament these truths. 

I ran out of new pictures and these came up in a social media feed a couple weeks ago. They are not that old, yet already they are of a time that is so distant that I'm surprised it can still be seen. That is the magic of photography, any other use of that form is probably from the devil's crimson eye. So, be wary of tricksters, particularly those that try to tell you that images include additional dimensions. That's the serpent's hiss, plain Beelzeblubbering for sure. 

If I've heard it once I've heard it whispered for all of eternity. 

.

2017 Chateauneuf-du-Pape

We planned on a Tahoe weekend - mountain biking and boating - but now it is all cancelled. The fires in the region have destroyed any possibility of doing any of the activities that would bring you to a place like this. It relies on people being outdoors. The skies are filled with smoke and the Air Quality Index is at 268 - Very Unhealthy. Yesterday it was closer to 500. 

We spent most of the day indoors yesterday drinking expensive and delicious wines. I broke my nearly one month break from alcohol. Today I am feeling the repercussions. We did, at the very least, have a chance to spend some time with our friends and their new baby girl, Neeva. She is walking and beginning to talk now. The last time we visited them it was nearly a year ago and we could not go near them. They are here from Henderson, Nevada, and have rented a beautiful place in Incline Village for a month. They have been able to be at the house about half of the time. 

Last night we started talking openly in front of our son about the desire to move away from California. Raquel and I have some things to figure out between us. A move of that kind is a significant life change and it requires a type of teamwork that she and I only seem to ever possess in fragments. But life is just a series of fragments, ones that sometimes seem to re-occur. Don't trust anybody that tries to tell you otherwise. It is only a trick of the mind that creates the sensation and appearance of a continuum. 

Well, that is what three bottles of wine are whispering to me from the recent past. 

.

... could have flattened, could have left

CS/Metropolitan Museum of Art

I could have flattened the paper out more before taking this iPhone pic of the print, and I could have left the colors alone rather than letting the phone "correct" them, but instead I didn't do either of those things. CS sent it to me, telling me that it might not last or that it will not last. I forget if it has a chance or if it's doomed. At least it will now live here forever. 

Now or forever? 

I'm having a difficult time determining what I mean by anything any more. Perhaps it is the result of being manic-depressive, though that is an emotional disorder more than a cognitive one. It does wreak occasional chaos on declarative memory and executive function. I'm not sure how that explains or excuses the confusion of the previous words I've written, though.

I don't know why I came in here to write. I am not of a single mind tonight and can't seem to harness or create anything on this last final spot. 

 

.