Surprise

Well.

So here we are.

Just "published" that last post, written some time ago....

Was expecting something much more depressing...so...hmmm.

Today is the same day as that on which I "published" that contemplation.  Not the same day that I'd written it, obviously.  But I do still wish I was a writer.  It is SUCH a good excuse for other sorts of inactivity.!!

And I still am SO impressed with Doctorow...and TC Boyle, and Jon Haldeman....I wrote a list of my "best friends" and they were on the list.  They, actually, WERE the list.  Interesting how over the course of life ones "best friend" writers change.  Early on it was Dostoyevsky...totally my best friend.  Then maybe Kafka and Sartre....Then it was Vonnegut...how I loved that guy...now its Doctorow and Boyle....what does this mean??

I like to believe that I've learned more; I've experienced more; but I don't unfortunately know why that alters my pleasures in reading....

well, whatever.

I got a new puppy.  Described as a cross between some sort of exotic Shepard...."Malwaw"?...and a pit bull, I think this puppy is a cross between a pit bull and a dachsund....totally different vibe, you know....we will see....doesn't really matter...she's mine now...and of course I love her....having some adjustment difficulties with my cat...a tortishell...cranky...capable....you get the picture....cat was here first....so....

keyboard now covered completely in cat fur....

puppy sleeping on my bed....

a faint recreation of what it's like to have two little girls to look after...

only fun in retrospect.....

love those girls, tho....love seeing each girl parenting two more...who are delightful...

life is good.

Wait! What??

The only good excuse for doing nothing is that you're a "writer"...who can check?  So.  I'm a writer....
This is an identity that is great for me....totally suits my needs....

Thus, I am writing.

I gotta say, I am impressed with Doctorow....every time I pick up another of his books, I am blown away.  Good job, I'd like to say.  Good job.

Sure would like to be a writer that good!  Not likely, though...what with one thing and another...

So a month later, I'm in worse shape than before.  Keep forgetting where I left my lighter...possibly because of over indulgence in mind altering substances....possibly due to age itself...and notice, rather peripherally (is that a word?) that most people don't like me anymore...which perception is a sure sign of depression....if not outright madness...don't you think?  I mean, really.  I could name them...(the people who liked me once but don't now) but why bother...  You see what I mean?

I just can't figure out where my energy went....presumably, it is going to fire the computer that is my brain which is busy trying to understand this thing called "life"...and presumably that takes a whole lot of energy, leaving me with practically none....

Well all I've got to say about that is "it damned well better be worth it"...the resulting "insight", I mean...If not, I'm writing a letter!

So I'm a writer....I love that....I'd rather be that than anything.  Always wanted to be that....am indulging this minor fantasy of converting these "blog" essays into an insightful tome of some sort....and wondering at the same time if there is a god or goddess of disillusionment...(see Google) ....Pluto's transit to Neptune??   Oh good grief.....but at least someone besides me asked about it...that's something...

What I do, besides almost nothing, is "write", right?  And here I am "writing", so I'm actually acutalizing that ....that.....notion? idea? fantasy? what????

I think I must be illustrating "magical thinking"...surely this is what magical thinking is....I pretend, it becomes real....yep....and what about all those other dimensions?  ?Why can't we think our way into a different dimension...a different life...different circumstances....maybe where we do waY BETTER...so OK, that's a little magical, too.

All things are transitory...including enlightenment

Yes.  Well. Here we are tax day...this year we get til Monday....great....to fund our government...which I am totally down with...except our government appears to refuse to govern...which gives me pause.

That is not my current issue, however.  Even though it's a good one.  My current issue is my own (of course) epiphany about the transitory nature of things....this is, of course, not a new idea.  Yet...being in charge of all of my mother's "stuff" makes me nose to nose with this fact of "transitory"ness....Mom seemed to think that "old" is "good"...but then, "good" to whom?  why?...so she dies, and no body knows why this stuff is important...what it has reminded her of...and even if they do...so, this stuff reminded my mother of such and such....what then?  Am I to keep it for another generation...and then my daughters can look at it and go "what about this stuff?"...it is, in fact, very painful to be the receiptient of this old stuff...particularly knowing that a)I have no first hand memories that make this meaningful and b) my daughters will have to dispose of it and c)...c....history is continually erased...

My own will be..of course...erased....which is fine and as it should be...

But I'm left here wondering, "so what" about my life, my parent's life, my brother's life, my childrens' lives...I can see that one generation follows the other...new leaves on the tree as it were....ok...but we spend so much enery on "blooming", don't we?  And when we don't "bloom"...we feel failures....

I feel so misled about things.

These old things of my mothers....mean nothing.

Wow.  I thought they meant everything....

So what does mean something.  I mean, hey....I'm not dead yet....I've managed to finance my way...I can exit without penalty....so...what the fuck? you know?  What does it mean?  What has meaning that I can enjoy?  I've got 10 or 15 years....where is the meaning?  What the fuck are we doing here?  I totally believe in peace, love and satchinanad...but we are too crowded...too confused....too overwhelmed with input to make it make sense...the sense is there....we MUST find it....the yahoos and idiots are close to blowing it up!

Ok.  So we are dealing with grief here.  I see that now.  I have dreams in which I am crying about being left so alone...my family all dead....I see that I really defined myself by my relationships with them...so that now that they are gone, I have lost that definition...rebel? against whom?....wtf.....

Egad.  I must pull myself together! There's gardening!  There's....uh....there's.....building various things...creativity...there's music ( I am getting remarkably skilled with the songs I know on the guitar)...there's philosophy.  Mostly there is philosophy.  I simply must know what the hell is actually going on here...and clearly, I am nowhere near figuring that out....I do know more than I did before...but still not enough for things to jell into something sensible...

To recap:  We get born (rather willy nilly near as I can tell)...we are told what's important.  We attempt to live according to what we've been told.  We discover that the information we were given is faulty and attempt to refine, improve, update that info.....we fail...and find we don't know even what we mean by success.....

We are pretty sure, however, that our personal family is not representative of "success".  To wit:
the pater familius commits suicide
the male heir falls in the driveway, suffers for 15 hours...dies....
the matriarch lives to 94 but alienates and damages her daughter....causes multiple "natural disasters" after her death....is remembered as a witch....

This does not seem like "success".  "Success" involves sweet breezes, flowers, serentity, peace and love , etc. etc...Anybody know where this is?  Anybody? Anybody?

No, right?...Just as I thought.  We are left thinking that we suffer to the degree we attach....
We find such pleasure in attachment, but since all things are transitory, attachment is suffering....That much I see....So that's something, I guess....

Kind of bittersweet, I must say.

I feel a bit like the bug smashed on the windshield.

Events are so much larger than me.

I shouldn't be so surprised.  I anticipated all of this for years...except, maybe, Donald Trump....didn't really see that coming....

So.
My brother dies.  My mother dies. There is a huge fire at the farm in which the old barn dies.
And I am the prime inheritor; the last of that nuclear family.

My nieces can't get along.
My daughters barely get along.
One of my daughters is effectively homeless....without drug or alcohol addiction....figure that.

The wind continues to blow in this really unhealthful way....spreading fires....making me feel too cold.....threatening....continually threatening.

I feel kind of shitty.....I perseverate on various illnesses....
I don't get enough exercise.
I drink too much wine.

North Korea launches missles.
Donald Trump is an idiot.

And here we are.

Where is this?, one might ask. 2017. A new era. Really really new.  All bets are off. Yegods.

Can you hear those drums beating in the background?....getting closer.......getting louder.... more insistent.....increasingly unignorable?.....bom bom bom bom......

As a (relatively) old person...an oldish person shall we say, I in fact DO have a much broader perspective than would be possible for a 25 year old....having been 25 myself, I am quite confident that I do know more about the structure of society than I did then....and I feel, therefore, as though I should be able to suss out what the fuck's going on and come up with the correct line of action in response to it.  And yet, I actually cannot.

A difficult position.  All I can do, as it turns out, with my superior perspective, is to keep on doing what's right in front of me....which is plenty, what with being the prime inheritor and fire victim and all....but that's not the point......all I can do is do what's right in front of me....while having a rather acute awareness of how futile this activity really is.  Huh.  How odd. 

We must pretend that all is going to proceed in a positive sort of direction....and behave with such an outcome in mind...it would be awful to act as though the negative outcome was inevitable.....that would surely lead to despair...to taking the lethal dose of kool-aide.....so we envision the future in a positive light and act in accordance with that (positive outcome)  as the consequence of our current decisions....
Clearly the best course of action.

We just need to get rid of that "acute awareness of futility" problem.....prozac probably helps with this....but not enough.....alcohol helps briefly, then dumps you......anger used to be the best, but at my age, it takes way too much out of me....I'd rather not....

Perhaps we just take it.  We go, "that's what it is to be human".....and accept it as fate....

I don't know....I feel a kind of burning resentment about this being the human condition....I find it hard to go along with....if I need to be floating freely down the stream of existence, this feeling is the big dead animal in the creek that is blocking my flow....if you see what I mean....

Well.  So.   There's an up to the minute report on doings here in Montana.....a busy place, as you can see.

I'll keep you posted.