“Have I not reason to lament what man has made of man?” William Wordsworth
I am sitting here, looking for quotes from the Buddha or Mark Twain to help dress up a story I haven’t even started writing, out of a fear of terminal boredom. Today (5/29) is my birthday and I am sick as a dog. The Wordsworth quote fit my mood. I have spent the day alone, with only one exception.
My love came in this afternoon, wearing a mask, carrying a box of other worldly pastries and a stethoscope. All this is easily explained. The mask is from a concern not to catch whatever I have. I grabbed for mine before she walked in. I’ve got no wisecracks about that, just a quiet respect regarding her choices and why. Now, the stethoscope is a whole other deal.
I think in a second conversation, somewhere around six months ago, she told me she was a physician. Conversations about how you’re feeling, etc., lose their casual nature under these circumstances. Now, doctors are a funny kind of people and I only mean it in the sense of quite unusual. I don’t know how many times during the day you might make a casual reference to what’s going on in your body, but with a doctor it is all on the table, right there.
Lest there be an ounce of misunderstanding, I am not complaining, not a chance. I knew when she whipped out the stethoscope, the next words would be, “Inhale through your mouth and then exhale.” Until the earpiece had touched all of the quadrants of the my front and back, there was nothing to talk about, until the diagnosis, which had something to do with congestion in the chest, but to be expected.
Now, the pastries were magical and even felt excessive, because surprises are endless testimony to the depth of her feeling for this old man. There were four of them in the box and they were gorgeous. We shared one and I encouraged her to take one for her daughter, who shares my same birthday. I tell you what, if I was still smoking pot, they would have been devoured before I even started this. As it stands, there are still two in the box and I don’t even dare open it, because I know what happens next and I just can’t.
You know, I was sitting around pretty much the whole day, thinking I should write something. I have kind of gotten used to start doing it on Wednesday, late afternoon and evening. Depending upon work schedule, etc., the day changes, but I try and hold the pattern as long as I can, not that anyone cares. The birthday gave me added pressure, while being sick made it really fucken challenging.
I am not sure when I gave up on any hope of sanity for me. Truthfully, I have no idea what it means any more. I don’t think there is some kind of magical yardstick that calibrates crazy. I can tell you that most everything going on everywhere in the world today is totally nuts. What I am witnessing now, I never imagined. If I was an anthropologist or sociologist, I think I’d shit can it and become a greeter at Walmart.
I guess I am distracted a lot by life, but here I am, on my birthday, all alone and not feeling very good at all. I suspect if I looked at past writings on today I’d probably find at least a modicum of introspection and inventory taking of time past and present. However, this is like Mad Magazine on steroids. If you had a sense of humor without any kind of moral compass, these are world-class hysterical times.
Somehow, and don’t ask me how, we have gotten dumber than we ever have been. When Aristotle and Socrates were hanging out in their togas by the sauna, plucking grapes from the vine, they were laying down some heavy shit. Being smart was really cool, something to aspire to. You said shit that maybe two or three people could understand, but it made you even more admirable. Then, the goal was to progress, to get better at what we were good at.
Oh fuck, it is only four o’clock and too early for me to go and get some takeout Chinese food, that I love thinking about and regret eating.
I don’t know what to say. It feels like we are just losing control of our future and the future of our home and the future of our children’s children. It’s not like it hasn’t happened right under our noses. What is it that has kept us so busy that we didn’t feel our future being pick pocketed out from under us?
I come from an era when it seemed like the entire world had grasped the significance of the times. Listen, I have nothing at all against Taylor Swift and think she is an extraordinary talent. In a way, she personifies the times. It is all about the show, a cultural drug. It is very important to be perfect. You cannot offend anyone, ever. What do I hear? A dumbass feud between Drake and Kendrick Lamar and that’s the best a Pulitzer Prize winning artist can do to address the times?
Let’s say you are a justice on the Supreme Court, in a country that desperately needs impartiality when it comes to the rule of law, because we count on it to be as close to perfect as we are capable. Segregating African American children was wrong. Not allowing women the right to vote was wrong. Now, that sacred institution stinks like a pile of shit in the warm sun, populated by selfish, small-minded people, with a gluttonous appetite for adulation and political expedience.
Corruption and capitulation to the dollar are all that matters. In this country, the wealthy have unbelievable advantages when it comes to taxes and inheritance. The bigger the corporation, the less they pay in taxes. You will never guess who these corporate criminals are in love with?
We have one of the most despicable human beings, birthed by the devil, blindly followed by people, who actually think that pizzerias in Washington are the headquarters for a worldwide pedophile ring.
Since 1789, we have had 46 presidents. This one is the first one to EVER be convicted of committing a crime. In all that time, with all the filth and betrayal in politics, this is the very first time this has happened and nobody wants to even think it is possible this motherfucker is an unscrupulous, self-absorbed, criminal. No, it is a plot perpetrated by the pizza owners and pedophiles.
Having nothing to do with anything. How can anyone truly give a shit about what any of the Kardashians are doing?
People are getting their news from social media, which is simply propaganda, specifically targeting what you are already predisposed to believing in and the products you buy are funding these messages.
When the only thing I see or hear is Robert DeNiro spewing profanities about the Tangerine Dream, something isn’t right to me. Social testicles have been shrunken to bb’s by the Whip of the Woke. The most offensive people I have ever laid eyes on are now today’s arbiters of what is offensive. Any body ever hear of a guys named Lenny Bruce? Pete Seeger? Even better, where is our Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. today?
It’s funny, I always follow releases from the Pew Center, a monumentally credible outfit that has been doing opinion surveys for years. When you read what people want, like the vast majority in favor of abortion for example and then the resounding silence of those voices, a chorus of who cares? Is it something in the pizza?
The Ten Commandments can now be displayed in Louisiana schools. Did you know that?
I find the silence in this country absolutely deafening. The insurrection on January 6th was as stunning to me as the obliteration of the Twin Towers on September 11th and this time it was at our own hand. We did this to each other, a kind of political incest, making the magnificent Constitution a toilet paper scroll.
Yes, I do lament what we are doing to each other and there’s no music, no marches, no outrage, no nothing. Of course, the other possibility is I am just an old man with a muddled view of why we have been gifted a modest amount of time on this heavenly orb. I also have a shitty, chest cold.
No fucken way.