Nothing Left

 I am 70 years old.

There is nothing left that I can do in innocence.

Strange feeling.

Here's to You

Whiskey for breakfast, lunch, and dinner yesterday.

Rough day.

Cent'Anni!

Hey - It's a Philosophy

 It's better to be judged by twelve than carried by six.

Springsteen Wisdom

Just ran out to Walgreens to pick up antibacterial ointment for the cut on my nose.

Carol wacked me with a broom again. And my sons wonder why I beat her.

Along the way I listened to Springsteen. Heard No Surrender, Jungleland, and Thunder Road. 

No Surrender: "Well, we made a promise we swore we'd always remember, no retreat, baby, no surrender."

Jungleland: "The Rangers had a homecoming in Harlem late last night, and the Magic Rat drove his sleek machine over the Jersey state line. Barefoot girl sitting on the hood of a Dodge, drinking warm beer in the soft summer rain. The Rat pulls into town , rolls up his pants, together they take a stab at romance, and disappear down Flamingo Lane."

Thunder Road: "Don't turn me home again, I just can't face myself alone again.......................So you're scared and you're thinking that maybe we ain't that young anymore, show a little faith there's magic in the night, you ain't a beauty, but hey, you're alright, oh, and that's alright with me."

The man is either painting pictures so vivid in your mind, or speaking truths so honest they sting, or projecting defiance to inspire. Beautiful stuff.

All of these stations dedicated to one artist have the fan thing where they come on and play their five favorite songs. They tell stories of what the songs mean and how they came to mean that. It is stunning proof of the magic of music.

The woman playing these songs this morning said, when introducing Jungleland - "This is my father's absolute favorite song." I loved it.

It is so cool when your kids know you in that way. When your relationship transcends the parent thing and crosses over to the human thing. I mean, if you are lucky, the human thing outlasts the parent thing by a long shot. If you are lucky, your kids know the human behind the parent - the vulnerable person who did the best they could to protect and love and - eventually - release the kid.

Music can be the magical bridge to get from here to there.

Fucking amazing.

You Alone

You get to a place in life where you have to make a choice: Either you say "Fuck it - I will be who I am no matter what." OR you say: "I will continue to the grave as the empty fraud that I am."

It's inevitable. If you spend your entire life playing a part, circumstances will eventually conspire to back you up against a wall to the point where your fucking head and heart explode OR your spine finally and fatefully dissolves.

Because life is relentless and cuts you no slack. 

For Your Consideration: Dissolving is death. Explosion is rebirth.

But, most likely, when you get to the moment when you have no choice but to explode, you are not ready for it. It makes you uncomfortable. You have put yourself in a situation where you have to speak out, to strike out, to raise your fist and your voice. As opposed to your typical reaction - smiling weakly, allowing others to place the boot to your neck.

You have made bad decisions. Or no decision. Over and over and over again. Until the morning you wake up to a bloodcurdling scream. Your own. At 3:00 am. Ragged, cutting through your throat like jagged glass. And you drool like a mad dog.

You know you have to do the right thing. You HAVE to do the right thing.

Or die.

This is gonna be really uncomfortable. People will be inconvenienced, and many will think less of you. But who the fuck are they to judge? Their lives are equally meaningless. Vapid and misplaced.

You alone hold the truth of who you are.

It is time to live up to that expectation.

You Are Not Blind

 "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."

Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

Creatives

Creative people are one degree removed from reality.

This is why they create. This is how they survive.

A creative person does not come up against a problem and think: "How can I fix this?" A creative person comes up against a problem and thinks: "How can I talk about this? How can I present this? How can I express or define this problem to others?"

The problem is not concrete. The expression of the problem is.

That's why it is so hard for them to negotiate life. They take life - which is a black and white and overwhelmingly boring concept - and try so hard to make it into art.

Sisyphus every time.

Creative people do not comprehend how to register a car. Or even why it is necessary. They don't get real estate taxes. They don't understand feigned politeness or conversations about the weather. They are not interested in anything that is defined by the word municipal.

They lament those who lie to themselves and others consistently as a means of merely survivng a life they should celebrate.

Creatives cannot deal with anything not connected with the truthful expression of emotion. Raw and honest.

I relate to creative people.

?

 If you work for a living, why do you kill yourself working?

Fuckadocious (and Shakespeare)

 In a fucked up world, you gotta be demonstrably more fuckadocious to have even a snowball's chance in hell of surviving.

Unrelated: I fucking love Shakespeare. I love reading it, I love watching it, it brings me enormous peace. It's one of the random and unpredictable (to you) things that puff up my soul and give me LIFE.

Heed The Fucking Warning

 "If Biden's hubris is such that he doesn't understand the best interest of his party, and more importantly, his country, then he has to be shown the door, period."

"Because, if trump is a threat to democracy - and in many ways he is - so too are the Dems who are in danger of being as feckless as the Republicans have long been shameless. If they're gonna send this guy out there - if trump is a monster, and in many ways he is, you're gonna send this guy out to slay the dragon? I don't think so."

Bob Costas on Real Time with Bill Maher, talking about Biden's diminshed mental capacity

From Now On

From now on, when you pour yourself a whiskey, pour three fingers more than you think you need. 

If you don't, you know you are only gonna go back for more. Why waste time? You can use the extra time to savor the flavor.

And reflect upon your life.

I Am A Strange Man

A heavy load was lifted up off of me a few months ago.

As a result, dark thoughts were exorcised from my brain. Gone. Just like that. Thoughts that had festered and poisoned me for decades. Truthfully, for the vast majority of my adult life. Assuming I ever had an adult life. The handcuffs, choke collar, and leg shackles were removed; I started staggering around uncertainly.

A different man was left behind.

Since then I have been trying to fill the void with heaping helpings of me. Trying on various personalities. I am forced to do this because I have no clue who I really am. The simplest solution, of course, would be for my real self to step forward to shock the world. But he doesn't exist. Not just yet.

I made an ass of myself at the family Christmas gathering because I was juggling personalities. Sidelong glances abounded.

Last week we attended the baby shower for our soon to be born grandson. The women did the shower thing, the men retired to a local bar. Where I made an ass of myself. Because I tried too hard to be whoever I thought I was.

Started the new job this week. More torture. A new beginning - I want my co-workers to know the real me - no more Pacino - but I struggled with it. I checked in, I checked out. Over four days I'd say I batted .500. Two good days, two bad days.

Old habits die hard. All of my learned responses, my misguided emotions, my rehearsed reactions - man, they are powerful and overwhelming. I gotta beat them back with a stick.

It seems I need something to obsess about. I have been handed happiness on a plate, yet my mind slithers around like a fucking snake, writhing around the happiness warily.

This is the inevitable conclusion. My life's denouement. Denouement is defined as the final part of a play, movie, or narrative, in which the strands of the plot are drawn together and matters are explained or resolved. That's where I am at.

Resolving the mystery of me after all these years. I suppose I should be grateful for the opportunity. The forward motion. It's quite possible in different circumstances that this moment would never have come.

One thing the new guy - me - has on his side is optimism. Bringing a new weapon to the fight.

And so it goes, as you well know.

On and on and on........................

It's Coming. You Know It's Coming.

 "But I regret that I took too much for granted and now face a death for which I am not prepared."

From Flags on the Bayou, by James Lee Burke

We Get What We Deserve

There is a man who wants to rule the country who maliciously and incessantly lies about who he is, and about the motivations for what he wants to do as ruler.

Tens of millions of people believe the lies because they want to believe the lies. They want to believe the lies because previous rulers let them down. Over and over again, every single fucking time. These people are tired and frustrated, angry and afraid. They are blissfully unaware that they are being set up for the biggest let down of their lives.

There is another man who wants to rule the country even though his mental state borders on senility. His ego is huge. He ignores what his heart is telling him and instead convinces himself that he is fit for the job. Tens of millions of people see this man as a savior. Maybe he likes that feeling. His supporters are blissfully unaware that they are being set up for the biggest let down of their lives.

These two men are perfectly content to gamble with the hopes and dreams of 332 million people, knowing full well they can never answer those hopes and dreams. 

How did we get here? It's a long fucking story.

The solution would be for these two ego-bloated men to step aside and let others step up who are more fit to hold American lives in their hands. After our system of government is revamped to plug the holes of exploitation and manipulation and vulnerability. Holes that men like these two happily take advantage of.

That will never happen.

Because this is America.

What Life Does

 "It was as though instead of having been subtly slain and corrupted by the ruthless and bigoted man into something beyond his attending and her knowing, she had been hammered stubbornly thinner and thinner like some passive and dully malleable metal, into an attenuation of dumb hopes and frustrated desires now faint and pale as dead ashes."

From Light in August, by William Faulkner

And I Will

 I see my light come shining

From the west down to the east

Any day now, any day now

I shall be released

From "I Shall Be Released", by Bob Dylan

And So A Peaceful Interlude Comes To An End

Starting the new job tomorrow.

Feels weird. Haven't worked since November 13. Been a nice run.

So tomorrow - new job - one I have not done before, new people, new challenges. The training period is lengthy, which suggests there is a lot to learn.

I have worked hard on my body and my brain since November. The theory being a healthier mind and a healthier body can only make new stress easier to handle. I am right about that. I was feeling great - healthy and confident.

Then I got sick over the weekend. Really pisses me off. Haven't worked out in three days now. Instead of bursting into newness with the right attitude and the right feel, instead I am tired, dealing with a head cold, and bleeding energy instead of renewing it because I am not exercising. Not good.

Shitty fucking timing, but that's life, baby.

Working Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday - BOOM! 23 hours right off the bat. Hell of a way to shock the system back to "reality."

But this was my short term goal, so I gotta make it work. Bank some bucks, build up a protective wall of financial security, then move on to soul-nourishing pursuits.

Feeling a little shaky today. That's only natural. A little heightened by being sick, not really where I want to be but, as Tony Soprano always said (especially when someone died) - "Whaddya gonna do?"

I'll take a whack at it. Try to survive the week.

Then move on from there.

Robert Duvall

 I will watch any movie with Robert Duvall in it.

Any movie.

Any time.

Anywhere.