The Weather Man

"I remember once imagining what my life would be like, what I'd be like. I pictured having all these qualities, strong positive qualities that people could pick up on from across the room. But as time passed, few ever became any qualities that I actually had. And all the possibilities I faced and the sorts of people I could be, all of them got reduced every year to fewer and fewer. Until finally they got reduced to one, to who I am. And that's who I am, the weather man."

Nicholas Cage as Dave Spritz in The Weather Man.

Reject Me Not Into The World Again

On Hearing a Symphony of Beethoven 

"Sweet sounds, oh, beautiful music, do not cease!

Reject me not into the world again.

With you alone is excellence and peace,

Mankind made plausible, his purpose plain.

Enchanted in your air benign and shrewd,

With limbs a-sprawl and empty faces pale,

The spiteful and the stingy and the rude

Sleep like the scullions in the fairy-tale.

This moment is the best the world can give:

The tranquil blossom on the tortured stem.

Reject me not, sweet sounds; oh, let me live,

Till Doom espy my towers and scatter them,

A city spell-bound under the aging sun.

Music my rampart, and my only one."

Edna St. Vincent Millay

No Answers

 "And whether or not it is clear to you, the universe is unfolding as it should." Desiderata.

It's inspiring, comforting, but a tough nut to swallow. Really? Is this life you're "living" actually unfolding as it should? How can that fucking be?

We fool ourselves. "I'm living my best life." Nope. Not a chance. That's marketing. That's all that is. You hear the phrase and you adopt it because it makes you feel better about yourself. Even though you know you are pissing your life away.

You are accepting where you are in life as your best effort. Which of course is bullshit. Few of us give life our best effort. Which is bizarre because we all know how this story ends. Every single time. Prematurely or not. You are going down, motherfucker.

I love Desiderata. It's one of my go-to's. I use it to toughen up when I have to walk into a building of torment to do a job. But I have been questioning the wisdom lately.

It's entirely possible that the phrase - and a million more like it - originate from a place designed to numb you to the viciousness of life.

I have been numbed by good fortune lately. I decided forty years ago that life was set up to drive razor blades up my ass. Suddenly, the sun shined. And I did not have the tools to respond. I staggered around like Bukowski in a skid row bar at 2:15 a.m. until gratitude kicked in and I righted the ship. Sort of.

Took a look around - clarity got blurred around the edges. The ship was no longer righted.

I want to believe my universe is unfolding as it should. Because I have little time left, and I require comfort. Good fortune came upon me unannounced and unanticipated. I got dizzy.

The major decisions I have made in my life were poor, and they dumped me on the doorstep of "and whether or not is is clear to you".....................

Should I believe that? Or take a hatchet to its throat?

The crossroads of life. A million times over. Take action, or repose in benign acceptance.

50% of my life is outlandish to me. Which is an improvement. Used to be 98%. Still, 50% is unsettling.

I so want to let go and let the rest of my life wash over me in trust and confidence.

I also want to buy a flamethrower and lay waste to all who attempt to poison and destroy me.

I am not alone. Many of us are driven off-track, uncomfortable, lost and unaware, wondering in tortured thought "How did I get here?"

No one can help you. There are no universal answers. 

You gotta figure it out for yourself.

Giving trump credit

He was put on this earth to accomplish one thing - to lay waste to and expose the weakness in our legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government.

He has done that in spectacular fashion.

He could use the opportunity to repair the damage and make the country stronger. Of course, he will never do that. Never.

To him, the Presidency is a pipeline to fatter bank balances. Nothing else matters.

The irony is that those who support his reckless ways are precisely those who will experience the biggest betrayal.

Of course everybody else will be in prison, so it doesn't really matter.

Line?

 Everything I say is scripted.

Even my thoughts are scripted. Very strange.

That's how I view life. As a series of scenes where I speak whatever words are necessary in the moment, completely detached from who I am.

I never speak the truth. Or rarely.

Even my deepest, darkest, innermost thoughts - when I am alone in the dark - have an element of play acting about them.

The Verdict

Great movie. Paul Newman. 1982. Newman plays an alcoholic lawyer. Which is probably a not uncommon occurrence.

The opening scene is Newman in a run-down bar in the afternoon, playing pinball. A half empty mug of beer sits on the windowsill next to him. Alongside an ashtray with a cigarette smoldering in it. Maybe two other people in the bar.

Stripped of responsibilities, I wouldn't mind living my life that way.

A couple of scenes later he's back in the bar in the morning. Circling obituaries in the paper. He's an ambulance chaser. Got a shot of whiskey next to him. He picks up the shot but can't get it to his lips because his hand is shaking. So he bends down to the shot and takes a sip. Then he picks it up.

I wouldn't mind living that way either.

I Dunno

 I may eat beef that is responsibly raised, but my sons certainly weren't raised that way.

I Was Born For This

I stress about this, I stress about that, but every time I come into contact with anything suggestive of decadence - like hearing Keith Richards sing "I'm Waiting For The Man" - a soul-deep serenity comes over me.

I was born for this.

What Would You Do?

What would you do if you were trapped inside your own skull, and crippling thoughts were flashing through your brain like lightning? Bouncing off the walls, criss-crossing each other in a maddening cycle of inevitability and intractability?

Like that time you were drunk at 3 a.m. and put a potato wrapped in tinfoil into the microwave, set the timer for seven minutes and then sat on the kitchen floor in wonder watching the light show.

What would you do if you knew deep down in your gut, you fucking knew, that these thoughts were not based in fact, that they were an evil presence created by a mind soaked in poison, a mind so far removed from the reality of who you are that it felt like a foreign object in your head?

And there was nothing you could do about it. You could not kill these thoughts no matter how hard you tried. 

You study up on critical thinking and emotional intelligence, the concepts make perfect sense to you. But every time, every fucking time the opportunity pops up for you to apply these principles you fall back on the diseased thought patterns that got you where you are today. Which is nowhere.

What would you do?

Who would you be?