"Grief is the stuff of life. A life without grief is no life at all. But regret is a prison. Some part of you which you deeply value lies forever impaled at a crossroads you can no longer find and never forget."
"Again, I've encountered no greater mystery in life than myself."
From The Passenger, by Cormac McCarthy
You cannot afford to die when you are reading a Cormac McCarthy novel.
It's just too fucking important.
I am a 70 year old man working a part time job to make ends meet.
However, I am not without substance.
I aspire to become an aesthete.
Just met Richard Kuklinski and Gary Tison.
Gary Tison was a dedicated criminal. At one point in his career he was convicted of passing bad checks and sentenced to 7 months in jail. As he was leaving the courthouse he asked to be allowed to kiss his wife. A guard refused.
Tison overwhelmed the guard on the way to prison, killed him, and escaped. He was arrested the next day. 7 months became life in prison. Smart guy. This was in 1968.
Tison's focus became escaping from prison. He tried three times. He successfully (sort of) escaped in 1978 with the help of his three sons. Fred MacMurray would be jealous.
As they were fleeing, Tison, along with Randy Greenawalt - who escaped with him, killed a family, including a baby, in Arizona, and a honeymooning couple in Colorado. They needed transportation.
Johnny Law eventually caught up with them after a couple of weeks. One of Tison's sons was killed, Tison managed to get away but eventually died of dehydration and exposure in the desert. He was 43.
Check out Last Rampage, the movie made about Tison in 2017.
Richard Kuklinski was a hired killer known as The Iceman. He claimed to have killed 100 men. This is what initially attracted me to the movie - The Iceman. Turns out law enforcement believes he killed no more than 15 men. So a guy I considered to be a raging success turns out to be an underachiever.
Still a good movie, though.
After serving 18 years in prison, Kuklinski died of a heart attack at the age of 70. I am 70. I am not dead and I am not in prison. Small blessings.
Anyway, it's a bit horrifying that people like this exist in the world.
Then again, it's kind of interesting.
A crazy wild child entices a man to let her into his car to give him a blowjob.
She tells him to drive into an alley for privacy. Tells him to pull his pants down because it's easier that way. So he does.
Then she pulls a gun on him and commands "Give me your fucking wallet!" He is petrified, begging and shaking. He yells "Why are you doing this to me?"
The wild child says "Because I am pissed off! And the whole world owes me."
I think that is an excellent approach to life.
The scene comes from a movie titled Freeway, starring Kiefer Sutherland and Reese Witherspoon, from 1996. A deliciously bizarre movie that I watched last night.
"The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and to a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence. When we examine the moments, acts and statements of all kinds of people--not only the grief and ecstasy of the greatest poets, but also the huge unhappiness of the average soul...we find, I think, that they are all suffering from the same thing. The final cause of their complaint is loneliness."
Thomas Wolfe, from God's Lonely Man
I've spent my entire life doing what was expected of me.
It is time for me to do something no one expects.
Should I go back to drinking Budweiser?
There's something about a Bud in a man's hand that is iconic and powerful.
Paul Newman drank Bud (lots of it), Steve McQueen drank Bud. Need I say more?
I drank Bud for a long time until I woke up one day hating Bud. So began an odyssey of beer relationships. Tuborg Gold, Newcastle Brown Ale, Miller Genuine Draft, Rolling Rock, Miller High Life, PBR, Coors, Coors Light, Corona and and and.............I had affairs with all of these beers. Some were passionate and long lasting, some were merely flings.
You never heard of Tuborg Gold but I loved it. I loved the taste of Miller Genuine Draft, and I also loved its association with Rusty Wallace.
I dabbled in IPA's because society demands it, but ultimately their IPA-ness overwhelms the flavor and satisfaction my taste buds require. I officially reject IPA's.
Right now I love Blue Moon. Love it. But I notice when I hold a Blue Moon in my hand, peoples' heads do not turn to gaze at me in respect and awe.
I might turn back to Bud. I am 70 years old. Manliness is draining out of me at an alarming rate.
A Bud in hand could very well compensate.
"The world is an evil place. Some people make money off of it and others are destroyed by it."
A character in the movie Before the Devil Knows You're Dead.
All you gotta do is look in the mirror to figure out which category you fit into.
Watched a movie last night called Before the Devil Knows You're Dead.
It's a "best-laid plans" story that critics described as dark, fatalistic, and hard bitten. The screen writer's script is described as one that "drips with the kind of bitter world weariness that only comes with a lifetime of disappointment, family dysfunction and regret."
The movie is all of that.
I've been reading a ton of crime novels, thrillers, and espionage novels lately. Usually I mix it up, but right now it seems my brain needs a break. Pure entertainment.
In all of these stories, when the lives of ordinary people are discussed, they are described as empty, repetitive, close to pointless. Desperate.
Time and time again.
Poets do it, songwriters do it, authors of "literature" do it. Philosophers, drinkers, dreamers and criminals do it too.
Must be a kernel of truth in there somewhere.
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead captures every form of the suffering of the soul. There is violence, there is crime, but what did me in was the soul-deep unhappiness of almost every single character. Self-delusions, broken dreams, unrealistic plans for redemption, lying, cheating. An inability to recognize and cherish the beauty and salvation of family.
It captures life so honestly and so painfully. No glossing over.
It pulls back the curtain and hypocrisy of mantras like "living your best life" to reveal the harsh truth of what life does to the best of intentions.
Let's review.
Moved up here on 10/31. Quit my job on 11/13. Enjoyed 2 and 1/2 months of serenity - no job. Snagged more employment in early February. Quit that job in early March. Enjoyed almost two more full months of serenity. Snagged another job late April. And here I sit.
When we first moved I was a fucking madman. Exercising my ass off, eating better, drinking less - I lost so much weight (I doubt my brother believes that) Carol continuously commented on it. And I enjoyed looking in the mirror. Previously, mirrors were anathema to me.
I felt good about myself.
Lost all control when I started Job 1. Holy shit - barely exercised, drank a whole lot of whiskey, gained fucking weight, slept like shit, ate crap. I instantaneously went from Superman to Derelict Boy.
Started Job 2. In the lead-up to it I regained some control. Not much, though. I have spent four days in indentured servitude and I am completely out of control. Again. Of course, the schedule is kind of a second shift kind of thing, so timetables are off and equilibrium is disturbed, but still.....................
I instantaneously went from Deadpool to Supreme Derelict Boy.
I hear David Spade, like in Tommy Boy, whispering in my ear...................."I can actually hear you getting fatter."
Only one conclusion is unassailable........................I am allergic to jobs. So I need to stop working.
Think about it. When I am unemployed I could sit around the house eating Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies by the dozens, and drinking Ten High Bourbon and PBR's, but I don't. I exercise like a fucking madman. I eat cauliflower with Catalina salad dressing on it for afternoon snacks. I drink two or three less quarts of whiskey a day.
BUT when I am working I exercise inconsistently and with much less heart. I pig out on whatever the hell I want to pig out on, and in massive fuck you quantities. I drink much less water, I stay up later and get a lot less sleep. If I was more determined, I would smoke crack, snort coke, and inject heroin.
I have always rebelled against employment; seems like a horrific waste of my time. But since I have recently tasted periods of freedom leveraged aginst a less crushing financial burden, things have really gotten out of control.
Not working: Cauliflower, exercise, pride, commitment and follow-through.
Working: Whiskey, junk food, sloth, and broken promises.
I have a debilitating disease. The only solution is perpetual unemployment.
This is a cure I can wholeheartedly embrace.
