My Love

For most of my life, my love had to leak through the tiniest cracks in the lead walls that surround my heart. Cracks that opened up through decades of emotions battering against this formidable barrier. The love that escaped was watered down, weakened.

Lately my love has been flowing freely, or at least free-er. There are multiple reasons for this but I will not go into them now. You have better things to do.

The result is powerful. I am so unused to the feeling it is almost traumatic. It jerks me upright in my recliner, or paints a smile on my face against all odds.

As soon as I get accustomed to this amazing feeling, I will share it with you.

HOPE?!?!?!?!?!

Just listening to a CD by Peter Malick. Blues, baby - blues.

Got a song on there called "Wrong Side of My Life".

"I woke up on the wrong side of my life". I have been feeling that way for approximately 70 of my 71 years on this planet. The first year of my life felt about right.

Lately I feel as though I am slipping into the right side of my life.

It's never too late, baby.

"It's never too late to reinvent yourself.

Start a new career at 40.

Fall in love at 50.

Learn to dance at 60.

Start a whole new life at 70.

Stop saying you can't.

You can and you should.

Dreams don't have an expiration."

I always thought words like this were bullshit. Lately, not so much. Although I notice there is nothing in there about 80. I'm 71 - gotta get movin'.

As long as there is breath, as long as there is life............................there is hope.

(I had to look up the meaning of the word hope. I am feeling it but was not familiar with what it is called).

Ancient Wisdom

 The current vicious dicktatorship in this country is proof that the Founding Fathers never intended for everyone to vote.

In 2026.............................

In 2026, maybe sooner, I'm going to stop whining in here and get back to creativity.

I've made that promise before and broken it 10 seconds later, but, I don't know, things feel different to me right now. I feel like I'm on the precipice of redemption.

I am fiercely creative. It's all I think about. I take it in with every breath and exhale it with every exasperated breath. I think about being creative, I am creative in my soul; I also lust after creativity in books, movies, poetry - I must have it. Other wise I AM FUCKING BORED.

And yet, I whine. 

Years ago I wrote good stuff in here - sarcastic, witty, unique. When I go back and re-read it I laugh out loud, or smile in appreciation of my creative turn of phrase. At some point I went 100% whiny, which probably means I myself went 100% whiny. Disgusting.

I hunger for change. I am tired of me and tired of my life.

I'll be 72 in January, and here it comes again......................my mother always said I was a late bloomer.

Well, mama, it don't get much later than 72.

Good Enough

John pulled up to his house and parked just outside the front door. Killed the engine and dragged himself out of the car. As he walked towards the door he stopped and looked back. A fucking Hyundai. Silver. Five years old. 50,000 miles.

He wished he was driving a Lincoln. He really wanted one. His Uncle Carmen was a Lincoln man and John loved and respected his uncle. But it was more than that. He wanted the luxury a Lincoln implies and delivers. Pimps drive Cadillacs. Classy guys drive Lincolns.

But he was having strange thoughts about the Hyundai lately. It was reliable, and he put very few miles on it. Fucking thing will probably last ten more years. Reality was shouldering its way into his reasoning against his will, and he simultaneously loathed it and considered it.

It was cold. November. He hated winter. John took two quick steps to the door, unlocked it, and blew into the house.

Both cats came running. They always did. So much energy, so much enthusiasm. Their greeting meant everything to him, along with the welcoming warmth the house had to offer. They were so happy to see him, they made him feel so good. Feeling good is a feeling he chased all his life.

He draped his coat over the nearest chair even though his wife hated that. He'd move it before she got home. He hit the head, then poured himself a generous whiskey, and slumped into his recliner.

It had been a shitty day. 

The late afternoon sun slanted through the whiskey, giving it an artistic glow, so he put the glass on the shelf unit his Dad had made, to get a better angle. It turned his whiskey into a painting. A focal point of warmth, beauty, and reflection. As fatigue set in, he stared at it and slipped into reverie. 

His thoughts turned to things that happened in his life that shouldn't have, and things that didn't happen that should have. Strangely, he wasn't feeling despair or panic, feelings his seventy one years tended to inspire. 

He was feeling a strange mix of melancholy and gratefulness. A little bit of hope for redemption. Unusual for him. Again, reality shouldering its way into his thoughts.

He thought that maybe wisdom made its way into your heart when you weren't even looking.

He looked towards the whiskey with unfocused eyes, and saw his kids, jobs, laughter, tears, broken dreams, decades...................so many glasses of whiskey, so much life lived, celebrated, appreciated, regretted, and mourned. No different than anybody else.

The path he had taken made no sense to him, and the place where he was at was anathema to his dreams, but still, he had created a life and there was a lot of good there, a lot of love, a lot of comfort.

That counts for something.

He told his shrink that if he died today, the only fitting epitaph would be "He pissed his life away." His shrink physically recoiled at that comment, which caught John off guard. Did Dr. Feelgood actually believe John's life made sense? That it was worthwhile?

It gave him something to think about, and he was doing that now.

He felt good, he felt peaceful. He knew he still had to do something with his life, at the very least to prove his worth to himself, but it seemed he had scaled back his thinking from apocalyptic to somewhat reasonable. Maybe

It wasn't perfect but it was good enough. For now.

He heard the door open, and he heard "You couldn't hang up your coat?"

He sighed and took a sip of whiskey. Admired the beautiful, warm, color enhanced by the setting sun. 

He smiled.

Time Waits For No Man

Gazing out the library window the other day, on a very quiet day; it's gettin' late and dark is beginning to fall. Lookin' up the road that leads to the police station.

A youngish man is walking his puppy up that street, heading away from me, on the left. The guy is dressed too lightly for the weather, in my humble opinion. He exudes the energy of youth (I think there is a connection there). The puppy is prancing, straining at the leash. 

Simultaneously, an elderly couple is walking towards me on the opposite side of the same street. They are close, you can sense the years they've been together. They're moving slowly, walking carefully. They are not talking because they don't have to. They are dressed just right, in my humble opinion.

In that moment I witnessed fifty years of life in a before and after snapshot.

The kind of moment that makes you respect and reflect upon the relentless passage of time.

No Better Morning

You're sitting at your desk in what passes for an office, door closed, eating the omelette you just cooked.

Listening to John Prine on the CD player your family gave you on Father's Day.

Your precious cat is on your lap; she looks up at you with eyes filled with all the love that she has for you.

Tears of happiness trickle down your cheeks.

There is no better morning.

Mama Don't GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I love John Lennon because he was introspective and unafraid to reveal his weaknesses and self-doubts.

Been thinking about him lately because one of the many things he explored was primal scream therapy. 

Ever hear his song Mother? Listen to it. He expresses his agony over losing his mother - twice - and over his father's absence in Lennon's life. At the end of the song he screams out his frustrations. "Mama don't go, Daddy come home." Screams these words, repeatedly. It chills your soul.

I am having good conversations with the psychiatrist, but sometimes I think if I could just fucking SCREAM - and release all the anger and frustration and self-loathing that suffocates me, maybe I could save some time.

Heard How? yesterday as I drove in circles, putting off to the last possible minute my arrival at the fucking library job, and, once again, it really got to me with it's honesty. And the way it resonates with my feelings.

Check out the lyrics:

"How can I go forward when I don't know which way I'm facing? How can I go forward when I don't know which way to turn? How can I go forward into something I'm not sure of?

How can I have feelings when I don't know if it's a feeling? How can I feel something if I just don't know how to feel? How can I have feelings when my feelings have always been denied?

How can I give love when I just don't know what it is I am giving? How can I give love when I just don't know how to give? How can I give love? Love is something I ain't never had. Oh no, oh no.

You know life can be long, and you've got to be strong. And the world she is tough, sometimes I feel I've had enough"

I am super sensitive and emotional, way over the top. It prevents me from functioning in this world efficiently. I feel those lyrics every day.

And most days it is a struggle for me not to scream. A soul-shattering internal battle. Like holding your breath until you feel you will explode.

Maybe holding it in is not the answer.

Being Defiant

 I'm somebody, just as good as anybody.

Who Would You Rather Be?

If you're going to work in "customer service" you gotta be Pat Boone.

Wholesome and self-effacing. At least in theory.

If you don't know who Pat Boone is, Google him.

Of course today, as you well you know, there are many flaming assholes working in customer service. They hate their jobs, they hate themselves for working those jobs, and that is understandable to a point. You gotta submerge your ego as a humble lackey, you get paid $1.47/hour, AND you gotta deal with the public. Cleaning toilets is more enjoyable.

I have worked in customer service for 9 years now. I have had 7 jobs. That experience has twisted my soul into a blighted imitation of what once was an ethereal entity.

Because I am a lot more like Lemmy Kilmister than I am Pat Boone. 

Eternal Regret

"When my death us do part

Then shall forgiven and forgiving meet again,

Or will it be, as always was, too late?"

From A Fatal Grace, by Louise Penny

The Purest of Love

 "Now he remembered last winter struggling to carry old Sonny the three blocks home when his feet couldn't take the cold anymore. It had broken both their hearts. And he remembered hugging Sonny to him a few months later when the vet came to put him to sleep. And he remembered saying soothing things into the stinky old ears and looking into the weepy brown eyes as they closed, with one final soft thump of the ragged, beloved, tail. And as he felt the final beat of Sonny's heart Gamache had had the impression it wasn't that his old heart had stopped but that Sonny had finally given it all away."

From A Fatal Grace, by Louise Penny

Pets do give us everything. Without that, we would be lost.

Reality, Baby

 "I have sought a paradise in this life, from the window of a train traversing a starkly beautiful land where a man's skin is still criminalized and a woman's body enslaved, where workers are thrown away like coal slag."

"But now that it was here, knowing that all it had taken was a flick of Lem Brand's wrist, Rye felt demoralized. It didn't matter what he did, what Gurley did, what Fred Moore did, what any of them did. Somewhere there was a room of wealthy old men where everything was decided. Beliefs and convictions, lives and livelihoods, right and wrong - these had no place in that room, the scurrying of ants at the feet of a few rich men."

From The Cold Millions, by Jess Walter

The title The Cold Millions refers to those millions of us who are not rich.

Sounds about right to me.

Gotta Get There

My ultimate goal with the psychologist is to get to a place where I can truthfully say:

"Everybody's got something to hide except me and my monkey."

Beatles fans will understand.

Fiction Points The Way

 By the way, lest you think my previous post was pure bullshit:

"Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth."

Albert Camus

"Fiction reveals the truth that reality obscures."

Jessamyn West

Are you going to argue with Camus? Give me a break.

There is an element of truth to most fiction. Increasingly over the last ten years, the idea of authoritarianism has been showing up in more and more of the books I read. Governments treating citizens cruelly, unfairly. "Leaders" enriching themselves at the expense of the commoners, who increasingly suffer through inflation, food shortages, heating crises, power crises. Dicktators lying to the people in outrageous ways, lies that any thinking human can see through, lies that tens of millions swallow whole like fine chocolate.

This is not coincidence. Authors are speaking out in their way about the state of this country and the world.

I have been reading a lot of espionage novels, and crime novels, because my brain is broken and it needs comfort food. I can't handle Tolstoy at the moment. 

Many of these novels are written by former Navy Seal types, military people, and government insider's with knowledge of the evil truths we are not privy to. These books are chilling.

You think our government is working in our best interests? Think again.

You think things are not getting worse? Think again.

And I am talking the entire history of our government, but especially now.

Hunker down kids. Pretty soon we'll be standing in bread lines, thankful the wait is only four hours.

We reap what we sow.

We Never Had A Chance

 "And the idea that you could make men equal just by saying it? Hell, it took only your first day in a Montana flop or standing over your mother's unmarked grave to know that equal was the one thing that all men were not. A few lived like kings, and the rest hugged the dirt until it cracked open and took them home."

From The Cold Millions, by Jess Walter

"I fell in love with my country - its rivers, prairies, forests, mountains cities, and people.............It could be a paradise on earth if it belonged to the people, not to a small owning class."

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

We never had a chance. And by "we" I mean every person, not rich, who has ever called America home.

Money isn't everything? Are you fucking kidding me? Money is everything. Trying limping into old age with no money. Millions and millions of Americans are in that category. Millions are suffering, living in fear, stripped of pride.

Expanding on thoughts about this country, I've come across some points of view - in works of fiction - that make you consider what a dangerously fucked up country we live in and how very little we know about that truth.

One involved a group of rich and powerful men  -  ultra conservative - who despised liberals, and who also blamed Muslims for the decline of this country. They hatched a plan to detonate nuclear bombs in two liberal, American cities, knowing full well that Muslims would be blamed, resulting in retaliatory nuclear strikes by America in Islamic countries. The assumption being that if we wipe out Islam, we will be safe, thereby justifying the slaughter of American citizens.

Far fetched? Have you sensed or maybe even experienced, the intense hatred, man to man, that is drowning this country? That story line is extreme, but it or something equally as dangerous and cruel is not hard to believe. I believe there are millions of Americans willing to kill fellow Americans to get what they want.

Another story detailed an all encompassing plan by our enemies to disable this country in a coordinated series of attacks. On the power grid, violent attacks on say movie theaters or other public gathering places all at once across the country, sabotaging our food supply, spreading disease - again - all coordinated, all simultaneously across the country.

Far fetched? Some, or maybe all of it, has to be true.

Another idea is the fact that many obscenely rich people absolutely hate "poor" people. Despise them, laugh about them and at them, could care less if they suffer or die and are dedicated to keeping poor folk "in their place." I believe that too.

Interestingly, I have two close friends and a brother who beat the system - who won at life - who are living comfortably above the fray. Very comfortably. $. They are all set. They earned that peace of mind, they deserve it. But even though I am surrounded by financially successful people, I believe it's the exception, not the rule. Most of us stumble around blindly until we inadvertently stagger into our graves.

Related point - The Desiderata says: "If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain & bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself." Those are wise words and pure truth. And although I believe in that wisdom, for some reason I cannot burn them into my brain, make them part of my overall philosophy.

The result? I am bitter, definitely not vain.

Fuck it.

Third Time's A Charm?

I snagged another psychologist. #3.

He's in for a wild ride, because I am committed to total honesty.

We had a Telehealth thing last Friday, kind of getting to know each other. He's an older gentleman (probably younger than me), but up in age. That's good because it means he partially understands the fears and thought processes of Elderly Joe. Kind of.

We chatted for an hour last week and I felt comfortable with him. That is key, because the woman I worked with a few years ago was touchy feely, which does me no good. And that was 100% Telehealth. The guy I worked with before was face to face, but if I told him I wanted to be THE PATS next QB he would have said "Great!"

As I said, I made up my mind to go full bore - total honesty about the fucked up shit that's in my head. That does not come naturally because I am Al Pacino. A deliberately made up character whose actions and words have been perfected over 50 years of playacting. And the poison in my head is totally corrosive - you don't know the half of it. So saying it out loud makes me sound like a complete fucking wreck. Which, of course, I am. I am fully committed to exposing every fucked up thought bouncing around in my head. 

We spoke comfortably; he asked a hell of a lot of questions and took a lot of notes. The conversation ranged from me to Carol to my sons to my father and mother, my grandfather, The Kid, friends; jobs, passions, fears, hopes, disappointments. He circled back around later in the conversation to make certain points based on stuff I told him earlier. That impressed me, because he was already working on my brain. And the points were good ones.

Got all that done in an hour.

I was comfortable enough to schedule another appointment, but I'm shaking things up. Gonna meet in his office, face to face, this coming Friday. I figure that will erase any Pacino shit. I was brutally honest through Telehealth, and I mean brutally, but still, it is not personal enough. I want him to look into my eyes, read my body language, to get a complete impression.

And face to face will make me nervous, which should cancel out any playacting. I really want this to work.

So here I go again. But with a lot more urgency this time around. A LOT. The spectre of Death is an amazing motivator. I need to get shit straight so I can get me some peace of mind. Be more honest with my family. And allow me to do what I got to do to protect me & Carol in this fucked up environment.

The hot breath of Regret, Failure & Shame is scorching my neck.

I am fucking sick of it.

When I'm done with this guy, he'll be an alcoholic. But by then I'll be fixed enough that I can counsel him.

Only seems fair.

And they're off..........................................

Why Not?

I am looking for part time work that pays a decent wage.

No more junior high school rates.

Troy Aikman is a dumb jock. Jim Rice barely speaks English.

Shouldn't one of those jobs be mine?

Nothing Else Left

I have failed. 

I have procrastinated, misjudged, mishandled; been shortsighted, hesitant, and afraid.

I have made bad decisions and non decisions. 

I have fucked up, then doubled down on it.  

I have sabotaged good situations and suffered needlessly through bad ones.

I have made every mistake a man can make.

There is only one outcome left.

Spectacular success.