Pick One - Or Both

 Psychiatrist speaking: "But patients will surprise you.........................I meant in a good way. They sometimes have rather sophisticated interests. Although I have to say that they're often inclined to give up what they treasure for what makes them miserable."

Patient speaking: "Its general vacuity aside there seems to be a ceiling to well-being. My guess is that you can only be so happy. While there seems to be no floor to sorrow. Each deeper misery being a state heretofore unimagined. Each suggestive of worst to come."

From Stella Maris, by Cormac McCarthy

Why Not?

He wanted the title for his autobiography to be Contorted, Hopeless, and Meandering Thoughts of an Unhealthy Mind.

His publisher resisted.

This Feels Serious

I am here alone today. With Patsy and Emmy Lou.

Carol is taking care of precious Jackson. I chose to stay here to try to right the ship of my existence. 

A dangerous choice. If I died today I would never see my grandson again. When you're 70 you think that way, although I guess the case could be made that it makes sense to think that way about every moment of your life. Every decision. 

It is an absolutely beautiful day here in my new home. The sun is bright, carefree, and dispensing hope and happiness recklessly. It is 73 degrees, the sliders are open, the two windows either side of the recliner are open, the front door is open, the windows in the master bedroom are open. The cats are ecstatic, and everywhere I look I see beauty and promise.

The downside to happiness is that it becomes a reference point. Because it is not a tangible thing. It is ethereal. A feeling. If you get a huge and unexpected dose of it, it can kill your spirit, in a twisted way, kind of the way a syringe of pure heroin kills the body. When the intensity of a megadose of happiness subsides to predictable levels, the shock is severe.

Been here almost seven months. And what a long, strange trip it's been. For me.

I've only worked two months out of the seven. Two jobs. A study in opposites. Bank teller at TD Bank. Bad choice. That was a real job. I don't need a real job. I just need money. That lasted a month.

Currently working at Walmart. This was the kneejerk reaction to the bank job. Do something simple. Bad choice. I am very close to quitting or getting fired. I really don't care which it is.

There is enough money in the bank for me to keep quitting jobs. That's dangerous because I am not a rational man. And eventually I will earn a reputation as the Lakes Region's most unemployable fool. Forced to seek day labor despite hands devoid of callouses.

There is no identifiable course for me to follow because my worklife was patched together randomly. So my experience is all over the map, and much of it has aged considerably. Much like myself.

I don't want to fuck up again. I am bone-tired of fucking up. Indefensible decisions made out of smoke and mirrors, ending badly.

Here I sit. On this beautiful day. Committed to creating an approach. One that I can live with. Literally trying to chart a course through uncharted waters. For my own fragile, yet highly desirable, peace of mind. 

Of which I have had precious little in my life.

I'm talking next step sort of stuff. Not ultimate solution sort of stuff. I am fighting my natural urge to think apocalyptically.

There is some hope of cogent thought. I have not done anything self-destructive yet, and I have been up since 6:30. 

This feels serious.

Ghost Light

A light left on overnight in theatres around the world.

They are said to ward away mischievous spirits. And to serve as a guide for the ghosts that are believed to haunt every theatre.

The Worst Addiction

In a book I recently read, a man was looking for a lost friend in a flophouse.

The kind of place where broken people live in single rooms with bare lightbulbs, hot plates, and no toilet, while clinging desperately to life for no discernible reason.

His theory was that you can look into each room and find a single clue to that person's downfall. The addiction that robbed each of his dignity. A crackpipe. An empty bottle of rotgut whiskey.

He opened a door to see a pile of books. And said "Ah, the worst addiction of all. Reading."

More Quotes

 "Sheddan once said that evil has no alternate plan. It is simply incapable of assuming failure."

And this is why the world we live in today will be destroyed. Inevitably.

"His father. Who had created out of the absolute dust of the earth an evil sun by whose light men saw like some hideous adumbration of their own ends through cloth and flesh the bones in one another's bodies."

A great and ominous sentence.

"A frail candle tottering in the darkness. All of history a rehearsal for its own extinction."

Mankind does NOT learn from its mistakes.

"And I've come to suspect that the ground we walk is less of our choosing than we imagine. And all the while a past we hardly even knew is rolled over into our lives like a dubious investment....................But if there is a common keel to our understanding it is that we are flawed. At our core that is what we know."

I feel that more than ever about my own life.

"The world's truth constitutes a vision so terrifying as to beggar the prophecies of the bleakest seer who ever walked it."

The truths of the world, the truths of life, are dark and barely visible. But crushing nonetheless.

Quotes from The Passenger, written by Cormac McCarthy.

Opinions by me.

Formidable Obstacles

Guilt and regret obstruct the route that leads to who I am.

The ultimate road not taken.