Why the font is so big

 I changed the font from 14 to 24 because I am getting eyestrain headaches.  Whenever I manage to get better glasses and/or adjust the size/distance of my monitor appropriately, I will put it back to a more reasonable size.  As it is now, although I have not checked, it probably is unreasonably large when viewed on a phone.  I generally interact with my blog on my computer, not my phone.

Lasts

Once again thinking of what, for me, will never be again.  I cannot predict when each will pass, or if I will know it at the time, but I know many that have.  Sometimes I knew, but seldom.  Some I suspect.  

Tomorrow I will not sing in front of an audience, nor ever again.  I discovered very late in life that this was my greatest joy, yet losing it does not end me.   I will never again sing well under any circumstances, and have reason to question whether I ever could, but the illusion that I could, now gone, had been enough to be sustaining for most of my life.  Even this loss does not end me.   

It seems I end by measures, not wholly at once.   By measures I become less, life becomes less.  When the last measure of me ends, I will no longer be capable of recognizing that it is happening.  Is this some kind of mercy?

There are also the things that might have been, but never will be.  And many minor thing begun that will never be complete.  These I know better.

Not all are sorrowful, but many are.  I seldom take any time to appreciate the worst of what has not happened.  Maybe read that last one again.  It's tricky.

That time when there are more yesterdays than tomorrows, we can never be sure when it will come, but I am sure that mine did many years ago. 

It isn't reasonable to be sad about dying, but I am.  I must die, we must all die, for what a horror this world would be if we did not.  I wish that the years of decay were not as painful as they are.  Maybe that is a way to make us more ready, or at least more oblivious, at the end.  

I should take care to not falsely assign purpose to these things.

There is no life of the mind.  The brain and the body are one, and they suffer and die together.

Why did I live just to end up with these same sorrows, these same pitiful and pointless thoughts, as have been held by most who have lived?

I hold steadfast to the notion that, to the extent that there are rights, I have the right to feel sorry for myself, and any guilt or shame I feel over this is without need or purpose.

The Power of Laziness

Shuffling slowly from my recliner to the bathroom, it occurred to me that I had consumed nearly the limit of drugs and alcohol that still permitted me to perform this minimal action, yet I was still in significant physical and psychic pain. 

 It occurred to me also that there is a possibility that if I were to follow all medical and quasi-medical advice, and were to embark upon a campaign of increasing exertion, that I may yet reduce at least some of my many discomforts.  I tried to weigh in my mind the benefits of such a course of action vs. my significant reluctance to commit to and execute the same.

My greatest weakness and my greatest strength, in a peculiar way which perhaps only I appreciate, is laziness.  Laziness is like a passive martial art, conserving energy and effort compared to other means of confronting the relentless attack of the reality of life.

In the end, who is the wiser: those who passively accept (all the while pointlessly complaining) the inevitable degradation and destruction of body and mind, beauty and dignity, that life inflicts, or those who make every effort to deny their own entropy with painful exercise and a myriad of artificial interventions (all the while vaunting their victory) against what must befall even the most vain and valiant?

This is where my faux attempt at wisdom ends, in keeping with the unformed tenets of the indiscipline of laziness.

Complaint Blogs and Theories Regarding Why They May Cease or Have Long Lapses

Honestly, mine is mostly a complaint blog. Mine, in fact, is mostly a complaint existence.  There are increasingly long lapses of average time between posts to my blog.  I have a few theories about this, which might also apply to other complaint blogs:

1: The complainer's life has become better and they are loathe to admit it.

2: The complainer can no-longer maintain the delusion that their complaints are worthy of being read by others.

3: The complainer's life has become so fraught with struggle and misery that there simply isn't time or energy left to complain about it.

4: The complainer is too lazy to even complain.

For me, at this time, my best guess is that I am not writing much here because of reasons #4 and #2.  I would cite #3, except that I know all too well the many ways my struggle and misery could increase significantly.

So, why not a thankfulness blog about the difference between #3 and my present situation?  Every answer to that question that I can imagine reflects poorly, and probably accurately, on my character, so choose your own.  I can't be bothered.

I forgot #5: The complainer is dead.  Not yet at the time of this writing, and way too much trouble to bring about by willful action on my part (see #4).

Oh, and #6, it literally physically hurts a lot to sit in the chair in front of my computer.  There are several strategies that may or may not mitigate this issue, but again, see #4.

Vague Weirdness

 Last night, I said goodbye to my younger Sister and my Mother for what will almost certainly be the last time.  My sister had moved to Virginia about a year ago, and yesterday flew in to get her Mother, who will be living next door to my Sister in Virginia.   I am very unlikely to ever travel out to see them, nor they here to see me.  My older sister had been living with my Mother, but I don't know where she is now, and will probably never see her again, either.  In fact, I have not seen my older sister since a few days before my Father died, 10 years ago.

 So, this is where a normal person with a normal family would be talking about all of the tumultuous emotions stirred up by this seemingly dramatic moment in time.  Instead, I felt nothing, feel nothing, except a vague worry that there must be something wrong with me because I feel nothing except a slight sense of relief that these are people I no longer have to feel obligated to visit, or guilty about avoiding.

 The final meeting was short, yet hard to fill with words.  It felt exactly like any of uncountable other unenthusiastic family encounters of the past. If anything, it was notable for being less annoying than previous meetings.   I don't know which is malfunctioning more, myself or my other family members.

 For many years, my Mother knew how to find the most sensitive spots in my psyche and poke at them and make me want to die.  Over many years I gradually built up my internal defenses until I was immune to being hurt by anything she said.  My younger sister and I have some negative history, felt almost entirely by myself alone, related to incidents that happened when we worked at the same company.  Time has dulled dulled those memories and emotions for me as well, and I don't think she ever really understood what had upset me back then, just over 20 years ago.

I'm not even sure why I am writing about this except that it is a curiosity, and oddity about myself and my family that I don't understand, and I don't understand why I am not more bothered by it.

A few months ago, when my cat died, I cried uncontrollably and at length on the day it happened, and again when I received her ashes and a ceramic postmortem paw print from the veterinarian.  I still cannot bear to look again at that paw print.  Living with these creatures, my cats and my Wife's guide dogs, means living with a lot of loss, and I think I had been suppressing a large portion of my grief over several of these, but for some reason this last cat was one too many innocent and loyal lives lost.

When my Father died, I did not cry.  I didn't even go to the funeral because I had been in such conflict with my older sister regarding his care in his final weeks that I didn't want the negativity between us to distract from the dignity of the ceremony.

Why so much emotion for animals and so little for my parents and siblings?  

To be clear, I do care about my wife and our children, and our grandchild.

Not Enough Time, Not Enough Self-Discipline

 So much music and art. so many books and films. So many nice and fascinating and talented people. I am getting the feeling I will run out of time sooner than later, that I have used my time unwisely. Thank you all, and I am profoundly sorry. I feel like a very selfish Burgess Meredith at the end of "Time Enough At Last" (The Twilight Zone).

Inconvenient Articles of Faith

We live in a time of great division, where the simplest of personal truths must be explained and justified.  This is particularly true regarding matters of faith.  Traditional faiths are out of fashion, and thus must be justified, explained, excused and forgiven, to avoid condemnation, and many dominant belief systems are not even recognized as belief systems at this point in time.

I recognize my adherence to specific traditional articles of faith to be completely without objective merit, if such a thing exists. Further, I recognize that my adherence to specific traditional articles of faith to be, and please take careful note of this, involuntary.  I consider my psyche to have been so deeply programmed at a very early age with very specific notions of faith that I could not remove these beliefs from my being with any effort I can imagine.  They are often inconvenient, frequently painful, and not something about which I like to speak or write.

Yet, for reasons mysterious to me, after all of my careful preamble, I feel compelled to share the following email exchange between myself and my Mother:

Mother:

Love you and think of you all the time.  I struggle with all this covid stuff...and find it helpful, even essential to read the 91st Psalm daily and to meditate on other scriptures.  I am doing well.

Me:

I hope you are well, but know that with age, my age and yours, comes many forms of unwell.  I just read the 91st Psalm and am unsure of its relevance to me or now.  Everything from the Old Testament, I believe, needs to be viewed through the lens of the New Testament, but I am not familiar enough with either to promote any specific opinions.  I have been thinking about this a lot, given all that is happening, and all of the history I have been reading lately.  I do not want to believe in a God who has a hand in this world, as that would truly be a cruel God, so those who have fortunate experiences and attribute all the good to God, should necessarily accept that all of the bad that surrounds us, and has for millennia, is also the hand of God either acting, or choosing not to act.  I do not wish to pass into, or now live within, an eternity ruled by such a cruel God.  I choose to believe that we are living in a time when we are on our own, that God has given us the opportunity to prove our worth through our actions and inaction.  I want to believe in a God who looks on this world and weeps.  But is leaving us, for any time, to our own devices, the act of a benevolent God?   I can't claim the wisdom to answer that, but the question remains.  When my own logic leads me into these dark corners of doubt, I remind myself of my smallness, my ignorance, the brevity of my existence on Earth.  I seek humility before God.  I don't always dwell in that place, but I know, with certainty, in the end, it is all I will have left.