Dismal

I shouldn't, I know. . . but I'll take a chance.  I may make the internet gods mad and get cancelled, but I did what the fuckers wanted and then people couldn't get into the site.  I may move the whole thing to Substack if things go south.  Apparently, one can do whatever one wishes over there.  For good or ill.  

I just like the image.  I like looking at it.  It may be a terrible admission, I don't know.  Or much care anymore, really.  The world has much bigger problems than a man with an eye for naked beauty.  Now that we've virtually eliminated smoking, we are going after the drinkers.  And the meat eaters.  We will, in due time, create an earthly paradise.  

I'm not living in one.  I'm in a truly terrible place right now, and I'm not even drinking.  I'm exhausted.  I'm not the man I've led other people to believe.  I'm not capable of doing all that needs to be done.  I'm not able to bear the pressures, to "hold up."  I guess I'm what some people would call a coward, but I feel overwhelmed.  This life is far too much.  

My mother is having more problems than just the broken wrist.  I left to go home to get some things yesterday and was terrified the whole time.  I can't tell you what I'm living with, but it is the thing I can't bear.  One more straw, it feels like, is all it will take.  

Maybe, though, I'll feel better when the sun comes up.  

I am truly alone in this thing.  People are quick to say, "If there is anything I can do. . . ."  But they absent themselves now.  "I didn't want to bother you. . . ."  I don't blame them for that.  I blame them for the other thing, the self-serving lie.  No, I don't blame them, but I'd rather they say, "Gee. . . that's awful.  I can bring you cookies if you want."  That's what they mean.  

It doesn't help that I am reading Cormac McCarthy's "Stella Maris."  The book is a dialog between a psychiatrist and his young, prodigal mathematical genius patient.  Stella Maris is the psychiatric hospital into which the young woman has checked herself.  There is not much of a good time there, and the conversations are weighing me down.  

At night, when I go to bed, my thoughts are all about death and dying.  It is becoming increasingly hard to live "as if."  My mother's health problems are not all I am dealing with, of course.  I have plenty of my own.  

Pretending is becoming ever more difficult.  

I took my mother for a little walk yesterday.  She needs to move.  She's been immobile since falling.  She made it halfway down the block and back.  We sat outside in the warmest part of the day.  I thought it might help, but I could tell no difference.  She sits with a stare that is a thousand miles and internal at the same time.  I speak and she looks at me.  She doesn't hear me.  I say it again upping the volume.  Conversation has become impossible.  I am reduced to responding to requests.  There are many. 

As the air cooled beyond comfort, we went back into the house.  Commercial t.v. only, I put on a playoff football game.  It was four.  I watched it and another.  Football was over at eleven.  I saw maybe two hours of football.  I saw more commercials.  The networks now show short commercials between plays.  It is hideous.  

"He missed his target on that one.  The offensive line is going to need to do a better job.  Join us tomorrow night for NBCs newest hit comedy, "Your Mother Is a What?" starring Bev Beachum as Beverly Potter, a 36 year old single mother whose teenage daughter is a laugh a minute.  You won't want to miss this zany comedy premiere tomorrow night at nine central.  O.K. It's third and long. . . . "

I watched the American Experience play out over those eight hours of football.  I understand better why our culture and country are so fucked up.  It is truly hideous.  

This is not my life.  Or, rather, it now is.  

I read this morning that as people live longer, the gap between their healthy life and the end of life is growing.  9.6 years on the average now, people live with chronic disease.  They live longer in worse health.  This is not good news.  If they get everyone to stop smoking and drinking, will the gap increase?  Will people live into their hundreds with chronic disease rather than dropping from a heart attack "in the prime of their lives"?  

"Dad just went to bed one night and never got up.  He passed in his sleep."  

Or will we be hooked up to machines in sterile rooms where we are filled with expensive chemicals that keep us alive?  

This is a morbid post.  I thought posting the photo would help.  All the commercials yesterday showed young people running happy and active and all the older people taking a medicine that would help them live longer with diabetes or heart problems and many potential side effects including rectal bleeding, liver damage, occasional dizziness and a danger of kidney cancer and stroke.  If you are young, you get shoes.  If you are older and can no longer do parcourse, you get pushing someone on a swing and Pezumamax.  

Whatever.  I'm waiting for the sun.  Everything will be better then.  The world's a fine a lovely place.  

I really don't know how long I can do it.  I don't even have a cat.