John Swinburn

When I got out of bed shortly before 4:00 a.m., I was disturbed to realize the distressing national and international news from recent days had stayed on my mind again overnight. News about violent incursions by ICE in Minneapolis and Portland accompanied me to bed and remained with me when I woke. The madness of U.S. imperialism—most recently involving Venezuela and Greenland and Iran—continued to stoke my anger this morning. Embers that kept the flames of my fury burning spiked into a raging firestorm. Foolishly, I allowed myself to fuel the fire by reading more news while in an already unpleasant state of mind. When my animosity had almost reached the point of irrepressible rage and hatred, I dragged myself out of the inferno by reading the most recent piece of the NPR series, My Unsung Hero. The story, about a man’s memory of being found after becoming lost one night in a campsite on Lake Superior, soothed just enough stress to prevent a complete meltdown. Though that positive human interest story did not change the scope of this administration’s cruelty and march toward authoritarianism, it blunted some of the sharp edges that, lately, escort me into each day. Positive stories, unfortunately, cannot erase the mental damage done by terror nor can they serve to reverse actions that foster it. But at least they can provide just enough of a relief valve to avoid a damaging explosive response. Rage, I think, is a dangerous reaction to feelings of hopelessness. If human interest stories can temper the venom of anger, they should be given more credit than we tend to give them.

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The paragraph above notwithstanding, hopelessness is not always a negative emotion. Losing hope (or avoiding its development) can make reality easier to face than holding onto hope long after evidence confirms its futility. The energy expended on hope can be invested, instead, on achievable aspirations. Hope, in the absence of reasonable expectations, is simply fantasy. Hopelessness, on the other hand, may be polished  and shined into something more productive: acceptance of reality.  Logic can get in the way of both perspectives, though. That’s true of almost everything in which a wish is involved.

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When a delusional Head of State is starved for affection, he or she can simply demand it. As much as the people under his or her rule may desire a much more rapid outcome,  the only viable option may be to acquiesce to the leader’s wishes; let him/her starve.

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Roughly two hours have passed. Human interest stories, like many other mood-enhancing drugs, may not all be of the extended-release form.

My plunging motivation to write mirrors my confidence that the words I write convey enough meaning to warrant spending the energy required to type them.  A favorite French phrase—Le jeu n’en vaut pas la chandelle—explains it better than my English words can.  “The game is not worth the candle.” Neither the original phrase nor the English translation, though, is sufficient without comment. Without a lengthy explanation of the origin of the French phrase, its meaning easily can be lost. So it is with the reasons for my flagging motivation and the role of my confidence in causing the decline. When “to break rocks” is offered as the motivation “to break rocks,” breaking rocks takes on a level of meaning and motivation that extracts all relevance from the practice. Why do I write? To write. Only to write.

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The older I get, the more I appreciate abstraction. That is not to say I understand abstraction; only that I tend to find abstract ideas more appealing. Abstraction once seemed chaotic to me—concepts sometimes lacking rational connections with the real world. Even then, though, something about abstraction held me transfixed, as if its turmoil represented ultimate rationality…albeit rationality far beyond my capacity to comprehend. Chaos is not disorder. It is, instead, a state of unison in which close relationships can be revealed between utterly dissimilar ideas or visions. For example, abstract art can expose viewers to images that show an artist’s perspective of the connection between diamonds and oxygen or nomadic tribes and monuments to architecture. Those revelations, though, are not necessarily straightforward. They can be hidden beneath layer upon layer of complexity. I think of physics as an abstract system of linking facts with fantasies or observations with beliefs. But, when I focus attention on those ideas, they become clouds of abrasive wind-blown dust that erase what I thought I understood. No matter how I look at what I wrote just now, I cannot make it make sense to me. On the other hand, its clarity is almost blinding.

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Well over an hour after I made my morning cup of espresso, I got up to quiet the howling cat. The cat suddenly stopped its disturbing shrieks the moment I stood up.  When I stood up, I noticed the untouched cup of espresso; to free my hands to allow me to open my study door, I had left it on top of a cabinet nearby. I drank it, despite its unpleasant cool bitterness as it slid down my throat. Mentally, I feel like I am paralyzed. I have all manner of things to do this morning, but no interest in doing them and I lack the ability to shame myself into taking action. I want nothing more right now than to sleep. But in just over an hour, I must go in for my oncological punishment, so sleep is inadvisable—I should shower before I go. Perhaps I’ll take interim steps, instead. Deodorant. Fresh clothes. That sort of thing.

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Enough of this. Again. I have nothing sunny and bright to say.

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What in the name of Driftwood Charlie? That string of words came tumbling out of my brain in the form of question when I woke up—very late—this morning. Accompanying those words was a lilting melody I vaguely recognize…but not in connection with those words. The attempts to dredge up a more precise recollection have failed, but not spectacularly. I think the melody might belong to a fading memory involving an old sea shanty, Drunken Sailor. According to Wikipedia, that shanty and another recent one, Wellerman, are two of the most famous sea shanties. Except, according to the all-knowing internet, Wellerman really is not a sea shanty but, instead, a whaling sea song or ballad,
not a rhythmic work song (shanty). The branding of the respective songs is of very little concern to me, but in a deeply meaningful way—buried beneath layer after layer of mystical irrelevance.  As the whimsical query continues to settle into my brain, I think I can feel ancestral connections with a word (forebitters) that is said to describe the type of song that was sung by sailors on sailing ships in their leisure time. But I have no defensible assertion to feel such an ancestral connection. To my knowledge, my heritage does not include any evidence-based links to sailors who faced the unending ferocity of angry waves and hungry sharks and whales bent on revenge. Admiration and respect for people who confronted such existential challenges does not translate into proof of lineage. Even if those attitudes did prove such ancestral ties, I would question the validity of truth. Inasmuch as truth is experience seen through the blind eyes of the inexperienced, perspective is at least as important as fact.

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Experiential Infusion (EI) was the name I gave to an imaginary process and to the fictional company that should have done a better job of protecting its intellectual property from theft. Had I been more attentive, I would have challenged the trademark registration filed by Chance Encounters (CE). By the time I finally realized what was happening, it was too late. CE had stolen the process I had spent two lifetimes creating. Those two lifetimes—assigned to Contrition Beasley (CB) and Emphatico Strutch (ES)—had little but sentimental value, but any value is better than none. I spent their value like it flowed from an endless supply. As we know now, though, endless value is a fantasy sculpted from cold rust and chilled paraffin.  CB was the first life contributed to EI; ES surrendered his just days later. Neither of them had signed the contracts. But that did not matter. CB and ES were expendable; the only thing that mattered was the explosive success of EI…without infringement by CE .  That’s as much as I am at liberty to tell at the moment.

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One month and eight days ago, I was scheduled to get a haircut. My response to an earlier chemotherapy session persuaded me to postpone that appointment. One month before that postponed event, I had been given a haircut; two months and eight days ago.  Today, if all goes according to plan, I will get that long-delayed haircut. Getting a haircut has not been a big deal for most of my life, but it has grown to seem unnecessarily intrusive. Haircuts and shaves muscle their ways into my routine, interrupting matters of greater importance and thereby boosting inconsequential stuff (like haircuts and shaves) to higher-than-justified levels.

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We assign value to time by using clocks and calendars. If we were to assign value to clocks or calendars, what would we use to illustrate their value? We should realize, of course, that time has no value in the absence of water or oxygen. Without water, time could not exist because those of us for whom time matters must have water to survive. And oxygen.

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Until yesterday, I had not eaten canned sardines in many, many months. Nor had I consumed canned smoked oysters in at least as long a period of time. Yesterday, though, I opened a can of spicy sardines that had been laced with piri piri peppers (a spicy pepper often used in South African and Portuguese foods). Tasty! I recommend sardines. And piri piri (also called peri peri) peppers. I can vouch for the suitability of peri peri sauce on chicken that has been prepared in various ways…like fried, baked, grilled, but NEVER raw. And peri peri sauce is good with grilled vegetables and drizzled over rice.

Meat loaf. My SIL brought us some delightfully tasty meatloaf. After our kitchen has been remodeled, we either will have to acknowledge that we are capable of cooking or we will have to admit that we love to eat food prepared by others. Or both.

The complexity of language is fascinating…but not sufficiently so to prompt me to delve deeply into learning multiple languages. I’ve discovered lethargy is an antidote to fascination. The reverse, unfortunately, does not seem to be the case.

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Something else I find fascinating is this: creating sophisticated shadow images through placement of lighting and using objects to block it. Again, though, the amount of both mental and physical energy required to create appealing shadow images is beyond my capabilities and/or willingness. People who are good at what I’ll improperly call “shadow-craft” have incredible powers of concentration, I think. And they understand (better than do I) how to practically apply at least a rudimentary knowledge of physics to the chaos of the real world in the process of artistic expression.

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Anonymity hides behind a nearly invisible window into an empty room. We can neither enter into—nor escape from—that hidden place because it exists only along the shredded edges of pretense.  Reality reveals catastrophic breaks in the shields on which we rely to surround us with defensive obscurity. Phantom locations block paths between here and there and even beyond. Wearing cloaks or veils or capes or the garb the guards give to prison escapees, the inmates in those places struggle to find unique, nonreturnable identities. Nothing that could have been used in an uprising, though. Nothing that might ignite kindling or fuel flickering embers. None among us want to admit it, but privacy is surrendered at birth…or even before. Our names are cross-referenced with numbers and dates and the names of people we cannot remember from moments we did not experience. We want to believe in anonymity, but too many among us know too much. Our seclusion— guarded by an ancient, vaporous, corroded chain-link-fence—is just a series of readily-available-reruns. People we have never met, but who have heard all about us or, at least, about common friends and enemies. The only safe place, where your secrets are secure, is in your own mind, where even your sacred vows of silence cannot be trusted. Once your anonymity begins to crumble, it cannot be rebuilt.

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Rarity drives value. We know that by the value humans attach to diamonds, gold, platinum, rubies, and lots of other “stuff” that is rare. Commonality (e.g., paper, plain glass, rice, wheat, etc.) tends to depress value. Using just that bit of understanding of the world, I should be able to apply the concepts in such a way as to dramatically increase the value of commodities; like trash. Exactly how, though, remains outside my skillset. I know, though, the key is in radically decreasing the amount of trash; if we can do that, trash will become a precious “commodity.” You try, first.

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It’s just shy of 6:30. I’ve been awake for close to three hours. I feel a growing need for sleep again. And another nap, which might lead to brief interchangeable periods that resemble wakefulness, sleep, trance, catatonia, vibrant alertness, and various other states of being.

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Everything is out of sequence. First comes after fifty-seventh. The letter Q follows W. Brilliant sunlight follows a dark and rainy night. Gratitude slides in on the tail of expectation. Rage trickles in just before glee, when torn pieces of laughter stagger in from a drunken night of pomp and perseverance. But what of the circumstance?

The setting of Mayor of Kingstown is as much a character in the series as are the humans with acting roles. The town is bleak in every way. Individual houses appear to have been neglected for years, after having arisen from the dirt as brand new minimally habitable shacks. Public buildings, too, are in various states of decay and disrepair. Fading paint, chipped bricks, litter in gutters, and the bent and broken signs tell the town’s ugly history and predict its equally hideous future. Each scene is gritty and brown and grey, as if the video camera’s lens was smudged with dust and oily fingerprints. The town’s main attraction is a large old prison, deteriorating as quickly as it companion public buildings. The largest employers—implied but not explicitly expressed—are the prison system, the law enforcement community, heavy industry, and a shadowy “mediation economy,” all of which are infused with a necessary collusion between people who consider their roles embarrassing, demeaning, and hopeless. Without all its supportive corruption to grease the wheels of illegal or immoral commerce, those distasteful Kingstown attributes would swallow the people, leaving them nothing but scraps that remain; failure after failure after failure.

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As I ponder what I’ve just written about the setting serving as a character for a piece of fiction (written or video or whatever) production, I wonder whether I would be able to write a “personality” for a setting that would adequately support the fundamental theme of the story…but which would not be so obvious as to be a slap in the face of a reader? That’s one longer-than-necessary sentence. I have begun to write such a character/story. But it’s extremely slow in coming. I think I was in my sixties when I started writing it.

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After almost every fairly powerful windstorm, many of the streets in the Village are littered with broken limbs and branches. The places on the streets onto which the trees shed their storm-battered appendages reveal how rotted and decayed the trees were. Light-colored “sawdust” is visible on the street all around the broken branches. Recently, during an especially fierce night, we heard a loud noise, as if a branch had fallen onto our house. When we were able to see outside, the next morning, we saw at least two trees whose  trunks had broken at least ten feet above the ground. The rotting upper part of the trunks could have caused some serious damage had they hit the house directly. Our good fortune was that the sound we heard was (probably) a branch just brushing the roof.

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A few days ago, we saw a mangy coyote crossing the street in front of us. It was the first coyote spotting in several months; maybe longer. The rarity of rabbit sightings obviously correlates in some way with the fact that coyotes have been seen around the woods around us. Coyotes, carnivorous beasts that they are, have an appetite for small dogs and cats and any other creatures that can overpower them. For that reason, we do not willingly let Phaedra out of the house. Lately, though, she has begun slipping out whenever a door is opened; she is far faster than I realized, making it tough to stop her from leaving. But, she is willing to let mi novia pick her up and bring her inside.

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I feel a tad achy, probably due to my sleep position last night or to sitting on the loveseat, watching television, for too long.  My approach to the matter will involve satisfying my sweet tooth with a tiny treat, followed by a return to that bed and “napping” in a more comfortable position.

I need more caffeine. One little cup of espresso—especially the lukewarm espresso that dripped into my cup—has not yet thrilled my tongue. I must find the YouTube video I once saw, giving instructions for resetting the machine to [possibly] correct the temperature.

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I hear the rumble of an ocean wave crashing onto a sheer cliff. Is the noise I hear coming from the ocean or the cliff? Or is it from their intersection with one another—and, if so, which with what? Would that sound have been made—regardless of source—in the absence of air? If dreams allow us to see without the use of our eyes, can they let us hear without the use of our ears? Would we be able to speak in a dream in which our tongues or vocal chords were removed or paralyzed?

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Luxuries can contravene other luxuries. I think a luxury-meter would help in situations in which one decadence must be enjoyed over another; one equally as appealing. Perhaps the same meter would serve the purpose of helping pick between dissatisfaction and sorrow.

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Several years ago, I realized my reading interests had changed from scientific fantasy to fiction; novels that relied far more heavily on characterization than on action. Later, my interests swayed in a different direction again—away from fiction to nonfiction. That was about the same time I decided fiction was more engrossing, but I had rather read my own fiction than someone else’s. So I began to write more fiction and read more nonfiction. But for a complex swirl of reasons and excuses, my interest in all of it, regardless of genre, declined. Today, my reading time is limited. More of it is spent consuming what gets by as news written by incompetent wanna-be journalists. I devote a sizable chunk of time, as well, in feeding my rage with the outright lies distributed by bigoted propagandists. These are the folks, calling themselves “citizen journalists,” who appeal to a populace of gullible, stupid, and equally bigoted demons. Even the reportage that spills from individuals and organizations that share many of my political, social, and fiscal philosophies often is a complex web of lies and half-truths. Journalistic fraud that supports my points of view is not journalism but clearly is fraud. I want to believe that the supportive “non-fiction” that comes my way, but it is just a nasty mirror image of the “citizen journalism” I despise. They all are like firefighters, who stand across the fire line from one another, emptying gasoline-filled hoses on their fellow flame-throwers.

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The costs to produce films, film series, and television productions reported by entertainment news outlets are often so high I have more than a little difficulty in believing the figures. Yet the expenses associated with key actors, alone, must be phenomenal. And, watching the credits roll, I can only imagine the exorbitant payroll expenses for almost endless lists of crew. During a recent binge-watch of Mayor of Kingstown, the potential cost of a single scene slapped me in the face. It showed an excavator uncovering a school bus that had been buried under several feet of soil. When enough of the vehicle had been uncovered, several police detectives and officers entered it by breaking the windshield glass. As I watched all the people in the scene and as I absorbed how extremely time-consuming its set-up must have been, my head filled with numbers I can barely conceive as real. Later in the series, a series of scenes involving explosions, gunfire, and blood gushing from hundreds of rifle wounds added to the unfathomability in my mind of the costs of the program. I imagine the total costs of producing the series could have been cut in half, but much of the substance of what makes the film so engrossing would have been left on the cutting room floor. I’m stunned by the money the film’s creation and distribution must have required. I’m glad I was able to experience all of it, including those pieces that thankfully were NOT left out of the finished film. And we’ve only started watching Season two of four currently in distribution. Plus one more in production.

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I drove my car, alone, to the oncologist’s office yesterday. The day before, I drove it to the shop to get a new battery. Alone. Both days. I feel like an adult! An aging adult. An aging (aged?) adult who has grown to enjoy naps, in spite of my complaints about how many I take and how long they last. I do NOT nap in my car. At least not when I’m driving. I do not need to own and operate an SUV. Not even a 10-year-old SUV. But replacing my vehicle with a smaller and/or newer car would be an expensive proposition. For what? An occasional brief escape from the house? If I trusted myself and other drivers on the road with me, I might go for a motorcycle. I do not, so I will not. But a 2-seater Miata…that is appealing. Although, as I think I have mentioned before, I might have a hard time getting in or out of one.

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Grey morning. Coolish, but not uncomfortably so. Nor comfortably so. Someplace between acceptance and tolerance. Sweater over a t-shirt weather. With gloves. Or a bed with a heavy, warm blanket. Nothing seems suitable for what is…only for what has been or could be.

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Tightrope over a volcano. That is a disturbing and soothing phrase, full of languid tension and precarious security. The sort of phrase that causes a love-fest to erupt between mortal enemies and their friends.

We finished watching Season one of Mayor of Kingstown last night. The series is brutal and bloody. The story line wanders through ugly territory between realism and impossible—but convincing—fiction. Its action sequences may have stopped and restarted my heart dozens of times during the program’s first season. I believe the series is set to end after Season five, suggesting my heart will get quite a workout before the final episode transforms my television into nothing more than digital vapor.

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Today’s early horizon is blushing, revealing the sky’s emotional reaction to embarrassment or stress or shyness…or anger or excitement or any number of similar automatic responses to an unexpected stimulus. Depending on how much the sky knows about the motives of authoritarian madmen who distribute grief as if it were a reward, the pink cheeks of the morning might represent Nature’s expression of overwhelming rage. Already, the tint at the edge of the Earth is beginning to soften…first turning beige, then cooling to a very light blue. That transition does not suggest a diminution in Nature’s indignation; only an indicator that her rage has transformed into fury so great that its intensity is capable of extinguishing a thousand suns, leaving only a fine powdery ash residue behind.

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Leonard Cohen lived a significant part of his life the way I dreamed of living mine. But Cohen’s thirst for a deeply meaningful life experience obviously was far more intense than mine. He overcame the fears that might have deterred him from pursuing his aspirations. I, on the other hand, allowed my anxieties to blossom into intimidation or something even more powerful—dread or weak-kneed terror. He willingly took risks I have never been able to myself to face. His courage and adventuresome nature fueled his resolve, while my meekness stoked my timidity. He lived for a time in a decaying old house he bought on the Greek Island of Hydra—a place awash in a culture that bathed him in adventure and excitement. I lived nervously for five years, at the other end of the spectrum, in a flimsy tract home I bought in a Houston suburb, worrying about how my wife and I would survive if I lost my job and the meager source of income it provided. Cohen broke or ignored rules that would have suppressed his creativity. I imagined myself a non-conformist, but usually took care to avoid uncontrollable conflict… coloring just barely within the lines. My self-identification as a bohemian was—and unfortunately remains—a pretense. I tend to hold in high regard people who visibly and vocally challenge rules and willingly criticize the status quo. I tend to view rigid rule-followers as soft and weak, unless they wholeheartedly support the rules and their rationale. But people who disdain rules, yet follow them in fear of the consequences of breaking them…I have the same pity and contempt for them as I feel staring back at me when I look into a mirror.  Hypocrisy chiseled in stone. Forgiveness does not wash away the shame; only deepens it.

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That’s all for now.

My fascination with unicorns has lasted quite some time, beginning as a child and continuing—but declining in intensity—into adulthood. I do not know whether the whimsical fantasy surrounding unicorns triggered my curiosity about narwhals or my interest in narwhals sparked the appeal of unicorns. Regardless of which one ignited the other, there’s no question in my mind that there was, and remains, a connection between them. Their curiously spiraled physical appendages (the unicorn’s horn and the narwhal’s tusk) no doubt account for much of their respective appeal. More importantly, though, may be the mystique those protuberances represent; the confluence of fantasy and reality. But no such intersection between illusion and fact exists to explain my enchantment with squids and octopuses, my attachment to which evolved in more recent years—except, of course, the almost magical appearance of their respective arms/tentacles. Octopuses, especially, captivate me with the incredible precision with which they control their eight strong arms. Squids have ten limbs: eight arms and two tentacles. There was a time when I enjoyed the flavor and texture of the “meat” of both creatures; I still enjoy calamari, but because I now classify octopuses as intelligent, sentient beings, I can no longer bring myself to eat octopus.  I have never eaten unicorn, of course, and do not plan to taste narwhal meat. More than a decade ago, I wrote the following poem about mythic meals:

Mythic Meals

I don’t believe in Unicorns
but I like the way they taste.
The flesh is rainbow flavored,
with proper salt and baste.

Now Centaur is my favorite food,
much muscle in their middles,
more flavor than the Cheshire cat,
who only tastes in riddles.

But have you eaten Hydra,
with her spicy after-bite?
It’s similar to Minotaur,
when the latter’s cooked just right.

And I like a bit of Griffin,
if it’s rare and undercooked,
Oh, Satyr can be delicious!
What have I overlooked?

Humans can carry parasites,
or is it the other way around?
Be careful when mixing meatafors
Oh, how awful this must sound!

I’m really not a cannibal
nor do I chew on a mythic beast
except when it’s in season,
then it’s nice to have a feast.

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My calendar reminds me I must pay estimated taxes to the IRS within the next several days. And I have to decide, this week, what to do with the proceeds of a maturing certificate of deposit (CD), the rate of return for which would be much lower than it has been heretofore if I were to renew it. Financial management is among my least favorite aspects of adulthood; but the discomfort associated with money matters is not quite as distasteful as the sound of footsteps along the inevitable march toward death, which grow louder with each passing day. More gallows humor, interwoven with a bone-dry discussion of matters that should be of concern only to practicing accountants.

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Once again today, I may try to force myself to arrange for my car’s dead battery to be jumped, so I can drive the car to a shop where the three-plus-year-old battery can be replaced. I am beyond simply lazy; my condition is extreme lethargy, amplified by slothful indolence. My apathy refuses to give me access to a recent edition of a thesaurus so I can explore additional synonyms. Instead, I am forced to try to think for myself, without the aid of thought-enhancing reference materials. The brutality of such an indignity is the embodiment of cruelty. Reporting this mistreatment to the thought police is not outside the realm of possibility. The penalties for such criminal behavior start with digital amputation, followed by public stoning and growing progressively worse, culminating in slow-motion beheading with a dull and rusty guillotine. In the absence of compassion, the punishment could be even worse.

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If I could eliminate the discomfort in my chest, I might be able to sleep for a while. It’s not sufficiently intense to call it pain, but it is well past the stage of being classified as a simple ache. Doctors should prescribe “discomfort pills” that serve as obstacles to the progression to more unpleasant developments. Gummies or alcohol might do the trick, but neither are advisable as one prepares to be a road-warrior.

Someone will read this post and scoff at what they perceive as its absurdity.  It’s actually more reflective than it might look.

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Finally, after what seems like a month-long holiday weekend, a new week is beginning to unfold. A more “normal” week, lacking most of the celebratory overtones of Christmas and New Year’s Day. But the energy of the celebrations that began before Thanksgiving never matched the intensity of holidays in years past. Adulthood strips the excitement away from them. The reasons for those festivities were clearly expressed to children, but some kids seemed to privately question the legitimacy of the explanations. They always were subject to suspicion. Stories about religious communities that practiced peaceful coexistence and believed in miracles—paired with a new year bringing spiritual renewal and rebirth—met with both youthful exuberance and skepticism. The experiential wisdom and emotional pains that accompany age, though, tend to heighten uncertainty and temper enthusiasm. Eventually, passionate ideals fade into dubious fantasies. Hope sinks beneath suffocating ritual. Purpose slides into either tolerance or, more often, grudging acceptance. Maturity transforms what passed as faith into resigned acquiescence. I have vague recollections from my childhood…thinking stories from children’s books were more realistic and believable than the fantasies sold in in shops and churches. Even then, excitement balanced precariously on the thin edge of disbelief. Subsequent years wore that thin edge into a solid platform, a place I could sit in relative isolation and comfort as I watched my excitement plunge off that ledge into the rocky abyss below.

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Similes and metaphors replace realism when facts are so unlikely that fantasy is the only believable option. When that is the case, we invite others into our imaginations by painting, with words, abstract images that are essentially self-portraits. A problem, of course, is that self-portraits reflect a mirror’s perspective; an image that is reversed from left to right and right to left. Therefore, our attempts to illustrate far-fetched reality begin with a distorted vision, further perverted by the recipient’s understanding of the sender’s interpretation. A simple example: I describe a young White man with words that you interpret to paint in your mind an image of an old Black woman. Clear communications between people cannot exist in such a twisted world, except by accident. And the odds of that accident taking place between the right people at the right time in the right place are infinitesimal. Yet, the incredible occurs with statistical certainty.

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The likelihood of ice, snow, sleet, and other cold-weather phenomena taking place sometime this month and/or next is relatively high. So I say. Predicting when that might occur, though, is an undertaking best left to meteorologists. They have knowledge of weather and climate patterns I lack. They have access to meteorological measurements and measurement devices that are unavailable to me. They have the advantage of collaborating with others of their ilk to develop and present forecasts, increasing the likelihood of reaching consensus about future weather conditions. That having been said, my assertion about the likelihood of cold-weather precipitation is little more than a random guess made by an untrained, uneducated, unequipped amateur whose qualifications to speculate about the weather are essentially non-existent. Given the value of my prediction, why would I bother to take the time to make it? Why would anyone else take the time to consider it? What could I have done with my time and energy to improve the world, had I not wasted it on such a useless activity? As I consider how I spend my time, I suspect most of it is used in useless pursuits. That’s probably true of almost everyone else, as well. If just one tenth of my wasted time were spent in positive productivity, I might have made an impact. If everyone spent a similar percentage in similarly productive endeavors, Saudi Arabia might be a country awash in vegetable farms with enough output to feed the rest of the world. Imagination. Fantasy. Delusion. It is possible, I think, for the right combination of committed people to shape those dreams into reality.

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One edible before bedtime sent me into a deep, deep sleep. I may have had a dream, but I am not sure. I may have budged during the night, but I am not sure. I woke late this morning. My starvation is getting the best of me.  I am hungry for a flame-broiled steak, cooked rare, with a dozen plain doughnuts available for dessert. I might not eat all the doughnuts, but their availability would give me a sense of safety and comfort.

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Every day brings us closer to the last one. And it increases the temporal distance between the one before and the ones before that. I think Time is elastic; flexible, like a rubber band. Time can be stretched, but it springs back to its original shape…up to a point. If the pressure stretching the rubber band gets too great, the tension breaks the its connection with itself. I suspect Time works in much the same way. When time is drawn out, it must eventually reach a stage at which it reveals its weakest point; an almost explosive detachment in which tension between its beginning and its end surrenders to its original scope…always or never.

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Somewhere between near and far is an unnamed distance that represents a point at which neither is superior to the other. That unnamed spot refuses to acquiesce to claims of proximity by either of them. That location is similar to the “special interim relationship” between North Korea and South Korea; neither here nor there, but equally and adamantly not both. Similarly, now and then belong somewhere in between, but precisely where is unknown. Perhaps when is more descriptive. Yet where and when share intersecting, but inexplicable, attributes.

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Give the right answers and the questions will ask themselves.

Another tired excuse for a day, its promise lost to an action plan left to sour on a street awash in soggy old calendars remaining from Time’s childhood. The day could be salvaged if enough optimism could be captured and used to feed additional attempts; more energetic than the stuff chat clogged the lines that fuel the machinery of progress.

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During one of my recent transitions from conscious awareness to the incoherent confusion that precedes sleep, I envisioned myself being swept along inside a large, dark tubular tunnel. The inside walls of the tunnel appeared to be composed of a flexible web-like membrane, bathed in dim, iridescent, lime-green light. Everything else was empty black space. I remember thinking I had somehow entered the tube from the “wrong” end, which I took to mean I had been effectively sentenced to experience life in reverse order, a condition I could not escape. The meaning of that odd realization, if it ever had meaning, has since been lost to me. But since having that mental experience (and beforehand, I believe), I have seen graphic depictions of artists’ concepts of spacetime wormholes. Those representations closely resemble what I “saw” while crossing between consciousness and its strange, pre-sleep companion state. Since that bizarre flight of fantastical imagination, I have experienced more mundane—but similarly bewildering—dreams that dredged up and heightened my distaste for people whose arrogant behaviors I found contemptible. Those dreams were too complex and too upsetting for me to attempt to describe; trying to do so would be a pointless exercise in frustration. My recollections are sufficiently irritating without adding to them by meticulously reconstructing them.

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Attacking other nations and kidnapping their presidents are the pastimes of idiots and  criminals. A suitable response to such actions might appropriately involve a crushing rebellion against the perpetrator of the crime and his enablers. There is a point beyond which terrified acceptance of the dangerous delusions that prompt such madness is utterly intolerable. Blind rage, accompanied by a willing and forceful abandonment of compassion for the aggressive bad actors, may be justified in such situations. Not only justified, but demanded…perhaps.

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The psychological pressures in his mind seem to increase exponentially with almost every passing hour. The causes of his distress can be tracked back to the deterioration of the human condition. The fact that he is not alone is of no consolation. In fact, that reality worsens the sensation…drowning in hundreds of pounds of microscopically fine powder that’s miniscule in particle size and hotter than the sun. He can feel the bones in his skull begin to flex and stretch like a balloon. Hairline cracks may not provide enough warning of an impending eruption. The speed with which the fissures form may be too great to detect a catastrophic explosion early enough to escape its apocalyptic impact. In advance of the detonation, though, and immediately after it occurs, an overwhelming sense of calm will envelope this universe and the ones just beyond the reach of the cataclysm. When the latex skin of the balloon begins to wrinkle in anticipation of the event, the magma at the center of Earth will vibrate in joyous anticipation. Liquid rock will spill forth from the core, covering the planet with a searing mist of molten material that will enshroud the planet with a granite crust. These images did not arise out of emptiness. They were taken from a camera’s lens; a finely polished glass disc that captured as visual experiences his interactions with the ashes of compassion. Sympathy, in that universe, is mocked by strands of hostility, woven into every piece of rough, biting fabric that shreds skin in much the  same way hate shreds the soul. A fictional treatment of overwhelming fear.

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Sleep may have become a symptom of depression or, at least, a temporary analgesic for anxiety. Rather than waking refreshed, I stumble into the morning feeling like I faced a cheering arena crowd offering congratulation to the bull after I lost another fight. Or maybe I just need a lot of sleep to help replenish energy diminished by eating too little and failing to consume enough water. I will conditionally surrender; I will exchange some of my unwanted wakefulness for a cookie or two and some more sleep.

After a brief flash of Winter, Spring spun through and around us, toppling rotted trees and otherwise reminding us how powerless we are in comparison to Nature. Today, the season seems to be an uncertain combination of the two, neither of which has sufficient motive to wrestle the other for superiority. The blend of grey skies, temperatures in the low 50s, and still air creates an atmosphere of dull weakness; a pervasive bleak and sullen detachment. A few scattered leaves are stuck to the driveway, the adhesive moisture of an almost invisible mist condemning them to stay right where they are if and until the environment changes. They have given up trying to be useful and lively. They are vestiges of a time when life filled the air with wind and aromatic conversations. There are no discussions between flowering plants and bees seeking pollen.  A pall of indifference enshrouds everything in emptiness. The day is unsure of itself. It wants to slink back into the anonymity of night. But clouds prohibit darkness from allowing even starlight to piece the night skies. The day can move neither forward nor backward; it is in a catatonic state, paralyzed with anxiety about a future it cannot see and a past it cannot remember. There is only the present, an enigmatic anchor to now.

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The absence of bright color can be beautiful. In the right combinations and textures, shades of grey blended with muted hues of sage green and black and creamy beige produce serene images that amplify one’s sense of tranquility. But the hideous monotony of unstructured, pointless mixtures of emphatically dreary tints and tones and hues—it borders on chaotic. Oddly, though, the chaos is not necessarily turbulent. It distorts perception in a way, stretching it into smooth-edged fragments that fit together like a complex, precision-machined jigsaw puzzle. This perception is not automatic, though. Not natural. It requires a focused disengagement that takes practice and persistence. I remember the first time…I think…this thought came to my mind. I was riding in the car of an Amtrak train, somewhere in North Dakota, between St. Paul, Minnesota and White Fish, Montana. Mile after mile of almost identical desolate scenery that other passengers described as boring, with its its monochromatic palette and repetitious vegetation, became an image of chaotic magnetism, to me. Beyond its monotonous sameness, I finally was able to see the extraordinary beauty of that long strip of natural elegance. In the right frame of mind, it can be seen all around us; along railway freight switches, in strings of graffiti on highway overpasses, in automobile junk yards on the “seedy” side of towns. Even in seemingly never-ending chain link fences and scenes of hundreds of oilfield derricks protruding from barren stretches of tan sand.

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Despite my affinity for the color, grey, I recognize and appreciate the spectacular beauty and energy that resides, sometimes hidden, within brilliant colors. Yet I tend to favor greys over brighter colors except for accents. I suspect the reason for my attachment to greys is enhanced by my sense that greys are valued by fewer people than are reds and blues and greens and so forth. I value my commonality with relatively small subsets of people who share my tastes and interests including, of course, my preferences of colors. That concept—valuing what I identify as a unique characteristic by virtue of its commonality with a select groups of others—is an odd sort of contradiction. Seen clearly, without looking through the lens of pretentious snobbery, the concept clearly reveals arrogance. Even with that admission, though, I still find it true…and bizarre. Does it make sense for a person to attribute his uniqueness—his differences—by virtue of the extent to which he is like others? That is not differentiation; it is unearned conceit. When I think of other aspects of myself I find worthy of pride, due to their relative rarity in the population at large, I can’t help but laugh: attraction to spicy foods; admiration for multiculturalism; appreciation of multilingualism. I could go on and on, of course, but to do so would only worsen my image of myself as a boastful egotist who relies on self-delusion to prop up unwarranted pride of rare characteristics that are not necessarily common, but certainly not rare.

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Honesty frees and humiliates simultaneously. The truth can tear down walls that keep people apart, while bringing shame to the people who built them—and who lived behind them. Walls are made of both bricks and beliefs. Bricks are easier to dismantle.

Another year of uncertainty begins. Like so many years before it, the outcome of this new year cannot be predicted with any degree of confidence. The challenges facing humanity— and the planet we inhabit—might finally overwhelm us, leaving only shattered fragments of smoldering detritus in place of what we once were. Or, this sparkling new year might end in the luminous glow of unimaginably wild and glorious success, well on our way to a near-term future that lacks all the unspeakably cruel and intolerable problems we have nurtured since our unknowable beginning. As much as I would prefer to place bets on the latter outcome, I am afraid that gamble would be an exercise in indefensible hope. Yet speculating on the apocalyptic version of “maybe” might well result in an equally unproductive wager.  Predicting the future may be an intriguing form of entertainment, but forecasts that lean heavily, on the whole, to either side of the spectrum of “good” versus “bad” probably fail miserably or succeed wildly. Likely to more closely resemble “actual” results are prophesies that mix “good” and “bad” outcomes with large swaths of guesses that suggest “it depends on who defines success and failure…and how.” If success is defined as the continuation of life, humanity in general may have a good chance of succeeding for another year or another decades or another century or even another millennium. But if that definition refers to individual human lives in the short-term, some time-limited success is possible. Yet, if the definition refers to individual human lives, success has an expiration date after which success is surrendered to death. In that thinking, though, people are incapable of succeeding. And death is synonymous with failure. I suppose the same logic can be applied to humanity in general. In either case, it would behoove us—both individually and collectively—to strive toward an agreement about what constitutes success. Though, in honesty, any such agreement probably is nullified in death. How long, I wonder, will this year last?

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I have noticed a dramatic increase in the length of some posts on Facebook. Those longer posts almost always take the form of “stories.” They usually are posted by a commercial entity—frequently an organization or individuals involved with publishing or history or some other source that seems unrelated to the subject of the story. Many times, in reading the comments left by readers, the commenters’ snarky statements mock the stories as having been created by Artificial Intelligence (AI). When I read the stories, I think I understand what prompted the mockery. The writing seems to have been produced by a writer who tends to intensify the story with dramatic embellishments. Something else strikes me; the writing style can be quite similar to mine. Short, dramatic sentences written to emphasize the emotional gravitas of earlier, scene-setting, sentences. When I find myself comparing my writing to “theirs” (whoever “they” are), I tend to think the writing is reasonably good, but in love with itself for its obvious dramatic thunder. And I then grow embarrassed with my own writing that lends itself to such comparisons. I seriously doubt my writing has been influenced by AI writing, inasmuch as my writing long preceded AI writing. But I wonder about the source of my writing style? And I wonder whether any unique value my writing may once have had has dissolved into digitized vapor?

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The bookshelves in my study are filled with books, the remains of a vastly larger collection I had before I moved from Dallas. In advance of the move, I gave away or sold a large number of books to Half Price Books because the volumes took up far too much space. Since moving to Hot Springs Village, I have relieved myself of many additional books. Still, though, my shelves are filled with books. I have not even opened most of them in the nearly eleven years I have lived here. Nor have I invested in a Kindle or its kin as an alternative to physical books. I blame my eyesight for my distraction from reading; I am not sure where the blame rests for the fact that I cling to books I have long-since read or that I have long intended to read. Maybe it’s the idea that simply having books to display portrays me as a man with an intellectual side…or suggests I am more well-read than is the case.  While those may be among the reasons to blame my dust-collecting collection, the core reason, I think, is that I tend to revere physical books. Simply looking up at my shelves give me an odd sense of comfort. They remind me of ideas that took shape or impressions I developed about the authors while I was reading them. “Book people” (whether real or, has-beens like me—impersonators) use books as mental destinations; safe places where thoughts can blossom without risk of ridicule or suspicion. I envy good writers who can do more with words than simply allow ideas to spill forth from their minds. Truly good writers have the ability to shape and mold those words into cohesive collections that educate or entertain or encourage or warn readers about real and artificial forces that swirl about, hidden from those of us who are less competent with language.

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Yesterday’s chemo session did not take place. Instead the oncologist prescribed IV fluids and wrote a prescription for antibiotics. She changed the chemo plan because I have felt weaker than usual for the last few days and have fallen back into my habit of sleeping more than I am awake. I will return next week to get the chemo I missed yesterday, assuming my condition improves. I have a low white blood cell count (Leukopenia), which had dropped again for the second consecutive time, making me more susceptible to infections. Will I EVER be able to live a semi-normal life again? I suppose it’s far easier for me, an old man with the tendencies of a recluse, than for extroverts who thrive on interacting with others.

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Sisal rope, made of natural fiber from the rugged Mexican Agave sisalana plant (related to Agave tequilana). While the sisalana plant is used primarily durable fibers, it is said to be useable in making a liquor similar to tequila. I have no idea what the liquor is called, nor where it can be found.

If not for the chemotherapy session scheduled for a little later this morning, I would return to bed in an attempt to sink into unconsciousness. Whether my body would permit it, though, is a matter for debate. Discomfort rudely interrupts the pursuit of the numbing pleasure of sleep. Regardless, cancer treatments insist on precedence over recuperation from…whatever it was/is that wrecked an otherwise tolerable evening. I retreated from the real world at around 7:00 p.m., in the hope of exchanging distress for a sense of well-being or, at least, anesthetic insensitivity. Like wishes against rocks—dashed by reality. Ten hours later, after a few failed efforts sleep—and many quiet curses flung at cancer and chemotherapy and the deterioration and decay that accompanies them—I crept out of bed. Now, an hour after feeding the cat and forcing myself to swallow a handful of pills (with a chaser of cold water, Ensure, and lukewarm espresso), I sit at my desk, whining. I do not like to whine. Whining is behavior unbecoming an old man who should, instead, stand in brave defiance of his challenges. Whimpering is beneath the dignity of a man with so many years under his belt. Yet here I am, grousing in pitiful self-indulgence. My middle name, which begins with the letter “S,”  should be Sniveling.

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The last time I left a record at the end of a calendar year was just one year ago today. I mentioned chemo and cancer in that post, just as I have today. And I included an incomplete snippet of dystopian political fiction, reflecting my sour outlook and dull grey mood, triggered in large part by the unbelievable reality that was just beginning to unfold. Had I been thinking more clearly, I might have written about anticipating a simultaneous event: a nuclear explosion so massive that every star in every galaxy—and all the planets surrounding them—would be vaporized in less than one billionth of a second.  Hindsight, though, force-fed by enormous tanks filled with unimaginable volumes of monstrous truth, is better than a pair of eyeglasses capable of focusing on reality billions of years into the future.

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Today, again, is the very last time any of us will experience a once-in-a-lifetime event: December 31, 2025. Some of the more advanced time-travelers among us Earthlings—the Aussies and Kiwis and the like—are just minutes away from leaving 2025 behind. They will find themselves at a different point in time—a completely different year—from us for a period of many hours. Time will be split into two distinct moments, at the very same time. Schrödinger’s clock will leave me confused, confounded, and dazed, as if I had consumed mushrooms grown in a universe so far away I can see it through a telescope but cannot reach without first encountering a singularity within my own mind. By then, though, the Hubble Telescope will be outdated and feeble; an obsolete piece of the past reflecting a crystal clear image of the future. Remember that? Those were the days, my friend, we thought would never end. But the tavern is closing and the regulars will be hailed for public vindictiveness without a permit.

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The incoming new calendar year will serve as a platform for more seriousness than has been the case with the past year. I intend to refrain from posting so much stream-of-insanity content, opting instead to express myself in more somber and serious and solemn ways. But, no matter how hard I try, I cannot seem to keep intricate threads of invasive dark humor from hiding among the thickets of light and airy gravitas. Like a trampoline, but with tiny filaments of razor wire threaded into its cloth.

The year is in its death throes. Only today and tomorrow remain. The rest of 2025—barely recognizable as it collapses into its ultimate decay—is a mound of shattered and splintered days—nothing more than smoldering embers and ashes. Gasping for a few, final, labored breaths. Most of history, rewritten to suit the grotesque bigotry of authoritarian autoeroticism, tells stories of events that never happened or expunges true-crime documentation about actions that should have never taken place. Illusions and lies, stitched together in fabric so tightly-woven it is water-proof and truth-proof, comprise the artificial fabric of the past; the “official recounts” explaining life as it never was to true believers tortured into accepting empty vapor as irrefutable evidence of fiction as the only real facts. Presented with the options of willingly accepting the suspension of reality or fighting against honesty in all its forms, we have chosen both. With an inexplicable fervor, we have ceded to a maniacal minority the reins of power. “We?” Who are we? It is “they” who agreed to embrace their own powerlessness. What have “we” done in response? Clearly, not enough.

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The air outside my study’s window looks weak, as if it is starved of oxygen. The translucent tree trunks and limbs beyond the glass are still and quiet now, but as the atmosphere continues to thin, they will change. First, twigs and limbs will moan—almost inaudibly. Soon thereafter, their soft expressions of emotional pain will become louder and their once-rigid wood will become soft and limp. The trunks will slump in irrepressible grief, as bark slides in waves onto the ground. Birds already have abandoned the forest in their search for breathable air. Deer, too, have scurried away, seeking an atmosphere more hospitable to living creatures. Squirrels and turkeys, stuffed with the bounty of their pre-winter feeding frenzies, waddle away in the hope that their plodding retreat will be fast enough to avoid the worsening oxygen shortage.  Time, known to require massive infusions of pure oxygen, came to a halt several hours ago, as expected; as we know, the cessation of time is the canary in the coal mine.

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We have known for quite some time that our Sun will one day spend the last of its fuel. Before that time comes, our planet may plummet into temperatures so cold that atoms will be unable to move. Or, conversely, the star will ignite its final store of hydrogen gas to incinerate our planet and all those within the Sun’s gravitational pull. Either way, we know our existence eventually will come to an end. So, why do we seem so terror-stricken to think of an ending that comes much sooner? “Temporal proximity.” That’s my hypothesis. Nearness in time. As the distance…whether actual or imagined…between then and now shrinks, our anxiety skyrockets, zipping past distant galaxies at speeds far greater than light-speed-squared. The simple solution, of course, is to employ a mechanism I call “time elongation.” Time elongation is a process that either dramatically slows the progression of time or actually extends the size and duration of time’s many component parts. In the latter case, for example, a second can be be expanded to the size and duration of a year in today’s experience. Thinking of the coming apocalypse in that context, we have all the time in the world. The logic of that line of thinking, though, may be similar in some ways to equating the time between elbow replacements with the likelihood of dying of frostbite in the heat of the Australian summer.

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Pessimism and realism live across from one another on the same side of the street. Their grandfathers and grandmothers, respectively, were arrested for crimes against insanity, but the charges were dropped from a high-flying aircraft whose pilots had been smoking marijuana. Needless to say. While some people are busy building concentration camps, others focus their efforts on building concentration campuses, where college students are forced to live the impoverished lifestyles of aspiring academics. Though my writing may seem like it is fueled by illegal substances this morning, that is not the case.

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Sometimes, the only real problem is the lack of a solution.

One day, I will write it. Until then, I will keep looking for words to describe it. When I find them, if indeed I do, I will write it. In the meantime, I will continue to leave myself clues. Sorting out the clues will be no simple task. It will entail, first, reading everything I’ve written. Then, I will discard the chaff. The next step will be to organize what’s left into a coherent sequence and pore over it to determine what’s missing. When I have found and filled the remaining emptiness, I will write it. A manifesto. Or, I may decide to start compiling it before all the pieces are readily at hand. No matter. Either way, it probably won’t be a mind-changing masterpiece. How many times have I vowed to finish a project, only to realize my commitments were not bankable?

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Last night, we sat quietly on our recliner loveseat. The howling winds that had introduced a cold front grew louder and stronger and more intense as the early evening wore on. After darkness fell, though we could no longer see the trees flex and branches bend in the wind, we assumed some branches would surrender to the fierce gusts. Suddenly, a sound above us and outside the windows confirmed the assumption. I imagined a mid-sized branch had fallen, scraping the roof as it fell. And I knew I could not confirm it visually until the morning. This morning’s view outside the north side of the house confirmed that something larger had fallen. A tall and obviously rotted tree, as straight as an arrow, had snapped off a few feet from the ground. Pieces near the top broke off when it fell, scattering some of its rotten remnants on the forest floor below. I am curious about whether the north side or the roof of the house show any signs of being struck by the tree. However, I have no immediate plans to go exploring on this brisk (31°F) morning, even though the winds have calmed and the skies are absolutely clear and brilliantly blue. If I were to journey forth, though, I suspect I would find plenty of evidence the wind won handily over the trees in last night’s round of fierce combat.

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Today is the final Monday of the final month of a chaotic year: 2025. By this time next week, we will have waded into the early days of the only January we will experience in 2026. Every day thereafter, and each day leading up to it, is the final opportunity we will ever have to experience the moments that comprise the hours of those days. The mere fact—that every moment of every component of time is unique—argues that each such unique instance should be afforded an appropriate level of reverential recognition. But any time we take to devote to commemoration robs us of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to actually experience that moment; commemorative or not. Yes, of course, time is fleeting. But does time pass us by, or is it the opportunity it takes with it as it goes?

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After I awoke at 4 this morning, I had already begun my morning routine when I decided to get back in bed. Sleep a little longer. Five hours later, I had slept for almost twelve consecutive hours—except for that brief detour. When I sleep so late, the day has a hard time recovering from its slothful beginning. It’s as if I might as well just go back to bed again and try again tomorrow morning at 4. For some reason, that day of sleep would not seem like an entire wasted day. Only when large pieces of the early parts of a day are torn away does the day’s value decline so precipitously. What opportunities would I miss, though? What opportunities do I miss during the time I sleep at night? Is that time wasted? I think I may be comparing apples to alligators here, when I use the word “opportunity” in a context in which “productivity” might better fit. “Productivity” can sound steely and sterile in some circumstances, but it can have a more compassionate side to it in others. “Opportunity,” too, can refer to “as-yet unearned and so-far-undeserved good fortune” or to a “chance to dramatically improve your situation.” I confuse myself when I attempt to think above my grade. Please pay no attention.

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For  years, I have had a minor fixation with crows. Several years ago, when I visited the Jose Cuervo distillery in Tequila, Jalisco, Mexico, I fell in love with the large metal sculpture of a crow at the entrance. Since then, I have maintained my interest and appreciation in a low-key way. I have noticed, though, I am not the only one enamored of the bird. Mi novia feeds them with whole peanuts, in the shells, most days; and she bought a high-end ceramic “crow” not long ago. It sits on the coffee table. An acquaintance from my involvement with the UU church seems to be fascinated by them. My sister-in-law (my late wife’s sister) also feeds crows and otherwise reveals her admiration for them. There are others. Crows are said to be quite intelligent. I wish there were a way to understand their thinking and they could understand ours. Communication between us would be required for the thought-sharing to work. I saw a large abstract painting of a crow somewhere recently; maybe online. I wish I had saved the image; I want it with me, here in my study. I really MUST do something with the walls in my study. I can’t decide what I want to put up, though. My cup collection? My unicorns? Neither is as powerfully meaningful to me as once was the case. Perhaps a multi-dimensional array of crows. It may be a bit late to begin a hobby of collecting such stuff.

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Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I immediately see an abstract image billions and billions of incredibly complex shapes in a labyrinthine pattern. Usually, the images have a limited rather dark color palate; just one color in innumerable gradations. Every one of the billions of shapes changes its shape…radically…several hundred times per second. If I try to preserve a specific shape or a specific gradation of a shade of color, all the images suddenly disappear from my mind. But they eventually return. On occasion, I convince myself these billions of rapidly-changing images represent the sophisticated inner workings of the brain. But, then, I think they must be visual representations of the processes which the most powerful super computers use to accomplish the humanly impossible.  This paragraph, by the way, is NOT a piece of fiction. I realize, of course, I write in ways that sometimes make it impossible for a reader to know whether I am spinning a tale or expressing my reality. This is real, but my experience cannot be adequately described with language.

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An old-style calculator sits on my desk, almost hidden beneath the computer monitor.  “Old-style,” meaning a stand-alone desktop device dedicated to arithmetic functions.  Mine is a latter-day old-style calculator, a small dual-powered (battery and solar) device.  I justified keeping the machine, in the event a power loss prevented me from using Excel on my computer. But when smart-phones came along and I had a calculator available whenever I had my phone with me, that rationale disappeared. But the calculator remains; a relic of an odd attachment to a machine that has long since been made obsolete by advances in technology. I do not use the calculator. I simply keep it close at hand for reasons that are essentially indefensible. Occasionally, I daydream wistfully about finding and restoring my 1971 Ford Pinto, my first car, which I owned for seven years until I replaced it with a 1978 Datsun 200SX. Perhaps the car and the calculator are physical manifestations of nostalgia for a less complicated period in my life, before hope became an unrealistic, naive aspiration for the future. It’s well past the time to make a little more room on my desk. My attachment is not to the device, perhaps, but to a moment in time when it actually served a purpose.

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I received two email messages within the last couple of days that included attachments; photographs of my oldest brother’s face in the aftermath of tripping on a hole in the side sidewalk in the nearby Mexican town of Chapala and falling face-first onto the concrete. Thanks to the assistance of locals who came to his aid, an ambulance came and took him to the Red Cross hospital. There, he got several stitches in his nose before taking an Uber home. The locals took care of his car for him after the incident and he took a bus back into the town the following day to retrieve his car. At least that’s the story that accompanied the photos. The photos look to me like he was involved in a bar fight with several bigger, younger, and stronger guys. The swelling and redness around his eyes, the scrapes on his forehead, and the obvious damage to his nose suggest one of the guys used a baseball bat and another hit him with a piece of steel rebar during the assault. Another couple of the assailants probably relied on their fists, alone. While the bar fight story is entirely fictional, it is only slightly less alarming than the reality of suffering such an injury only a few miles from one’s home. The fact that he is conversant in Spanish probably was useful…but if my face looked like his after such an incident, I doubt I could communicate in any language.

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A huge Bavarian-style beer garden is planned for west Houston, joining several others that apparently have come into being in the years since I lived there roughly forty years ago. At least 100 beer taps are planned for the new one, which will sit on 21,000 square feet of land in Ashford Yard, a multi-use development in Houston’s energy corridor. One one hand, the idea of such a place is appealing to me because its beer offering will be so diverse. But it will be big and crowded and attractive to young-ish patrons who I expect will be loud and raucous and more-than-likely poor matches for reclusive old loners like me. The last time I spent time in a beer garden was several years ago, when I was in Houston with several family members. My niece took us to a little neighborhood beer garden relatively close to their home; it was small, intimate place with outdoor seating under some big trees (if I recall correctly).  I miss having ready access to such places. The population density is insufficient, I suspect, to support a beer garden near where I live. I used to equate beer gardens with friendly, casual, progressive conversations; no longer, though. Nasty conservatism, coupled with maniacal religious fervor and delusions of moral superiority seem to have taken hold of even the most appealing locales.

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Despite the fact that I know today is Sunday, I see a very different day when I look outside my window. This is an unnamed day that’s held in reserve for an imaginary rail journey through a non-existent countryside. The vistas outside my window include rolling hills, rocky cliffs overlooking the angry waves of an ocean storm, winding highways slicing through enormous pastures dotted with sheep, and small villages where the residents are as friendly and welcoming as close family members. Unlike the rest of the world, beer gardens in these environs do not rely on dense populations; they rely on small populations of intelligent inhabitants who enjoy the camaraderie of sitting beneath shade trees, discussing philosophies of life, death, and the adequacy of “enough.” The huge public vegetable gardens that surround these places supply all the food resources one would ever need. Social media components of the internet in these places is years…maybe decades…away from becoming reality. Except, of course, a select group of applications available only to people whose psychological profiles confirm their humanity and fundamental human decency. The junipers in these areas have been cultivated in such a way that, when tapped, they yield buckets full of crystal clear Bombay Sapphire gin. Farmers in these spots have developed the means to raise vegan versions of prime rib that, when roasted, taste and smell and feel and look exactly like the beef version. Olive orchards surround these hamlets. Nearby, tamale ranchers work hard just before the end of the year to provide ample supplies of lab-grown pork tamales, perfectly-spiced with locally-grown jalapeños, for the Christmas season and beyond.  Okay. If I can imagine it, I can experience it, right? Still, I cannot see the sheep…or the cliffs…or the beer gardens…or the friendly denizens. Obviously, I am lacking a little something to elevate my ability to become physically enmeshed in my illusions.

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Staying far, far away from the sharp edges of a brutally angry and violent world is an ambitious and admirable objective. It is, unfortunately, physically and mentally impossible. However, emotionally, one can corral one’s mind to stay within the boundaries of a safe psychological delusion, where a warm embrace awaits.

Last night, while listening to an Amazon Music station’s selection of soft, soothing piano music, my mind conjured an idea for a huge graphic that would illustrate the enormity of the scope of words that relate to Time. In the absence of the concept of Time, many of those words  would be meaningless. At the center of the graphic, the word—Time—would stand out in large, bold letters. Radiating out in a circle from that word would be those time-dependent words. For example, on one side of Time, the word ‘Now’ would be opposite the word ‘Then’ on the other side. And then, the floodgates would open, encircling Time with so, so many others:

Always—Never—Soon—Today—Tomorrow—Yesterday—Eventually—Previously—Afterward—Future—Past—Eternally—Present—Ever—When—Before—After—Late—Early—Second—Minute—Hour—Week—Fortnight—Month—Year—Decade—Century—Millennium—Forever—Eon—Concurrent—Perpetual—Consecutive—Subsequent—Simultaneous—Calendar—Clock—Birthday—Holiday…and on and on.

This list probably represents only a portion of the linguistic entanglements with Time. The circular graphic might make an intriguing large-scale mural on a windowless side of a big commercial building. I am a fan of murals and other façade art. One of my favorite art-related websites is Street Art Utopia. There’s something about street art that can give me a glimmer of hope for humankind; but some street art can dash that hope into a million pieces.

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Lately, I have read several articles about the Sarco (short for sarcophagus) Pod, an assisted-suicide machine designed by Philip Nitschke, a doctor who later became CEO of Exit International. An article on HuffPost, written by Nitschke, most among my most recent exposures to the concept of the device. The pod, intended to be produced using a 3-D printer, is served by a nitrogen gas cannister which releases nitrogen into the pod. Supporters claim the device works quickly and comfortably, inducing nitrogen hypoxia within a very short time. The CEO of Last Resort, a strong advocacy organization for ‘right to die’ and ‘death with dignity’ initiatives, Florian Willet, committed suicide in May 2025 after leading efforts to legalize euthanasia as an individual’s right. He had been arrested in September 2024 for his role in supporting/ assisting a 64-year-old woman from the United States who had used the machine. Willet was released from police custody in December 2024.  I do not know how he ended his life. Nitschke, the designer (and others) fiercely advocate for giving individuals the right to determine their own time and means of death. He opposes the medical model of support (when it is given) only for those suffering terminal prognoses. Forcing people wo wait until they may be in excruciating pain before authorizing their right to die (or never giving that authorization) seems (to me) cruel and antithetical to the Hippocratic Oath. Decisions about one’s death do not belong in the hands of government—not any more than do decisions about whether to bring life into the world.

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Some people who spend time around me often remark that I do not talk much. Conversations may buzz around me, but I tend not to insert myself into them with any frequency. I listen. I observe. If I participate, it’s usually to a rather limited extent. My involvement would be greater if I thought I had something of value to add to the discussion, but I rarely have that “added value” to contribute. Even when I have something I think might add to the mix, though, I avoid intruding in conversations that seem to be moving along quite nicely—and with few pauses—without me. Mostly, though, I think I my tendency to avoid injecting my thoughts into discussions is due to the fact that I am not a fast thinker. That is, I prefer to allow thoughts to develop slowly—by the time they have matured to a level at which I am confident, the conversation has moved on to other subjects. I say “I prefer…to develop slowly,” but it may be that “I have no other choice than to allow my thoughts to develop slowly.” In other words, I am not fast on my feet. I think much faster with my fingers on the keyboard. I doubt I would feel nearly as comfortable with a keyboard had I not acquiesced to my mother’s urging, while I was in junior high school, to take a typing class. Before I leave the subject…several people know I can readily abandon my silence in the right circumstances, to the extent they would gleefully muzzle me just to bask in the quiet.

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Next week’s weather will  return the fireplace to both its aesthetic and its utilitarian roles. Temperatures in the mid-70s in recent days have caused the value of a warming fire to decline. But we are told to expect frigid temperatures and howling winds next week, so bundling up in front of the fireplace will be attractive again. Cold weather creates in me a craving for hearty soups and spicy chili, along with a desire to relocate to more hospital climes. A conversation a few nights ago about locations that have near “perfect” weather included mentions of the California cities of Oakland and San Diego. Unfortunately, the cost of living in both places makes living in them prohibitively expensive for most people. Good weather and well-designed and well-maintained infrastructures attract people, driving demand for housing ever higher and increasing density to the point of discomfort. With our nation’s recent abandonment of climate protections and the government’s advanced levels of financial mismanagement, though, we are doing our part to make such places unlivable and well-beyond-unaffordable, therefore, unappealing. The problem of density, then, will be resolved and homelessness will be addressed wave after wave of additional poverty-driven relocations to more affordable places. Those places, of course, will then suffer from growing densities of destitute former city dwellers, declining tax bases, and burgeoning homelessness. No, no, no! that’s just nonsense! We can always count on greed and cruelty to solve our problems, so there’s no need to worry.

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At what point does humankind rebound with explosive resolve to tackle the worst of the problems facing us? When does individual greed give way to collective benevolence? Are hatred and love cyclical…that is, do humans grow weary of one in favor of the other and then repeat the process in reverse? The only power we have is the power we use.

On this day after Christmas, I feel an urge to write about war. I am grateful for having never been asked to fight in a war. I wonder whether I would have had the courage of my convictions and refused to participate in such utter madness. Wars are fought in service to the madness of greed. That is, I hope, universally understood. So, we know how wars start. But do we know how they end? The answers to that rhetorical question are numerous, but the one answer that resounds with me is this: Wars end when the resources of one warring faction run out. Depleted pools of personnel to fight; financial hemorrhaging; loss of allies; military equipment; whatever it takes to fight a war. Ultimately, the ‘will to fight’ can be one of those dwindling resources, but the will to go on, I think, must be the final stage of the process of resource annihilation.  The simplest solution to the problem of war, then, is to preemptively redistribute resources equally, by universal contract. Simultaneously, the psychological perspective that gives us the ‘will to fight’ must replaced by the ‘commitment to peace.’  How can two such simple steps have been missed by so many for so long? As to implementation?  I’m not into the practical application of such concepts; I’m more of an idea guy.

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We had a delightful meal yesterday afternoon. We had appetizers of some absolutely addictive home-made croutons made with toasted chunks of sour dough bread combined with the perfect mix of olive oil and favoring. Salmon chowder, sour dough bread, and salad, almost completed the meal, but the finale was a home made pecan pie with vanilla ice cream and/or whipped cream. By the end of it, I was stuffed. Afterward, I took a nap that lasted until after the sun rose this morning. The accompanying wine and the post-dessert ‘edible’ may have contributed to what amounted to my hibernation over the past many hours.

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Merrill Lynch Pierce Fenner & Smith—writing on behalf of its parent, Bank of America—sent me two missives recently. First, a letter accompanied a check in the amount of $00.02, requesting that I cash the check (which had replaced a “stale” check I discarded a few years ago). Failure to do so, the letter informed me, might result in my money being turned over to the state, which might place the money in its state ‘unclaimed funds’ accounts. Shortly after the first letter, a second one came to reiterate what the first one said and to again request that I cash the check. Though I conceptually understand their desire to make certain their books balance to the penny, I am astonished they do not pursue something less expensive than two expenses for postage, two for envelopes, the cost of printing the letters and check, and the resources used to stuff the envelopes and mail them. This time, I will deposit the check in my account. If I try to cash it at the bank, though, I wonder if they will give me a nickel, instead, since we don’t use pennies anymore?

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It is awkward to find oneself drowning in dehydrated ideas. Writing is an addictive affliction, a disease made immeasurably worse when the subject of the craving’s so rough.  Repetitive steps toward perpetual change is stagnation on steroids.

Today is Patty’s birthday. AND it’s Christmas Day, as well. Coincidence? Or a diabolical plan hatched by Krampus?  No matter. I wish everyone a Merry Christmas, Happy Holiday, and other celebratory situations.

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Regardless of how early I go to bed, my morning blush of energy when I wake is short-lived.  Sometimes it lasts long enough to allow me to reach a satisfactory—to me—endpoint in writing a blog post. Other times, my stamina is an invisible hologram; an expectation that does not fully materialize. Sleep can be a refuge from the dangers of consciousness, but sometimes wolves that live in one’s dreams tear through the sanctuary’s walls, pinning the dreamer down in a state of terrified submission.

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Options can seem more like threats than like choices. “Would you prefer to eat broken glass, sir, or to drink gasoline?” Such unpleasant thoughts disappear, though, the moment I hear the “hoo-h’HOO- hoo-hoo” of an owl; presumably a Great Horned Owl, or hoot owl. Though the sounds can seem like they are coming from just beyond the panes of glass of my window, I have read that those notes can be heard over long distances. Mother Nature’s deceit. Forest trickery. If I had better eyesight, more stamina, and enormous patience, I might wade out into the darkness in search of the source of those haunting noises. And, if I did wander into the woods, I might trip over a fallen log, smashing my skull against a large rock. At what point are risks worth the possible rewards of taking them? In the time it took to write that sentence, dull grey illumination spilled through the foggy haze; enough to confirm the impending onslaught of daylight. We are certain of predictions we make, based on repeated experiences. But yesterday’s sunrise is no guarantee that the sun will return to the skies today. Guarantees are iffy propositions, even when “everything is the same.” “Everything” is never “the same.”

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Imagine a child blowing soap bubbles while laughing gleefully at the shining globes floating through the air. Now, imagine those bubbles as they slowly drift to the earth. The moment a bubble is pierced by a blade of grass as it reaches the ground, the little sphere bursts in a nuclear explosion of unimaginable strength. Its heat is so great that the surrounding air instantly zips through several stages—liquid, solid, gas, and one more we’ve never seen before. The child is unphased by the chaos. She goes on smiling and chuckling, mesmerized by the magic of thermonuclear abstraction.

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The spirit has not quite captured me yet this morning. I’ll give it more time.

Roger Whittaker release the single, “Durham Town (The Leavin’)” in 1969, when I was sixteen years old. The tune spent sixteen weeks on the UK Singles Chart, reaching the peak of its popularity when it was number 12 of the chart. I do not recall how I was introduced to the song; only that I heard it shortly after its release and I liked it quite a lot. Years later, after Urinetown won three Tony Awards on Broadway, my wife and I went to a production of the musical at a performing arts center in Addison, Texas. Though there was (to my knowledge) no relationship whatsoever between the musical and Roger Whittaker’s song, I managed to merge the two into the lyrics of a new song I sometimes sang, to the distress of my late wife:

I’ve got to leave old Urinetown,
I’ve got to leave old Urinetown.
I’ve got to leave old Urinetown,
And the leavings gonna get me down.

Many years later, I learned that Whittaker’s original lyrics referred to Newcastle, not Durham. He changed the town to make the music sound more “natural.” But he did not change the name of the river referenced in the lyrics, the Tyne. Had he made the appropriate change to reflect the river near Durham, he would have referred to the river Wear.

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Just a shade more than eleven years ago, I began writing a short story that featured two drunk and disorderly mermaids, Molly and Shirona. The riveting tale, cut short almost before it began, is typical of my attempts at writing autobiographical fiction. That is, fiction laced with more than simple fabrication; filled, instead, with bald-faced lies, complete with verified bibliographic references attributed to giants of literature—people whose fame seems familiar but whose surnames are misspelled. At any rate, as the story ended abruptly after only a few incoherent paragraphs, “Molly and Shirona surfaced in a shrimper’s net, their tails in tatters and their smiles intact.” There could have been—should have been—far more to the tale. Their bravado and drunken revelry had already been introduced, when they paid for a two-month drinking binge with “gold doubloons snatched from sunken ships.” But the story’s promise ended long before it was told. Somewhere in the ether of my brain, the arc of the story resides, still. There is more to tell about Shirona’s full lips, curled into a come-hither pucker. Had more of the story been written, readers could have learned whether mermaids deliver babies or lay eggs. The reason for Molly’s affection for alcohol might have become apparent as the story unfolded. Instead, the reader (had there been one) would have been sorely disappointed to discover Molly’s troubled upbringing was not even mentioned before the thickening of the plot could begin. I could return to continue, and perhaps complete, what I began. But I have begun and ended so many others before losing my motivation…that the pointlessness of selecting this story over dozens and dozens of others might simply represent compelling evidence in my trial or motivation in my sentencing. The oldest trick in the book, though, is to weave fiction into the fabric of truth, hiding reality in between layers of honesty and mendacity, both of which might be sprinkled with fantasy and fear. What “book”
is that? In which of the many encyclopedic volumes of magical deceit might that trick be revealed?

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Here it is, Christmas Eve, and my calendar shows only one obligation: a visit to my oncologist’s office, where I will have blood drawn for laboratory evaluation, get an IV infusion to counter my tendency toward dehydration, and receive an injection of neupogen to support my white blood cell count.  No chemo today, but during the chemo visit last week my oncologist noted in my file that she will “Continue conservative approach with chemotherapy dosing given patient’s history of treatment ­related complications.” Tomorrow, mi novia will prepare salmon chowder. We will have have two guests (our little local semi-extended family) with whom we’ll share the holiday meal.

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Winter weather has abandoned us for the time-being. Highs over the next few days will surpass 70°F. That brief reprieve from intolerably cold outdoor temperatures may spur me on to try to jump-start my car, after which I will either buy a new battery or get confirmation that the current battery died from a lack of attention during a recent cold snap, therefore not needed replacement.

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Two recent visits by friends reinforced my sincere appreciation for people who act on their good intentions. Christmas cards, phone calls, emails, and the like add to the sense that there are many, many good people in the world. My failure to reach out to them, and to others, is an embarrassing flaw. My good intentions, smothered by laziness, must be given infusions of oxygen! Hand-written cards are not my thing (because my handwriting is illegible), but personal correspondence created on my keyboard will, I hope, accomplish the same thing I experience.

Back in the early days, when I was young and energetic and more than a little naive, I wore a suit and tie to work every day. My favorite ensemble from my collection of business attire comprised a dignified, light-grey three-piece business suit, starched white shirt, brightly patterned red tie, and highly polished black loafers. Whether I had anything to put in it or not, I regularly carried home with me each day a thin black Samsonite briefcase—irrefutable evidence that I belonged in the executive suite. I was under the mistaken impression that “the image makes the man.” It was much later that I realized the world operated on an entirely different principle: “the man makes the image and tries desperately to climb into it.” The first thing I did when I wore my costume to the office was to take off the jacket, put it on a hanger, and place it on the back side of my office door. I liked the way I looked when I wore the two remaining pieces of my three-piece suit. The vest, especially, sculpted the image I thought I presented: a no-nonsense, hard-working young man who was serious about sprinting into a future full of spectacular opportunities. In hindsight, though, I think the image was considerably more comedic: a young, inexperienced, buffoon who was easily manipulated and misled into thinking he had important contributions to make to a world that had dismissed his laughable misconceptions about himself long before he was born. My fragile self-confidence, always brittle and subject to being shattered in a stiff breeze, was an exercise in pointlessness in the face of the hurricane winds of young adulthood. I was a relatively believable actor, though, so I managed to muscle my way through seemingly endless crises of confidence by pretending to be someone I was not. I hid my quivering lower lip beneath blankets of false bravado. During the many years of pretense—while I focused on making my counterfeit self appear real—I lost sight of who hid behind my masks. I cannot tell which version of me is authentic and which ones are simply products I created from pieces I found in books or films or lifelike models. Who am I, really? If I could strip away all the synthetic pieces, who would remain? I wish I knew, but I am afraid I might find authenticity intolerable. Are we all, in fact, actors? Do we act out of necessity, knowing that somewhere in the recesses of our mind is an empty form that can live only through mimicry?

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My thoughts spin between rage and humor. I need more rest.

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All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms;
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

William Shakespeare

I do not know who created this image, but whoever did it is, in my mind, a brilliant artist and thinker. 🙂

Blue Lights, the BBC police procedural set in Northern Ireland, is annoying in the infrequency of available new seasons and episodes. We completed Season 3 last night (on BritBox), which had six episodes. Each of the six episodes was released at least a week apart in the U.S., meaning viewers had to either wait a week (or more) between them or wait until all had been released to binge-watch. Because we had watched Seasons 1 and 2 on an incredibly rewarding binge-basis, we jumped at the first opportunity to start watching Season 3. We did not wait to binge-watch it, though. A maddening mistake. Now, we have to wait until at least late 2026 to begin watching Season 4, which will not begin filming until early 2026.  If the distributors of the series had even a shred of human decency, they would speed production, in the interest of people with terminal lung cancer who are facing  an uncertain future. Gallows humor.

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Somewhere on the outer fringe of my mind, I feel the edge of a mostly-hidden memory of last night’s dream. It involved anger, my two dead siblings, my late wife, a faulty home security system, and a woman who was involved in a client association (not sure who she was, nor which association). The woman and the client and my own company all had accounts at a common bank. I strode across the roofs of Chicago skyscrapers, one step per building at a time. It was another disturbing dream, complete with a cold, early-morning sweat. I hate such intrusions in my head! My acquaintance, David, who commented recently about his similar stressful dreams, knows the source of such nightmares; now, if only someone could tell me ways to prevent them.

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I feel icy crystals of blood in my arteries and veins. Blood must freeze at temperatures much higher than does water. But maybe it’s not blood crystals. Maybe, instead, I feel the hulls of tiny hematological ships scraping against the tubular channels as the ships pass through. Somewhere along those miles of shipping lanes are canals, the flows within which are controlled by locks. The locks, you see, adjust to control blood pressure. When the pressure rises to potentially dangerous levels, shore birds poke their long, probing beaks through the surface of the vessels, relieving pressures and gently stroking the tubes with their delicate feathers. This is the kind of truth that Kellyanne Conway discovered when she went searching for alternative facts to confirm truths that, to her, seemed self-evident.

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His creativity cannot be located. It was last seen as it plunged into the frigid waters off the coast of Newfoundland, followed by a murder of whales and a pod of crows. Spotted by a sunbeam, the caravan was then trailed by daylight for immeasurable miles, until dusk showered the travelers with darkness, stars, and scorn. Scorpions scurried across the southern sky, preparing for battle with an Achilles heel. And then, God created enchiladas, awash in  African spice and mental anguish. Suddenly, after a laboriously long year of plotting and planning, and after a lengthy exposure to flames as hot as the sun is hungry, a tub full of tuna  sashimi was declared cooked and ready to thaw. Mermaids, their muscular legs as soft and short as a granite California redwood, marched in unison to the sounds of trumpets firing rounds of cotton candy into a swamp filled with solemnity and fresh gravity. After a lifetime of worry, he found his creativity, buried between the folds of an empty steel blanket in a pool of empty space that extends well past the end of forever in all directions. Everything else was no more than an abbreviation; a symbol for nothing is the absence of anything.

We know it’s fiction, of course. Though we play along with the idea—to an extent—we’re under no delusions. There is no question about it. Clearly, it’s fantasy. But somewhere in the deepest recesses of our minds, we secretly consider the remote possibility. We wonder whether there may be a shred of reality tucked into the far corners of that imaginary world. No, of course not! We shake off that brief exploration of the impossible, laughing at ourselves; embarrassed that we would ever entertain such a ridiculous concept. Yet, while we’re unwilling to admit it—even to ourselves—we permit ourselves to glide aimlessly through this whimsical flight of fancy.

But maybe forest sprites really do exist. Maybe the stories about the tooth fairy are based in fact. Maybe Santa Claus is not just a character created to fascinate children. Maybe all the creatures that populate children’s books and childhood fantasies are not just ingenuous fabrications. Maybe they arise from hidden memories that have been repressed to protect ourselves from believing we have lost our minds. Or to protect ourselves from recognizing that reality.

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I don’t believe in magical beings. But I often wish, desperately, I could. A fantasy existence holds so much more promise than a real world awash in hatred, war, famine, thirst, cruelty, greed, poverty, starvation, and an array of other such atrocities that emerge, endlessly, with every sunrise and sunset. The byproducts of these horrors—hopelessness and rage—add fuel to the fire that keeps the cauldron scalding hot. Holiday cheer, drowning in rivers of molten humanity—once belonging to Venezuelan fishermen or drug smugglers—struggles to overcome its diametric opposite: misery.

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Yesterday’s Zoom video with mi familia cercana was far too short. I may reinvest in a paid subscription to Zoom so I can enjoy longer conversations with my brothers and sister (and mi novia). I have another Zoom engagement scheduled this morning with a pair of friends from Dallas. Even with my preference for limited social engagement, I find myself wanting to bask in the comfort of time with family and friends. I sometimes worry that my comfort with seclusion, though, is viewed by some people as meaningful, targeted, intentionally vindictive aloofness. That misreading of my personality might result in close friends leaving me alongside the road of life; a bit like a snake sheds its skin.

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My hands are as cold as ice, as if I stored them in the freezer overnight and just now remembered to retrieve them. If I do not stop typing right away, my fingers could shatter into a million pieces, leaving me unable to think. Sometime later…hours, days, weeks, months, or more…I will return here to think with freshly-warmed phalanges. In the meantime, I will seek out a comfortable rock under which to hide.

Both my attention span and my memory are short. Together, they have the capacity to create an insurmountable obstacle to developing expertise in any subject.  When coupled with a lack of discipline—and levels of curiosity and interest that ebb and flow like Bay of Fundy tides—they seal the deal. In my youth, my interest levels never reached a point at which expertise would have been attainable. The older I get, though, my passion to learn  can burn as hot as the sun. But the heat never lasts long enough. My interests erupt like a volcano, only to cool when another captures my imagination. And the cycle repeats itself. Over and over and over. How many times have I documented these failures of mine—and to what end? I cannot count that high and I can only guess at the reasons I repeat the tale. If I were to guess.

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Similarities exist between stupidity and ignorance, but ignorance is curable. And ignorance is forgivable. Stupidity, on the other hand, tends to be an incurable condition nourished by bigotry. And stupidity often is willful and, therefore, unforgivable.  Stupidity can be infectious and/or hereditary—people who are not inoculated against it at a very early age are at high risk, especially in environments in which it flourishes. Education, including the teaching of tolerance, is subject to disdain by stupid people. But education can erase ignorance, up to a point. Education cannot eliminate intolerance of stupid people. The hypocrisy of intolerance in people who consider themselves tolerant is difficult to defend, but easy to understand. Perhaps another word or phrase is in order; one hates to consider oneself a hypocrite. Even worse, though, would be to consider oneself stupid.

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The view outside the window of my study is radically different today than yesterday. Shrubs loaded with red berries had afforded me an additional measure of privacy—beyond the privacy of living in the only house on a cul-de-sac—now are gone.  The lower branches of a large round shrub  across the driveway are gone, exposing the ground beneath and beyond it. Other trees and shrubs have been pruned and shaped, replacing the wild look of natural growth with the appearance of a freshly semi-manicured landscape. In the Spring areas of the ground that are now vacant except for a thick layer of small rocks will be planted with low-growing shrubs and a Japanese maple. The setting will have the appearance of casual formality, surrounded by a natural forest. I am counting on being here to see it.

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Temperatures are rising. The forecast calls for highs to reach 70°F, and maybe a bit higher, by Christmas Day.  Cooler air is expected to return within a few days afterward, though, a prelude to who know what? If January 2026 is like most beginnings of the new year, much colder air will follow. Ice? Snow? Bitterly cold winds? I no longer trust the National Weather Service to give accurate forecasts; government meteorologists are being stripped of the resources they need to give reliable predictions. I would not be surprised to experience blizzard conditions at the same time the White House announces the most pleasant, warm January temperatures ever felt during periods when groceries are almost free for the asking and gas prices are lower than they have ever been.

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Early Christmas Eve morning, I will go to the cancer center to have my blood drawn and get an injection…either to counter low blood cell counts or protect me against bone disintegration or some such thing. I doubt we will have tamales and chile con queso and beer for dinner on Christmas Eve this year. That annual tradition from my childhood would require more effort than is warranted. Tradition. Ritual. Custom. Practice. Such stuff tends to dissolve over time, especially when reality interferes with memory.

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Mi novia is tentatively planning on making a salmon stew for Christmas dinner, which I think will be just right. When she mentioned it, I immediately remembered telling her several months ago about a comfort food I have not had in far too long: creamed salmon over rice, seasoned liberally with white pepper. Sometime after Christmas…not too soon, but soon enough…I want to make creamed salmon over rice. The dish is, hands down, my favorite comfort food, surpassing every other common comfort food such as macaroni & cheese, pasta, chicken pot pie, shepherd’s pie, tuna casserole, etc., etc.

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Early to bed last night, but not early to sleep. Hours after getting in bed, I remained wide-awake. After I finally got to sleep, I woke less than an hour later. Again, when I returned to bed, I was unable to get to sleep right away. Even after I did, I woke again in a couple of hours. I’ve been sleeping a LOT during the day, courtesy I suppose of my most recent chemo treatment a few days ago. When not having disturbing dreams, I am delighted to be able to sleep. It is a refuge from an overactive imagination. I am ravenously hungry at the moment. Perhaps a double-stuffed Oreo cookie will hit the spot. Or, I could shower and shave and go out to breakfast. We’d still have to take mi novia’s car; I have yet to deal with my car’s dead battery. Why do I still have my car? I bet I’ve put less than 200 miles on it this year. Ach.

Five years ago today. It was both yesterday and a thousand lifetimes ago. I suppose I was fortunate to have known my wife’s death was at hand, but I was not prepared for it when it came. How does one prepare for the impact such an event has on one’s life? The shock was far beyond my ability to have expected it. Suddenly, her life ended. How long is a “lifetime?” It is both elastic and inflexible. As I have learned, grief is never-ending, but it is survivable.

Earlier this week, I learned of another death. A man who, along with his wife, was active in our church died suddenly, without warning. I can only imagine the shock of such an utterly unexpected tragedy. My wife’s illness had already emptied me of the emotional “high” I had always associated with the Christmas season, but this man’s wife—a remarkably selfless person and a good friend of mi novia—had no warning that Christmas time probably will forevermore be a time of grief. Ach! No matter the certainty of death, it surprises us and takes our breath away. Goodbyes are never sweet sorrow, Shakespeare’s words notwithstanding.

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I awoke, soaked in sweat, from a disturbing dream sometime before midnight. My memory of the dream has all but disappeared, but I remember fragments. At some point, I was thrashing about in a huge body of water—possibly an ocean—trying to reach the visible but distant shore. The surface of the water was relatively smooth, but I expected sharks to surface and attack me at any moment. I was afraid, but not in a panic. I wondered how painful the attack would be. Another fragment: a vacationing neighbor couple had left some cable television equipment for me to pick up while they were gone. Just in case, I rang the doorbell before I entered. The door was answered by a Black woman who knew nothing of the agreement but did not question its legitimacy. She and her husband/ boyfriend offered to help me with the equipment, but none of us knew what I was to pick up. Yet another piece: I offered to give a couple a ride, but after we were in the car, I realized I had no idea where we were, nor where we were going. I could not make the maps on either of two old smart-phones work. We stopped at a bar to ask for directions to a car dealership where I had left an old sports car to be refurbished, but none of us knew which dealership. Our search then involved climbing steep cliffs and crossing railroad tracks. All the while, during all these dream segments, I was extremely worried about…something. The dream must have taken place in pieces; sometime during the night, I got up and put a towel down on the bed to insulate me from the cold, wet sheets. This has happened before.

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You are a product of my mind. You exist as I perceive you only because I perceive you. And I exist as a product of your mind. It’s not just you and me, though. It’s everyone. We’re all interpretations of someone else’s perceptions. For that reason, I think the possibility exists that none of us are real; we’re just expressions of the way we are imagined in the fictional minds of nonexistent beings. Vapor, in other words. Not even vapor, actually—vapor has considerably more substance. More weight. More mass. More…reality.  The same is true, by the way, of everything else. Bottles of pills. Boxes of Kleenex. Scissors. Coffee cups. Paper clips. Paper plates. Papier-mâché. Wall-paper. Trees. Yes, even trees. And their roots do not exist until we start digging around the base of their trunks, which also exist only in what I’ll call our “vaporous universe.” Perhaps we’re the products of the hallucinations of a tiny being; something smaller than one tenth the width of a proton. This miniscule being dreams big! Big, as in spaceships and planets. Ponder that.

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Given the size of the audience for this blog, it is reasonable to consider the words I record here as pieces of a long, disjointed soliloquy. I write to provide an insubstantial, almost fragile, structure for my thoughts. With or without that delicate framework, the ideas that spill from my fingers would bleed into one another. Thus, therefore, ergo…