Hello and good morning.  It’s Thursday, unless I’m losing track of things, and thus it’s time for my formerly weekly blog post, on its usual day.  It’s also the thirteenth of October, which is always at least a bit of a fun date, as far as it goes, and it has significance to my extended family.

The trains are back on the usual side of the tracks now.  This actually was inconvenient for me, because I missed the earlier train which arrived just as I got here, since it was on the opposite side from the entrance.  I don’t know if I would have been able to make it even if I’d run up the stairs, across the bridge, and down the other side.  But I wasn’t up to that, anyway.  My chronic pain has been even more severe than usual lately, with my back, hips, and ankles giving me tremendous trouble, even compared to their usual sorry state.

The train adjustment isn’t that big a deal, though.  The one I just missed was the earlier train, not the one I “usually” take.  I woke up way early but decided not to get up too much earlier than my alarm, because I figured that getting up to stand would exacerbate my pain a bit.  I was correct in that assessment, of course—I know the subject pretty well, after all—so at least I was not surprised.  That’s good.  I’m not a huge fan of surprises.

Now I’m sitting back in my usual seat on the usual side of the track, and I’ve got a bit of time to write this before the usual train comes.  Of course, I still don’t really have much about which to write.

I guess I could let you know that, although my video was done, I forgot to upload it to YouTube yesterday.  I’ll do that: “My video was done as of yesterday morning, but I forgot to upload it to YouTube.”  I would apologize to those who were waiting for it, but I doubt that there is even one such person, let alone more than one.

Of course, I haven’t written any new fiction, though I talk about my fiction in the video, encouraging people to consider buying a copy of some of it if they’re interested, or if they want to “support” me.

Actually, if someone really wanted to support me, they could get me admitted to some neuropsychiatric hospital somewhere.  Or they could procure for me lethal doses of fentanyl and valium in combination.  That seems like it would be a good way to go; at least they would leave me relaxed and not in pain.  I would really like to be relaxed and not in pain.  I don’t even remember what either of those states is like, let alone a combination of the two.  Then I might be able legitimately to quote Kurt Vonnegut and say, “Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.”  As it is, I usually say the opposite*.

I’m honestly more tired than ever of everything.  It doesn’t help that some idiot is having a heated phone conversation on the other side of the track, presumably to someone in her headphones, at whom she is spewing unimaginative expletives.  Yet the other person is remaining on the phone with her, at five in the morning.

Or, perhaps, she’s having an argument with a hallucination; that would be harder to recognize in the modern era, given the prevalence of smartphones and Bluetooth headsets.  But she seems to be having a believably real conversation.  If she’s not schizophrenic, then she has no excuse for being so rude as to inflict her profanity-laden conflict on everyone waiting for the trains in the early morning.  Where is Hannibal Lecter to deal with such rude people in his typical fashion?

He’s a fictional character, of course, so he is nowhere.

I haven’t made any new fictional characters recently, as I noted above.  I did pick up and strum around on the guitar I have in the office the last few mornings, but it was highly unsatisfying.  My playing just sounds like crap to me, and it’s all just the same old thing over and over again; and it’s not as though there’s anyone who listens or cares about it.

Someone on one of the other WordPress blogs I followed shared a meme from the video game God of War III that I liked enough to copy and save, though it doesn’t apply to me, since it’s about “hope”.  Obviously, it wasn’t something that Kratos, the main character, said.  He’s not big on hope, but he is stubborn and angry enough that hope is mostly not necessary for him.  This resonates with me far more than hope does.

Anyway, my son has always loved those games, and I thought I would share it with him, but I had to do so indirectly, through his sister, because I don’t want to irritate him by sending him yet another email, when he already said he didn’t want to have a personal relationship with me.  It’s weird:  His sister, my daughter, is spending a semester or year in South Korea for college, which is mightily cool, but in the modern world, it’s swifter to send something to her, on the other side of the world, and have her send it back around the world to her brother, less than a hundred miles away from me, than just mailing something would be, let alone bringing it to him.

It’s beautiful, but at the same time heartbreaking.  I haven’t actually seen either of them in ten years—by their choice—though I do interact with my daughter at least.

I’m seriously thinking of just selling Bag End to the Sackville-Bagginses** on my birthday, which is rapidly approaching.  It seems like the sort of thing that would be fitting.

Anyway, the train just arrived, and it stopped at a different location than usual, so I had to trudge along to get on it, and my ankles and hips hurt so much that I had to fight back real tears in the face of the random, unnecessary additional walking, and then climbing into the train and up the few stairs.

That’s it for me, at least for today.  I hope you’re all feeling a lot better than I am.

TTFN

*Nothing was beautiful, and everything hurt.

**This is a metaphor, by the way.  I neither own a place called Bag End, nor do I know any Sackville-Bagginses.