It’s Tuesday morning, now, as I’m writing this, which makes sense, since yesterday was Monday.

In case anyone was wondering about the title to yesterday’s blog post:  After deciding not to try to work any reference to any song titles or lyrics relating to Monday into the title‒though I did link to that Carpenters’ song‒I thought I would reference the moon, nevertheless, perhaps as some metaphor for madness.  That seemed appropriate for my blog, since I’m rather steadily mentally deteriorating.  So I figured, who better to give a quote about the moon and madness than Shakespeare?

My first thought, though, led me just to the classic Heinlein novel, which I had thought had been a direct quote, albeit not from any play I had read.  But it wasn’t, apparently.  So I dug around a bit and found a quote from Henry IV part 1‒which I have read, but quite a long time ago‒and took the appropriate lunar reference.

However, I didn’t want simply my usual, slightly altered Shakespearean quote, though that might make up for last Thursday.  The fact that the original line references Diana* made me think of turning it into a Japanese “quote” and replacing Diana with Tsukuyomi, the traditional Japanese moon god or goddess (more often the latter in manga and anime depictions) sibling of Amaterasu, the Japanese god (or goddess) of the Sun/Dawn (obviously a very important deity in the land of the rising sun).

I can’t claim the Japanese expertise necessary to have translated by myself the quote into yesterday’s title, at least not without a lot of work and probably making a mess of things, so I used Google Translate.  I do know enough Japanese to have been able to tell, basically, that it was a decent translation.  I originally planned to leave it in the Japanese characters‒I had gone as far as to remove Google’s transliteration of “Tsukuyomi” or “Tsukiyomi” into katakana** and put in the actual kanji/hiragana characters‒but then I decided that would too pretentious, even for me***, and so I left it in the transliteration into romaji.

For the picture, I used a version of Tsukuyomi found in the brilliant and beautiful manga Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle by the unparalleled manga team CLAMP, creators of such works as Cardcaptor Sakura among many other (in my opinion) even better and more beautiful works.  I altered the picture, though, to make it darker and more eerie and sinister-seeming, since that seemed appropriate for a moon goddess as a representative of madness, as the Shakespearean reference seems to imply, and which certainly seems most pertinent when it comes to me.

Anyway, I’m sure that’s all quite boring, but I thought the title might seem strange and obscure enough to merit an explanation, and while I was at it I ran off at the keyboard.  That, at least, is not too unusual.

I’m writing this on my phone again, by the way.  Yesterday I decided not to carry my laptop back to the house, because I knew I planned to walk from the train to the house (which I did) while talking on the phone to my sister (which I also did), and I figured I’d keep my load light-ish, just to make the process as pleasant as could be.  It wasn’t raining, which was good, but it was rather hot and, of course, humid.  Fortunately, having someone to whom to talk makes the trip pass rather quickly, subjectively speaking.  In objective time, it took slightly longer than usual for 5 miles for me, which makes perfect sense.  I was talking while walking, after all.

I’m afraid I have to report that I am still pretty stressed out at work, and when I am not at work, and just in general, other than when I was talking to my sister.  I had a third quasi-chamber locked and loaded already yesterday, if you’ll remember my reference and metaphor/analogy from the other day.  At one point, I decided just to take it, which I did, and that little bitty minor risk did calm me down a bit.

I’m still just quite, quite depressed, and I guess I’m also what would be called terribly anxious.  Though it doesn’t feel like “fear” of any kind exactly to me as much as it does a kind of mental itchiness and swelling tension, as though most things in the world give me a central nervous system neurologic allergic reaction that makes me want to peel myself out of my own metaphorical skin.  I’m not afraid of anything per se; it’s more as though I’m being squeezed and stretched at all times in numerous directions in some mental vector space, and it’s both crushing me and tearing me apart, slowly and sadistically.  I find nearly every interaction‒especially ones involving interruptions to something I’m already doing‒to be incredibly irritating and stressful.

I feel a bit like an injured and sick feral cat that’s being approached and molested by various different gawking people (no good Samaritans) and other animals when my instinct is to want to be left alone and unmolested, so I can succumb to the elements and just die.

It’s all really very uncomfortable‒though there are pleasant interludes, at least, as noted above about talking to my sister‒and I really don’t think I can last much longer.  I need to escape, but there’s nowhere in this world, in this life, to which I can safely flee.  Not as far as I know, anyway.  There’s no rescue shelter out there that’s going to take in and try to help and heal and find a home for as diseased and damaged a stray as I am; certainly I see no sign of one, and I can’t just keep waiting and hoping.

Well…I can, or I could, in principle, but there is no percentage in doing so as far as I can see.  I’ve been waiting and hoping and waiting and hoping for quite a long time, meanwhile subsisting on the delusion that some nominal, abstract “fact that people somewhere in some abstract kind of sense kind of care about whether I live or die” can actually make any literal, physical difference.  But, like “thoughts and prayers”, it seems not to matter in actual fact (though it is appreciated, and I don’t mean to denigrate such thoughts).  Or, if it matters, it doesn’t matter enough to keep me going indefinitely.  I’m a miserable person to be around, and I’m a miserable person to be.  I just need to screw my courage to the sticking place and finally take more decisive action than exposing myself to a slight risk of a GI bleed.

Real daggers still work against daggers of the mind, but a bare bodkin is an intimidating thing to turn upon oneself, as Hamlet knew.  But I need to do something.  I can’t just keep waiting and deluding myself that something in me will get better.

Oh, well.  Time to head to the bus stop.  Maybe the walking will help my morning back and leg pain.

Have a good day.

*Not Wonder Woman, but, unless I’m mistaken, the counterpart to the Greek god (or goddess) Artemis, sibling of Apollo.

**Which seemed a dreadful bit of disrespect toward such an important deity, treating it as if it were a foreign-introduced word.

***If you can imagine.