It’s Wednesday, November 4th‒my Mother’s birthday, as you might have guessed from the headline.  She would have turned 85 today, unless I’m miscalculating, misremembering, doing both, or am making some other unknown error type thrown into that mix.

I miss her; she was a good mother.  But she wasn’t terribly good at taking care of herself, health-wise, at least not for her own sake.  I suppose that’s an attribute that I’ve inherited, in a probably more purified form.  Either that or it’s simply a fact that culture‒probably quite by accident‒arranged for support structures for her, and for my Dad, in the form of each other and of nearby family, which I lack.  For instance, neither my parents nor my grandparents (to the best of my knowledge) ever got divorced.

I don’t think either my Mom or my Dad would even have considered divorce.  It wasn’t an option for them to break up with their chosen life partner; it just wasn’t in their nature, as far as I can see (also, they didn’t want to do so).  I don’t think it’s in my nature, either.

How’s that, you ask?  I’m divorced; how can I be a “mate for life” kind of animal?  It’s not a contradiction.  It’s simply a fact that I was divorced.  Divorce happened to me.  This is deliberate passive construction.  I would never have seriously considered divorcing my wife, nor cheating on her.  It’s not the way my operating system works.  But in the same fashion, I would not consider trying to hinder my wife from splitting away and trying to achieve her happiness if she could.  If she was unhappy with me, it would hardly be an act of love to try to keep her against her better judgment.

I could try to persuade her, of course, and I did try.  But you can probably imagine how poorly I did that.  I am not good at advertising or promoting myself.  I’m not even a fan of myself (though I do like my writing and my drawing and my music well enough).  Anyway, she went on and did her thing and continues to do it, and as far as I can tell, she is doing well.  I cannot think that’s a bad thing.

On the other hand, I am not the sort to try to find someone else and “start again” or whatever.  It had never been my dream or expectation to fall in love and start a family in the first place; it just happened, and that was great.  But that’s that.

Anyway, it’s now today, as it always seems to be.  I am not in the best of moods, not even for me.  And I am lonely, of course.  But I continue to trudge along, because that’s what I think I am supposed to do.  I continue to have all my chronic pain issues, obviously, but I’m sure they’re almost as unpleasant to read about as to experience‒not quite, of course, I’m as sure of that as I can be, but I am similarly sure it can be quite unpleasant to read about them.

Still, that’s me as well, it seems:  unpleasant.  I have it on good authority that I am an unpleasant person, and it’s not just on my own (though I concur).

I guess “authority” doesn’t really apply here, does it?  First of all, unpleasantness is a subjective assessment, not a fundamental attribute of a thing itself.  Different people find different things pleasant and unpleasant.  Oh, of course, there are things and people that would be found unpleasant (or pleasant) by a majority of people, but it’s hard to consider it likely that anyone or anything will be universally loved or universally hated.

No one can be an “authority” on what the “best” dessert is, for instance.  They can be a relative authority on what their favorite dessert is, but even that is something that can change from moment to moment, let alone across one’s lifetime.  And one can probably only speculate, at best, about why one prefers a particular dessert to another, or why that preference changes.

As for favorite deserts, well, I suspect most people wouldn’t have a preformed opinion if you asked them.  With desserts they might, since food and food preferences are discussed and considered relatively often in a typical modern life.  But deserts?  I think even those who dwell in deserts rarely bother assessing their favorites.

My own favorite desert‒a determination I’m considering for the first time now, as far as I can recall‒would probably be the Atacama Desert in South America.  I like it because in and near it, there in the Andes, are some major telescopes/observatories which take advantage of the high altitudes and very dry air to get exceptionally good “seeing”.

That’s been a peculiar stream of thought, hasn’t it?  I guess that’s fine.  I have nothing better to do, in any case.  I’m having a hard time even finding any books interesting.  And all of the billions of videos available through YouTube seem boring after ever-shortening periods of time.

I really should just get in the habit of meditating more.  If it gets me too depressed, well, maybe I could at least be as (ironically) cool as that famous monk who immolated himself in protest back in the day; through the whole process, he was remarkably still.  He may have died, but it was a triumph.  To paraphrase The Old Man and the Sea, he was destroyed, but he was not defeated.

I’m already defeated, of course, so I have one less thing about which to worry.  I might as well be destroyed at this point, right?

Anyway, it doesn’t matter.  I hope you all have a good day, individually and collectively.