Health

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A session of digression but without a confession

Hello, everyone.  It’s Monday morning, and I’m still at the house, sitting on the piano bench—the only piece of furniture I use for sitting, though I almost never play the keyboard anymore—and writing this blog post on my laptop.  Last week, every post was written on my phone.  Also last week, my posts didn’t get as many views or “likes” as they usually do.  At least, that’s my impression, and I wonder if writing on my phone contributed to the outcome.  I haven’t actually done an empirical, side-by-side comparison of the numbers, so I could easily be wrong about the posts’ popularity.  Perhaps it’s more a sign of my emotional state than the state of the world.  As Radiohead so aptly sang in There There, “Just ‘cause you feel it doesn’t mean it’s there.”  Or, as I like to say, “Just because you inferred it doesn’t mean it was implied”.

Still, this is my own blog, so I suppose I can allow myself to proceed from my subjective point of view.

I’m not looking forward to this week.  My coworker with whom I share some of my duties is out today and tomorrow, and I’m also going to be working this coming Saturday after having worked this last Saturday, since said coworker was/will be out of town.  I had already had a week of terrible sleep, even for me, which didn’t help.  I did take a bit of rest yesterday, though I had to do my laundry.  But a lot of the resting was simply me being wiped out due to the fact that I had some form of (presumably food-borne) enteritis, so I didn’t feel well at all, despite taking some loperamide*.  That illness, at least, appears mostly to have run its course, for which I am grateful.  It’s not pleasant to try to commute while fighting a lower GI issue, but it’s not as though I can stay out of work today with my coworker out.

Sorry, I know all this trivia about my day to day life is probably both boring and depressing.  What can I say?  I’m a depressing and boring person.

Yesterday, between trips to the bathroom, I picked up the Les Paul guitar that my former housemate built, because I wanted to practice some more on that David Bowie song I mentioned last week.  As with most songs, it sounded even better on the Les Paul.  It’s the best sounding instrument—of any kind (which includes cellos, pianos, guitars, violins, and keyboards in general**)—that’s I’ve had the privilege to play.  He did an amazing job with it.  The red Strat he made is also excellent, and I love it, but the Les Paul is almost miraculous in its tone.

It was remarkably dusty, but that didn’t bother me too much.  I’m not one to polish or tweak or maintain things, except when using them, and then only to the extent that it’s necessary in order to use them.  My brain just doesn’t work in such a way that, for instance, I would ever notice or care that a car I owned could use a car wash, or that my room was cluttered, or that my desk was cluttered, or whatever.

Cars and the like are merely things one uses for a purpose, as far as I’m concerned.  And I’m actually quite happy that I seem to have been spared the whole social hierarchy, showing off, keeping up with the Joneses, owning things as status symbols, and so on, kind of mentality.  I’m not intimidated by so-called superiors, and it usually doesn’t occur to me that I ought to be so.  I’m also not disdainful of so-called subordinates, and I am provisionally convinced that this is the correct attitude.

Of course, all this sounds a bit like a species of showing off in its own right, I guess.  I don’t mean it that way (though I am glad of it, as I said).  I just recognize now that perhaps some of the things that have always been true about me, and which I guess are different from the way many other people are, may in fact be related to ASD if I do indeed meet the criteria for that.  I have never been a person who cared about owning the latest popular brand of sneakers when I was a kid, or a particular brand of clothes or jacket or whatnot—I honestly couldn’t even understand why people cared about such things.

I did like some things that I thought looked cool, or neat, or interesting sometimes, and I still do.  I also had a jacket, on the left breast of which were pinned dozens upon dozens of buttons depicting the band, The Police, because I was fairly obsessed with them and bought every such button I encountered.  But I am not and have never been the sort of person who would have put racing stripes or LEDs on a motorcycle, or tried to get bright chrome doo-dads for a car.  A car is just a tool.

So is a guitar (or a piano or a cello).  These are wonderful tools, and I care more about them than I do about cars, because their purpose is to make music, which is much more aesthetically pleasing than just being able to get places quickly and easily while sitting on my fat bottom.  Even so, what matters in a guitar, say, is the sound.  I honestly don’t really give a flying f-ck at a tiny little rat’s a-s if it looks shiny or fancy or whatever***.

I don’t know how I got started on that big and pointless digression.  I suppose I’ll be able to see the route when I go back to edit this, though I still might be mystified by it.  At least it fills the page, so to speak.  And it isn’t even late enough that I would normally have left for the bus stop, which is good, because it’s raining a bit, and even with the bus shelter roof, the rain tends to get little splatters on the laptop screen if I write there.  I definitely write much faster on the laptop, though at least doing the phone stuff last week doesn’t seem to have hurt my thumbs too much.

I have to work up my courage to go in to work, though.  I just need to survive until Saturday, at least, because I don’t want to leave everyone at the office in the lurch.  After that, it’ll be two weeks in a row where I won’t be working on Saturday (to make up for two weekends on), and so there won’t be any time when my presence is essential—well, except for payroll, I guess, but I can’t be too tied down by that.  Having to prepare the payroll for people is not by itself an adequate reason to continue living, not indefinitely.

I’m not sure I’ve ever found an adequate reason, even during the times when I was reasonably mentally stable.  I just didn’t much think about it, not in any serious way.  When you’re not feeling depressed and/or stressed, you don’t really need a reason to continue, you just coast along on the surface of biological drives and follow the local path-of-least-action.  At least, I do.  But it’s been a long time since I’ve had a noteworthy interval of not being depressed and/or stressed, and unfortunately, when depressed, time seems to take much longer to pass than do the times in between.

Probably, reading my blog posts feels like that sometimes.  Meaning that the time is much longer, more wearing, than other times.  Apologies for that.  I hope you have a good week, nonetheless.  And to all you mothers**** out there, I hope you had a wonderful Mother’s Day yesterday.

*Look it up if you don’t know what it is.  It’s an excellent product.

**I’ve also briefly played a saxophone—a cheap one bought from a flea market.  It made a lovely sound, and I enjoyed diddling around on it and making absurdly loud but cool noises, and it was easier to play than I expected it to be, but I lost interest pretty quickly.  I like to sing and play, and you can’t do that with the saxophone.  I do, in retrospect, regret that I had never even thought to try to work out and play the sax riff from Baker Street.  What a missed opportunity!

***Though I do grant that the guitars my former housemate made are lovely.

****And I don’t mean that as “half a word”.

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Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate, that Time will come and take my blog away

“Hello”, and “good morning”, and any other standard, ritual greetings one should use in such openings to blog posts.

It’s my “traditional” Thursday blog day‒the day on which I used to write my only blog post of the week, because every other day I was writing (or editing) whatever work of fiction I was producing at a given time.  Often my blog posts had something to do with the fiction writing process, which I imagined some people might find interesting.  Or it was some discussion of the story itself on which I was working.  I often veered off track, I think, if memory serves.  This blog is, after all, my main form of conversation and communication, and it was so even then, so I did as people do when just talking, and let myself say whatever came to mind.

Of course, unlike what happens with most speaking, I reread and edited my words before putting them up for other people to read.

It might be good if people did more of that.

I’m nervous about my commute this morning, because both of the previous two days saw the train previous to “mine” canceled*, and thus the train I took was doubly crowded.  I really don’t like crowds at the best of times, though on the bus it feels less onerous, because everyone on the bus feels thoroughly transitory, which I suppose is appropriate.  Anyway, even a crowded bus ride sees everyone shift or get off after a few stops, and the scenery is also somewhat engaging.  The train feels more closed in, and if you feel the need to do so, it’s harder to get off quickly‒you have to wait until the next stop, which on the train is farther than on the bus.

At least there are bathrooms on the train, which is one big reason I prefer them to the bus.  I can’t wait too very long without needing to use the bathroom; this has been the case for me all my life.  Even my sixth-grade teacher called me “straight pipes”.  It’s rough when your own teacher teases you (openly) but I didn’t really care too much at the time.  It seemed clear she didn’t mean much by it, and I wasn’t really very susceptible to social bullying.  I had my core friends, I knew I was a bit odd, but that I was smart, and I had a family that cared about me, and for the most part I think I was reasonably well liked.

Also, I loved learning things, so I liked school.  And when one doesn’t react defensively, or really at all, to name calling, people stop doing it, because its usual point is to have an effect on you that asserts or determines some form of dominance hierarchy.  I’ve never felt I had anything to prove to people who would say insulting things, or whatever.  If a squirrel chatters at me as I pass, or a bird squawks, or a dog barks, it doesn’t mean anything to me***; it’s just some creature making noise.

Now I care even less, I think, because no other person could possibly say or think worse things‒and especially not more personal things‒about me than I do about myself.  I suppose someone could make false claims about me, but that would probably just be puzzling; it wouldn’t threaten my sense of identity.

I’m not particularly vulnerable to defamation and I’m not readily susceptible to “gaslighting” because my own memory of myself and my doings is always going to be more reliable than the accounts of humans around me.  Have you seen how malleable and unreliable their memories and concepts are?  It’s frankly amazing that some of them remember how to speak from day to day.

I’m continuing working on trying to feel better, to see if I can make myself feel like I’m worth saving.  So far my success has not been stellar.  I’m continuing with the Saint John’s Wort, I’m trying to be careful about what I eat, I’m trying to control my pain as best I can‒that’s a really difficult and frustrating endeavor‒and I’m trying to explore new approaches as well.

For instance, I’m reading the book Breath, about the author’s exploration of how our modern respiratory habits may be harming us and what changes might be beneficial.  It’s a bit less skeptical than I might like, but it’s not full-on woo by any means.  At the least, I’m trying to improve my nose-breathing as much as I can, and to move toward that goal I’m trying to get my allergic rhinitis under control.  We’ll see how it goes.

It’s still really hard to understand why I’m bothering with all this, other than the biological drives to survive and the wish not to cause inconvenience to others.  But one thing I do know, that I have seen over and over, and that I recognize when I think about it: after an initial shock, people just get over it when they “lose” someone, especially if it’s not a person who’s terribly close to them.  And I’m not terribly close to anyone.

So, maybe I shouldn’t worry too much about making people sad or inconveniencing them.  Life is inconvenient, and everyone loses or is lost by everyone else eventually.  Before 1969, I didn’t even exist, and no one was inconvenienced by that fact.  And after I’m gone, the universe at large will not even notice.

We’re all virtual particles, anyway‒we pop into existence only to disappear more quickly than the universe can even notice that we were here‒though, as with “real” virtual particles in quantum mechanics, there can be palpable effects from many of us existing at once.  Only rarely does a virtual particle become “real” and continue to exist beyond the conveyance of a tiny bit of some fundamental force, one blip among countless such blips, existing for less than a Planck time before disappearing, and honestly not even actually being a real thing in the universe, just a shorthand.

Maybe.

Anyway, all that is a heavy-handed metaphor.  Sorry about that.  Now I must leave for the bus, to get the train, to get to the office, to work, then to reverse the journey, then repeat ad nauseam until I can finally, like virtual particles do, self-annihilate.  Or whatever.

I hope you’re feeling more optimistic than I am, and I hope you’re right about that optimism…but I’m not going to bet on it.

TTFN

ruins

*I don’t know why, and I have not yet been able to locate an explanation on the Tri-rail website.  Perhaps I should check their “social media” sites.  If it happens again today, I may**.

**It didn’t.

***Though I will usually greet dogs that bark as I pass‒their tails are almost always up and alert, and they look like they just want to be noticed, so I say hi.

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Back to work with a back that doesn’t work well

It’s Monday morning‒early‒the first day of the second work week of the fifth month of 2023.  That sounds a bit like the sort of time when one might be able to use a magic key to open a hidden door in a lonely mountain or something similar, but pretty much any day sounds that way if you describe it in that fashion.

Try it.  You’ll see.

I’ve had a pretty uncomfortable weekend, because whatever flared up my back pain last week‒I suspect it was riding the bike‒has not faded back to normal levels.  I have scrupulously avoided riding since mid-week, but so far that has just made the pain shift a bit, not fade.  I barely even went to the nearest convenience store this weekend.  I ordered in food for dinner, which had its own comical or ironical pitfalls.  But I did make sure to take a decent walk on Saturday, and it was nice enough, but wasn’t adequate to sort my back out, which should come as no surprise to anyone.

Of course, I did not go to see The Guardians of the Galaxy III this weekend.  I was a deluded child to imagine that I might.  Perhaps, if the scooter had started up and been running easily when I pumped its tires up, I might have gone, but otherwise it just wasn’t worth the effort to get to the theater, whether by public transport or Uber or Lyft*.

Probably my fantasy of going to the movie and having popcorn and candy and soda and watching the movie by myself is much better than the actual experience would have been.  It’s a bit like how I always enjoy thinking about having a beer or glass of wine or mixed drink much more than I ever enjoy the drink itself.  Often I don’t even finish my first drink in such cases.

Reality is just not as good as my imagination, like in the song Kodachrome.  That’s partly why I don’t really care for “realistic” fiction.  If I want a realistic story about ordinary people, there are eight billion of them happening every day all around.  And they’re pretty much all boring, at least to me.  Not the people, necessarily; the stories.  Or, at least, they’re not worth writing a book about for the most part.

Of course, here I am, ironically writing a near-daily blog reflecting my daily, boring life.  But that’s nonfiction, at least.  And I doubt anyone will ever be assigned to read this in school anywhere, any when.  If they are, well:  Hey, kids!  How’s it going?  You’d really be better off with Shakespeare, you know; tell your teachers I said so.  At least, if you’re going to read my writing, read my fiction.

Speaking of my fiction, I finished Mark Red again on Friday.  It was a good book, I thought, but I am biased.  I doubt that I’ll ever write the sequels though, not that that will break anyone’s heart.  But I’m reasonably proud of the book.  I still love Morgan, the vampire from the story.  She’s very cool.  You know she must be cool; Tony Stark named his daughter after her.

That last half sentence was wild speculation on my part, for which I have no evidence other than the coincidence of the two characters’ names.  I’m okay with that, though.

Oh, btw, I’m writing this on my smartphone, because I chose not to bring my laptop with me to the house on Friday.  Given the state of my back and hips and legs, it seemed fair just to keep my load light.  I don’t know if that helped any; after all, as I said, my back is still killing me**.  I’m writing at the house, because I might as well get the first draft done before leaving for the bus.  I suppose I could have “slept in”, but then again, I was awake starting more than two hours before my alarm went off, trying to use my USB chargeable massager to relax my back and hips and sides and all that, with limited success.

See how exciting ordinary, solitary life is, even for a weird, malfunctional, pseudo-human like me?  Why would anyone write or read fiction about them?  Well, people can write and read what they like, and they have my sincere best wishes if they enjoy themselves doing so.  It doesn’t work for me, unfortunately.  I can barely read any fiction at all anymore.

I’m on my second week of retrying Saint John’s Wort.  I don’t think it’s doing much good so far, but it is making me feel more tense and jittery, and I suppose it’s possible that it might be contributing to my worsening back pain (though I consider it more unlikely than likely).  I almost didn’t take it today.  I may give up on it, as part of the process of giving up on everything.  But I’ll give it at least one more day in court.

And with that, I think I’ll head over to the bus stop and head in the general, eventual direction of the office, because as long as I’m unable to suppress my biological urges, I need to feed myself, and as long as I keep not wanting to inconvenience or disappoint other people, I need to keep doing the work I do.  I don’t find any meaning in it per se, but then, nothing currently in my life has any meaning, so that hardly matters.

Such is real life.  Why would anyone want to write and read stories about it?

*I have downloaded and signed up for the apps, but haven’t used them.  Perhaps if I had previously done so and felt comfortable, I might have gone, but I still have resistance to it.

**But far too slowly for my taste.

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I didn’t write a blog post yesterday

Well, it’s Tuesday, and I’m back to writing on my laptop—the computer, that is, not the upper surface of my thighs when I’m seated.  Writing on those would not only be rather bizarre, but I think it would be quite difficult to upload such writing to WordPress without first retyping it, anyway.  And if I’m going to do that, I might as well just write my posts out longhand on paper before typing them in.  I sometimes consider doing that, but the time required is prohibitive.

I was off sick yesterday, which is why I didn’t write a blog post.  I had a migraine, with nausea, though somewhat regrettably, I did not find myself able to throw up.  So I laid on the floor with the lights off and the blinds drawn for a little more than half the day.

I’m going to be riding the bus to the train station this morning, though I was tempted to try my bike, because I got this new, portable, electric, USB rechargeable air pump on which you can set your goal pressure and it pumps up to that pressure very quickly then stops.  It came fully charged and worked beautifully on my scooter tires—then the scooter battery turned out to be dead, so I couldn’t use it.

I was frustrated, so I tried it on the bike and realized that, despite my earlier attempts, I had previously underinflated the tires a bit.  So, I rode the bike to 7-11 Sunday (and back—no need to leave it there), and I had no noticeable exacerbation of my back pain.

However, the trip to 7-11 is shorter than to the train station and back, and I’m a bit too nervous to do the latter today…cats walking on hot stoves and all that.  Anyway, I’m writing the beginning of this post (now) in my room in the house, but will probably finish it at the bus stop*, depending on how fast I write, which is, to be fair, pretty fast.

I started taking Saint John’s Wort again this weekend—it’s possible that’s what gave me a belly-ache on Sunday and then might even have contributed to my migraine yesterday, though I’m skeptical of that.  Still, it’s not as though any other antidepressant ever failed to give me side-effects, and most of the others require a prescription.

I tried the curcumin stuff, but it gave me stomach problems almost immediately, so that was a miss.  I’ve got Sam-E, or however they write that stuff, but it’s more of a supplement to treatment or whatever and I’d rather not start it at the same time as the SJW**.  Anyway, since “the wort” (as in “going from bad to wort”?) was the first and most effective antidepressant I’ve taken, so I’ll try it again as, potentially, the last antidepressant I take.  I simply cannot go on the way I am.

I’ve been trying to do mindfulness meditation, as you may know, and when I do it helps a bit.  I also try not to let myself by constantly distracted by other things from it when I’m at work, and it seems to be somewhat useful as far as it goes.  One of the biggest benefits to meditation is that it seems to make me less grumpy at the office, and less stressed out when people interrupt something I’m working on to ask me to do something unrelated, derailing my train of thought and my work process and everything.  I still dislike those things, but at least I don’t feel like I want to lash out at the people involved with teeth and fists and claws and everything to make them go away.  Well…I do feel like I want to, but I can at least keep from letting it show in my voice.

I think it only shows to me, anyway.  I don’t think other people ever really pick up on what’s going on in my head.  I feel like it ought to be obvious to everyone that I’ve been depressed and self-harming and feel suicidal and all that, but no one really says anything, and when I mention such things, people seem to think I’m joking.

I suppose I have only myself to blame for that latter problem; I have a dark and somewhat morbid sense of humor, and I guess my delivery must be pretty deadpan whether I’m joking or not.

Here’s a hint, in case anyone is paying attention:  If I ever say that I hate my life and feel like I want to kill myself, and to hurt myself, and wish I would catch pneumonia or cancer or trip in front of an oncoming car or just drop dead—even if I sound like I’m joking, even if I am joking—I do mean it.  It may not be the whole story of me.  Obviously it isn’t, because I’m not dead yet, but it is true, nevertheless.  I hate myself, and a big part of why I haven’t actively sought out help or whatever, or at least not much, is that I really don’t like myself, and don’t want help, or rather, can’t let myself seek help because I don’t think I deserve it.

I have no sense of anything like a future for myself; I can’t imagine a life even one year down the road, even one in the autumn of this year.  I can’t imagine another birthday.  I have no image of my own future life in my mind.  It’s just a fog of emptiness and entropy.

Anyway, that’s that.  Go ahead, take it as a joke or as the mind drippings of a dealer in melodrama.  I missed yet another potential palindromic digit sequence in recording numbers at the office last week, and it’s getting old even hoping for one, however fun it would be.  If one appeared today, I don’t  think it would matter (though it’s not possible, currently).  What’s the point?  Is getting eight digits that read the same front to back as the recording number on an audio recording verification system really a good enough reason to stay alive?

I mean, I like fun with numbers and everything, but they only have so much charm.  Hell, there’ve been at least two new Numberphile videos with Professor Grime, one of my favorites, and I haven’t bothered to watch either of them.  I couldn’t give a shit.

That’s not a good sign, in case you didn’t know.

Anyway, it’s getting about time to leave for the bus stop, and I’m already at over a thousand words in the first draft of this.  I do type quickly, and when I can just write what I think pretty much as I think it, as I do with these blog posts, it comes fast.  It’s much easier and quicker than speaking, ironically.  Unfortunately, fewer and fewer people seem to read anymore.  They all want to watch five minute smartphone videos on Instagram or TikTok or whatever, with their annoying, vertical aspect ratios that just don’t really work to make a watchable tableaux of anything but some juvenile face, most of the time.

There are a few brilliantly funny videos, I’ll admit, but they are short.

There are reasons both movies and TV are wider than they are tall and always have been.  A lot of it has to do with the fact that we evolved in a world where all the stuff with which we can interact is within a fairly narrow vertical range but a functionally unlimited one horizontally.  We and other animals don’t do much going up or down relative to moving along the surface of the ground.  Even flight takes place within a range much narrower than the horizon is wide.

But because smartphones are relatively effortless—and thus mindless—people make all those stupid vertical videos.  Heck, I’ve done it myself.  See?

video screenshot

Anyway, that’s enough of that.  Who knows what will come next.  I’m giving myself a last chance with the Saint John’s Wort, but it may be just enough to give me the will to make an end, who knows?  Prediction is difficult, especially about the future.  Maybe this blog will all be the beginning of a truly long course of writing, and maybe it will be the final records of a mind headed for catastrophic failure and death.  The latter seems more likely to me, but I’m unable to be objective about it.

Thank you all for reading, anyway.  You know who you are:  you’re the ones reading, and thus the only ones who will be thanked.  That’s kind of convenient, at least.

*I finished it at the house before leaving.

**Saint John’s Wort, that is.  It has nothing to do with “social justice” or the warriors thereof.  I’m not even sure that’s a coherent term, “social justice”.  Perhaps it’s merely a redundant one.  What’s the alternative?  Anti-social justice?  Asocial justice?  Solitary justice?  It’s weird.

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An intention to work on meditation

It’s Friday morning, now, and I’m writing this on my phone, because I did go back to the house from the office last night.  My boss actually made a point to have me leave a bit early; he took me to the train station himself.

I guess it was pretty obvious how worn out I was.  I actually felt rather giddy and weird much of the day, yesterday, but it wasn’t exactly a healthy feeling.  This morning I feel more like my usual self, which is not an improvement, necessarily, but at least it’s “usual”.

I’ve been reading a book called From Strength to Strength, by a guy who was on Sam Harris’s podcast and sounded like he had some interesting ideas.  It’s basically about how the abilities and habits people have as young go-getters, achievers, innovators and whatnot inevitably diminish over time, but that other abilities, and the possibility for a different and deeper kind of success, can happen after passing the peak of the “fluid” intelligence stage.

However, as he notes, it can be difficult for people whose habits of achieving have been honed and have worked well so far in their lives to achieve what they thought they wanted‒money, power, prestige, and so on‒to let go of those habits and move on to more rewarding “second act” kinds of things, like good relationships, family, teaching and helping others, and spiritual pursuits.

Now, I was certainly a high-achiever, but all my youthful rewards were taken from me by injury and ill-health, divorce, depression, and incarceration.  I lost everything I had except a few knick-knacks that had been lent to other people, and I lost my wife and kids (effectively), and I certainly lost any and all prestige I’d had.

The prestige stuff was never a huge deal to me, nor was “being a doctor” the way in which I defined myself (I’m not sure I ever actually “defined” myself in any way other than that I was the person thinking and doing whatever I was thinking and doing).  I went to medical school almost as an afterthought, when other plans got derailed due to my congenital heart condition.

Medicine was something I liked, though‒intellectually challenging and stimulating, full of science and learning, and centered around the ability to do real good in the world and relieve or at least lessen the suffering of some people within the reach of my arm.  That was good, because I have always felt a kind of inherent guilt over the very fact of my own existence, and have felt very much wrong in this world.  I’ve always felt that I had to justify, in some way, my continued existence, the inevitable depletion I caused of the planet’s oxygen and food and water.  Either that or I would simply need to embrace being a villain and willfully choose destruction and cruelty and evil.

That latter bit was too much work, though, and it’s hard to be a pure bad guy when you’re what might be thought of as a sort of anti-narcissist.

So, anyway, back to the subject.  I didn’t need to force myself to jump off the treadmill of my youthful power curve; I had already crashed and burned catastrophically.

I unfortunately have no close relationships whatsoever to cultivate anymore, not really.  My sister and brother, with whom I get along well and always have, are more than 1300 miles away, and my cousin slightly farther.  I cannot face the prospect of trying to move closer to them, to change where I am located, to try to find a new place to make a living, and to become a burden, even a minor one, upon those people‒even if they would be willing to take that burden up.  I am not willing to deliver it.  Not to them.

However, I may be able to try to approach some kind of “spiritual” life.  I can’t be religious in any kind of traditional, “western” sense.  I just can’t buy into that stuff.  I’ve tried.  I’ve read the whole Bible (parts of it multiple times), both testaments, including the first chapter of Genesis in Hebrew.  I’ve read as much of the Koran as I could force my way through (about half).  None of them are very impressive, and I’m willing to bet the Book of Mormon, for instance, isn’t any better.

However, I’ve always been pretty good at self-hypnosis and meditation.  I’ve had trouble with meditation in recent years, because, while it tends to reduce my tension and stress, it seems to exacerbate my depression.  However, that was often meditation associated with a sort of mantra, drawn from my time of self-hypnotism habits.  But maybe if I try simple, pure Vipassana meditation, it might be better.

I don’t think I could possibly become very much more depressed than I already am without crashing full-steam into a life-threatening‒or life-ending‒crisis.  And that would be at least some kind of result, so that’s not so very bad.

Anyway, I think I’m going to try, in my moments of lack of work, to get into a more persistent practice of mindfulness meditation.  I’m not ready‒and I may never be‒to work toward any metta (lovingkindness) meditation, because it’s hard for me to feel beneficent feelings toward the world in general, though it’s easier than feeling them toward myself.

It’s not true that in order to love others you have to love yourself; that’s patent nonsense.  It may be that you have to love yourself in order to be loved, but I doubt even that is close to being true.  These all seem to be just tropes and gimmicks trying to trick people, often with good intentions, to work on loving themselves.

Anyway, that’s a tangent.  I do hope that maybe, at least, being less tense will make me snack a bit less, since eating is almost a form of “stimming” for me, a kind of self-soothing behavior, a reliable source of at least transient positive feeling, strongly wired into the nervous system.  I don’t eat because of actual hunger, that’s for sure.  When I actually am hungry, I usually don’t eat, because the feeling, the sensation, is quite interesting and stimulating.  But, of course, these kinds of eating habits end up making me feel worse about myself, and they aren’t good for my physical health.

So, I’ll try to do the mindfulness stuff.  I might as well.  I’ve tried every class of antidepressant except MAO inhibitors in the past.  I’ve not tried psychedelics, unless you count my disastrous attempt to take a hit off a former coworker’s blunt that led me to feeling weird‒not in a good way‒and throwing up repeatedly for a few hours.  I’m very nervous about psychedelics, because my mind is not my friend, and I don’t know what it might do to me.  Anyway, I have no idea where I would even get psychedelics from, or even MDMA (which seems like it might be interesting, but is apparently neurotoxic).

I’ll try to try meditate, and who knows, maybe I’ll develop at least some insight and improvement.  If I do, I imagine the character of this blog will change.  That might be something to which my readers can look forward.

In any case, I work tomorrow, so in the shorter term, I will be writing some form of blog post tomorrow, barring the unforeseen.  Don’t expect any real changes by then, of course.  That would be almost ridiculous.

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“…and we sang dirges in the dark…”

I’m writing this on my phone again, today, because it’s still a relief not to have to carry the laptop.  I wouldn’t have thought it would make such a big difference, since the computer really is quite light, but the subjective experience is a notably easier feeling‒physically, at least.

I had to run a bit across some major roads to try to catch a connecting bus last night, because the first one was 35 minutes late, and it was good not to have the minor bit of weight in my back when doing that.  Of course, now, today, my back and hips and legs are aching more than usual, probably as a consequence* of that running.  It’s not the muscles that are the problem, though they do spasm up in response to the pain.  It’s the joints and the nerves.

Speaking of that, I’m not sure why typing on the phone isn’t giving me more trouble than it is.  Maybe my thumb joints have adapted after the initial use back a few months ago, or maybe I’ve adapted my typing style.  Or perhaps the problem is still coming, and I just haven’t been doing this often enough for long enough yet to trigger the inevitable flare-up.  I guess I’ll soon find out if it’s the latter, though even if I don’t get an exacerbation, it’ll be hard to differentiate between those first two hypotheses.

It’s not really important, I guess.

I haven’t been riding my bike, as I’ve said before, and I don’t think I’m probably going to be riding it.  It’s been too clear from the timing and the specificity of outcomes that it was triggering both pain exacerbations and postural adjustments that interfered with my sleep.  I can’t lose more sleep than I already do, and I already have enough pain** every day.

I literally feel fear at the thought of riding the bike because of the clarity and certainty of those outcomes.  It’s a shame and a waste…but then again, so am I, so I guess that’s fair enough.  I’ll just walk and take the bus until something kills me.

Speaking of that, it seems one of the people who used to work at our office, and who had recently had a heart attack at a rather young age, died yesterday, in the hospital.  One of the people at the office rents a room from him and he was devastated by the news.

I won’t give names, but the former worker was an electro-pop musician in slightly earlier days, and though his stuff isn’t really my kind of music, it was really quite good.  He wrote and performed it, and had albums and everything.  One of his songs was used in a movie.  So, he was the real deal, if not truly a big star or anything.

He said he really liked my song Breaking Me Down, and that if a slightly shorter version of it had been released in the 70s, it might have been a hit.  He also said he was impressed with my guitar playing on my “baddish” cover of Street Spirit (Fade Out), but that the vocals didn’t sound great***.

It’s very sad that he died so young, particularly for the guy who rented from him, because they were friends in addition to being “landlord/tenant”.

We’ve had a surprising number of people die who worked in or used to work in the office since I’ve been there.  It’s not my fault (I think) nor the fault of the business.  Of course, when I was in medical practice I saw a lot more people die, but that’s the nature of adult medical care.  Still, it’s also kind of sad.

Well, it’s very sad.  These are people who‒as far as I know‒did not actually want to die, and yet they did.  And here I am, ironically relatively healthy apart from my chronic pain and my mood disorder(s) and whatnot.

I would say that it’s hard to make sense of it, but that’s not really true.  It’s just that the universe isn’t set up such that the laws of mortality apply relative to one’s desire to live.  Biology leads us to tend to want to stay alive and have offspring, and after that, whatever happens is really just stochastic and erratic, and an adult human body is like an empty seed pod that lingers on a branch past all use once the age of reproduction has gone.

And I think to myself, “What a wonderful world.”****

I really don’t think I’m going to be able to go on much longer.  By which I don’t mean this blog, though of course that is subsumed in the larger subject matter; I mean I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to continue living.  There’s really nothing to which I look forward, short or long term.  I don’t look forward to getting up and going to work, I don’t look forward to coming back to the house and going to bed.  I don’t look forward to meals or drinks.  There are no shows or movies I’m awaiting‒I’ve become more or less indifferent to the Doctor Who specials and new series that are coming later this year, and the new Guardians of the Galaxy movie also doesn’t particularly spark my interest.  All the new Star Wars related crap seems just to be blah at best.

I wish there were some book series I was reading that was enticing, whether new or old, but I still can’t seem to read fiction anymore, which is a truly hellish turn of events for me.  Reading fiction was always my refuge, my joy, my escape.  Not anymore.

There is some interesting nonfiction, which I usually tend to seek out after hearing someone on a podcast with Sam Harris or Sean Carroll, but the podcasts are getting boring, and I haven’t finished the last 3 books I’ve gotten under those circumstances.

It’s like the line in the Beatles song I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party: “There’s nothing for me here, so I will disappear.”  She’s not going to turn up while I’m gone‒whoever the metaphorical “she” is‒so there’s no need to worry about letting me know.

I’m so tired and in pain and depressed and I really, really hate myself.  I wish I would have a heart attack, or develop cancer, or catch pneumonia, or something like that.  In my case, it would have no serious, life-altering repercussions for anyone, though I’m sure there are those who might find it sad.

There are sweet, kindly, compassionate people out there, after all, and my family members and some of the people who know me are among their number.  They would be sad over the deaths of anyone they know, and particularly family members‒as I am sad over the death of my former coworker‒and it’s good that people feel that way, I guess.  But death is the guaranteed payoff of life, after all, for everyone. It really feels like it would be better just to skip to the end.

*If you can have a consequence, why is there no sinquesence or perhaps sansquesence?

**One might even be inclined to say that I have too much pain every day, but let’s not be reckless.

***He wasn’t wrong, though I’m not sure if he meant my voice itself didn’t sound great, which it didn’t‒I had recently had Covid, and was not fully recovered‒or just that the recording of it was not great, which is fair enough, since I don’t have a studio or high quality recording equipment or mixing equipment or anything.  Possibly he meant both.

****Sarcasm.

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Above the lake, after the flood

It’s Friday again, but that fact in and of itself is no particular cause for celebration for me, because I work tomorrow.  Still, I’m up and at the bus stop today, unlike yesterday, which should imply that at least my back and legs are not as painful as they were yesterday.

I spent pretty much my entire yesterday lying down, just trying to rest and relax the muscles and joints in my back, my hips, my ankles, and my knees, all of which were hurting.  Of course, I availed myself of OTC analgesics, but I always use those, so it’s hard to make much difference using them without permanently disabling my kidneys and/or liver, which I am probably already doing based on the amount that I use every day.

It’s a bit frustrating finally to have sorted out most of the issues with my new bicycle and gotten it into a situation in which I can ride it comfortably and usefully only to have a week-long stretch of nearly constant rain.  I can’t even imagine how I would have gotten back to the house Wednesday night if I’d tried to ride the bike.

Just to give you some idea:  there is a small park area right near the train station in Hollywood (Florida), and a main feature of that is a river/lake that I suspect is artificial.  It runs under the main road as well as under some foot bridges.  Normally, the nearest foot bridge is the sort of thing you could imagine people rowing or canoeing or kayaking under easily, without needing to duck their heads.  Well, on Wednesday evening, the water in that lake was up to the bottom of the bridge, several feet above its baseline.  The water in the main road and the bus stop and the nearby fields was flowing—clearly, obviously, and powerfully—toward that lake, such that it looked as if soon the lake would swell its banks and the water level would engulf the sidewalks and the bus stop and the main road.

Of course, much of the road was underwater, anyway.  Particularly at the intersections and cross-walks, and along the edges where the bike lanes are, there were vast pools of water.  Even during the walk from my final bus stop to the house, which is just a bit under a mile, there were places I could not pass without stepping more than ankle deep in water.  And, of course, when trying to minimize the degree to which I had to do that, I skirted around edges of sidewalks and berms and roads, and met some very unsteady ground.  I’m sure it was more unsteady than usual.  So my back and knees and hips and ankles were subject to unusual stresses and strains that probably contributed to yesterday’s problem.

My Timberland boots would have been entirely useless for avoiding the soakers I had in both feet before I got even close to the house.  If I had worn my “motorcycle” boots, those would have kept my feet dry in anything much less than knee-high water—they’re pretty great for that.  However, they are not great for walking if you want to avoid blisters or ankle problems, because they don’t exactly grip the feet firmly, and they have elevated heels.  They look good, and they would be good for wading, up to a point, but they wouldn’t be good for any significant walking, and you certainly wouldn’t want to run in them.

Once again, here I go, writing about the weather, of all things.  It’s a reflection of the sorry state of my life that this really is the only interesting* stuff that’s going on with me.  Weather, commuting, depression, pain—these are the things I have about which to communicate.  At least, they are the things that come to my mind.  I’m not really learning anything new—not by my standards, anyway.  I still haven’t really written anything at length about sugar or whatnot, and I haven’t done any audio posts or “podcasts” or whatever you want to call that stuff.  I just don’t have the will to do it, any more than I have the will to write any new fiction.

It is an interesting fact that, most days, more people look at my blog than have bought, let alone read, all of my books put together.  I’m not counting the stupid purchases I made of my own books, which I then signed and gave to the people at the office.  As far as I know, only two of those people have actually read any of my books, and one of them subsequently died of a drug overdose; he was the closest thing to a real friend that I’d made in well over ten years.

That’s frustrating, to say the least.

I’m not sure what to do.  I don’t expect any epiphany or any other kind of spiritual or psychological breakthrough; I’ve been trying to explore the nature of reality and, to some extent, my own mind for most of my life, as far as I can remember.  I’ve read lots of science books, of course, but I’ve also read many self-help books and spiritual books and so on.  I’ve meditated and did self-hypnosis throughout my teenage years.  I’ve read religious works of various stripes; some of them were interesting and engaging and even profound in places.  But none of them were very impressive overall.  Shakespeare was better.  As was Milton.

I don’t know what I’m getting at.  When do I ever, right?  I know where I’m going in the long run, at least, which is the same place we’re all going in the long run.  If there’s something else waiting, I’ve never encountered anything close to good evidence or argument for it.  I have looked, but I’ve tried to do so without self-deception.

Maybe that’s my problem.  Maybe the only escape from dreariness and depression entails or requires some form of delusion or another.  Maybe Shirley Jackson was right, and no live organism really can continue to exist “sanely” under conditions of absolute reality.

But, of course, we never really exist under conditions of “absolute reality” in any serious sense.  We don’t have access to all levels of reality using just our ordinary, unaided senses, not even close to it.  But that (in principle, surmountable) limitation is one thing, while inventing stories about the “meaning” of life and reality out of wisps of desperation, fear, loneliness, loss, and pain is another thing entirely.  I have no intention or desire to do that.  It’s like trying to weave a sweater out of yarn spun from cotton candy.  It would be an interesting novelty, but at any real test—including just sweating while wearing it—it would melt and dissolve and draw swarms of flies and ants and just be disgusting.

That’s a weird metaphor, I know.  Sorry.  I’m not being particularly coherent here.  Which I guess is reason enough to call this post to a close.  I hope you all have a good weekend, and spend it relaxing with people you love and who love you.  What else is there?  A lot, I guess, but none of it is quite as pleasant, and it’s not more important.  Not that anything is important; or rather, on a cosmic scale, either everything is important or nothing is important.

On the scale of an individual life, though, things can be quite different, and in an entirely reasonable sense.  So, if you can, enjoy your weekend.

*I use that term hesitantly.  Perhaps I should have written that it is the closest thing to being something interesting that’s happened to me.

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Half sunk a shattered visage lies

Well, it’s Wednesday morning, and I’m sitting at the bus stop again, because it’s still raining in south Florida.

One thing that I like about summer in Florida—though it seems more of a central than a south Florida phenomenon—is that there is an almost-daily thunderstorm, but it happens in mid-afternoon, lasts for a brief period, and then goes away.  If you’re biking or walking or otherwise vulnerable to the elements, and you don’t feel like enduring the process, you can just wait it out.  Again, this does not seem quite to be the case as much here in south Florida, at least not on the east coast, but it’s relatively predictable.

Anyway, that’s not such a big deal, but it does mean that both walking and biking have been a pain these past few days.  I have also had very bad issues with literal back and leg pain, though the knee brace on my left knee seems to be helping that joint at least a little.  But much of last night, when I wish I were sleeping, my time was taken up with trying to loosen the spasms in my back and my hip and my calf and the arch of my foot and so on.  I met with only modest success.  So, as is often the case, I am now very tired, even more so than average, though certainly not many standard deviations away from the mean.

I try not to be mean, but on average, I think I am meaner than the mode in which I would prefer to be.  Ha.  Ha.

So, physically, I feel pretty ground down, and even the walk to the bus stop was less minor than it ought to have been, though I will admit that, compared to when I started back up walking not so very long ago, it feels like much a lighter endeavor.  Compared to walking five miles to the train station, it’s laughable, but then again, it’s unfortunately not much exercise.

I’ve noticed that riding the bike, while quite invigorating when the weather is decent, definitely puts new and different stresses and tensions on my skeleton and connective tissue and musculature, and it instigates flare-ups (flares-up?) of pain in slightly unusual places that catch me rather off-guard.  One doesn’t really, fully “get used to” chronic pain, but at least it has familiar patterns a lot of the time.  Then, when new things happen, they are especially disheartening, because they don’t tend to reduce the prior pain, just add to and overlay it.

Fun.

I’m sorry to keep talking (or writing, if you want to be pedantic, though I think “talking” is a perfectly reasonable word to use*) about this kind of irritating and negative stuff, but it’s what’s dominating my mind, unfortunately.  Believe it or not, I don’t even share some of my darker thoughts, even in posts like yesterday’s in which I dwelt on—and considered methods of—suicide.

I would love to make this more a blog of ideas and explorations, but when I’m feeling so depressed and in pain and alone, my ideas tend to go along nihilistic, entropic, pessimistic, pro-mortalist lines.  I look even at notions like the Lovecraftian concept of an alien and uncaring, unkind, malevolent cosmos populated and dominated by truly alien entities, and find myself disdainful—because I think it’s still anthropomorphizing the universe to imagine it inhabited by godlike or demonic beings, however alien and uncaring or malevolent they might be, and however much they may disdain humanity.  I also find it rather ho-hum, because, yeah, so, the universe is vast and dangerous and uncaring.  What else is new?

The fact is, as far as we can tell, there aren’t even any Lovecraftian god-aliens out there, certainly not on any kind of relevant scale, and such beings as there are certainly aren’t showing any interest in humans.  There is no reason for them to be interested.  Humans are only really important to other humans…and indirectly to the various other life-forms on Earth on which their activities impinge.

In some ways, humans are the closest things in the human world to actual Lovecraftian monsters:  innumerable and powerful but uncaring and destructive to less powerful beings.  To cephalopods, for instance and ironically, it would be humans that would be the “great old ones”, though humans are not so old, and they are great only in their power and ability to wreak havoc—though they have the potential for truer greatness.

But overall, the universe is far vaster than people can even begin to contemplate seriously, at least not without concerted effort.  The average, typical location in the universe is intergalactic space, in which there is perhaps one hydrogen atom per cubic meter, where light from even the nearest galaxy would be far too faint for the unaided human eye to detect.  In other words, it is an empty blackness, with a steadily shrinking temperature of only 2.7 Kelvin.  It’s cold, and dark, and empty, and it’s getting more so of all of those things with every passing Planck time.

Left to its own devices, the universe, as far as we can tell, is going to become that way everywhere, only even colder and even emptier.  If life is ever to become truly consequential on a cosmic scale—which is not, in principle, impossible—it will require seriousness and commitment and work, by the majority of people.

The current political and social and artistic cycles of the world, to say nothing of the military and ideological aspects of human interaction, don’t exactly thrill me with their possibilities.  Humans are like preschoolers fighting over toys and snacks and who gets to be “it” while clustering in a ramshackle hut with a hurricane approaching from one direction and an active volcano in the other, and the floor of which straddles a major, active geological fault-line.

When the end comes, it will probably be terrifying and painful, but it will likely be quick, at least—on a cosmic scale, anyway—because the toddlers have no idea how to protect themselves and each other and to survive.  And then, in the end, darkness and decay and the Red Death will hold absolute dominion and sway over all, and the lone and level sands of the desert will blow unnoticing about the forgotten monument-legs the toddlers leave behind, until—in quite short order—even the ruins and then the sand itself will go the way of all else.

There are billions of “livable” years in the universe, and even perhaps trillions if one stays close to red dwarf stars.  Given the potential of knowledge growth of which, if they decide to do it, humans are capable, that could easily be more than enough time to find the science and technology to get around even the heat death of the universe.  It’s not, in principle, impossible.

I’m not holding my breath.  I’ve known toddlers who were intelligent, inquisitive, cooperative, creative, kind, and showed promise of great things.  The human race as a whole does not meet that description.  It’s a shame about the good ones; but there aren’t enough of them, I suspect, to prevail against the troglodyte toddlers**.  So, I don’t think I’m going to try to wait around and see what amazing things they’ll get up to, because I think I’ll just be tragically disappointed.

And if I’m wrong, well—I will have deserved to be wrong, and that’s not a horrible outcome.  I’ll be dead, anyway, so I don’t think it will make any difference to me either way, even if it would be nice to know.

That’s it for today, I think.  There, I did actually get some ideas into this blog post.  I hope you’re pleased.

end-of-evangelion

*For pedants among us—I tend to be one—it’s worth reminding ourselves that all words are made up.  No set of letters or sounds have any inherent meaning, even within the human and related species.  Nevertheless, I am certainly against the casual bastardization and flagrant misuse of words, relative to their generally accepted meaning, and I truly dislike awkward, manipulative, new terms such as “allyship”, which sounds like a vessel in the navy of a nation that’s politically aligned with one’s own.

**Trogglers, if you will.

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Don’t know why there’s no sun up in the sky…

It’s Tuesday morning, and instead of sitting at the train station, I’m sitting at the bus stop.  It’s been quite rainy out, and after riding my bike back to the house from the train station yesterday afternoon in a non-stop deluge, I decided to walk to the bus to the train and so on instead.

I’m a glutton for punishment, obviously enough, but everything in my body aches now after the wet ride yesterday, and I was up more than usual during the night with back and hip and leg pain.  That’s not really anything new, but it felt clear that it was exacerbated by the thorough soaking, and then of course, by nearly slipping on the wet floor in my room, which is hard, smooth tile.

I say “nearly slipping”.  I guess I actually did slip, but I caught myself before getting very close to falling.  I suppose that’s a good sign of improved physical strength and agility from all my walking and biking and everything, but it doesn’t mean I don’t feel the consequences.

Even my supposedly water-resistant boots were literally squishing inside by the time I’d gotten back to the house, only five miles from the train station.

This is boring, isn’t it?  I keep realizing how boring it is that I’m writing about this stuff, and I do apologize.  I guess it’s the sort of thing about which most people talk to their friends or their spouses or their family in general when it happens, but I don’t really have any such people to whom to talk about it on a daily basis.  I suppose I can mention it at work, and people will probably listen politely, as they will when I tell the about a physics article describing the extreme roundness of an isolated electron and so on.  But no one really interacts about it.

No one really interacts much about anything I’m interested in; I bore people pretty quickly with them.  I, in turn, have a hard time getting interested in anything in which they are interested.  Certainly, typical matters of gossip or popular entertainment are pretty lost on me.

The closest thing I really have to regular, daily social interaction is reading and leaving comments and getting responses on Jerry Coyne’s website Why Evolution Is True.  But yesterday, at least, every comment I tried to leave disappeared.  I don’t know if that was a technical glitch or just that my comments were blocked or whatever by PCC(E)*.  I sometimes get the impression, on the rare occasion when he responds to one of my comments, that he doesn’t like me (this is not an unusual attribute), so he may just be disallowing my comments.  Thus, even that little outlet is fading or at least is glitching.

It’s irritatingly windy this morning, and the wind is blowing water from nearby trees even here to the middle of the bus shelter, and it’s getting on the screen of my computer some.  I may have to stop and finish this later.  It’s frustrating.  But what do I not find frustrating?

I felt horribly depressed almost all day yesterday.  In fact, ironically, I was probably least depressed while I was riding through the rain, partly because my locking mechanism for the seat of my bike had worked, and partly because it was just kind of hilarious how wet I was getting, from above and below.  I would have been less soaked if I had walked, because I could have used an umbrella.  It’s hard to use an umbrella on a bike.

There were a number of times during the day yesterday when I thought about how much I hated my life and hated the world and (mainly) hated myself, and how I wanted to just swallow all the Tylenol in the bottle I have at the desk** or slice myself open with one of the box cutters I have, or douse myself in lighter fluid and set myself on fire***.

None of these are great options, and I would prefer to find something less painful.  Of course, the governor of the sunshine state and the goobers in the legislature are, I think, working on making it so that I’ll legally be able to purchase a gun again soon, if they haven’t already.  Anyway, there are plenty of people in gun shows and so on who probably wouldn’t care about restrictions on selling guns to people like me—you know, non-violent “ex-felons” or whatever the proper term is, even though my “felony” charges were ones to which I pled guilty only because of extortion by the legal system.  I never knowingly or willingly “trafficked” in drugs; I was trying to help people with chronic pain in a society in which those with non-lethal causes of pain are expected simply to keep soldiering on despite constant misery, even though—ironically—their pain will continue much longer than will that of a person with, say, terminal cancer.

It’s hard to say, though, whether I could use a gun to kill myself.  I have too much knowledge about guns, and have used them with respect, shooting competitively and for pleasure—never once having so much as fired at another living thing, unless you count scaring squirrels or raccoons off with a low-power bb gun.  I did once play Russian Roulette, but only once, and afterwards, though I was obviously horribly depressed, my hands were shaking.  I didn’t do it again, though if I had succeeded, at least I wouldn’t have gone to prison, not that I knew that at the time.  I had no clue what was coming.

I don’t know why I’m talking about all this, or rather, writing about all this, sitting at the bus stop waiting to go to the train to the walk to the office.  I don’t have a therapist anymore, so that’s part of it.  I don’t have a personal physician of any kind, either.  I don’t have any local emotional support, and I don’t make a good friend, so I’m not likely to obtain any new ones or any other form of a social circle.

I keep wishing I would catch pneumonia or some other severe illness and be killed by it.  Maybe that’s part of why I was so amused by getting so wet when riding last night; there was just the bare possibility that my resistance would go down low enough that I would catch something.  But of course, that isn’t really how infection works, and I know it only too well.  You have to be exposed to an infectious agent, and I don’t seem to be all that susceptible.  Probably I have lots of antibodies and whatnot from medical school and then medical practice.

I’m just so tired.  I can’t sleep at night for more than about an hour at a time, then I wake up and try to go back to sleep and sleep at most another hour, and then eventually just watch the clock reach the time for me to get up.  I want to be able to sleep and just stay asleep until I feel rested, or forever, whichever comes first.  That would be like…well, I was going to say “like a dream”, but it’s not quite accurate.  That would be wonderful.  That’s what it would be.

rainybikebandw

*This is how many of us refer to Professor Coyne.

**This is probably not a good choice.  It takes a long time to work, and if it fails it can still cause terrible liver problems, and it’s a long and drawn out death even if it works.  It’s very unpleasant.

***That’s something best not to do indoors, of course, and it was rainy yesterday, so it probably wouldn’t have worked outdoors if I had tried.  Also, it’s not got too high a fatality rate, or if it is fatal, it too can be a long, drawn out, and very painful death.  My point, overall, is to try to diminish and avoid or escape chronic pain, both physical and psychological.

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It’s an okay Friday, at least, I guess

Well, as the titles says, it’s Friday, and I’m on the early train heading to the office.  I actually don’t feel terribly well this morning, and probably should just have stayed home, especially since I have tomorrow off and would thus have had a three day weekend in which to rest from whatever is ailing me.

However, I got my new bike seat post and portable tire pump with pressure gauge yesterday, and I wanted to be able to try out and ride my bike today.  So, last night I put the thing together and put it in place—more or less—and this morning I rode it to the station, getting on the second train of the day.

I say “more or less” because the seat still needs a bit of fine, and not so fine, adjustment.  For instance, the clamp that holds the seat post in place* seems to have been thrown out of whack a bit when whatever little mutant troll goblin stole my prior bike seat.  I tried to put the new seat a little higher than I’d had the one before, because they say that having your legs more extended makes for more efficient biking, but as soon as I sat on it the seat slid down into the frame pretty much as far as it would go.

Still, I really don’t like the feeling of not being able to put my feet securely on the ground, so that isn’t such a terrible thing.  Maybe, if I get more used to biking and feel thoroughly at home doing it, I’ll feel better about adjusting it higher.  In any case, I ended up having to bring the seat and post with me on the train, and to the office, because I found that my cable was too thick to fit between the spaces in the frame of this bike seat, and I didn’t want to leave the seat unsecured on this, my first day using it, especially since it’s a holiday and foot traffic in and around the station might be light, and so make the seat more prone to be stolen.

I hate the fact that I have to worry about such things.  It’s one thing to need to worry about mechanical failures and the like; things fall apart, as the poem says.  But people who do things like steal someone else’s bike seat need just a quick death and an anonymous burial.

At least, that’s how I feel about it.  Fortunately (for me and for others) I don’t consider feelings to be reliable guides to action.

It’s amazing how out of condition my legs and everything else has gotten after only a week without using the bike (and despite having walked about forty miles so far this week).  It was really a bit of a struggle to keep going at times, and I rode in low gear at least half way to the station.  I really feel fatigued to an inordinate degree.  I suppose that will go away relatively quickly, unless there is something truly wrong with me physically**.

Oh, right!  The conductor made her announcement and thereby reminded me that it’s “Good Friday” today, and will be Easter on Sunday—the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Vernal Equinox, as my sister taught me decades ago, and which I still remember in precisely those words.  I guess there’s nothing remarkable about the fact that the specific words are how I recall it.  After all, they are concise, precise, and clear.  Why change them?

Anyway, for those of you who celebrate these holidays, please enjoy them.

I hopefully will make use of my new bike a bit this weekend.  At least having the seat with me today will allow me to adjust the pitch of it slightly, because this morning it was leaning back somewhat, and I didn’t want to get out my socket wrench—which I have brought with me, oh yes—and adjust it early in the dark of the morning.  That’s one of my difficulties when it comes to getting such things done:  I am only at the house before dawn or after dusk, so it’s a pain to do anything that requires light, even though there is, of course, a good outdoor porch light in my entry area behind the house.

I still feel a little fatigued and out of breath, even as I write this, and it’s been more than half an hour since I got to the train station.  We’re almost to my stop.  I hope this doesn’t persist, because it’s annoying.  If there’s something wrong with my lungs or heart, I wish it would just go full catastrophic and kill or at least thoroughly disable me, rather than lead to some gradual, annoying deterioration.

But nature doesn’t respond to requests, unfortunately.  I was going to write that it doesn’t take them, but it takes them fine—you can request things all you want.  It just doesn’t respond.  It doesn’t know you’re making a request.  It doesn’t know you exist, frankly, as far as we can tell.

As the saying goes, “Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.”  Of course, you cannot do anything other than obey nature.  That’s the nature of nature.  That’s why we refer to “laws of nature” rather than “suggestions of nature” or “requests of nature”.  Wishes don’t do anything—but learning about nature, learning its rules, and applying them to your best advantage can be useful.

This is what lies at the heart of the saying.  It’s not implying that you could choose not to follow the laws of nature, merely that, if you want to get things done, you should know how nature works as well as you can and apply that knowledge with creativity, with determination, with discipline.  Then you’ll be able to achieve remarkable things.

You won’t be able to revoke or waive the law of gravity, for instance, but you may be able to use fluid dynamics and chemistry and thermodynamics and the like to make a structure that will use the air to create a force powerful enough to overcome the pull of gravity, and which will let you fly through the air at speeds never achieved by any organism in its “natural” state.

Wishing won’t get you from Detroit to Florida in two hours, but science and technology can.  Science and technology can even get people to the moon and back.

Anyway, that’s enough for this week.  Have a nice weekend, whether you celebrate it as a holiday or not.  I’ll do what I can at least to get some rest and, hopefully, to get a bit more adjusted to my bicycle again.

happy easter basic

*I don’t really know any of the “proper” terminology, so if there are bicycle aficionados reading and they can give me better, more useful terms, I would welcome the input.

**One can always hope.