walking

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Rockin’, rockin’ and rollin’. Down to the train I’m strollin’.

Well, it’s Monday again.  Yippee.  I’m writing this post on my “smartphone”* today because I didn’t feel like taking my miniature laptop computer with me when I left the office on Friday.  Perhaps that was shortsighted of me, but hopefully at least this way I will avoid writing too much today.

Of course, as usual, I have no particular subject or topic to address with this blog post.  I just started writing and, well, we’ll all find out what comes forth, won’t we?  It may be a lame-ass way to run a blog, but whataya gonna do?

I did walk to the train this morning, five miles (the same distance as before, of course‒it would be weird if the distance changed from day to day).  It was, perhaps, slightly easier than the last time, which is good.  It would be troubling if it were getting harder every time, though blisters can sometimes make that happen.

I rode my new bike around on Saturday and on Sunday, but I didn’t have the heart to try to ride it this morning.  For one thing, riding it is still just exhausting relative to walking or to riding my other bike.  Also, I cannot help but fear getting a flat tire while on the way to the train (or on the way back), and that possibility makes me too nervous to want to use it.

If I get a flat on the weekend, then I merely need to walk the bike back to the house‒or to a bicycle repair shop, if there’s one nearby, which there pretty much isn’t.  But if I get a flat on the way to the train, then I have to deal with a bike with a flat and with getting to work.

Perhaps I’m just a wimp for not wanting to deal with such things, but I have only so many “spoons” to go around, and they get used up by so many little things throughout every single work day (and other days as well) that I don’t feel that I have any reserves.  For many years now, I’ve felt that I’m in imminent danger of complete collapse; I still feel that way.

One of these times, I’ll be correct in that estimate, but that’s a bit of a cop-out.  It’s like someone stating that the world will end tomorrow, then when it doesn’t (if it doesn’t) they just roll it over to the next day.  Sooner or later, they will be right.  It may take over a trillion tries‒let’s imagine they’re immortal as well as absurdly bloody-minded‒but they will eventually be correct.

Anyway, though, for me it’s not the fact of getting flat tires that’s the exhausting part (though it is exhausting when it happens).  It is, rather, the tension of worrying about it every single time I ride.  You might say that I simply shouldn’t let myself worry about it, should not let that imagined possibility interfere with the “now”.  To which I might reply that you shouldn’t fear cancer and/or heart disease and/or Alzheimer’s, etc., because sooner or later something is going to get you, and your fear is just causing you stress in the here and now.

Or perhaps it would be better, or more analogous, to tell you that you shouldn’t fear running across a busy road, because either a car will hit you or it won’t, and you won’t change that by worrying.  Except, of course, you can change that by worrying, if you act on your worry and therefore don’t recklessly run into the street.

I know, I’m being fairly silly.  I’m not trying very hard to be rigorous right now, so some of my logic may be strained.  But I hope I’m not being fundamentally or thoroughly irrational.  I don’t think I am, but just as it’s not up to you whether or not you’re appropriately considered an asshole, it’s not necessarily reliable for me to judge my own rationality.  I do judge myself, and I am fairly harsh about it, but if I were to start losing my mind, I would be an unreliable witness to what was happening.

Anyway, that’s enough for now.  I hope you’ve enjoyed this post, if that’s even possible.

Oh, and by the way, though I have not set up a Patreon or anything, if any of you would like to request that I write a post about some specific subject or topic, by all means, please let me know in the comments.  I don’t promise to fulfill any and/or all such requests, but I do promise to read and consider them.

In the meanwhile, please have a good day.

*I don’t mean to denigrate the phone by putting that term in scare quotes.  It’s a fine piece of technology, and for the most part, it does what it’s meant to do.  I just think the expression “smartphone” is a poor term.  It’s mainly a marketing gimmick, like “organic” and “gluten free” and “non-GMO”:  designed to lure in the insecure and get them to buy particular products to try to counter their…I don’t know, their existential angst or summat.

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That small model of the barren earth which serves as paste and cover to our blogs

Hello and good morning.  It’s Thursday, and I’m sitting at the train station as I begin to write this, having walked the five miles here from the house.

I’d intended either to walk or ride the bike today, having taken a rest break yesterday, but riding the new bike was just a little too intimidating.  I think I’ll need to get a bit of practice in over the weekend—a longish ride or two each on Saturday and Sunday—in order to get really used to it, so I don’t feel daunted when I arise in the morning.

I don’t have anything against walking, of course.  It’s actually rather enjoyable.  But it does take quite a bit longer than biking does, and it’s much more likely to cause me blisters, as well as irritation in my right ankle and left knee (though I have a spandex brace on for the latter issue, and it helps).

How’s that for a boring beginning?  Still, at least it’s a form of “good” news, in the sense that I have accomplished something useful already today.  That’s one reason it’s nice to get your exercise in before work—or whatever constitutes the morning for you—because then you begin the rest of your day with an accomplishment already under your belt, so to speak.  And, of course, over time you’ll be able tighten that belt, or so it is to be hoped, if you keep up the good habits.

In any case, I’m starting this post off much more positively than I did yesterday’s post, though that’s admittedly a very low bar to clear.  Hopefully there will be no minor catastrophes today involving the train as there were on Tuesday after I walked.  The announcement proclaims the train is on its way in ten minutes, which will make it right on time, so that’s a hopeful fact.

It’s not as though I don’t have plenty of time before work officially starts; I can’t seem to sleep past about three in the morning, and I wake up more than once before then, no matter when I go to sleep.  I might as well use that time to get some things done, and exercise can be one of those things.

Okay, well—what should I talk about now?  I don’t know.  I never plan these things out, as you know, and though sometimes I think I write better when I feel angry in general, I don’t feel especially so at the moment.  I keep trying to give myself positive “self-talk” as they call it, but it’s difficult for me to do, because I find that I don’t believe it.  I want to be able to say to myself that “I love my life and I love myself” but I really don’t.  Maybe if I said something like, “I deserve to love myself” or similar I might find that easier to stomach.

I doubt it, though.  Perhaps if I’m able to get into better condition, as I am trying to do, I’ll feel better about feeling better about myself.

***

Well, I’m on the train now, and we appear to be moving on time and on schedule and other redundant expressions meaning that things are going according to plan.  It’s quite chilly on the train, after the tropical mugginess of the very early south Florida morning.  Fortunately, I brought an extra tee-shirt to put on over my fancy one, the latter of which is supposed to allow perspiration to evaporate quickly.  I’m not sure that it really does that, but it at least doesn’t tend to sag as it sticks to your skin with your sweat.

Well, it doesn’t actually do anything to your skin or in response to your sweat.  As far as I know, no one else but I has worn any of my shirts.  That’s good.  I don’t really want anyone else to be in my shirts, and I certainly wouldn’t recommend to anyone that they try being in my shoes.

Ha.

Ha.

So, now, what to do otherwise for today?  Of course, I will go to the office, and I will work, which makes good sense, since that is the point of getting up and leaving in the morning.  It all does get quite drab and repetitive, though, and it is certainly pointless from any objective point of view.  Unfortunately, it’s also pretty pointless from my subjective point of view, and over time that view has become more and more definitively that my days are without a point.

Do most people have a subjective sense that their daily lives have some meaning?  I suppose if they live with a spouse and/or children and/or have a group of friends with whom they spend their time, they might not even have to acknowledge any subjective sense of meaning; they will simply instantiate it.  That’s probably nice.

And so it goes, and so it goes, and the train is also going, and there seem to be no untoward complications.  It’s still dark, but dawn is in the east, gradually drowning out the lovely morning spectacle of Jupiter floating a degree or so above Venus in the eastern sky.  Venus, of course, is far brighter than Jupiter, belying the actual relative sizes of the planets, since it is much farther away and light intensity falls off as the square of the distance, due to the geometry of space.

It’s interesting how many names Venus has, and how contradictory they are.  In middle-earth, of course, it is Eärendil, and we call it Venus, but it was also the original Lucifer, the morning star—and it’s also the evening star, depending on where in its orbit it is relative to the Earth.  And it is, of course, the most transitory of planets.

With that really stupid and bad astronomy joke I’ll end for the day, and none too soon.  I hope you all are feeling well and are accomplishing your own little or not-so-little successes.  Sometimes just living to the next day can feel like a heroic accomplishment.  And sometimes it can feel like a terrible mistake.

TTFN

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Monday reflections and a song parody

It’s Monday morning, the morning after the Super Bowl, in case you pay attention to such things.  It was a pretty good game, I guess‒I watched it‒but it never felt very exciting to me at all.  Not much seems very exciting to me, honestly.  I had gone for a couple of long walks and bought some snacks and ordered a bit of indulgent food for the game, but I’ve ended up throwing most of that away.  I guess that’s probably good, in the sense that I don’t need the extra junk food calories and whatnot.  But it is a shame to waste the food.

Still, food waste is not the biggest problem.  Even in the places in the world where there is starvation, the problem is not that there is no capacity to get the people food.  The problem is political‒local and geo‒in addition to economics that are born of twisted politics.

At least food waste is, more or less by definition, biodegradable.

I haven’t written any new fiction, of course, but I did something slightly creative yesterday morning.  Somehow, the Carpenters’ song Close to You got in my head.  As its lyrics passed through my thoughts, I again had the impression‒which often happens with this song‒that the person being described seems to have sinister, supernatural powers, or at least is surrounded by supernatural portents.  Then it occurred to me that the words “close to you” and the word “antichrist” have the same number of syllables and the same (rough) stresses.  So, inspired by these two facts, I wrote a parody of Close to You called, of course, Antichrist.

As someone who has long enjoyed horror fiction and who at an early age familiarized himself with the “Revelation of Saint John the Divine” as it is sometimes known‒the last book in the standard Christian Bible‒the lyrics came rather easily.  I’ll share them below.  I vaguely entertain the notion of actually recording my parody, doing all the various parts and whatnot, but since I haven’t been practicing or playing guitar more than once every few months, and have done the keyboards even less, I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen.

I also thought once again yesterday about some slight tweaking to the plot of my “super hero” story HELIOS.  This is an idea that took root originally waaaay back in my childhood, and was one of the “comic book characters” I used to draw, and for which I made some partial comic books and even an arch-enemy.  But the more current version of the idea isn’t really a superhero story, certainly not the type that would involve costumes and secret identities and whatnot.  I even thought, for a moment, that I just might start working on that story soon.

That didn’t last long, though.  I just don’t feel any motivation to do it.  If five living people, total, have read any or all of my books or stories, I would be surprised.  So, writing them is a bit like taking all the pages of the finished works and scattering them into a hurricane.  They just all go off somewhere and become mere parts of the detritus of reality, their information lost to all but Laplace’s Demon.  And, presumably, He wouldn’t appreciate them as stories, even though He could keep track of each and every force and particle they entailed.

Maybe the fact that these thoughts and stirrings happened on the weekend, and after one full day off, means that if only I had some regular mental rest, I might find the energy to start writing fiction again, or playing music, or some other, similar creative endeavors.

I doubt that will happen, though.  I’m in the middle of the ocean treading water as it is.  How am I supposed to locate a place to rest?  The odds of me happening upon some Gilligan’s Island type of refuge are pretty low.  I’m just biding my time, waiting for fatigue and hypothermia to get the best of me.  In a real ocean, that would have happened a long time ago.  Unfortunately, metaphors are not as lethal as one might like them to be.

Anyway, there’s not much more to say.  I guess I’ll close by giving you the lyrics of my parody.  Here it is:

ANTICHRIST

A parody of Close to You (by the Carpenters)

–

Why do crows suddenly appear

Every time you are near?

Seems to me

You’ve got to be

the Antichrist.

–

Flaming stones fall down from the sky

Every time you walk by.

Plain to see

You’ve got to be

the Antichrist.

–

On the day that you were born the demons got together

And forged a waking nightmare built for strife

With storm clouds heralding your birth and armies of the dead that came to life.

–

Businessmen and others who want power

Before you now will cower

They just know

It must be so

You’re the Antichrist.

–

When at last the time arrives to show your true dark nature

all of those who bear your mark you’ll pierce

With fire and brimstone in your breath and ten horns on your seven heads so fierce!

–

Then the world meets its final end.

Into Hell it descends.

There awaits

Your dismal fate,

Antichrist

–

Seems to me

It sucks to be

The Antichrist.

–

Waah, Antichrist

Waah, Antichrist…

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A brief and weary Monday blog post

Welcome to Monday‒if that makes any sense to say.  I’m writing this on my smartphone and I am at the train station as I begin it, because I decided to walk to the train this morning.  I figure, if I’m going to be in pain anyway, I might as well get something out of it.  And, of course, it’s slightly more pleasant to walk 5 miles in the morning than in the evening at this time of year.

Mind you, I’m still so sweaty that my shirt looks as if I had just fallen into a swimming pool.  My pants are less soaked but still noticeably wet.  Nevertheless, I’m not too worried.  I have sprayed myself with “Scent Bomb” spray, so mostly I smell like artificial mango odor, which is not half bad.

I will make this short today.  I’m really in a very poor mood in general.  I had to get called into the office on Saturday*, which is terribly annoying, because I was truly looking forward to being able to relax after my week of exceptional pain.  I was even thinking of ordering a steak from Outback.  I did not do that or anything else that was fun on Saturday, and of course, Sunday was mainly just laundry day‒though I did have a nice phone conversation with my sister on Sunday evening.  Most of it consisted of me talking about esoteric things in which I’m interested, while she listened politely.  I used to be better about giving other people the floor, so to speak.  Now I’m just a nearly insufferable droner on about my interests.

I’m so tired of everything, and I’m tired of myself most of all.  I just can’t seem to like myself.

Can you blame me?

Anyway, I don’t really have anything interesting to discuss, not even an answer to the question “What is the deal with that round flat thing they throw in the Olympics?”

I guess the days are getting noticeably shorter, in the sense that sunrise is noticeably later than it was a month ago.  But that should come as no surprise.  We’re more than a month after the solstice, after all.  It’s not getting any cooler or breezier or less humid around here, however.  In fact, the fifteen day forecast, when last I checked it, basically showed the same predicted highs and lows and precipitation chances marching forward like a line of disciplined but unimaginative soldiers.  It’s so dreary.

Oh, well.  Whataya gonna do?  I don’t have any new ideas, but I’m still keeping the old one‒basically, just leaving, leaving everything and everyone and never being seen again.  I’m so tired.

Speaking of being tired, this is all I’m going to write today.  I hope, at least, that it hasn’t been boring.

*I had worried on Friday that I might be asked to do so, but by the end of the day I had been assured that it would not be necessary.  Then, at 9:38 on Saturday morning, just an hour and 22 minutes before the office was due to open, I was texted to ask if I could please go in, because my coworker simply could not, because most of his family was ill.  Being the idiot I am, I not only went in, but took an Uber in since there was no way, especially on Saturday, for me to get to the office before about noon otherwise.  I was not reimbursed for it, at least so far.

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The teeming Autumn blog with rich increase

flame-maple-tree-autumn-blaze-almost-at-peak-amur-pruning-florida-red

Good morning, and good Thursday.  It’s blog day, of course, and I hereby officially welcome you all to another weekly post.

My experiment with tags last week worked very well, i.e. labeling my post with the tags “sex,” “drugs,” and “rock ‘n’ roll.”  I’m not up to doing such a thing on a regular basis, though.  In fact, I doubt that I’ll do it more than once.  Of course, it may be that those inaccurate tags simply weren’t as off-putting as the ones I’d used the previous week, which upon reflection might have seemed weird and (incorrectly) New Agey.  I think one of them was something along the lines of “cosmic caring,” and that’s bound to make a discerning reader want to keep his or her astronomical distance.  I can’t blame them.  I’m too embarrassed even to go back and look at what my other tags were.

Of course, it may be that the post from two weeks ago was just too dry and dreary to be endured.  I tend to be that way when in a glum mood, and I’m sure that even hypothetical people who are really, deeply interested even in my darkest thoughts* would find my melancholier musings stultifying.  Even my humor tends to be dark, and though I do try when I can to make my darkness humorous, I know it’s still probably unpleasant.

On a lighter note:  I got my vehicle back yesterday, after almost two weeks without it.  I was so pleased that, even though I got thoroughly soaked just riding it back from the shop to work**, I was as happy as a pig in shit.  Even by the time I got home, I was still borderline giddy.  I doubt that I’ve smiled that much since, oh, maybe 2011 at the latest.

Taking the train has been good for me in some ways, though.  I’ve been forced to walk between 2.5 and 5 miles a day, and I can tell that it’s had a beneficial effect on my endurance.  My back, however, which as I noted last week has been experiencing an exacerbation of its chronic pain, has not been pleased!  Having no stegosaurus-style brain with which to be able to articulate its concerns, or with which to understand the necessity of the extra work I was giving it, it mulishly insisted upon reminding me with every breath that it was pissed at me.

Human backs are stupid.

Thankfully, the train, and my habitual early hours, continued to allow me to edit.  Unanimity is getting whittled away, as I strive to remove all the bits of it that don’t look like a good pseudo-sci-fi horror novel.  I still like the story, and I still like the characters—including the “bad guy”—so that helps a lot.  Even if I didn’t, I think I’d be able just to push myself through as a matter of stubbornness, something with which I’ve been endowed in great quantities, but I’m glad it’s not necessary.

And in other news, I can’t let the arrival of October go unheralded.  It’s generally my favorite month, because Halloween is my favorite holiday.  Once it’s over, the steady shortening of the daylight hours becomes pronounced enough the wear me out.  By the arrival of the Winter Solstice, I’m often so affected by the season (get it?) that I feel like celebrating the holidays with a game of Russian Roulette***.

October, however, is still fun, though in south Florida it’s lamentably un-autumnal.  This will be the first year in a few (I think) that I won’t have a new horror short story to release around Halloween, which is a bit disappointing, but Unanimity is such a big project that I want to make it the sole focus of my fiction work.  I hope it will be worth the wait.  It’s ambitious, at the very least, even if I can say nothing else about it without subjective bias.

I am still finding myself sidetracked here and there by music; I’m working on another new/old song and have early work done on a few fully new ones, but those really are a personal indulgence, a set of vanity projects if you will.  I have no idea whether anyone would ever willingly listen to them if they didn’t know me.  My stories, I think, can stand on their own.  Maybe I’m wrong.  I guess, ultimately, it doesn’t matter, since I’m writing them because I want to write them, just as I’m doing the songs because I want to do them, and I can only offer whatever I am for others to waste or hold as they see fit.

Speaking of wasting, that’s probably enough blogging for today.  Including the footnotes, this post is already over a thousand words long.  Once I get going, I’m hard to shut up.  It’s lucky for all of you that I have a day job, or I’d probably be doing this more often, and even the kindest of readers might lose patience.  Perhaps there are Everettian branches where that’s happened, or maybe there’s some infinitely repeated version of me that meets that description somewhere out in one of the other versions of the multiverse—if any of them exist (if you’re unfamiliar with this subject matter, you couldn’t get a better introduction to it than Brian Greene’s The Hidden Reality, which I recommend unreservedly).

And, really, now, I must be going.  I hope you all have a wonderful day, a wonderful remainder of the week, and a wonderful month.  In fact, why stop there?  I hope you have a wonderful future for as long as you’re able.

TTFN

*I don’t recommend it.

**My “vehicle” is a scooter…though it’s a scooter with a 600cc engine, so it’s really just a motorcycle with automatic transmission.  It provides no protection from the rain, which rather hilariously was absent right until the day when my scooter was ready to ride again.

***I did that very thing once at that time of year.  I lost that game, unfortunately, as should be obvious from the fact that I’m here and writing.  But, of course, as with all such games of chance, the odds are against you, and the house usually wins.