Spiritus Victus

My troubles mount, and I, a hero, am crumbling at an exponential rate.  Today may be a watershed as I am summoned by the boss for an annual evaluation.  Whatever.  I don't wish to make my troubles yours.  It is only entertainment for you to observe from afar.  There is nothing else to do.  And you have all been there/here, have all had terrible times and hard times when you can feel every day age you by years, nights when you fall asleep early exhausted by tension only to wake in the darkness to face the void.  And we all assume it will be worse at the end.  Neil Young said that only love can break your heart.  Right now, I'm not sure that's true.  But the body can be broken in many ways, some of them psychological.  The spirit is more enduring.  The spirit.  What a concept.  It is what has kept me in eternal trouble.

But my troubles are costing us all.  I am not paying attention to what we need reminding of.  Yesterday was February 29, the last day, as Daniel Tosh pointed out, of the longest Black History Month.  Leap year.  I read on another blog that yesterday was Balthus' birthday.  He was a leap year baby, so that would make him twenty-six years old.  His life was charmed from birth.  From Wikipedia:

In his formative years his art was sponsored by Rainer Maria Rilke, Maurice Denis, Pierre Bonnard and Henri Matisse. His father, Erich Klossowski, a noted art historian who wrote a monograph on Daumier, and his mother Elisabeth Dorothea Spiro (known as the painter Baladine Klossowska) were part of the cultural elite in Paris. Balthus's older brother, Pierre Klossowski, was a philosopher and writer influenced by theology and the works of the Marquis de Sade. Among the visitors and friends of the Klossowskis were famous writers such as André Gide and Jean Cocteau, who found some inspiration for his novel Les Enfants Terribles (1929) in his visits to the family.
In 1921 Mitsou, a book which included forty drawings by Balthus, was published. It depicted the story of a young boy and his cat, with a preface by Balthus's mentor, Rilke. The theme of the story foreshadowed his life-long fascination with cats, which resurfaced with his self-portrait as The King of Cats (1935). In 1926 he visited Florence, copying frescos by Piero della Francesca, which inspired another early ambitious work by the young painter: the tempera wall paintings of the Protestant church of the Swiss village of Beatenberg (1927). From 1930 to 1932 he lived in Morocco, was drafted into the Moroccan infantry in Kenitraand Fes, worked as a secretary, and sketched his painting La Caserne (1933).

I have to laugh that Wiki tells us his "life-long fascination" was with cats.  Perhaps mine is with a red couch.

Today is the first of March.  Is that a day?  I mean of significance?  Normally, it is the 60th day of the year.  This year it is the 61st.

So, in the spirit (there's that word again) of tributes. . . today's picture.  She brought the Hank Williams marker with her.  Said she found it on the side of the road.  "Fuck yea, Hank," she screamed.  Sr. of course.