Off the Rails

 I used to have much more self-discipline than I do now.  Much of my will has broken. . . or been broken.  I'll have to check with my Life Coach to see which.  But boy, I used to be able to make myself do anything.  Mental or physical or spiritual.  I pushed through a grad degree in lit while working full time and taking full loads.  I had dozens of books to read each term, more papers to write.  I did it.  No. . . I did it well.  I rocked it.  The physical things are legendary.  I brag about those all the time.  But what has me by the 'nads right now is losing weight.  I don't want to be fat, so I tell myself, "I'll fast for three days and then. . . and then. . . .  Ah, shit. . . no you won't."  Or, "I'll quit drinking.  No more alcohol."  Or, "At least do intermittent fasting.  I'll eat five hundred calories ever other day.  Right?"  

No I won't.  

I should, but I don't want to do that sort of thing any more.  Back "in the day," I ate no carbs for years.  Bacon and eggs for breakfast, sardines for lunch, a handful of unsalted roasted peanuts for a snack, and a pound of steak with banana peppers for dinner.  I had keto sticks, kept myself in the purple.  

Now I've become John Falstaff.  

But it is cloudy today.  I am achey from exercise.  I tell myself it will be all grains and pulses and tea.  I will get "witchy," and find some exotic incantations and spells and herbs from my herbalist.  I've hung the moon, so to speak, to start things in the right direction.  I am calling for some supernatural intervention.  

Or, I guess, I could get Ozempic.  

If I could run, I would lose it fast.  I walked three miles yesterday and my bad knee is barking today.  Limped, really.  

"Look away. . . I'm hideous. . . . "

O.K.  Enough of the melodrama.  It is not as bad as all that, but I'm having a bit of trouble getting started.  I can't even seem to get back to yoga/stretching and meditation.  Today.  Absolutely today.  

I just read an article in the Times that shows younger voters are moving more and further to the political right.  People become more conservative as they age according to the article, but Gen Z started our that way, or more so.  Few of them are fat, and the female hominids of the group are all nearly perfect.  The other ones dye their hair blue and pink and wear big t-shirts with political messages on them, and. . . you know the rest.  

Many of my old friends prefer I not run with the broheme conservative crowd, but I don't always want to go to the worst dive in town with shitty beer, shitty food, and what my lefty friends might refer to as a proletariat attitude.  I spent my youth and early adulthood that way.  But, you know. . . I evolved.  Ha!  It was the girls who did it.  I liked the coiffed ones with all the beauty things.  If you are thinking of putting them into some "ditz" category, though. . . they'll kick your ass.  Strong and successful, every one.  OK.  There was one who was not into the beauty thing.  But the other ones. . . yea.  Gorgeous.  Like the old movies, you know?  The old "oo-la-la."  

So. . . I became a BoBo.  And I realized that all the heroes of liberal left lived like BoBos, too.  They were making money off the movement.  When they walked among "the throng," they took center stage.  Even the postmodern urge to tear down hierarchies didn't work.  Everyone had to refer to Foucault, Derrida, et. al.  

"Derrida said. . . . "

No he didn't, bootlicker.  

Like most people left and right, they preferred easy to memorize slogans.  

At some point in life, you just find everyone to be a little bit distasteful.  Well, maybe "you" do.  I'm using the royal "we."  

And here I must quote Sherwood Anderson once more.

One shudders at the thought of the meaningless of life while at the same instant. . . one loves life so intensely that tears come into the eyes.

 Of course, he also says that we are destined, like corn, to wilt in the sun, so. . . 

But "we/one" must agree with Hemingway about death, right?  

"Don't let it happen until it happens."

"So we beat on, boats against the current. . . ."  Fitz.  

And a billion of other quotations (right?  I'm not immune) that are no longer taught.  You'll have to look hard, under rocks and in squalid caves, to find a college kid majoring in history.  Or English.  Or political science.  Or any of the humanities.  Many of the things they now major in weren't even in conceived of when they were born.  Like the medical industry, education has become an industry, too.  Colleges have become factories.  Legislators have moved kids into majors like "Widgetry."  

And maybe it is o.k.  What the fuck ever came out of the Social Sciences anyway?  Those were the majors that lazy kids got because they were easy.  Try to find a sociology major now.  

Digital Media.  Entrepreneurship.  Computer Science.  Upper Management.  Lots and lots of Managements, always Upper.  

Oh. . . and polls show that they don't want to go to the office.  Nope.  Polls don't lie.  They want to work from home.  I'm guessing for many of them, from their parents' homes.  

But heck. . . at least they are used to communal living.  

Jesus.  This went off the rails worse than a train in India.  I need to get back to narratives.  I guess whatI was trying to say was. . . I guess I wasn't trying to say anything other than that I'm fat and there are a lot of beautiful people who now tend to be more conservative.  I mean. . . if I was challenged to do so.  

But I'm with Burt Bacharach--what the world needs now is love.  Sweet love.  

That's the only thing that there is just too little of.  

"Say goodnight Gracie."

"Goodnight, Gracie."