Desire

If you Google "what causes high blood pressure," you'll most likely read that it is your own fault.  You don't exercise enough, your diet doesn't include enough fruits, vegetables, and legumes, you are overweight, you drink, you smoke, and you don't sleep enough. What can you do to lower your blood pressure?  Exercise more, change your diet, get more sleep, cut down on alcohol, lose weight. . . .  Apparently, if you have high blood pressure, it is your own doing.  You've been awful. You've done this to yourself.  

My doctor tells me that I am not going to exercise more and eat better and lower my blood pressure.  "It's a combination of age and genetics," she says.  

I exercise more than any two of you out there, I'm sure.  I always have.  I eat well, mostly a Mediterranean diet.  I sleep eight hours a day.  O.K.  I may drink too much.  But I don't eat much salt.  Oh. . . and I have apnea.  

But the bottom line is that she is right.  I have a disease.  There is the science.  There are fat people without high blood pressure.  There are alcoholics whose blood pressure is fine.  There are couch potatoes who haven' a problem.  The bottom line is that my body isn't doing something that it should do.  I've been reading.  There are chemical deficiencies and malfunctions that cause the body not to convert the chemicals it needs to.  Genetics.  It becomes more acute with age.  

I have a disease.  Like any disease, medicines might mitigate some of the symptoms.  In my case, they aren't doing enough.  I am realizing this now.  It's like telling a person with sickle cell anemia that it is their fault because they are Black.  Some shit is just fucked up. 

The good news is that I will probably start experiencing other health issues because of this soon.  It's a downward spiral.  Kidneys, heart, and brain, mostly.  I'm more likely to get dementia.  

So fuck me.  There is the science.  

To wit: I've always been easy to lose.  Tell me you don't like me anymore and I'll say "O.K."  I won't try to change your mind.  There is no "mind" involved in such a thing.  You can't make somebody like you.  It is impossible.  They do or they don't.  So. . . I just put on my walking shoes.  I don't understand people who chase after someone who doesn't like them any longer thinking that they will "win them back."  That' just not in a person's control.  

"I'll change.  We can go to therapy.  I'll work on it.  We'll work on it together."

Who in the fuck came up with that idea?  Oh, yea. . . there is an entire industry.  

It's far better and easier, I think, to head on down the highway.  

"A walking man walks." 

Does that sound like hubris?  I don't think so.  

But for some reason people give a shit about Jonah Hill's text messages to his ex-girlfriend who decided to publish their correspondence for whatever selfish reason.  I say "selfish" because it wasn't agreed upon by both parties.  Girlfriend couldn't just put on her walking shoes and say goodbye.  She wanted to show "all women" what dangers can befall them in a relationship.  Now, you didn't really need the texts to know that Jonah was something "special."  He made a documentary called "Stutz" to warn you.  The therapy crowd, of course, was enamored by the thing.  I watched it.  Stutz is fascinating.  He's weird and smart but he is some sort of Svengali, too.  To use a favorite phrase of the beleaguered crowd, he seemed to be gaslighting a bit.  I had to look up the phrase again.  Its meaning is so broad, I think, it means next to nothing.  I'll link an article for you in case, like me, you need a reference (link).  

Jonah was, according to some "therapists" setting boundaries.  According to other's thought, he was trying to "manipulate."

Fucking relationships.  Why can't people just walk?  This blame game shit. . . . 

So. . . I have a disease.  And I don't want to share it.  It would be a burden.  And a walking man walks.  

I think I just walked.  I think the thing just ran its course.  Square peg, round hole.  Don't try to wear a pair of shoes that are too small.  

It's getting late for me, I think.  

Like a lot of people, I watched too much t.v. during and after the Covid years.  It made me fat and lazy and accelerated my disease.  But now, that is over.  I've counted on others to provide me with entertainment.  I am going back to entertaining myself.  I just saw the Emmy nominations.  Holy fuck. . . apparently there are like three shows on television.  And this:  "Emmy Nominations: Dragons, Jedi, and Zombies Find a Seat at the Awards Table."

The nation has been infantilized.  I don't get it.  I don't have to.  But I will have to entertain myself.  Make believe monsters and alternative universes are not my thing.  

The question is whether the market is driving the business or is the business driving the market?  What is it that people desire. . . and why?

I realized yesterday that we know only that humans have desires.  Sometimes scientists will make the mistake of anthropomorphizing nature.  

"The environment desires a steady state. . . ."

Or something of the sort.  We might say that an animal desires a mate, for instance, but we don't know that.  We know that they seek one the way water molecules link with other water molecules, but to say that water wants to link to long bipolar chains of H2O would be overstepping our knowledge.  But, you know. . . we learn from narratives, and so science becomes a story, a big chunk of narrative knowledge, and a little troping is probably desirable.  There's that word again.  

I have many desires.  That's the thing that Buddhism teaches is the cause of all suffering.  One should just "be," I guess, like a rock or a tree.  No longing, no suffering.  

It is silly, I guess, this desire to live forever with my own true love.  Last night, I would have liked that very much.  But the house was silent and the bed unwelcoming, and I thought, not for the first time and certainly not the last. . . "Why?"

I'll be distracted today, though.  I have a date to go to the art museum and then to lunch at one of my favorite restaurants that I have not been to for months.  My friend is leaving at the end of the month, so this could well be our last lunch for awhile, though I suspect there will be some large gathering to see her off.  She, like me, is a child-free only child.  We share an understanding of life that is fairly unique.  Not all of life, of course, just a small sliver of it.  

She, however, is the one who I had lunch with just after my doctor told me I was going to have a stroke, and she is the one who said, "Well. . . you've had a good run."

"You're sad and lonely. . . will you marry me?"

"Ooh, ooh, she told me. . . ooh, ooh. . . you're mine 'til dawn."