To Be Determined

Here, minutes before sunrise, the outline of the trees separates from the sky and I can see the silhouette of the neighbor's cat lying on the mat in front of my kitchen door looking in at me in the chair where I sit mornings in the Xenon glow of the laptop computer, first reading, then writing, a cup of coffee balanced next to me on the arm of the chair.  I don't read so much now.  I find that the news does me more harm than good, informing me less about what is important rather than more.  The writing of new articles is predictable and poor, by and large, and I am not interested in the many opinions which come to dominate the online "papers" more and more.  

And so I turn to this, struggling to make sense of my life, wrestling with words and phrases and then sentences and paragraphs that take on some life of their own--for good or ill.  A million words, I'm sure, in the years long archive.  Maybe several.  I have no way of checking.  The words are just there sitting without obvious appraisal, perhaps as only an indictment.  I thought yesterday of just turning them off, leaving them silent like yesterday's news.  

I should check my horoscope.  I am struggling with some bad ju-ju, I think.  People's reactions to me are not what they have been.  I am not lighting up anyone's world, or so it seems, not even my own.  I am feeling no joy.  I struggle like a man who knows he has to take a beating that is unavoidable.  Each step brings me closer to it.  

Still, I labor on.  Each day now, I do things that must be done.  I fertilize and weed and trim and spray for bugs.  I buy the tools I will need and prepare for the work ahead.  I sat down for a couple hours the other day and did my taxes.  I will have to write a big check to cover the taxes I have not had taken out of my pension payments.  Plus a penalty.  One is not allowed to wait until the end of the year to pay their taxes apparently.  The government wants their money up front.  They are willing to hold your money and, perhaps, give some back at the end of the year, but not vice-versa.  I am not one to complain about paying taxes, but this part doesn't seem quite fair.  

Boring.  Would you rather hear about my peculiar romantic life?  

Each day now, my heart sinks with the sun.  Nights are predictable.  The first cocktail, The preparing of dinner.  A glass of wine and a plate of food before the television.  Etc.  

There are nights out.  I go.  I will go tonight.  These nights, however, are as predictable as the nights at home.  Drinks, then food in front of a live "t.v."  Banter.  Chatter.  

All this could lead me to believe in auras and chakras and the alignment of the planets.  Maybe there are circumstances where the soul dies before the body.  

The withering spirit.  

Perhaps it is something larger, an illness of the entire Anima Mundi. 

“Man himself has ceased to be the microcosm and eidolon of the cosmos, and his “anima” is no longer the consubstantial scintilla, spark of the Anima Mundi, World Soul” (Carl Jung). 

Perhaps this is what Emerson and Thoreau felt.  Each person a little piece of the larger spirit.

Or maybe it makes me feel better to simply imagine myself part of this high brow company.   

Like Hemingway's, for instance, who always needed a little "giant killer" and a light for the night.  

I feel myself becoming a character in a story by John Cheever.  

Last night, I vomited in my sleep.  Fairly awful if not terrifying.  

As I keep telling you, I need to change my life.  

I think, though, it might have been the result of spraying insecticide on the lawn and around the houses yesterday.  Maybe.  I am not so very careful and I think I might have breathed some of the mist coming from the spray.  Maybe I'm mistaken.  Maybe the body will die before the soul.  

There is so much to do both here and at my mother's house.  I feel deeply overwhelmed by it.  Perhaps I should consider just paying people to do the work at this point.  

"What are you saving your money for?"

This from my mother's 90 year old neighbor.  

"What money?" I reply.

This blog goes back to September, 2007.  That is when it began.  There is too much there to ever read.  And even though most of it is better than today's post, I think there is no need to leave it "out there."  It is only "bot bait" at this point.  

I like some of the new photos, though.  They are a nice new direction.  But, like a woman in a red dress, many of the old photos might be "dangerous."  I'll not make any decisions today, though.  I've been around the block enough to know not to make decisions in times of desperation.