Quandary

Quandary--what to post.  I am still working on the roller derby stuff, but I don't feel I should post those every day.  I have "new" Lonesomeville stuff, but I've probably shown enough of that.  Well--heh--you can never show enough of that, can you?  Still. . . I need to mix it up.  I haven't made those mushroom pictures yet.  Wanna see another house?  Yard signs?  A picture of a cat?  It's difficult to post a picture (or more) every day.  Try it.  You'll see.  

Old NYC pics.  They are meant to inspire me to go back.  You'd think it would be easy.  There are many cheap flights from here.  Sure, accommodations will break my bank account, but when I get there, I eat pretty cheaply, and it is all walking and looking at art and taking photographs.  Walking gives me pause now.  I keep walking miles and can do it, but it is slower and more painful than it used to be, enough so that I worry about my ability to "see" things on the street.  I don't know.  I should go and try.  But. . . Thanksgiving, my mother's birthday, Christmas, New Year.  I have to be around for my aging mother's sake.  

It seems there is always something.  I wish I were like other people and could sometimes prioritize my own life, but I feel I am indebted.  

I think I feel better this morning.  I am pretty sure it was/is a case of diverticulitis.  Painful.  Awful all around.  But yesterday, after eating nothing all day, I made eggs and rice for dinner.  One of the best meals I've ever had.  I was very hungry, I found, and it went down easy.  Didn't bother my gut at all.  Cream of Wheat with eggs for breakfast, I think.  

But because I stress very much when I am sick, certain this it, sitting alone with my own sick thoughts. . . well. . . I don't do very well.  I fall deep and far into a terrified depression.  What will happen after I'm gone kind of shit.  As shitty as life can be and pretty much is, fuck, I'll miss it.  I love things so much.  Of course, I think it will be my fault when I die.  It will have been something I did.  I will feel a terrible embarrassment and a tremendous guilt about it.  There will be no one to take care of my stuff.  It will all have to go into a dumpster.  The house, the money, it all goes to my soon to be 93 year old mother.  That will be a big burden for her to handle.  And what about the million photographs?  The billion worded journals that I don't want to destroy but don't my mother to read?  

It is all too troubling to think about when I feel devastated by illness, so. . . last night I took a Xanax.  By nine, I was asleep.  By four, I was awake.  I tried to sleep for another hour, but it was fitful.  I was in a hostile Arab country and strayed into a neighborhood where I got lost as in a Paul Bowles novel.  I was fascinated but knew I was in trouble.  I didn't know the language and couldn't read the signs, though the script looked beautiful to me.  

Somehow, I made it back to my American acquaintances, but there were four men and three women, and I was the odd old man out.  They were all paired up and I was. . . discouraged.  

While the Xanax was kicking in, I was watching the new season of "Diplomat" on Netflix.  Have you seen it?  A man, a successful but controversial ambassador, is replaced by his wife.  Their relationship is fraught with problems. He gets blown up in a terrorist attack and she goes to see him in the hospital.  She breaks down, climbs into his bed, and weeps.  I was weeping, too.  When I was in the hospital inches from death, my girl came back, climbed into bed with me, and weeped.  

Fuck me.  

There I sat alone in my living room, hours away from some terrible death, eating eggs and rice and drinking Gatorade, turning into Xanax jelly, an emo deluxe at best, weeping.  

So I went to bed and dreamed of wandering lost and alone in an Arab land.  

Huh.  

I feel better this morning.  I hope.  It is always difficult to tell before I get out of the chair and begin to move.  Sitting still, talking to you, I can pretend for awhile, but once this is over and the day begins. . . I am faced with "The Truth."  

I swear it has never set me free.  

Nope.  Coffee and an anonymous stream of consciousness is the better bromide.  We (you) may each fool yourself in different ways, but sure as shitting we are all running from reality in our own way.  When it confronts us, it is never, ever fun.  Reality is grim.  Our lives are like those nature shows that present the beauty and joy of wild things, lions playing with their cubs, the love of elephants, etc.  But that is not nature.  That is just anthropomorphism/personification.  In nature, everything lives with terrible parasites.  Everything fears being attacked and eaten.  

That is the reality.  Movies and books and tv shows and music--they are there to keep us from thinking about that.  

I think I may be losing my mind.  The hole seems too deep this time.  

Oh. . . what the hell.  

I should have just stuck with the roller derby.