Tuesday, January 14, 2025

A Man Alone

When things get crazy, my mantra for decades has been, "I'm a house plant, I'm a house plant."  It calms me and keeps me quiet without any sudden reaction.  I am in house plant mode now.  I need to do some breathing exercises, too.  I had begun doing them before that night in the ER when my mother's system crashed.  Before bed each night, I would sit on the edge of the bed and breath in, hold, and breathe out for twenty breaths.  It is a remarkable thing, really, in how easy it is to clear your mind of anything but the breathing.  It is reportedly very good for your health and well being.  I had plans to increase the interval to 30, then 40 breaths.  

I haven't breathed since my mother's fall.  I need to breathe again.  

I also need to stretch.  A little light yoga on the floor.  I'm stiff as the proverbial board.  No. . . you can't imagine.  I'm drinking ever so much more water than I have in decades, so maybe that will help my ligaments and tendons a bit.  Breathing and stretching, I think, might be my road to Nirvana.  

I need some Nirvana.  

But it's O.K.  Don't worry about me.  

That's a joke.  Ain't no one to worry about me.  Everyone tells my mother she is lucky to have me.  My mother says she only stays alive because she has to take care of me.  Some things are too complex to unravel.  But she may be the only one who gets it.  Nobody ever says, "Poor you.  Who will take care of you when you are old?"

I am old.  I only pretend and appear to not be so much.  Mine, if you listen, is the Hero's Tale.  

We all know how tales end.  

All that is possible is a hope not to cry.  

"I'm a houseplant, I'm a houseplant. . . oommmmmmm."  

People are now telling me similar tales they have gone through with someone, a father, mother, spouse.  

"My father came to live with us. . . ."

I want to say, "us" back to them.  There were spouses, siblings, children. . . there was some shared responsibility.  

"It ain't the same.  Don't try to pretend."

Hemingway famously wrote, "A man alone ain't got no bloody chance."

He didn't write "bloody" originally, but that prudish editor Maxwell Perkins would not let him publish "fucking."  I have to go back and look, but I'm not even sure he allowed "bloody."  As I think back, it may have all been dashes or asterisks.  "To Have and to Have Not."  You can look for yourselves.  

I'm too busy with "Stella Maris."  I'm near the end of it, and I have a few thoughts.  When McCarthy was at the Santa Fe Institute, he spent his time talking to theoreticians in math and physics.  So it is reported.  It is also reported that these geniuses said that McCarthy was interested in what they were doing.  The book may reflect this interest. . . but I doubt any real in-depth understanding.  He could have read the equivalent of Will Durant's "The Pleasures of Philosophy" or some overview of the history of math.  There is no evidence of any true or deep understanding of the fields.  That's o.k.  He sets the novel in the 1970s which alleviates much need for an understanding of what comes after.  It's a historical novel in that sense.  Psychiatry was not what it is today.  The meat of the novel is an exploration of the meaning and reality of the self.  What is normal?  How do we know?  Ultimately, is the self or selfhood or even existence knowable?  And does it matter?

It is McCarthy probing as he himself approached death.  Or, perhaps, vice versa.  

You may not find much solace there, but I haven't finished yet, so. . . . 

The book IS more interesting in light of the new biographical info on his affair with the 17 year old girl half his age with whom he illegally ran away to live with in Mexico.  Oh, my. . . I understand him so much better now.  

I'm trying.  I don't want to be a heavy, a drag in print.  I'm adapting, giving in and hopefully not giving up.  I visit my house and my old life and things and interests and activities, but only for a minute.  Then I'm back to being a houseplant.  

Ommmmm. 

My mother is peripatetic this morning.  `She says she feels worse than she ever has in her life.  Her whole body.  Her stomach.  Her back.  Everything.  I don't know what to do.  I ask if she wants to see a doctor.  I get no answer.  Tell me how you'd feel?  I mean, you can ask family, dial a friend.  I don't know what to do.  

"For Whom the Bell Tolls."  Hemingway/Donne.  "Ask not for whom the bells toll. . . . 


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