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Dispatches From Dystopia

~ "What man by worrying can add one cubit to his span of years?"

Dispatches From Dystopia

Monthly Archives: October 2017

Unplugged. Off Line

29 Sunday Oct 2017

Posted by David in Uncategorized

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Obviously I’m not because I am writing this from my Smartphone. Still. I realized today how this compilation of nanochips and nanocircuits facilitates my day. And it’s nice mostly, but kinda creepy.

I remember when my family didn’t have a television set. We would go over to my Uncle Ed’s house to watch Milton Berle on Your Show Of Shows. Uncle Miltie. I’m 66. So the incursion of electronic media into all aspects of our lives is relatively new, as human history goes. 

Consider it took a couple of generations for somebody to rig a steam engine to a set of wheels in order that the railroads came about. Then people could travel in hours the distance it formerly took days to cover. People could travel by train from London to Brighton and have a holiday by the sea. Suddenly the diversions of the middle class, the wealthy, and the aristocracy were all becoming commingled. And the wealthy were now richer than the aristocrats.

But what money could not buy, and still cannot buy, is time. Sure affluence buys leisure, but it does not purchase reflection or introspection. What is worth doing? How do we know?

So I have time on my hands in a house whose silence is shredded by the dishwasher,  working its rhythmic cleaning magic. And I’m going swimming in a few minutes.

I will come home and avoid talking with my wife, in any meaningful way, lest she bring home the painful truth that love is not a replacement for passion

Leisure. It’s what you make of it.

Muscles And Sinews And Joints, Oh My!

27 Friday Oct 2017

Posted by David in Uncategorized

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I woke up hurting where I usually hurt. There seem to be regular places, e.g. my left hip, left shoulder, right triceps. The pain is mostly from use of the muscles related to swimming. Add in loss of flexibility in my back. I think that loss is minimal. I’m very grateful to be as active as I am.  My buddy, Mike The Swim Coach, told me yesterday that the body needs recovery days. I need to pay attention, but I’m vain. Sometimes I think I’m planning on having the healthiest body in the cemetery. Perspective. Dammit.

I’m sitting in my chair trainspotting. Trains are running late on some lines because of track repair. The lateness spills over into the section of track between Washington and Richmond.  That includes the spot in Ashland that I watch.

Mrs CorC? just texted me apologizing for being angry with me. I had no idea she was angry. She forgot she was dealing with a Male,  an individual incapable of reading subtle nuance. We understand angry when we come home and the locks have been changed. Other signals are murkier.

That’s all for now.
 

Imagination Destinations

22 Sunday Oct 2017

Posted by David in Uncategorized

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I can take the Amtrak app on my smart phone and plot journeys to places I’ve never been to meet women I’ve never met. I can imagine what my new found ladies would be like. Do they like the prospect of meeting me at the railroad station, wondering which stranger I am as they leave the train?

Are they wondering why they are doing this, having an adventure with someone they’ve never met.? 

Saturday Night

22 Sunday Oct 2017

Posted by David in Uncategorized

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Sometimes I just feel lonely.  Sometimes the back pain is just annoying, not bad, bearable but unrelenting.  The platonic. sexless marriage that is ours cannot always be rationalized or explained away.

Yes I want some magic A little makeup, perfume, candles. 

Tell me I’m worthwhile. 

Stay in the house with me. Help with a meal.    

Friday And Fish Sticks

20 Friday Oct 2017

Posted by David in cooking, food, memoir

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Tags

#trainspotting

I had a tomato caprese panini (or is that panino?, singular?) for lunch, with a bowl of minestrone. I do the abstain from meat on Friday penance most weeks. It reminds me of my childhood. I wasn’t raised Catholic but the public school I attended always had fish sticks on Fridays. They were served with boiled potatoes  sprinkled with dried parsley, boiled cabbage, and corn bread. I still like fish sticks. Until now, that has been one of my darkest secrets. Now you know.

It is a quiet day on the trainspotting front. The trains have been rolling through Ashland more or less on time. Right now, I’m waiting for the Northbound Carolinian #80 to pass through. It is about 15 minutes late. The leaves are just beginning to turn, but it is hardly dramatic. Here comes #80 Northbound just as a southbound freight, hauling intermodal containers, passes on the other track. This is like having a model train layout.

Looking at the box cars covered with graffiti, I often wonder if there would be less graffiti on freight cars, if there were more funding for the arts in public schools. Or would we simply have better trained graffiti artists?  As President Obama once said, “That question is a little above my pay grade.” (To answer, that is).

I had a slightly longer swim last night, 3500 meters, in a pool slightly warmer, than the temperature in my regular pool. I will be leaving in a short while to do my swim for the day.

The quiet of our home and neighbourhood during the day is most soothing.  I can hear a few insects chirping and the noise of the compressor on the fridge.

MrsCorC?  is working a late shift so dinner is just for me tonight. I could go buy some fish sticks. Maybe I will.

Tuesday By Myself

18 Wednesday Oct 2017

Posted by David in Uncategorized

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I had my Weight Watchers weigh-in today. I am keeping the weight off. Still Lifetime. The long spell of too much coffee and too little sleep caught up with me. I crashed this afternoon And had a good long nap. Mrs CorC? has been gone studying for her .medical billing and coding class. 

I was alone and lonely until I cleaned the kitchen while watching the Yankees rally to win Game Four of the American League Championship Series. It was baseball at its best. There is no better sport than baseball, well played.

Today was a day off from swimming. I get plenty of swimming done. 

I’ve been reading blogs and I am always filled with admiration for my blogging colleagues and how they fearlessly share their lives.

Meanwhile, on the trainspotting front, I just watched a fast freight on the second track overtake a passenger train just pulling out of the ststion. Quite a sight to see. This is one heck of a hobby.

OK. Feel much better.

Too Much Coffee = Rant

17 Tuesday Oct 2017

Posted by David in Foreign Films, Uncategorized

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Tags

#Culture

It is almost Midnight in Richmond, Virginia. I have YouTube on. There is a performance of Les Indes Galante 1, by Jean Phillippe Rameau. If you like baroque opera/ballet combined with total nudity, this performance is for you. This is a French production. We have lean and lithe dancers’ bodies, uh, dancing about.  

It’s OK, I suppose. The music is more engaging than the nekkid people. This choreography is just down right silly.

What does this have to with too much coffee? I ran out of decaf, you see. And I slept entirely too much today. So I am awake. I’m thinking I should read, but no. Now in the “performance” there is a procession of clothed people, led by a man dressed as the Pope. I know this is supposed to symbolize something but quite frankly, I don’t care.  The innocent nekkid people, corrupted by (boo, hiss) CIVILIZATION, perhaps?   Next we have  rube tourists wanting to get to this Eden where the naked people cavort. I know the 18th Century gave this idea of the Noble Savage., Merci, Monsieur Rousseau. Maybe this stupid ballet is what we need to bury the Noble Savage idea once and for all eternity.

About twenty years ago, I saw a classic French film, Les Enfants du Paradise, for the first time. It was an homage to classical French Theatre. How tragic that the French no longer take their art seriously.  Western Culture is engaged in an orgy of self-hatred, as evidenced by this performance.

Maybe, we in the West will summon the collective courage, intellect and will to challenge the intellectual foundation of modernism, specifically the works of Freud, Nietzsche, Marx, and Darwin.  Intellectual counterrevolutions take time.  

Rant over.

 

Lust Or Loneliness?

15 Sunday Oct 2017

Posted by David in Uncategorized

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We look at our desires within a context of sinister motives. The sex drive outside of marriage is viewed as lust. We want someone as a partner, as a lover outside of that marital bond and it is considered, by some people, at least, as lust.  Marriage is construed as the societal construct that keeps that lust in check and puts it to the good use of perpetuating the society and the culture. OK.

 Lust isn’t about just sexual gratification. Lust is the soul seeking to thwart loneliness.  At a very basic level, the soul only knows that it is lonely, just as a hungry baby cries because all she or he knows is that she or he is hungry,

I spent the day lonely as Mrs CorC? worked. When we finally were reunited, we were groove–ing on each others presence. The one-dimensional aspect of our marriage thwarted sexual expression.. 

Still her being home fills a void at least,

Watch “”Samson and Delilah” – Rev. Gary Davis” on YouTube

13 Friday Oct 2017

Posted by David in Uncategorized

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If you do nothing over the next day but listen to this, it will be time well spent.  Pure Genius.

The One-Horse Open Sleigh

11 Wednesday Oct 2017

Posted by David in Uncategorized

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It isn’t even the actual Columbus Day yet (12 October) and I just heard the holiday perennial most of us know as Jingle Bells on the Tee-Vee. 

When will this madness end? Uhh, 2 January, most likely,

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