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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: July 2018

Madeleines. Ice Cream.

26 Thursday Jul 2018

Posted by David in memoir, Summer

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

#1950's, ice cream

0726181602_burst011252449493.jpg

The Bottle In Question

OK, most everybody with any reading experience has at least heard of the start of Marcel Proust’s Remembrance Of Things Past (A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu), wherein the protagonist bites into a madeleine and the taste of the little cake brings back a flood of memories. Well last night I bought a carton of ice cream at Publix and had a similar experience. The flavor was maple walnut. It was full fat ice cream. (These days admitting you like full fat ice cream is like admitting you enjoy unprotected sex with total strangers. You have self- identified as a risk taker.)

I remember from my childhood, where the family, all six of us, would pile into the car on a hot summer night, drive with the windows down, go get ice cream cones, and then cruise around, looking at stuff. One particular night, Daddy took us to the Curles Neck Dairy Bar, a lunch counter/ ice cream shop that sold their own ice cream It was a local dairy, that had their own farm in Eastern Henrico County (Charles City County, maybe?). Curles Neck denotes one of several bends in the James River. Local dairies were in business then. I ordered a maple walnut cone one night. Then we rode in the 1953 Nash Ambassador Super to Byrd Park, where colored lights shone on the fountain in the Fountain Lake. Quite lovely. I remember the orange colored light on the fountain most distinctly.

This was the great era of neon. Cities, like Richmond, were filled with fantastic signs. One Chinese restaurant, Joy Garden, had a neon sign evocative of an oriental lantern. Gorgeous. The sign was more memorable than the food. The cookie maker, FFV, had its letters illuminated on a water tank, on the roof of its now defunct factory, re-purposed to loft apartments. There was a billiard parlor,the Triple Triangle, that had neon billiard balls racked-up in the triangle Every burger joint had neon tubing outlining their roof, or part of it, at least, in red or blue or green. It was an illuminated night, reflective of an optimism and pride in the businesses of the community.

There are vestiges still. The flavorings and spice maker here in Richmond, The C.F. Sauer Company, has an animated sign featuring a mustachioed chef in a chef’s hat sampling something, as a string of bulbs light up. The night was a show. When I think of illumination these days, I think sodium vapor lights, making the community a little safer from thieves and predators lurking in the dark.

Today, I have a milk bottle from Curles Neck Dairy. I use it to fill the reservoir of my coffee maker. It holds a quart of water. and I can use eight tablespoons of ground coffee to make four eight-ounce cups of coffee with the water poured from the milk bottle. Kinda cool, I think. It’s a memory, or a bite of a madeleine, every day.

Hootenanny Mass

23 Monday Jul 2018

Posted by David in Catholic Life

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Novus Ordo Mass

Sunday at Five PM, they break out the guitars and tambourine, find piano arrangements weirdly evocative of an 80’s piano bar, and sing about Jesus not as Redeemer, but panacea for one’s problems, just in case ProzacĀ© CialisĀ© or OmeprazoleĀ© don’t work.

This is The Holy Sacrifice Of The Mass? The Confiteor is abbreviated, combined, if not blurred altogether, with the Kyrie. Why not? Confession is mandated but once a year. You can do a lot of sinning in 365 days. Your mindfulness can all but vanish and the rationalization of your selfishness can take free rein.

Somehow, The Church has abandoned exhorting, guiding, and nurturing the faithful in the discipline of personal holiness. Practice of faith comes with minimal abstinence, fasting or penance. Quiet contemplative prayer is the province of decrepit monks and praying the Rosary is relegated to little old ladies in Warsaw, Sicily, or Mexico City. The Hail Mary is now a synonym for a desperation play in football. And the clergy? They agreeably play along as if spine on their part was optional, if not downright rude.

The Church acts as if good social policy, and a cheap sentimental love are substitutes for the selfless love that Christian love, agape, compels of us.

The sappy music follows the Mass like the soundtrack of a Hallmark Channel Christmas show. And the nagging questions never pierce our consciousness, “Am I loving God with all my heart, mind and soul?” “Am I willing to walk away from my life, comfort, prosperity, the esteem of my friends and family, for the love of God?”

The Precious Body of Our Lord is distributed as if it were a cookie.

The Mass soon ends. As the last strings have been strummed, the last chord played and the tambourine shakes no more for at least another week, the audience, oops, congregation applauds. Yes applauds. Can a priest at least admonish the parish that this is not entertainment? Applause is inappropriate.

I feel as empty as I felt when I walked in.

Sunday

22 Sunday Jul 2018

Posted by David in Relationships

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

#Sexual Frustration

Yesterday it rained. A lot. I feel like I’ve been in a strange tired and lethargic state, sleeping on and off, as if I were taking a long nap.

MrsCorC? worked last night, closing the store, arriving home around 1230. This is not unusual. I stayed up to talk a while about nothing very important.

I got up today, shoving to the back of my mind the hopeless feeling I have about this house never being a home. Is this it? Are our senior years about waiting around to die, living in clutter and junk? I don’t feel very alive. My sexual frustration is off the charts. What this means is that I have to put my feelings out there again, expecting them to be ignored, if not out right ridiculed.

She knows I won’t leave. Or cheat.

Peaks and Valleys

19 Thursday Jul 2018

Posted by David in Depression, Sexuality, sleep

≈ 2 Comments

So my mental health has been OK. I don’t know why I call it “mental”. I feel these emotional swings that are noticeable, but not extreme. Just when I feel most hopeless, that feeling dissipates. Right now I am fine.

My sleep patterns are odd. So now, it is 0140,Thursday morning. I should go back to bed. I had a nap around 20:00 Wednesday for about ninety minutes. I thought I was going to sleep the whole night. But I woke up, energized. Now the sleepiness is creeping back.

I miss having a sex life. A little romance might help.

Summer

18 Wednesday Jul 2018

Posted by David in Summer

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

#Fantasy/Reality

There are people out there who have fabulous Summers. They go to the beach, A LOT, and they tan perfectly. They do all the cool things, have perfect barbecues, on beautiful decks, with lovely Japanese lanterns, drinks with paper umbrellas in them, and no mosquitoes.

I am NOT one of those people. I can’t stand the heat, nor do I like to sit in grid-lock traffic jams on the Interstate to get to the beach. I now have a healthy fear of skin cancer. My back deck is falling apart. And I own no cute paper lanterns. Or paper umbrellas for sissy drinks. Can mosquitoes count as pets?

Sunday was the 15th, the Ides, as the Romans called it. I thought six weeks til Labour Day. Football season is grinding ever closer. Baseball season is half-way done. Wimbledon just finished.

On the plus side, I am retired. I can reinvent my leisure any time I want. I have strawberries and a pint of heavy cream in the fridge with a copper bowl chilling in the freezer. Plus a watermelon.

I have these lovely roses blooming

So what if it ain’t perfect? It’s close enough.

What I Did Today. OK, Just Some Of It.

13 Friday Jul 2018

Posted by David in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

I love that feeling I get when I’m climbing out of a hole, even a shallow one. There are certain markers that indicate I am making progress in handling the stuff of life that we could just as well do without.

1) The bills are paid.

2) My son came to visit.

3) I’m swimming regularly again.

4) I’m getting to AA meetings.

5) I sleep when I need to.

Today I had lunch w Mrs CorC?. I went to the Y and swam. I did not worry about the state of my stomach. I saw friends at the Y. They seem to be doing well.

We ate our back log of leftovers tonight. When the news upset me, I turned it off.

A good day.

More Of The Same

12 Thursday Jul 2018

Posted by David in Catholic Life, Exercise/ Fitness

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

#Catholic Liturgy, Insomnia

More back pain.

More insomnia.

More wishing I could get to sleep.

I had a good swim today. Tonight I was going to go to a book discussion at Church on the history of The Mass, but when I got home from swimming, the desire and energy to go just wasn’t there. So I said I wasn’t going. Our parish is about 12 miles from the house. There are five parishes closer to us, but I like St Benedict because our priest offers a reverent version of a Novus Ordo Mass, no guitars or silliness. Sometimes at the 11 O’clock Sunday Mass, we will chant the Credo in Latin. Truly beautiful. And we will sing the proper Marian Anthem. Right now it is the Salve Regina. Sadly, there are Catholics who are ignorant of the Latin hymns, service music or Marian anthems and antiphons.

I digress. At least now I’m somewhat sleepy. Maybe the naproxen will work a little better.

It was, all in all, a good day.

Insomnia, My Old Nemesis

11 Wednesday Jul 2018

Posted by David in Love and stuff, sleep

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

#Ear Wax, marriage

Why am I up? I was up at 3 AM, for a couple of hours, then back to bed and asleep for ninety minutes. Then Mrs CorC? got up to go to work and I got up to pack her lunch. Now I am awake again. I watched two trains go through Ashland, one passenger, one freight, and several ear wax removal videos.

Yes ear wax removal. Evidently, given their viewership and subscribers, hundreds of thousands of people like to watch videos of people having their prodigious quantities of ear wax removed. Who knew? There are also videos of people having their toe nails worked on by podiatrists, and their blackheads popped. So we denizens of The Global Village have some, uh, idiosyncratic, viewing tastes.

I really should go back to bed. Yet I can’t or don’t want to. I can’t decide. I could turn off YouTube, then go upstairs, and climb back in bed. And yet, the deep yearning in my heart has me up. I long for a caress, an affirmation that love between long-time partners is more than platonic, more than an affirmation of selfless Christian love, agape. People don’t get married to be just really good friends. We get married to get sweaty with our mates, to be aroused and then exhausted.

My feet are getting cold, my back sore. It is time to go back to sleep.

Former Vatican Bank chief: Authors of New World Order demographic collapse influencing the Vatican

11 Wednesday Jul 2018

Posted by David in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

https://wp.me/pYA4j-c5u

I read this article with a great deal of interest. It is tempting to dismiss this as the musings of some sort of conspiracy theorist, but I believe there is real substance to his criticism.

We have grown to accept uncritically the notion of a “population bomb” to use Paul Ehrlich’s phrase. It is, or claims to be a premise based on observation and analysis of impartially obtained data, except we rarely scrutinize the theory or challenge its conclusions.

There is a push back against the globalists occurring throughout the Western democracies. The nagging question, “What does globalism have to do with saving souls?” doesn’t seem to be echoing through the halls of The Vatican. That is a disturbing question., disturbing in its absence.

Our proclivity to sin, or concupescence, hasn’t gone away.

24 And There’s So Much More

10 Tuesday Jul 2018

Posted by David in alcoholism, Family, Sobriety

≈ 2 Comments

It has been 24 years since I had my last drink. When I consider that I drank for 25 years, I’m entering that year when I will have been sober for as many years as I drank.

I had a lot of sick, self-serving thinking. As I move further down the sobriety path, I discover a little each day how that selfishness damaged those around me.

I’m tired now. There will be more.

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