#2 son, C, came by yesterday. He wanted to eat Indian food. I told him I wanted to have root beer floats. So we ordered take away from the Indian restaurant I got roghan josh with lamb. He ordered goat curry. We had Samosas and spinach and potato patties and enjoyed the food tremendously. Somehow the Indian dishes that come all mixed together in spicy sauce all taste the same. They are delicious, mind you, but my palette can’t make distinctions in the flavors.

After eating, we watched cricket for awhile. I was explaining the game to him. This is an over This is how a wicket can be taken. This is a boundary 4; this is a boundary 6. He was doing well until we got to “lbw“. Then his eyes just glazed over.

We had root beer floats. It is hard to describe the flavour. But, trust me, it tastes good. To the root beer, a scoop or two of vanilla ice cream is added. And the ice cream, being mostly fat, floats. It is a real American summertime treat.

Even though he is 32, an adult, we had some innocent fun together. It made a huge difference to me.

I slept earlier on Saturday night. Then I awoke, watched some TV with J. I came downstairs to fix J’s lunch. I fixed some cream cheese and olive spread. She likes that. Now I sit here, World War II documentaries on YouTube, pondering, wanting to cry for no particular reason.

I’m going to bed.

The World today is one rape and one murder away from total madness. Not real ones, even though they will occur. The TV was on as I attempted to nap beside my wife, as I desperately tried to bring myself closer, while at the same, the TV rapists and sadists were fully engaged.

So now the virtual PTSD has had its way. And passion becomes an elusive wish.

Life, so dear. Peace so sweet.

When I sit at the end of the day and think of something to write about, some days are easier than others.

I went to BJ’s, almost spent $30 on bath tissue. Then I realized that we just aren’t that low, to buy about a six month supply for us.  I did buy croissants, Andouille sausage, coffee, and Serrano ham. You know, the real necessities.

I really got J laughing at lunch when I did an improvisational riff on Tail Envy among Old World Monkeys towards their New World Monkey cousins. It was one of those situations where I made something up on the spur of the moment and it worked. Now I can’t remember a damn thing about it.

As to laundry, I cranked out three loads. It wasn’t a big deal, just needed doing. I made a fruit salad with honeydew melon and strawberries. I should have bought some blueberries to add, if only for colour.

Anybody else out there remember how Tang©, an orange flavored powdered drink mix, was sold on the premise that the astronauts drank it? I’m watching a bunch of commercials where Warner Brothers cartoon characters, Bugs, Yosemite Sam, and Elmer Fudd  are flogging the product.  More crap from my childhood.

So there you have it. I had a good day, texted with a friend, made myself useful, had a nice shower, put on clean clothes.

Life is good

This day was kind of meh. I sort of wish something exciting would happen. Exciting, as in wild, passionate sex Exciting. I did some sleeping. Watched a show on YouTube about the Songhai Empire in what is now Mali along the River Niger. This is the first I have heard of this kingdom. I did know about the fabled city of Timbuctoo, somewhat related to to this empire. Thus edified, I decided to sleep a bit after that. Then when I awoke, I put a brisket in the slow cooker. So we had brisket tonight. I fixed corn, tomatoes, and okra for my own enjoyment. J does not like okra.  I also made a fruit salad with honeydew melon and strawberries for my dessert. I ought to be happy. I’m bored, fed up with COVID-19 protocols, sexual denial, all the crap senior citizens like me have to put up with. However, as bad as things seem, the country and the world are not turning to poo! Trust me. This is pretty much the way things have always been. Good stuff and bad happening at the same time. The constant you need to be aware of, in case you are not aware, is that mass media are constantly trying to manipulate how you feel. They will distort, if not outright lie about what is actually going on. This did not start with the advent of #45 on the scene. It’s been going on as long as I can remember. There are heroes and villains, people you are supposed to like, like JFK, people you are supposed to dislike , Castro, for example. Now it may be that the good guys are good and the bad guys are bad, but that is merely serendipitous when it does happen. Truth is the whole purpose of the mass media is to facilitate your buying stuff. Sixty years ago, advertisers wanted people to buy cigarettes. Now the big advertisers are pharmaceutical companies that make drugs for COPD and lung cancer. Get it?

Sitting here, after a good day. My son is OK. That is a big relief.

We went out for a late lunch and I fixed a spinach Canadian bacon, mushroom fritatta for a late supper. I hear the dish washer running now, all electric motors and gears and spray.

I made Earl Grey tea for after dinner. Right now I’m watching a creepy tourism film from Nazi Germany, made in 1938. It is cuckoo clocks and Schühplättler, fröhlicher Volk. Did I say it was creepy? How, after 75 years, do we still get chills watching their lies?

I should go up. Really. I’m tired. Time for bed.

Have we started to look at the world as a giant theme park? We go through life collecting experiences. We go about turning everything into roller coasters, or carousels. (I know. Nobody rides carousels anymore.) Sex is easily morphed into a ride, wherein we collect and store the experience in our bodies.

We are no longer human beings, but, rather, human feelings.

Where is the room to derive anything more than a feeling from anything? An experience. Life becomes a succession of experiences. A trip to an art museum is about experiencing how art makes us feel. Always feel, never think.  Thinking itself is debased into a means to access feeling.

What the experience-collecting paradigm leads us to is a very narrow and selfish focusing into what life is. We look at religion, or spirituality, through the filter of how a rite, like worship, makes us feel. Do we feel closer to God? People are fond of saying they feel closer to God in a garden than they do in a house of worship. I don’t wish to discount that attitude. We all feel that.  But is knowing God more than a feeling?

Feeling is not bad. Rather it is limiting. Can we imagine that there are things beyond feeling? That, say Heaven, goes beyond feeling and experience?

If we are afraid we are stupid, we spend our lives proving to ourselves that we are, in fact, smart.

Or that we are attractive, athletic, spiritual, funny. Insert the negative antonym, then the disproving behaviour will follow.

Diabolical? Yes. But if we know what our fearful innerselves are up to, maybe there is hope. That we can put this behaviour to good use.

Sleep last night was filled with dreams, of fears about my son, expressed in dreams of death and funerals.

The memories of my childhood was a chaos of books and bugs and food and toothpaste, toothbrushes and dental hygiene in general.

I dreamt, last night, I was stuck at my parents’ house, I needed to get my younger son back home, so I could get him to school.

It is the story of my parenting, or so it seems, from the perspective of today.

We carry our own turmoil within us. Eventually that turmoil infects others, or resonates within them. Then we have a riot or a regime change Or a divorce. Or a war.

We make ourselves far too complicated than who or what we really are.

At some point in my adulthood, I came to realize that surviving the home and family where I grew up matched the feeling I had when I walked away unscathed from a head on collision.

My son is OK. But there is some mending that needs to happen around relationships.

I feel like reaching to my blogosphere friends because my son is having a mental health crisis. He is on the autism spectrum of disorders, but the pandemic and the civil unrest it have taken their toll on him. He has some heightened paranoia.

This really sucks.