I’m sitting on my front porch, on a beautiful day, and this snatch of dialogue came to me. I don’t know if anybody I was ever with said it, but it rings true, if only for me.

One night, we were alone. We’d been drinking. We? I, at least, had been, anyway. We drank the cheap white wine, sold in the three liter glass jugs. It was from California, but it didn’t really matter. Both of us were in it for the buzz, betting it would get there before the puking started.

“You like sex, don’t you?” She asked, matter of factly, and out of the blue. She had a knack for cutting to the chase.

“Yeah.”

“Wish I could. But I hate that feeling. Vulnerable, exposed. It’s not just my thighs I’m opening, you know. Men don’t get that. Maybe some women too. But there I am, my cunt, my heart, my head, exposed, like a grand biopsy of me. And I fucking hate that I need somebody else!”

So I joined LinkedIn. What that means is I go through the listings , the profiles of people, comparing my life to other people I have known in my life .

This is toxic for me. Not that I will drink or use, but that I will somehow decide that by not playing The Comparison Game, I am admitting I am a failure.

So now I am watching the Sacred Liturgy from Ekaterinberg. The priests, deacons and choristers are praying and chanting, as they have done for centuries. They remain. Stalin is gone. Brezhnev is gone.

Breaking the night silence is the choir singing Praise The Lord by Sergei Rachmaninoff, an Orthodox Liturgical chant.

The icon of The Virgin and Christ Child is the only image on the screen.

Beauty. Sublime Beauty.

The prayer we offer to God from our hearts,And Divine Love, which we receive from The Lord in our all too fragile hearts.

Let Beauty strike the spark that ignites this flame of Love.

Both my adult children came by today.

When one is 70, it is a big deal.

I can’t say more than that.

I exposed my upper arm this morning to receive whatever the first dose of the Pfizer anti-COVID-19 vaccination is. I trust them. I don’t know why, but I do. Let’s hope it works.

As one of the philosopher-Marines of Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket says, “ Sometimes life hands you a shit sandwich and you just have to take a bite.” That pretty much sums up the last year and the foreseeable future.

Speculation about the players in this tortious spectacle is useless. There is neither a Nuremberg Tribunal or even a session with Judge Judy to adjudicate this event. Simply grit your teeth, and pray that some lesson be taught these perpetrators from somebody, somewhere.

I’m tired, really tired. Maybe there is a light at the end of this tunnel . I saw actual daffodils blooming this morning. Maybe I’m dreaming, but strangers seem more apt to speak to me.

Trainspotting offers pleasant diversion. Over, Comrades.

I will be injected with the first COVID-19 shot on Saturday morning. I hope it works. J gets hers this afternoon.

I no longer have any sense of what a pre-COVID-19 “normal” was. I fear the pandemic was a pretense to tear apart the world and its norms we had become accustomed to, like Mass with no preregistration, or swimming for longer than forty-five minutes at any one time, or seeing the face of a stranger.

The people who brought us this dystopian nightmare ought to be brought to justice, as in pay monetary damages for trashing the world’s societies and economies, but they won’t. We all know this. This unspoken reality affirms every notion we have about the inequities of power and wealth. Powerful people and nations, e.g. The People’s Republic of China, can do whatever the Hell they want and the rest of the world will play along, albeit begrudgingly. They can even get their demented hireling elected President of the United States.

The rich and powerful can dictate their desires for the world and governments will do their darndest to gratify those wishes. The Papacy will act as a lap dog, rather than a guide. The New World Order. That’s what Marx and every monster of the Twentieth Century wanted. Maybe Stalin should have worn those nice sweaters like Bill Gates wears.

I think I will eat some red meat today while I still have the chance.

I’m waiting for an Amtrak passenger train #84 to stop in Ashland. After that I plan to go back to bed.

I had oatmeal for breakfast, again. I found a recipe for steel cut oats, prepared overnight in a slow cooker. It makes enough oatmeal to feed the hungriest and largest Irish family in Southie, but for one old man on a weight loss regimen, it represents breakfast for a week. Or more. It’s redeeming feature is that it’s delicious.

It is muy importante’ to either use a lot of cooking spray, butter or oil to coat the inside of your slow cooker. Or use a slow cooker liner. This stuff sticks like you wouldn’t believe! That complete, you’re ready to move on.

Take 1.5 cups of steel cut oats( no quick cooking steel cut oats), no regular oatmeal. I use McCann’s in the nifty steel can. Add it to 4 cups water, 2 cups milk,. Add 3 tablespoons milled (ground) flaxseed meal, for healthy fatty acids, vanilla, cinnamon 2 teaspoons salt, and two mashed bananas. Stir it up real good, set the slow cooker on the low setting and leave it to cook overnight. (8hrs)

The idea is to create an oatmeal with the flavours of banana bread. It pretty much does.

It’s a fairly simple recipe. You can find more instructive recipes online for slow cooker oatmeal. Use them! I intended that summary as just an overview. This is a perfect breakfast for, say, Christmas morning or any other morning where a large herd of humans may be corralled in your domicile.

It is very tasty and reheats easily. I use my oven, putting the desired amount in a Corningware dish warming it for 15-20 minutes at 300F. Or use a microwave oven, if you have one (I don’t).

Other than eating, sleeping, housework, swimming, and enduring unrequited sexual longing, life is pretty uneventful.

Oh, and I pray the Rosary daily with the priests at Lourdes Grotto. Seems to help.

If one is Welsh, this is the Feast Day of the nation’s patron saint, Saint David. Time to put leeks in the band of your hat. Or you could just wait a couple of weeks and opt for the less embarrassing shamrock of your Celtic kin, the Irish (St Patrick).

It was a bit premature, but I watched an intensely Welsh movie, produced by Euan Lloyd, a Welshman, featuring Welsh actors Richard Burton (born Richard Jenkins) and, Kenneth Griffith. The film, Thr Wild Geese, is something of an action-adventure cult film, but I remember it for its ties to Wales.

Since my Christian name is David, I also remember that the Russians celebrate the Saint’s Day of one’s patron saint just as we celebrate birthdays. Now I don’t know if that means that, if you go to The Cheesecake Factory in Moscow, the waitstaff serenades you, but the Russians do sing in chorus an awful lot.

Interestingly, the Welsh are also known for their tradition of choral music. So that’s how I tied those two threads together, Russia and Wales. Pretty neat, huh?

Joan Armatrading. Pure genius. Ex-wife #2 had her album Show Some Emotion. I regret not listening to the album, more intensely and more often. She had this marvelous tremolo that could raise the hairs on the back of your neck.

I listen and I forget about every heartache and heartbreak I’ve ever had. Then I listen other times and I remember them all again. Music is like that.

Time to write that novel.

God help me.

I mean both those last two sentences.

…are OK, but what about the rest of me?

Today was semiannual doctor visit day. After attributing my inactivity to COVID-19 restrictions during my August visit, I decided to get serious. Words like hypertension and diabetes characterized my general health. Diet and exercise, blah, blah, blah.

But I did get serious. I’m losing the weight. My blood pressure is no longer in the “scary” range. We will see about the lab results for the other issues later.

Truth is,, I would rather do the healthy stuff, the diet and exercise, than sit around watching TV or reading or making cornbread and biscuits.

But sliding into unhealthy habits is easy, too easy.

Take care of yourselves. It’s easier to make time for exercise than having to go to dialysis. Much easier.