So I am up. No surprise there. I just ate a slice of whole wheat toast with butter and cherry preserves.

My Ukrainian metal detecting comrades (товарищи) are going through an abandoned house. These visits are poignant, abandoned houses filled with memorabilia and trash. Sometimes there is an icon, a prayer book, the hidden things of the Soviet era.

I watch these posts from Russia 🇷🇺 and Ukraine 🇺🇦. There is antagonism between these two nations, once Republics within the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Different languages, and the lesser nation, Ukraine, is fearful of the cultural domination of the other. To be honest, I like the Russians and the Ukrainians both. They seem like regular people. One of my neighbors flies a Ukrainian flag. I think there are Russians in the neighborhood too.

So many of us have Russian souls but do not know it, until we hear the Easter chants and see the Cathedrals, rich with icons. The women hold the lit tapers and their eyes mirror their devotion. In the time of their parents and grandparents, the State set out to destroy their souls. The martyrs were many. Tsar Nicholas was among them. And we, in the arrogance of our freedom, think we have tamed our own Leviathan.

I have switched to trainspotting. There will be an hour, at least, till a passenger train passes through Ashland. A freight, who knows?

I am choosing to be awake. I am mourning the brokenness of our world, like the rift between Russia and Ukraine. It seems so pointless.. But the takeaway is that people need to maintain that sense of who they are. I get that. We constantly cast aside that from which we are alien. The hard part, sometimes, is understanding the people who embrace what we reject, let alone loving them.

I think I’m losing sleep over the Epstein Scandal. The man, if he really is the pervert he is alleged to be, has well concealed the darkness within him. Pray for him. And the millions like him, for whom, as St Paul said, “Their god is the belly.”

And now I am getting tired. But the beds seem unwelcome, There is little comfort in lying down. And who knows who will visit in my dreams?

It would be a relief to see my mother, even my ex-wife. I would ask both how Death is treating them. I would hope they are on their way to Heaven, if they aren’t there already.

There are few demons or monsters from my past that I fear in my dreams. For that I am lucky.

Bedtime, again. In some bed somewhere. Some time soon.

Certain people will think I’m an SOB.

I don’t care.

I prefer heartfelt scorn to phony compassion.

You know who you are.

The railcam, web cam placed at the rail station in Ashland, VA. is on. People walk by. Some know there is a camera there. They will look up and wave. Others go about doing whatever it is that they do. The trains are supposed to be the stars. But the minor players in the show get their moments.

Earlier, a middle-aged man wearing those baggy shorts cut off at mid calf and a blue golf shirt, stood, with a camera on a monopod, taking pictures of the Amtrak train #125, when it stopped. He later walked away. Various women walked in and out of camera view. And some men did the same. They were all headed to someplace else.

There is a black SUV parked in the handicapped space. In a few minutes Train #90, the Northbound Palmetto, will pass through. It does not stop in Ashland. #90 is late. That isn’t unusual.

The web cam is extending its focus Southbound, anticipating the passage of #90 through town. A car crosses the tracks.

Outside my house I hear thunder. There seems to be no thunderstorm approaching Ashland, not yet at least. It is Summer. There are hot days and we all swear it’s miserable. And there will be marvelous, splendid storms, bringing noise and water and static discharges over the landscape, perpetually the L’estate movement of Vivaldi’s Il Quattro Stagione.*

The Ashland scene has no people in camera view, just cars, pavement and tracks, until a person in black pants and a pink top crosses the tracks. It is like an ambulatory Good N’ Plenty candy, the kind you buy in a box at the movies.

The signal flashes, the gate goes down, #90 passes through, on the way to Washington and New York. The camera pans by the lovely, verdant commons that are the Grounds at Randolph-Macon College. In the Southern sky are storm clouds.

Here comes Amtrak #66 headed ultimately to Boston. It stops. The tee-shirted travelers board the train using the yellow Amtrak stepstool. The stairs retract. The door closes. After a minute the train moves on.

Summer. Travel. Fun?

*Post Script:

I decided to listen to the Summer Movement of The Four Seasons. I found a recording on YouTube, performed by a chamber orchestra of young women. And I remembered that Vivaldi was, in his day job, a priest at a girls’ orphanage in Venice. He wrote The Four Seasons for just such an orchestra as this one.

I went to Publix to buy some chicken and other stuff. The chicken breast with bone and skin on was $1.99/lb. while the other kind, boneless and skin was more than twice, so I skinned and de-boned it myself, and the skin and the bone pieces with plenty of meat still on them, I’m making stock with. Aren’t I the clever one?

I bought some local tomatoes too. When I get my Social Security check, perhaps J and I will drive over to the Valley, (Shenandoah) and get some fresh local peaches. Shenandoah Valley fruit is superb.

The motivation issues loom large still. But I did something today, at least.

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday

Your friendly neighborhood high technology tycoon wants artificial intelligence to interconnect with the neural pathways of the brain. What could possibly go wrong?

I can’t sleep. I don’t know why. My head is swirling with images, Roman Polanski, Nixon, just for good measure, Clinton, Pelosi, Trump. They’re all there. It’s not whether I like or dislike any of them. I have some pain, plenty of heartbreak.

J fell off a step stool at work and hit her knee. There is no bruise, or any discoloration. It hurts, but I think she will be OK.

I put in the DVD of the series Civilisation, done by Kenneth Clark on the BBC fifty years ago. I am watching the episode on the High Gothic world, St Francis of Assisi, Dante, and Giotto figure in this episode. There is plenty of beautiful scenery of Tuscany and Umbria, of the cities of Florence, Urbino, Siena.

I don’t know. I need the beauty shown in this episode. Leave it at that.

Anybody remember what happened that day?

If you answered The Manson Family killed actress Sharon Tate and four other people, you would be correct.

Fifty years ago.

I don’t remember all the details. Chances are most people who know them would like to forget them.

And we are coming up on the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing , Woodstock, the release of The Beatles’ Abbey Road album, all kinds of culturally important stuff.

And The Manson Family is there, in the mix.

I dunno. I guess the Epstein Case has touched a memory of another sensational and horrific story.

I’m not “dot-connecting”. At least not yet.

Roman Polanski, husband of Sharon Tate, was convicted of child rape much later after the murders. And the sexual underworld of Hollywood is about to come under much closer scrutiny.

It is going to get very ugly and scary folks.

I have to get my keester out of the leather recliner and do something. I know. I know. Dave version 68.2 is not loading properly. Could be a hardware problem. I pretty sure my Motherboard has been defective since it came from the factory.. So I have had to come up with work arounds again and again.

I believe in the therapeutic value of Popeye. The cartoons always set me straight. Just the music is delightful on its own. So Popeye, Olive Oyl, Bluto, and Wimpy are here providing intensive therapy.

On the pornography front, I watched two women, 40ish, full-figured, and naked, make love/have sex with each other on video, just 2 people connecting, beyond the mere physical sense of the word. To some people, it’s perverse and twisted, both the performance of the act and the digital recording of said act. Then again, I aspire for that sexual love with my wife. I guess you have to not give a fuck, to fuck. Ya know what I mean?

I’ve watched trains today, been to the periodontist for him to check the holes in my jaw he created, had a nap, early dinner, and a digital voyeuristic experience. My friend texted me about the crappy bus service in town. J is watching The Bachelorette. What can I say?

Now I am posting. I know all the moves in the self-help dance. And I’m a wallflower.