Not really. Figuratively. I have a bad case of wanting to do nothing. And sadness. A friend of ours from the old church lost his son to cardiac arrest over the weekend. The son was maybe 48. Sucks.That’s all I can say.

I’ve spent the day reading porn  from Sinclair Sexsmith’s Sugarbutch Chronicles.  All I can say is that they know how to write. She writes porn that holds my attention. And makes me what to be sexual again.

Alternatively I am also reading Black Reconstruction In America, by W.E.B.DuBois. It is an admirable work for its scholarship and DuBois’ consummate skill as a writer. The author’s Marxist perspective is not concealed and, because of the openness, the scholarship is not compromised. 

But I’m emotionally fatigued. I’ve been obsessing over trains. I want to watch the same train pass through Galesburg, Ft. Madison and La Plata, as if following the same train is some great feat.The LA-bound Southwest Chief #3 is passing through Ft Madison now. I must say the view here is stunning, yet again. 

J works and sleeps.

I have lost a lot of motivation. I am sure it will return. “There ain’t no cure for the summertime blues”, goes the refrain of a Sixties song. I feel them. Living down South, the summertime blues go with the territory.

I have a kinky story idea that I should write down. Maybe in a couple of days.

That’s about it.

The lesser god of Explanations

Was cast down from Olympus

When Zeus tired as the endless words

Left his lips in torrents

When a simple nod would do.

In Acadia, he found a nymph

Prattling on with questions,

As the randy displaced god

Took the pins from her chiton

Then buggered her to silence

As both god and nymph

Learned their lesson.

You don’t want to live in fear

 Because you are

Who you are. 

That isn’t asking 

All that much.

Truth be told I feel the same

But who I am 

has learned to hide a little better.

I have found another site to “railfan”, to sit in my recliner and watch trains. Virtual Railfan, LLC has a network of cameras on YouTube.

I started watching trains in Ashland, Virginia, near my home. The camera looks down Railroad Avenue. It is a busy site with CSX and Amtrak trains going through town all day. The activity of the town also provides diversion, entertainment, as I watch the day progress.

Recently I moved on to Ft Madison, Iowa on the banks of the Mississippi River, an awesome sight in its own right, without the added feature of trains. Ft. Madison has a swing bridge over the river with a span that pivots open to allow barge traffic on the river to pass through.

La Plata, Missouri is a stop on the BNSF tracks, more or less South of Ft Madison. If one has time to waste and knows the schedule, it is possible to see a train pass through Ft Madison, then La Plata.

This brings me to Galesburg, Illinois. It would be first in a sequrnce: Galesburg, Ft. Madison, La Plata. Right now I am watching a freight pass through Galesburg. I am pretty sure I saw this train cross the river at Ft. Madison. Now it moves through Galesburg.

This is America going about its business. The freight trains haul plywood, bulk chemicals in both solid form or liquid, in tanker cars for that. There are boxcarss, owned by leasing companies, such as GATX. Then, of course, are the cargo containers, that travel the world, carrying the manufactured products of Korea, China, Taiwan, and Malaysia ultimately to a Wal-Mart or Target near you. From time to time I will see a container bearing the Amazon Prime logo. At least I think I do. When a symbol is everywhere, I can get confused.

So the morning progresses. There is a light rain falling in Ft Madison and Galesburg. It is sunny in Ashland, I need to check La Plata, but I suspect you’re not interested.

Later, folks

I think I want to sleep. I need to sleep, I tell myself. I can’t really write, without my heart becoming noticeable in my chest, my eyelids heavy.

I want to sleep, yet when I take the plunge and climb back into bed, I lie there, with my mind still racing. I sit, my mind racing a little less, thinking about J and why I just don’t take her, when I need to take her.

That’s it. I run around putting a fine point on everything. Is she or is she not my wife? Being used sexually is part of the deal. It’s how we keep our sanity, by admitting this urge exists. You think with all that’s been said and written about sex in the last 150 years, we would have figured that out, the two of us, I mean.

Apparently not.

It did not take long for me to start feeling down and negatively toward things. Slightly paranoid, planning my escape from America. I know. It’s completely delusional thinking.

I don’t know. I lay in bed, began to experience some back pain, and the negativity just started to well up from inside of me.

I will sit, see what happens

Such a glorious Sunday it turned out to be. A vacuumed carpet and the waste paper and magazines consigned to recycling, a shower taken, teeth brushed, cheeks and neck shaved. I sit in clean clothes with a plastic tumbler of iced Earl Grey tea on the table to my right.

As a change of scenery I am watching BNSF tracks in Fort Madison, Iowa. The tracks handle a lot of freight. The tracks flank the Mississippi River, then cross the river on a bridge and into Illinois, near Nauvoo, where Joseph Smith, Prophet of the Latter Day Saints met his demise, if memory serves me.

Speaking of memory, I recall the story, learned I know not where, of how Thomas Jonathon Jackson earned his sobriquet.

“There stands Jackson like a stone wall! Rally behind the Virginian!” Commanded South Carolina’s General Bee at the Battle of First Manassas.

Funny how the tangible can be desttoyed, but the idea, the legend, the memory and the dream live on, undaunted by the tattooed cowards of the night who afflict our city like those other nocturnal denizens, the rats.

Memory conserves so much. Some memories live on in the brain, others in the muscle, some even in the cock, to be recalled in tumescence for time to time.

Anger seems so distant now, as I gaze upon the tracks, park, and river on this idyllic afternoon.