Mass+Brunch=A Good Day

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This was a Sunday that began with my feeling tired and wishing I could sleep some more. I went upstairs, looking to sleep some more and planning to skip Mass.( I had an excuse, as if Jesus cares about excuses). J and I decide to go. We get there in plenty of time. We extend comfort and condolences to friends who lost their 35 year old daughter very suddenly. We hear a good homily from our Deacon. We meet the seminarian, Armando, who will be something of parochial “intern”for the next year. He strikes me as a young man who will become a good priest. As always, there are plenty of cute babies and young children to boost the spirits of a man without grandchildren.

After Mass, we go to Maggiano’s to have brunch and people watch the mall customers passing in front of our window. The brunch at Maggiano’s is their best value and we had a coupon in our email. J had the crème brûlée French toast, which, for all intents and purposes, is a donut without the hole. I had the braised beef hash with poached eggs.

We get home. Now I take that nap. I fix a quick dinner, sit and rekax

I’m taking a Jeffrey Epstein /Ilhan Omar/ Donald Trump respite, watching Popeye cartoons. I always think, watching these cartoons, that we were perfecting animation in America, while the Germans were perfecting the tank, dive bombers and mechanized warfare.

Amazon

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I have an Amazon Prime membership. I’m trying to take full advantage of it. I also have a Kindle, which I find difficult to read from. Truth be told, I wonder how useful any of this stuff is. And how much Amazon has stored about me, my life, values, tastes, and preferences. I have a paranoid fear that Jeff Bezos wants to rule the World. And if i don’t fit in, Bezos will have me killed, if I’m not dead after a suitable time interval. All because I buy stuff from Amazon, but not everything I want or need.

Call me crazy. But I’m like an addict at this point. Anybody else want out of the digital world? I realize now it is an “all or none” proposition. The name is control. Where can we “dropouts” go to survive, even thrive, without making these diabolical bargains?

Awake After Two Sleep Intervals

I fell asleep the first time while J started a video on an Indian restaurant in France. I couldn’t watch it because I had to contort my body into an uncomfortable position in order to do so. I listened and fell asleep. After a couple of hours I was awake, went downstairs, then came back up, put in a Seinfeld DVD from Season 6 that starts with The Jimmy. I remember that episode and the one that followed, The Doodle. I was up again around 0200 Hrs. I couldn’t get back to sleep, mind just working away on stuff, so I dressed, went downstairs to brew some decaf and watch YouTube videos.There is an interesting sound film of Kyoto Japan from 1929 playing. Girls are singing before a statue of The Buddha.

At this point I have yet to drink any coffee. I am fraught with guilt for “wasting food”. You are never too old to let parental messages of guidance from your childhood, kill off a good time, as if wasting maybe fifty cents worth of ground coffee will disrupt the economic equilibrium of the household.

OK time for the coffee. Had the coffee and a quesadilla. Now I am getting really sleepy. I think I am close to going back to bed.

Evening Ramble

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Today, J and I did stuff together when her work day was over. We did mundane stuff like go to the gas station, then a late lunch, then to Target to pick up drugs for me, (my regular maintenance drugs, nothing cool), and then to my semiannual psychiatric visit.

Lunch was at Red Lobster. We both had wood-grilled shrimp on a skewer. They were pretty good. The server was a nice guy. His amiable personality was worth the price of the meal. Target was a quick trip. I like this particular Target, because it’s where The Tattooed People shop and I wanted to check out the ink. One woman had a nice half sleeve but I couldn’t get but a half way glance.

Then to the psychiatrist. We drove through parts of the City/County area that were undergoing new construction in both political subdivisions. There was this ginormous thing with very tall nets that were part of a golf thing. I don’t play golf, so I didn’t know such a structure was being built.

In Virginia, hard liquor sales are a state monopoly. We drove by the liquor warehouses, that will be relocated and a fancy new ball park will be put up on the old site. Ramshackle abandoned buildings have been razed to make way for Wa-Wa convenience stores.

We arrived at the offices, part of VCU’s new pediatric mental health facility. The old one was built in the 1960’s and looked like it used blueprints for a facility built somewhere in the old Soviet bloc. It had a certain gulag quality about it. If the kid wasn’t crazy when he got there, he would have been shortly thereafter.

The new facility is modern, spacious, clean and cheerful. It was money well-spent. The building, even in its lobby and waiting area reflect hope. My pediatric psychiatrist has mostly pediatric patients, but I have seen him since my younger son was his patient. It’s an accommodation that works. He’s a good guy. I’m honest with him And it’s a good relationship. He is about my age.I told him I had some despair that seemed to be related to inactivity and sleep deprivation. I will track my physical activity and my sleep patterns to see if the issue resolves itself. If not, we will reassess the meds.

J and I drove home. She is exhausted from her work schedule. She is resting. I’m writing.

Funny how attitudes can shift quickly if one is committed to one’s partner.

I had a mango/ Greek yogurt smoothie with a little coconut milk, wheat germ and maple syrup. It is all I wanted for dinner.

A train pulled in on the YouTube channel. It discharged passengers in Ashland on its way to Richmond.

Tired.Bedtime.

St Edith Stein

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Today is the Feast Day of St Theresa Benedicta Of The Cross, born Edith Stein. She was born in Prussia in 1891, one of eleven children in an observant Jewish family.

Possessing a keen intellect, she studied philosophy under Heidegger and Husserl. She had become atheist, but she admired the way her Catholic friends practiced their faith. Reading the autobiography of St Theresa of Avila brought about her conversion to the Catholic Faith. Later she would become a Carmelite nun and took the name Theresa Benedicta of The Cross. She became a cloistered contemplative nun, devoted to a life of prayer.

Her life paralleled the rise to power of the Nazis. Nazi anti-Semitism was based on their specious “racial theory”. So having Jewish “blood” was tantamount to a death sentence. The Carmelite order transferred her to The Netherlands, but she was ultimately taken by the Nazis from the convent, sent to Auschwitz, and murdered in the gas chamber, along with her sister Rose, also a convert and a Carmelite nun. Today is the seventy-seventh anniversary of their martyrdom.

Fittingly St Edith Stein is the Patroness of Europe. Europe today, like America, suffers a profound crisis of Faith, buffeted by Islamic immigration on the one hand and secular agnosticism on the other. The challenge for European Catholics is to witness the Faith, always with Love, for the Salvation of souls. What better Patroness to ask for intercessory prayer.

St Theresa Benedicta, pray for us.

Up Before Noon

I got up around 0300 hrs. I was awake while J got ready for work. I stayed awake for awhile then went back to bed around 0800 hrs, slept soundly. Then I got up, showered, and put on clean clothes, my 501 jeans and my Cienfuegos Elefantes tee shirt from Ebbetts Field Flannels. It’s a Cuban League baseball team.

I have a psychiatric appointment this afternoon. Maybe it’s time to look at my depression meds to see if they’re doing the job.

All in all, life is good.

Barf

I started a puff piece in Finance about Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, who according to the title could “save or break Western Democracy”. Really? You mean like Lincoln or Churchill saved their countries at their darkest hours? By doing what, shadow banning? Hiring more Marxist slugs to monitor people they don’t like? Jack Dorsey is forty-fucking-two. He lives a life of absolute privilege and he’s gonna save Western Democracy? Oh please.

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American People.”- H.L. Mencken

Woke

As in awake. Got up. I’m drinking the early morning Sleepy Time tea iced. Actually it is as good iced as it is hot.

Had a dream about selling, wherein I am completely unprepared to go on a sales call. It was a perfect metaphor for what I did for much of my working career.

J is home from work. She is tired. Who wouldn’t be, if they got up at 3:30 AM?

Now I’m watching a stoppage in play in the West Indies vs India ODI from Guyana, of all places.

Life is good.

A Sleep-Deprived Man Ponders The World.

I have been up about two hours after getting 2 hours sleep. I made a pot of Celestial Seasonings Sleepy Time Herb Tea. I thought I would go a day without caffeine and see what happens.

There is still high drama performing in my head. I see being beaten or spanked as cathartic. There would this sadomasochistic psychodrama played out and I would be “normal” afterwards. “Purged” may be a more suitable word. We all go through life, I think, with these private dramas, our little stories. To an outsider, they mean nothing. To the person who is the star of that internal drama, they mean everything.

Maybe I should find a woman who likes perfume and makeup, who keeps a clean house. But that is most likely delusional thinking on my part. That’s the sleep deprivation speaking.

I fixed J’s lunch last night. She went to work this morning. I will see her later.

Right now, as I watch the street and tracks in Ashland, I notice how the street lights make the green leaves stand out, as joggers and walkers start their days. There is light on the pavement that reminds me of that Edward Hopper painting Nighthawks. But I don’t want to be reminded of Hopper, but rather of Raphael or Rembrandt, Rubens or van Eyck. Even Breughel would be better in line with my mood right now. I think of the Bible stories that meant the world to the medievals, like The Annunciation, the Baptism Of Our Lord, the Miracle At Cana. Jesus turns water to wine. We look at people eating in the middle of the night. No wonder we’re crazy. Go reread September 1, 1939 by W. H. Auden. Think of Nighthawks when you do.

Train #98, Northbound Silver Meteor just passed through. Today it is only a half hour late. That is almost on time.

I made hibiscus flower tea. If I could be some place else, it would be Jamaica or Cuba. The Cayman Islands, maybe, Little Cayman though.

Bedtime, yet again. I fantasize two lesbians take me to their bed, because maybe I am the one male they can and want to connect with. Vanity on my part? Of course. I hold no illusion that any thought I have is grounded in reality.

Remember.. Very rich people want us to accept the world they constructed. And the messes they made. Our consolations are gasoline and war stories, as if the bravery and suffering validate it all.