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I am 66 years old. I swam 3250 meters today. That is 2 miles and then some. I feel bulletproof. Viagra? Who needs that?
Short Post
25 Saturday Mar 2017
Posted in Health Issues, Sport
Burning Daylight
20 Monday Mar 2017
Posted in Catholic Life
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Even though I am retired, I still believe I have to be doing something “useful”. There was this block on the report card in elementary school that said “Uses Time Wisely”. I knew that one better be checked or there would be adverse outcomes at home. Last night, I was tired, fell asleep next to MrsCorC?, while Christopher Guest’s Best In Show was on. I love that film, but I dozed off anyway. At its conclusion, Mrs CorC? announced that Downton Abbey would resume in the DVD player. I was now awake, unable to resume my sleep. I got up to brush my teeth. While brushing, I realized I had yet to pray The Rosary today. I blew that off with an “Oh well”, then started my flossing.
After my dental hygiene ritual, I went to the other bedroom, put my jammies on and started Bach’s St Matthew Passion on the CD player. It was about 11:10 PM, at which point I said, “Just go pray The Rosary anyway. No way are you sleepy!”. Downstairs I went and began, contemplating the Fruits of each Glorious Mystery; The Resurrection-Faith, The Ascension-Hope, Descent of The Holy Spirit-Love of God, The Assumption-Grace of a Happy Death, The Coronation-Trust in Mary’s Intercession. Praying The Rosary gets me out of my head and my self-absorption. Prayer rekindles my love for humanity and my concern for God’s Creation.
So I’m finally tired enough to go to sleep. And sleep I do. Next thing I know it is 9:20 AM. MrsCorC? is getting ready for work and I am left wondering what to do with the day. Will I Use My Time Wisely, even though Mrs Shanholtz, my First Grade teacher, is not around to report on me?
I’m writing this blog post, perhaps going to an AA meeting, then I’m going swimming. There’s straightening to do in anticipation of the FIOS/Verizon guy coming on Wednesday. There is dinner to fix.
Busy. Busy. Busy. Who keeps score, now that Mrs Shanholtz isn’t around?
Propaganda vs. Public Relations.
18 Saturday Mar 2017
Posted in Big Business, Health Issues
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It’s been one of those days when a magazine article I read last night continues to unsettle me. I can’t let it go.
I got my April 2017 copy of Men’s Fitness magazine yesterday. In it, along with the handy hints for “losing your gut”, is an article extolling the virtues of cannabis in various iterations. Somehow it is the wonder drug for athletic performance. OK. I suppose. But tell that to the couch potato toking on the sofa and hitting the Domino’s number on his speed dial. I strongly suspect this article was produced by the public relations firm lobbying for cannabis legalization and planted in a compliant magazine.
Nearly a hundred years ago, the father of modern American public relations, Edward Bernays, had three women light up cigarettes on Park Ave one Sunday. Photographers were there to cover this manufactured event and photographs of these ladies lighting up appeared in print. Bernays was a nephew of Sigmund Freud and he used Freudian psychology in his work. In his Freudian imagination, he decided that a cigarette was a substitute for the penis and the ladies were envious. Since they didn’t have the “genuine article”, a cigarette was as good as ,uh, a pecker. I’m not making this up.
Well, for whatever reason, it worked. Women started smoking, and, ultimately, dying of smoking related illness.
Bernays was quite candid in his assertion that public relations and propaganda were synonymous. We now associate the word propaganda with monsters like Goebbels. To us it is synonymous with falsehood. Public Relations has morphed into “spin”. We are now supposed to believe that marijuana is a benign substance, at the suggestion and urging of the marijuana legalization speculators, advocates, and entrepreneurs.
Nevermind that marijuana can be and is, abused by its users every day. Somebody wants to make big bucks off the misery.
Sometimes I Need To Just Express Myself
17 Friday Mar 2017
Posted in Sexual Identity
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Mistress Keyboard is demanding her due as I sit before her. All she wants is for me to pour out my very soul to her.
1). I was completely unprepared to work in the world of business-to-business sales for as long as I did. All through it I felt the way I did when I walked into a fraternity rush event at a house that was interested only in old family money and a Social Register pedigree. Out. Of. Place. I only worked in that environment for thirty-five years. Go figure.
2). Sex without Love is totally inauthentic to me. On the other hand, my sexual desire can delude me into thinking that I am in love with a woman, so I can have guilt-free sex. What happens, of course, is that I create havoc in the lives of others and myself. Then I ultimately fall in love with a lady whose libido is a casualty of menopause. Can you say irony? Still being in love beats the alternative any day of the week.
3). A sexual imagination (aka Dirty Mind) is a marvelous resource. It turns the mundane into the exotic in the firing of a neuron. Loading the dishwasher can become an exquisite ordeal.
“Have I pleased you, Mistress?”
Where Have I Been?
15 Wednesday Mar 2017
Posted in cooking, Exercise/ Fitness
It’s been six days since I last posted. Too long. There are things I want to say, activities I want to recount, dreams I would like to reveal. I need privacy. I can’t write when my wife, partner, spousal unit is around. I don’t know why.
I have been consistently exercising again, as in 35 days out of the last 49. Good old discipline. Good old nonkinky discipline. My swimming workout is now 2500 meters free style per day. If I don’t swim, I will walk four miles in my townhouse circuit, resting 2 days per week. It feels great. Sometimes, while swimming or walking, I let my mind wander. I fantasize about being in a sort of BDSM “fat camp”, where Trainer/ Dominatrices push out-of-shape males into top physical condition. Lurid. Silly. But all fantasies are absurd,lurid, and silly to some degree. Maybe the silly fantasies will find their way here as blogposts.
My cooking has been uninspired, treading water in the culinary sense. I imagine fixing a gumbo with chicken, Andouille sausage, red beans and gumbo (aka okra). Okra is verboten around Das alte Haus, but I think within the context of soup I may be able to pull such a daring venture off.
The Verizon door-to-door solicitors came by this afternoon. It is colder here than a well-digger’s toe. These intrepid lads out canvassing deserved some reinforcement. So I finally scheduled a FIOS installation. This means I have to take the lead in sprucing up the old mini-storage unit we call home in order that the Verizon guys can do their job. MrsCorC? may not like this, but she will get over it. Or she won’t. Worse things can happen.
Life is pretty mundane. No blizzard. It’s been a fairly mild winter with just one decent size snowstorm. But that’s OK. Other than needing roads safe for emergency vehicles to operate, snow removal is waste of time. It usually melts within a week here in Richmond. The daffodils, croci, Bradford pear are all blooming or have bloomed.
“Life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone”- John Mellencamp
Morning- 9 March 2017
09 Thursday Mar 2017
Posted in Classical Music, food, Sexual Identity, sleep
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I wish I could say my day started at 8:30. But that is merely the most recent time I woke up. Maybe it started at 1:51 when the pain of being in one position for too long jarred me awake. I thought it would show some sort of noble effort if I tried to go back to sleep next to MrsCorC?; that I actually wanted to be there with her, her, wearing her beige cotton granny panties and her forest green turtleneck with little gold Brooks Brothers sheep embroidered on it. But no. Her nightwear is whatever remains on her body after she takes off her trousers (khaki) and bra (beige) after work. Reality speaks volumes when I awaken in the dead of night. I do so desire to love you, have you, goddammit, FUCK you.
I get up, go downstairs. I’m sort of hungry. I rummage in the fridge for the log of goat cheese I bought at BJ’s, find it. I ignore the little bit of blue mold growing on the leavings of chevre already consumed, making slices to add to the rice crackers, gluten-free, I bought at BJ’s yesterday. Crunchmaster. A Master, forgodsakes! Is there a Crunchmaster General? Is there some little Crunchsub, out there, eagerly yearning for the Crunchmaster to take him/her in sordid, kinky, gluten-free cracker defilement and depravity? I digress. I have my little snack, topped off with dates, purchased at BJ’s. (Where else?) for some insane reason, I fix a pot of decaf, thinking I might just drink some.
Then I go to my tan leather Danish reclining chair and just sit. I don’t read, turn on the TV, or make an attempt at The Rosary (Thursday: Luminous Mysteries). I just sit and revel in the stillness and the silence. Finally 3:00 AM rolls around. I go back upstairs with a mug of decaffeinated coffee I won’t drink. I go to the other bedroom, take off my pyjama top and scapular, put on a CD of Schubert Lieder, sung by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. I am reluctant to take off the pyjama bottoms and sleep, completely nude! Why? Is sexual repression contagious, like some bizarro-world version of the clap?
Next thing I know it is 8:30. I am awake. I hear the shower running. Mrs CorC? is getting ready for work. I get up, embrace her. She remarks that I am strong. I infer that that comment is an acknowledgement of my sexuality. My hopes are raised Maybe we will be lovers again.
No Mass
05 Sunday Mar 2017
Posted in Uncategorized
I can only call yesterday The Day Of The Backache. It never seemed to go away. It wasn’t all that painful, but it was persistent. And I was tired . I took a morning nap, an afternoon nap and was in bed fairly early. I woke up around 3, hurting, and finally took 2 Extra-Strength Tylenol. I got some sleep but a day of pain wore me out for today.
Today Mrs CorC? is driving to Fredericksburg for lunch with her brother and sister-in-law. It would entail about five hours of riding and sitting and is just too much for me. It was her suggestion that I stay home. I offered no argument, because, as much as I like her family, I knew I wasn’t up for the experience, err, ordeal.
So I’m home, skipping Mass, unless I go at 4:30 or 5:00. I plan to swim in a short. I want to read posts from the bloggers I follow, and have a spot of lunch. I will write more later.
Putting On The Brave Face
04 Saturday Mar 2017
Posted in Health Issues, Love and stuff
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Life ain’t easy. I hurt pretty much all day. It hurt to walk. Or to sit. I got through a shopping trip to BJ’s and came out with some frozen salmon, a bag of turbinado and a loaf of bread.
When Mrs CorC? came home I fixed the salmon.She resumed her viewing of Downton Abbey on DVD. I thought I would like this, but it’s a soap opera for the PBS/BBC types.
The weekend comes and I think there will be quality time together. Wrong. Oh well.
There is a saying in AA. “Don’t give up five minutes before the miracle.” I think about that a lot. And I am tired.
Sleepers Awake? Gladly!
03 Friday Mar 2017
Posted in Gentrification
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I never imagined I would have a nightmare wherein my smartphone disintegrated and I lost my shoes. Richmond has a lot of old neighborhoods; many in various states of gentrification. I imagined a neighborhood with artists, and restored movie theatres and houses being rehabilitated. There was a street festival in progress and I found myself near an old tobacco factory that had been turned into something else. I got lost. There were people appearing from earlier in my life, sleeping in strange rooming houses and the festival going on and a Greek restaurant nearby. I tried to call Mrs CorC?. It was here that my phone literally fell apart. I had old bosses appearing, promoting products, and we needed passes to get somewhere. I noticed my shoes were missing and I needed help retrieving them. While we were waiting for an Amtrak train to stop, I woke up.
It wasn’t a horrible dream, just confusing. Am I supposed to spend the rest of the day figuring it out? But there’s other stuff to do; AA, swimming at the Y, finding some fish to fix tonight.
Mrs CorC? had a conference call this morning. I teased her that it was about having too many conference calls. Every time she has a conference call, I thank God I am retired.
Free.
01 Wednesday Mar 2017
Posted in Gender Roles, Love and stuff, seduction, Sexual Identity
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I walked four miles in warm, windy weather under a bright sun. The weather would change to blustery, with dark clouds and rain after I finished.
Inside, after my walk, I stripped off my sweaty clothes and savored the free feeling that only nudity offers. My imagination put aside the reality of differing libidos and values and inhibitions as I fancied myself deliberately making love with my wife. Tasting her body, caressing her, feeling her kisses on my skin. Taking her with certainty, authority, and power.
Dispatches From Dystopia 