Working Title: Catching Up

11 Thursday May 2017

Posted by in Relationships, Sexuality

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So it’s been a while since I put my actual thoughts, feelings and activities into the blog. I’ve thought about a lot of things I would like to say, from a bucket list of my deeper desires, to thoughts about our narcissistic culture, to my latest endeavors around getting our house free of junk.  Through it all I’ve read y’all’s blogs and am grateful I don’t have to face the problems some of you are experiencing, and am jealous of the FUN some of you all are having.

Let’s start with the conundrum that is sex.  Some people look at sex as a struggle between procreation and pleasure, that the experience of any kind sexual pleasure is ipso facto  a perversion.  The sole legitimate purpose of sex from that perspective is procreation, bringing another human being into the world.  Well, we all know that that is  quite the yoke to place around a person’s neck.  On the other hand to devalue procreative sex is to deny our humanity.  We need to nurture, both men and women.   There is, I think a middle ground, a via media.  Sex is about intimacy.  From that intimacy springs both ecstatic pleasure and new life. There is dissent from my position.  I get that, but I’m not here to argue.  I respect all perspectives on sex.

Next: THE HOUSE.   This place is chock full of crap, Mrs CorC’s old client files, books I probably won’t read, clothes I won’t wear, tchotchkes collecting dust.  I’ve written about it before and letting go of it is hard. It is the wasted energy of my life made both tangible and burdensome.  The latest strategy involves my working on one room at a time. My bedroom/ man cave is getting attention. I just discovered that an affiliate of Books A Million, 2nd & Charles,  buys used books and am selling some of my stuff to them.  Thank God. They evaluate up to three boxes of books a day and make an offer on the books they think they can sell.  The real value lies in getting the books out of the house; the books they don’t take can go directly to the Goodwill Donation Center situated across the street.

Speaking of which, time to load my three daily boxes and get going.

Later.

3250 Meters Swimming

22 Saturday Apr 2017

Posted by in Exercise/ Fitness, food, Sport

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Uh, fascinating. Really? I had last done 2+ miles four weeks ago. It feels great, that sweet exercise high that beats the pants off dope or booze.

I was busy trying to talk myself out of working out today or taking it easy.  But once in the water and moving, all the negative self-talk disappeared.  I actually felt my mind relax, focusing on the laps.

Last week I swam 10,000 meters and to repeat last week’s totals, I needed the 3250 meter distance today. And it really wasn’t hard. I finished, actually lost count of the laps swum. 3250 Meters is 65 laps in a 25-meter pool or 130 lengths. Putting my brain on auto-pilot and just being mindful of my surgical sites (lumbar spine and right shoulder) was my emphasis.

Mrs CorC? and I went to one of our favorite unpretentious restaurants, with good entrees, costing not too much.  I had a blackened rockfish Caesar salad. She had crabcake sliders with sweet potato waffle fries. 

Richmond is a restaurant town. There are lots of start-ups with new concepts. I can tell you that Bruce Springsteen goes to Mama Zu’s on Oregon Hill when he is in town. It’s owned by a buddy of his.

Now FIOS is bringing me a baseball game, Washington Nationals at the Mets. Good game in extra innings. I am at the point where I don’t care who wins. I just want it to be over. My son mentioned to me tonight that the real value of sport is that it is inconsequential. True that.

Wednesday.

20 Thursday Apr 2017

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The dryer vent cleaning guy came today. He pulled some of the accumulated lint out of the exhaust port. Kind of cool. The exhaust port is on the roof.

And I went swimming. 

I don’t think I’m much of a sunbeam for Jesus today.

“Tomorrow is another day,”- Scarlett O’Hara.

Tuesday: Random Thoughts

19 Wednesday Apr 2017

Posted by in cooking, Depression, Exercise/ Fitness, Sport

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Last month, we ponied up the money to get FIOS.  So far, I am happy with it for both the internet speeds and the television package. My new favorite sport is Women’s College Softball. The women are great athletes and competitors and the game is very interesting and fun to watch. It’s worth the cost of FIOS to watch these athletes. 

I did some house cleaning, floor mopping, tub-scrubbing, deep-down cleaning. I worked up a good sweat and had a generally fun time. 

I fixed some salmon steaks for dinner. Used the convection oven  feature. Nice fish. I went with the wild sockeye salmon rather than the farm-raised kind.

It was a good day that included a 2500 meter swim. Life is good. 

When I do positive things, I feel positively about the state of the world. It’s not as if there are no problems and concerns.  Rather, I feel that there isn’t an issue that can’t be resolved. Enemies? None that I’m aware of.

Treading Water

15 Saturday Apr 2017

Posted by in Catholic Life, cooking, Exercise/ Fitness, Family

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Well, not literally.  As water goes, I’ve been swimming fairly consistently.  I have swum for the last four days, 2500 meters each day, a total of a little over six miles.  The opportunity to exercise is the best aspect of retirement for me.  I would have made a marvelous English gentleman of La Belle Epoque .  They made an art of not working, a worthy avocation if there ever was one.

I have a fruit salad to make this morning to bring to my Thomistic Philosophy discussion group at Church.  Bananas, pineapple, strawberries, and maybe a pear or two, should make a tasty treat.  I’m so tempted to say “Eff-it!” and go buy some donuts, but this is the wiser course of action.

Mrs CorC? and I will attend the Easter Vigil Mass.  It has a quiet dignity that is quite compelling.  Maybe, if we are lucky, the choir will chant the Litany of Loretto, in Latin. Tomorrow we will go to brunch at the local Maggiano’s. We have gotten out of the habit of elaborate family get-togethers at Easter and Christmas because my sister, a church musician, has a pretty demanding schedule.

My dream is to have the family here.  That would require that we get the house presentable. Mrs CorC? has given no indication that this is a priority for her.  To be quite frank, I consider her reticence a lack of interest in my family and my needs. And I am hurt.  Communicating my needs is a fruitless activity, I’ve learned.

My needs.  Every damn day, I long for affection, sexual intimacy, a little politically incorrect banter.  However, I have the relationship/marriage that I have.  Any change will have to spring from both her and my own personal transformation.  Dammit.

Passion and Catharsis

07 Friday Apr 2017

Posted by in Catholic Life, Classical Music

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I have a confession to make.  I am an enormous sentimental slob. I love passionate  over-the-top operatic duets.  I just finished listening to Luciano Pavarotti and Maria Guleghina sing the finalé duet of Giordano’s masterpiece Andrea Chenier,  Vicino A Té .  I cried, emotionally overwhelmed.  I defy you not to cry.

Truth be told, we need this catharsis.  The characters in the story are sacrificing their lives for others in that orgy of violence, The Reign of Terror that ended The French Revolution.  Every time I turn on the TV,  a movie saturated with violence, a vulgar, comic-book violence, is  promoted. The news?  Brutality.  We have become inured to brutality.  We all have.

We Christians are approaching the critical event of our Faith, the Passion and Crucifixion of Our Lord.  I’ve heard the Passion Story countless times and I am still haunted by the sheer ruthlessness and brutality of  it.   It doesn’t fit well with the Gospel of Nice.  Human beings don’t come off particularly well.  Even Jesus’s friends abandon Him.  We prefer not to think of the evil we are capable of and we are quick to say “Not me. I’m not a party to this atrocity, this execution, this abortion, this genocide.”  And maybe not.  Until. Until we get to dispatch someone we truly loathe or we think “deserves what’s coming to him.”  Until we decide that that particular war, in Syria, or Yemen, or Nigeria, or Sudan, or Darfur, or Chechnya,  or Kurdistan, or Afghanistan isn’t our problem,  just as our grandparents or great-grandparents thought the wars in Manchuria or Ethiopia or Spain weren’t theirs.

We see the killing every damn day and we bottle the grief up.  The rage is fine. We get to be enraged and let that out, part of the unisex Machismo we all can claim, embrace, and revel in.

The tears I cry when Chenier and Maddalena face death, buttressed by their love, arise because I know that some things are greater than the offerings of this world.  And that even when Love appears to lose, it wins.

Noon

06 Thursday Apr 2017

Posted by in Classical Music, Love and stuff, Sexuality

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IMG_20170406_101852_122NSFW. Adult Language

I woke up at some mysterious time in the dead of night, knowing only that it was too damn early to be up.  The cup of decaf I brewed was cold even in my fancy stainless steel mug .  Now I was hungry too.  Whole wheat toast with peanut butter and pear preserves sounded good.  Little did I know that that would be breakfast.  In a little while I felt sleepy again, back to bed I went.  I started the CD of Saint-Saëns Piano Concerto #1 Opus 17.  And I fell down the rabbit hole of sleep.

9:30.  I gotta pee!  and I’m up now, like it or not.  I take care of that need, get dressed. I want to get the paper. Opening the door, I see a squirrel on the porch rail. Cute in its squirrelness.  While Mrs CorC? gets ready for work, I lie in bed, watching her dress, appreciating her nudity as she hides it in her khakis trousers and striped knit top.

The longing gnaws at me again. My mind catalogs the passion I feel in acts, gestures, rituals of Sex. I’m tired of dressing up Sex in its Sunday Best of Married Love. The love is there all right, but it’s time to kiss the back of her neck, nibble her ear lobe,  fondle and stroke, probe and push and shatter the Good Girl Shield that protects the parched and withering flower of her Southern Baptist C-U-N-T. 

Yes, Precious, I will lick that cunt of yours, and put my finger in there.  I will  kiss the pucker of your anus, push my tongue in a bit.  Yes I am just that dirty and I want to get you dirty too. So when you get on your hands and knees with your Baptist butt on proud display, I will tease your pussy lips with my hard prick before I push it in, spread your ass cheeks, wet your butt hole with a gob of spit and push my  finger in to stuff you like a Christmas goose.

I want to hear you say the words you never say, because you’re afraid that God is keeping score and maybe He won’t forgive you. Because you’re not ashamed you said cock and cunt and asshole and clit and fuck . And let your own Husband do the nasty with you.  And, by Jesus, you even liked it!

Bach To Basics

06 Thursday Apr 2017

Posted by in Classical Music, Love and stuff

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That is not a spelling error.  I am sitting in the Chair of Omniscience, wondering Where Oh Where has civility in public discourse gone, among other things.  Baseball seems incapable of lifting this sad sack of bones out of this funk.

In my desperation, I turn to the work of one of the world’s great geniuses, Johann Sebastian Bach. I am listening to the Sonata #1 in G Minor, BWV 1001. All of a sudden, despair lifts as the beauty of the melody fills the room.

In the great scheme of things, 300 years is not a long time, but it is longer than 30 years.  We (millions of  us) are still listening to Bach. How many of routinely listen to serious modern music, written, say in the last 30 years? This is not to say that it is bad music, but does it engage our souls and our spirits? This musical drought extends to Church music also.  The hymns of the Christian churches, both Catholic and Protestant, may be catchy and sing-able but do they touch our souls?

Bach was a devout Christian.  Even his secular works inspire a spiritual serenity in me. I can reaffirm that 1) Life is worth living,  2) we can all contribute in our own way to make this Earth a better place, and 3) if God can forgive me for being the egotistical bastard that I am, I can forgive the myriad of people who frost my butt on a daily basis.

Naked Victory

04 Tuesday Apr 2017

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I’m sitting at the computer naked. Quite frankly it’s a tad warm, 80 degrees F outside. I need to turn on the AC, I guess.  Or not.  I hit  a workout goal today: to exercise 50 times in 70 days for the sake of consistency.  Every negative thought I could think of ran through my brain.  “Nausea will make you want to stop swimming.  “You’ll get those calf cramps.”   “They will close the pool because of a thunderstorm.” .

But I persevered. I stopped after 100 meters, rested a bit, restarted the stopwatch, then swam another 2050 meters.  I took my shower, headed home.

OK the naked part. Here’s the simple answer.  It feels good.