Does it make sense that we get in our cars and drive to a gym, where we walk on a treadmill?

Yeah. I know there are all kinds of extenuating circumstances, but let the irony at the core of the paradox sink in. If we can’t walk outside our own homes for reasons of safety or security, something is amiss.

I’m not saying don’t go to the gym or don’t drive to the gym. Gyms exist because they fulfill a need, for social interaction at the very least (or most).

Chalk this rant up to questioning how we do things, of how we got to where we are today.

Caution: These are observations about apartheid,the social and legal system that dominated social policy in The Republic of South Africa until the early 90’s It is NOT an endorsement.

The first thing one notices about apartheid is that it was an attempt by a minority (South Africans of European descent) to control the native and mixed heritage populations, Xhosa, Zulu, Coloureds. It was all about minority control.

In the USA, at this moment, politicians representing minority populations and civil servants of the administrative branch are seeking to marginalize members of the population of the dominant ethnic faction, Americans of European descent. The few are seeking to dominate the many, just as in Apartheid-era South Africa.

The analogy isn’t perfect. Right now, white people in the USA have plenty of money, power, and guns. But looking 20 or 30 years down the road, could minorities come to dominate the government, the legal system and the economy and marginalize the majority population?

If the legal environment of Affirmative Action and racial “equity” continues, will American society move along a track of instability and unrest?

Can minority factions hold on to political power, as they do in urban enclaves presently and still claim to be politically disenfranchised and oppressed? Just consider the City of Chicago, IL, for example. Or Detroit, MI, or Newark, NJ?

Remember the saying from Orwell’s Animal Farm: “All animals are created equal. Some animals are more equal than others.”

That is a philosophy, whether explicitly stated or implied, that inevitably promotes instability, whether apartheid South Africa, the Jim Crow era American South, or 21st Century “Woke” America .

I started cleaning last night drifting over into the early hours of this morning. I cleaned counter tops, mopped floors, cleaned the disgusting pink mildew out of the bathtub, washed the shower curtain liner in hot water and bleach. Today I will vacuum and dust. I have some impressive cobwebs that are slated for removal.

Right now, it is almost 0700. I kinda slept for a couple of hours. I am exhausted, but I’m also keyed up from my activity .

The takeaway, for me, is that activity can defeat depression. I will also deal with the junk mail that is infesting out already tight living space, Lebensraum. This activity is particularly valuable when necessary cleaning is performed.

So right now, I will go back to bed. J is home from work. She brought me a French cruller from Dunkin’. It has been awhile since I had a donut. One was plenty.

I really am tired!

It is 1630 hours (4:30 PM) She may have gotten out of bed for the rest of the day, but maybe not. She is running the water in the shower. That means she will be awake and ambulatory for the rest of our time together, before she goes to work.

I’m stuck. I could leave, for 2 hours, for the rest of my life, but I’m stuck. The slow agony of disconnection lingers like the slow agony of my arthritic hip. We were going to Cracker Barrel to eat corned beef and cabbage on this St Patrick’s Day, but they chose not to have the special. Oh well.

St Patrick’s Day. We honour this missionary priest with everything but evangelizing, in a Church that treats salvation as if it were a vestigial organ, like the appendix, present but not necessary. And the emptiness resounds from the ambo like the clap of wood at Holy Thursday Mass.

If there was any hope in the Fabian Socialist world view, George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells would be revered as the secular saints of the brutal universe of abortions and euthanasia. But we all know the lies, the lies many of us choose to believe anyway.

As so many do, I choose to stay. And hope a new forest grows above the charred trunks and ashes of the old, in my heart, in my home and in The Church.

I looked at J this afternoon, driving back from the barbeque joint we prefer. I had been saying odd things, like

“How did Vermeer have time to do all the paintings while he was making and selling those wood chippers?”

Comments like that. There were other gems. Then I laid my cards out,

“There’s a circus going on up there in my head. Most days, I’m doing the very best I can.”

Yeah. I’m harmless to myself and others. Still I fluctuate between slightly eccentric or full bore crazy, as in stock up on freeze-dried beef-a-roni and 5.56 mm ammunition crazy.

Tonight I finally had time to remember my friend Franz. He loved opera. I have DVD’s of Lucia di Lamermoor that he recommended, the last two he made for me, the day before he died.

I’m drained. My friend E. had to put her 17 year old dog down today. So I guess I’m thinking back about loss. And grief. And how compassion is free to give away.

There’s other stuff, all negative, about lies, mendacity, deceit, and manipulation. We have to keep going. Maybe there’s someone who needs to know how much you feel their sorrow, rather than how you would fix things, assuming God was going to loan you His Magic Wand.(not that kind).

That’s enough.

Let’s tell the truth about our “system”. Let’s be honest about the prosperity we gloat about.

That phrase. Jesus used it. You don’t have to believe Him on any point of theology, but He got this much right.

“Whited sepulchres”.

Coffins, nice on the outside, but hiding the death and decay within.

That’s this world we built. Beautiful. And if it ain’t beautiful where you are, maybe a little too stinky, maybe a little too decayed, just get in the SUV, you work so hard to pay for, and find that perfect place. Take the kids, and maybe a bag of dope for toking later, as you cogitate on your beautiful life, brought to you by you and the people who own you.

We don’t have a Stalin or a Brezhnev or even a Gorbachev to lie to us about happiness. We think our system “works“. The Five Year Plans or the perestroika couldn’t fill the hole for them. General Motors or the Social Security Administration or Goldman Sachs or the World Economic Forum can’t fill the holes for us.

There ain’t enough crap in the world to fill the holes in our hearts.

Sucks, doesn’t it?

I’m sitting on my front porch, on a beautiful day, and this snatch of dialogue came to me. I don’t know if anybody I was ever with said it, but it rings true, if only for me.

One night, we were alone. We’d been drinking. We? I, at least, had been, anyway. We drank the cheap white wine, sold in the three liter glass jugs. It was from California, but it didn’t really matter. Both of us were in it for the buzz, betting it would get there before the puking started.

“You like sex, don’t you?” She asked, matter of factly, and out of the blue. She had a knack for cutting to the chase.

“Yeah.”

“Wish I could. But I hate that feeling. Vulnerable, exposed. It’s not just my thighs I’m opening, you know. Men don’t get that. Maybe some women too. But there I am, my cunt, my heart, my head, exposed, like a grand biopsy of me. And I fucking hate that I need somebody else!”

So I joined LinkedIn. What that means is I go through the listings , the profiles of people, comparing my life to other people I have known in my life .

This is toxic for me. Not that I will drink or use, but that I will somehow decide that by not playing The Comparison Game, I am admitting I am a failure.

So now I am watching the Sacred Liturgy from Ekaterinberg. The priests, deacons and choristers are praying and chanting, as they have done for centuries. They remain. Stalin is gone. Brezhnev is gone.

Breaking the night silence is the choir singing Praise The Lord by Sergei Rachmaninoff, an Orthodox Liturgical chant.

The icon of The Virgin and Christ Child is the only image on the screen.

Beauty. Sublime Beauty.

The prayer we offer to God from our hearts,And Divine Love, which we receive from The Lord in our all too fragile hearts.

Let Beauty strike the spark that ignites this flame of Love.

Both my adult children came by today.

When one is 70, it is a big deal.

I can’t say more than that.