I increased my Prozac© dosage from 20mg to 40mg. Maybe the stress of insurrection is too much for my usual dosage. I am watching my Ukrainian metal detecting guys (Crazy Seeker on YT) magnet fishing in a river in Ukraine.They pulled out the outer casing of a Soviet era washing machine. The inner drum, mechanical parts and motor were missing. They also found an anchor. Earlier I watched the Brooklyn Bridge camera for a while. In the early morning sun, the Bridge is exquisitely beautiful.The coffee tasted good.this morning and I want another cup. Body pain and sleep deprivation are taking their toll on my mental health. Tomorrow is the Summer Solstice here in the Northern Hemisphere. This is the only hemisphere I have known.In about five months you will begin to hear incessantly Gene Autrey singing Frosty The Snowman ⛄ . Enjoy these last few months of serenity while you can. I will try to sleep some more. Depression sucks. Denying how bad I feel is even worse.

I texted her,

Most days I feel totally worthless and unloved and try to think of ways to be loved.

Come up here.

Yes, Ma’am.

I don’t know where the “Yes, Ma’am” came from, inside of me. It just sounded right. We started watching an old movie Barefoot In The Park, with Jane Fonda and Robert Redford but she switched it over to Law and Order, SVU. Neil Simon or sexual psychopaths? The winner: sexual psychopaths. To be honest, it really was the better choice. It is a contest as to who had the lesser amount of talent, Redford or Fonda over at Barefoot In The Park.

Meanwhile, ” I need you to wash some red tops for work tomorrow.” I get out of bed to wash red tops. Then I go back to bed. A new psychopath episode is on.

I switch the wet laundry to the dryer, then discover I can’t sleep. Or don’t want to.

I come downstairs, and prep her fruit for tomorrow, pit the cherries, hull and slice the strawberries, slice the bananas. I fill her little cookie container with 3 Tate’s Bake Shop Butter Crunch Cookies. I put out a mini chocolate croissant. She has a little Sargento Balanced Break cheese, nut, and dried fruit snack. I also put in some homemade chili just case she has to work a full shift and needs a lunch.

Now in the silence of downstairs, I hear the Seinfeld DVD playing upstairs.

I will finish a cup of tea, Lapsang Souchong, the smoky kind. Maybe I will watch more of the Brooklyn Bridge. I will think of my city destroyed and try neither to cry nor plot vengeance

When dawn breaks, I will look for another reason to live.

I slept as fitfully as I always sleep.

My day consists of coffee, trains, and sloth.

It is best to not be angry.

But I can’t NOT be angry.

I will not apologize for who I am

I’ve learned that much from Stonewall.

Jackson?

Riot?

Both?

Long Day. I wrote the morning post here, then went grocery shopping. I did some cooking and cleaning up

J worked then came home We put gas in the tank of her Honda CRX, then checked the tire pressures.

We had lunch at First Watch. We had homemade chili for dinner.

Now I am tired. J is asleep or maybe just in bed.

It is hard right now to imagine change around here.

I feel tolerated, appreciated. I am frantic to make J laugh. It is the only way I know I am loved or might be. Guess I will go to bed.

Right now on Turner Classic Movies, one catch watch Where The Boys Are. Who had lead billing in this film was Dolores Hart. She was an up and coming Hollywood engenue of the Sixties,until she left “Tinsel Town” to become a ….. Benedictine nun. Over on YouTube I am watching the liturgy from Svyatagorsk Lavra, (roughly the Holy Mountain) à Russian Orthodox monastery in the Don Bass region of Eastern Ukraine.

Who takes on the religious life today, particularly as a cloistered contemplative? Yet, in nations once part of the former Soviet Union, Russia and Ukraine, we see monasteries forming at a surprising rate. YouTube has plenty of videos of Communist mobs at work, destroying the churches, the bells, and icons of Russia about a century ago. Now the churches and monasteries are resurgent, as the people reclaim what was taken from them by those atheistic heralds of “Progress”.

We think our materialistic, hedonistic culture offers greater appeal than the religious life. I use “religious” purposefully over the more appealing term “spiritual” “Religion has its origin in the Latin word for rope, where we get our word “line”. Religion ties us to the spiritual, to God.

The Church seems confused about its mission as a stronghold for the spiritual life. Go into a Catholic Church built post Vatican Two and look for the Tabernacle. Here is where the consecrated Hosts are kept. This is the Body of Christ., present in the species of bread. It may not make much difference to most contemporary Catholics who don’t believe in the Real Presence in the elements of the Eucharist. Search also for the Stations of The Cross, where Catholics retrace the walk of our Lord to Calvary. The Stations are a fundamental spiritual exercise.

What the Church is not is some quaint and quirky combination of “art museum and NGO”, as Michael Voris put it. But it is hard sometimes to recognize it performing its mission of assisting souls in getting to Heaven.

Rejecting the emptiness of Social Justice “wokeness” is counterintuitive in our time. Since the middle of the Nineteenth Century, we have been trying to “fix” the culture. Some things needed, desperately, to be fixed, slavery and other exploitative systems of labour, and racial segregation made for a good start. But what we carry into every new dawn of progress is the same old us. You know, the part of us that wants inexpensive consumer goods at the expense of human worth and dignity. There is a part in nearly all of us that relishes having power over others, and a part that denies our need for honest and loving interpersonal relationships. These are flaws and faults of human character that another law or government agency can’t fix.

Recently the Episcopate has been falling over itself decrying the “sin” of racism, as if the laity pays attention to them these days. Sorry, You Excellencies, you lost your moral authority a couple of decades ago. Covering up rape puts you at a disadvantage to counsel about anything. So the leadership, our pastoral fathers, give us stones when we need and ask for bread.

The Russians and Ukrainians know what the State tried to take from them. We, in this culture of religious “freedom” reject our Churches ourselves, with a little help from the larger atheistic culture and a lot of help from the spiritually dead within the clergy, who have failed at catechesis. Simply listen for the phrase, “I used to be Catholic but….”.You will see what I mean.

I can’t undo my life, a life where I wanted one foot in hedonism and another in spiritual life. Jesus Himself tells us, “No one can serve two masters, for he will either love the one and hate the other.”

Relentlessly our machines steal a little more of our human dignity. The film Metropolis becomes a little more prophetic every day. “Steal” isn’t the correct term. We give the machines our dignity, as we think the machines and our knowledge can assuage our fears over the things that we feel threatened by, environmental degradation, racism, nuclear war, overpopulation, rapacious capitalism, Marxist regimentation I’m not saying to ignore our God-given gift of intelligence or the tools it creates. We all have to make choices with what we have. A little mindfulness goes a long way.

.

I was probably asleep for most of that time. I can’t guarantee it though. I woke up to urinate. And I started thinking. Not thinking really, just having thoughts.

She snores. There, it’s out of the bag, that particular cat.

I’m in the other room in the other bed. And I will fall asleep again.

Sexy Scents, Gwyneth Paltrow’s new candle smells like her orgasms: Bang Media

That was a headline in the news feed on my phone.

I have been desperately holding on to my sanity for the last few weeks. Now there is Gwyneth, her candle, and the smell of her orgasms. Do they smell like cinnamon, sandlewood, bubble gum?

I try the best I can.