Getting Over. Getting Through

22 Monday Jun 2020

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This is Day 2 on my increased Prozac©{Fluoxetene) dose. I am sleeping a lot and don’t know why, except I’m just exhausted from fighting the negativity I had felt for so long. I could sleep now. My appetite isn’t ravenous. I’m no longer fueling the negativity.

I slept all morning. It felt great. I woke up to fix J a slice of warm buttered cinnamon toast to take with her to work. Then back to bed, where I slept til noon. As I write I am more certain that this is emotional exhaustion.

We may never know the whole truth about the George Floyd killing, the origin of COVID-19 and how it spread, or the Jeffrey Epstein death, just for starters. We are experiencing an endless cycle of event and cover-up. I was trying to make sense of things and failing in the attempt.

Yesterday #1 son came over to assemble his Fathers Day gift of a gas grill. We talked as he worked and he told me he ignores the news, just as I attempt to do the same.

I remember a joke from The Firesign Theatre recording Don’t Crush That Dwarf. Hand Me The Pliers.

“Those are the headlines. Now here are the rumours behind the news.“

I have felt like I’ve been trying to navigate this ocean of lies, using the bioluminescence of a lightning bug as my polar star.

Now that I’ve stopped I experience moments of clarity that are similar to those discovered when getting sober or leaving a dysfunctional marriage(relationship).

The relief that comes from letting go is awesome.

Upping The Dosage

22 Monday Jun 2020

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Recently, I thought my general dis-ease in my overall mental health was attributable to the ongoing political melodrama being acted out in DC and elsewhere, culminating in the recent protests/riots.

Now I believe the problems and feelings I am experiencing are really about the efficacy of my antidepressant medication. So I am increasing my dosage of Prozac©from 20mg daily to 40mg. Earlier, my psychiatrist has been OK with my adjusting the dosage level on my own. After a few weeks, I will see how I feel. I have been taking this drug almost continuously for 26 years. It could be time to move on.

We shall see.

21 June 2020 0738 Eastern Time North America

21 Sunday Jun 2020

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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.

Tonight I Went Up Early

21 Sunday Jun 2020

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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.

History Lessons

21 Sunday Jun 2020

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Way back around 1970, Joseph Colombo,the head of the Columbo/Profaci Family a criminal organization and one of Metro New York’s Five Families started showing up in respectable places with classy WASP types and talking about Italian-Americans being unfairly stereotyped as gangsters and criminals. Everybody was dancing around the fact that Joe was a gangster and a criminal, but, hey, I guess they wanted the garbage picked up at their co-op. He started an organization called the Italian-American Antidefamation League. The League started lobbying for Columbus Day as a national holiday. Congress came through for the poor slandered Italian-Americans and we had Columbus Day. Try sailing West with navigational aids any Boy or Girl Scout could make and use, with wind and ocean currents as the sole means of power and I think one can appreciate the magnitude of Columbus’s accomplishment. Oh and he made it back too. But the greatness of the accomplishment from a fifteenth century perspective didn’t matter to Congress or Joe Colombo. Congress wanted to throw a bone and Colombo wanted to catch it. Despite his efforts for more positive recognition of the Italian-Americans, Colombo ended up getting shot and paralyzed at one of his Italian-American “civil rights” rallies. There was some discord in Mr Colombo’s Family and let’s just say it wasn’t over Mama Colombo’s recipe for Sicilian Gravy. So Columbus Day, which nobody gave a rip about prior to Mr Colombo’s endeavours, became a “holiday”, in other words, another day where you don’t get the mail.  America’s aggrieved malcontents,, suckling at the breast of free speech, have used Columbus Day as an opportunity to grouse about every American born with the skin pigment popularly called “white”. I don’t much care for Columbus Day. I’d rather get the mail. But I also don’t much care for collections of individuals, once called “mobs”, tearing down statues of Columbus and city officials displaying a cowardice as equally despicable in letting them do it. A figure from history, nearly contemporary to Columbus, Martin Luther, was all into reforming The Church, Then some German peasants got the idea of reforming politics and government. Not surprisingly, blood started to flow and Luther thought the princes had better restore order and deal, rather ruthlessly, with the peasants. Order is a good idea, you might say.

Watching The East River, Thinking

20 Saturday Jun 2020

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You can find most anything on YouTube. The other day I found a live cam that looks across the East River, from Brooklyn to Manhattan. The visual centerpiece is the Brooklyn Bridge in all its magnificence.

A bridge is something we take for granted in 2020. We cross rivers, lakes and bays without a second thought. Rarely are we touched by the beauty. But the beauty of a bridge derives from its functionality.

This post is more about the thinking than the East River or The Brooklyn Bridge. Tomorrow is Fathers Day. My son is coming over to assemble the gas grill he sent me that is my Fathers Day gift. Truth is, for me,the gift is just him being here. We will talk, joke, commiserate.We think alike. We’re father and son after all.

That was the first tier of my thoughts tonight. A little further down comes the “should haves” and “could haves” around why my life turned the way that it did. The images of ex-wives stream by in my mind, as if they were floats in a parade. I think about the sex I once had that I’m not having now, the thoughts I don’t share with J, because her life is about comparing herself to others and to some idealized version of “wife”. It is best to keep quiet.

A little deeper are the observations that I am looking for some sublime experience and then when I have it, want to immediately have it again.It is found most frequently in The Search For The Perfect Cup Of Coffee. I have a cup of coffee that is just hot enough, strong enough, flavorful enough. Once finished, I want to have it again, that same perfect cup of coffee. But it hardly ever comes back again, at least, not right away.

I went through two marriages looking for The Sublime Sexual Experience. You know the one where we both have world-shattering orgasms and promise to love each other forever, but end up divorced anyway, the rubble of our failures comparable to Berlin in 1945. .

I was dreaming a new dream earlier, with J, the laughter, the sweaty sex, the orgasm, the Eternal Pledge of Fidelity and Trust. And I was ready to risk it all.

Again. Why not?

Bonus Paranoid Rant.

20 Saturday Jun 2020

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I cleaned and threw away stuff, recycled paper products. I stopped getting the newspaper or at least I told the newspaper I was cancelling .

That is a lot of stuff right there.

I am tired.

I’m thinking of getting rid of all electronic and digital services. My concern is that The Government, its intermediaries, or its vendors are spying on me, all of us, really. How much does The Government pay Google for the data it collects?

Paying in cash. Never sleeping in the same house two nights in a row. Avoiding public buildings. Walking places. They must have some sort of sophisticated recognition software or they wouldn’t be telling us to wear masks all the time.

Trump isnt even scratching the surface of the Deep State elements. He is really just annoying them at this point.

Daddy Bush #41 was the paramount Deep State operative. He had everybody fooled that he wanted to fool that he was Yale’s version of The Village Idiot. But he ran the CIA and was the first American diplomat in Red China. He was lurking around Dealey Plaza in Dallas on 22 Nov 1963, the day the CIA and the mob whacked JFK. Little #43 was there with him, being home-schooled in real world civics, I guess. Poppy Bush was Mr WASP, so nobody thought he liked to get as much stuff done on the down low as he could. Reagan had him as VP just to keep an eye on him.

“Keep your friends close but your enemies closer.”

Stonewall

19 Friday Jun 2020

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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

19 Friday Jun 2020

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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.