I decided another day of respite from power walking was indicated today. So I skipped another day.

The anxiety present in the last post, Tired. Worried., are absent this evening. My friend, John A, a scholar of Twentieth Century Cultural History, reminded me that the 1920’s followed the devastating pandemic that was the Spanish Influenza of 1918-19.

The Roaring Twenties featured a business boom, a cultural flowering, and frenzied technological innovation wherein all three trends worked synergistically. There are some worrisome trends, but this country wants to grow.

Now, I have my feet propped up, watching YouTube videos of Renaissance culture and the Russian Orthodox Church. Prior to this I worked rather intensely on meal prep, chicken salad, tuna salad, mango slicing, iced tea making. I was on my feet for a couple of hours and it was tiring.. I am going to drink my decaf coffee and chill.

The vanity and folly of this world struck home to me today. I want to walk away. I want anonymity in a world where that is no longer possible. What keeps me alive is that I’m not a threat to the powerful and hence not worth killing.

Don’t delude yourself for a single moment that we aren’t living in a dystopia. The government just created trillions of dollars out of thin air.Farmers are killing off livestock. How, in the coming months, will we be able to buy scarcer and scarcer food with worthless money? And the politicians want our guns. Fat chance. Brigandage is coming. Free speech will be a meaningless right.

The seeds of despair have been sown. The harvest is in November. Thank the Communist Party of The People’s Republic of China.

I want you.

Naked.

Soft.

Warm.

Clean, but even dirty will suffice.

Your wet lips meeting mine as I hold the back of your head, so you don’t pull away.

The Earth has circled the Sun too many times for me to knock you up

As if that coarse expression carries a dignity of its own.

I regret not risking it all for you when we had the chance.

But that risking part rings true. You are confident I will be with you tomorrow, as I trust you will be with me in constancy. The risk is the naked openness as we touch and stroke, suck and lick.

When we lose our dignity in ecstatic union.

Not literally. That is not my kink. Maybe it should be. I’ve had my rear end figuratively kicked by my obsession with power walking. I did another six mile walk yesterday. I felt the exertion in my lower back near the fusion site, my arthritic hip and in my right shoulder where I had my rotator cuff repair.

The shoulder pain is due to my arm swing, I suspect. Actually all of the pain is about moving my body.

I did some serious sleeping this morning, which I needed. The fear that I’ve caught the plague crossed my mind. Then I realize, I have neither fever nor sore throat.

It is OK to be tired.

NSFW Obscene

In this time of exile

As I feel the sequestration press on me like a weight, 

The longings scream inside me, their freedom frustrated.

 “Get naked, spread your ass cheeks, let me bury my tongue in your asshole.”. 

There I said it. Is that asking too much?

I went for my usual power walk this afternoon. Within the first few strides I knew that I was going to have a particularly good outing. And I walked six miles in 87 min: 15 sec. My last outing at that distance was 5 minutes, 44 seconds slower. As the title says “Go Figure.”

All in all I had a good day. I did a good amount of sleeping, then binge-watched shows from the UK series Timeline on the Plantagenet Kings of England and the War of The Roses. I know we like to think of the English as super genteel and classy, but this period was little better than a gang war, only with swords, instead of Tommy guns. Yeah, real nice people.

I fixed some leftovers for dinner, black beans, brown rice, cold red cabbage that I fixed last night.

I’m just stoked from that walk still.

I made this sweet and sour cabbage dish with sweet from oranges, sour from balsamic vinegar. Very yummy. Cheap too.

Thing is, I call it “food porn”, because when I get creative in the kitchen, I wanna have sex real bad when I’m done. Anybody else like that?

Anybody else out there have an abundance of this stuff? I guess we should use it when we’re at table eating our meals cooked at home. Well we could, you know.

Or is malaise a better word? My car battery is dead because I don’t drive anywhere anymore during the day when J is out. Or asleep. (Same difference, when you think about it). I suppose we could give it a jump when she gets home. But here I sit, needing a haircut, in my stocking feet, not wearing my eyeglasses. There is just no need for any of that. You know, trimmed hair, shoes, corrected vision.

Pre-SIP, my world had little points in space to which I would venture, Church, AA, the YMCA and its pool, Weight Watchers. I would drive to the store by myself. Now, not so much.

Most people, especially those with jobs, want this to end. On the other hand, here I am, with an ever-deepening case of the Fuck-Its settled into my consciousness. And I think that perhaps, I’m not alone. The isolation breeds apathy, a false sense of self-sufficiency. There is the virtual community that exists in the internet and on my smart phone, but it’s not the same. The images aren’t the same as real people.

For the benefit of civilization, we humans need friends, family, lovers, partners, associates. We do stuff together. If we are lucky, we will take from this that the shortcomings of the connected world show it to be a scattered, fragmented and lonely place.

It is no substitute for genuine community.

The storms rolled in in the middle of the night, waking me up. Now the raindrops gently patter outside, serene in contrast to the thunder and lightning.

I long to return to sleep, perhaps to dream of love and a lover, of new experiences, unafraid and uninhibited.

The storm did not shatter a serenity or ravage my bliss. To dream again is no small wish.