Happy

Originally Posted Saturday, May 24, 2014

The long weekend to which I had so looked forward to has yet to bring me pleasure.  But life is often this way. . . things long anticipated, etc.  Perhaps I am just trying to replicate the feeling of other, wonderful days off.  That is always a mistake.  A gorgeous day sitting at an outside cafe table can be ruined by memories of other days when things were at their best.  I'll take what I have, I guess, and enjoy it--pain, sleeplessness, and yet again, etc. 

Bukowski nailed it.  He knew what he wanted and it was simple.  A beer, a liverwurst sandwich with onions, a day at the track.  Or so he wrote.  I have to believe him.  It is such a bare minimum of pleasant expectations.  He'd had plenty of days without them. 

I wish I could bring myself to eat a liverwurst sandwich with onions.  I have been programmed not to.  Heart clogging food.  But just writing it makes me happy.  I want one.  It won't make me happy the way it did Bukowski, I know, but I want one today. 

And I wish I had something as simple as the track.  I don't like horses, really, and simply sitting and watching sports of any kind, whether human or non-human, has come long ago to bore me.  I do not enjoy gambling, either.  I like winning well enough, but I can't stand to lose, and I lose far more than I win. 

I oft repeat what Faulkner perhaps said.  "The trouble with people is that they don't know what they want." 

It is true, isn't it? 

I want to eat a liverwurst sandwich and drink a beer.  But I am sure it will not make me happy. 

Of course, the trouble could lie in the goal--happiness.  What a silly desire.  No, I don't want to be happy, I just wish to feel like it. 

Maybe I'll go to Amsterdam and then to Prague.  I'll price it out today.  But really, the sandwich and beer would be much simpler.  I may check on that, too.