Wednesday, November 8, 2023

Shoot. I Didn't Mean to Say That.

I'm probably going to do something I will regret later when I don't have any new pics to share.  I'm going to post most of my window reflection pics.  It's OK, though.  None of them are great.  They aren't really even good.  But they are cool and new for me.  I might as well dump them all at once and be done with them.  They make me think that I can do more and better.  Surely more.  Maybe better.  Less likely do.  I have gotten ridiculously lazy about it all.  Maybe "lazy" isn't most accurate.  

I got an early start yesterday morning taking Tennessee to pick up a truck.  I should get more early starts.  It was refreshing.  The day was much longer, though, and I was ready for bed when it got dark.  I think it was 5:30.  Trying to slow my alcohol consumption made the night seem much longer.  My god I long to impair my acute awareness and reflections alone in the dark. Call it the "Bukowski Syndrome."  But many have had it before him.  It was just that he made it a central topic of his work. People with higher intelligence, I read just recently, are sometimes emotionally colder because they tend to be more analytic.  I think that some women have said that about me, but it is only true, I must hold, in argument.  My mind shifts to diagnostic mode then, I am certain.  But maybe always.  I was surprised in the gym yesterday in conversation with  a woman who sometimes comes out for drinks with the gymroids.  I was telling her that Tennessee was a fighter, a real badass, but that he was really a sweet guy with a good heart.  He never acts like a badass, just a bit devilish.  

She said that I was the one a person would take to be meaner.  "You've got that resting bitch face," she said.  

"Bastard," I said.  "It's a resting bastard face."

My faculty used to tell me that I scared them when I would come into the classroom to do my observations.  They said I never smiled.  

"Really?  I was just thinking," I would say.  

I guess I don't register a lot of emotion on my face.  I think I had to learn that, but maybe it is just the hillbilly culture in me.  I do remember noticing that no one smiles in fashion photos.  Or it could have been a defense mechanism when I moved into my wealthy little village from Crackerville.  Working out at the criminal steroid gym for decades may have played a part in it, too.  

But I am emotionally soft, an only child with great big feelings, so I felt a little surprised by her suggestion.  I guess, however, that Tennessee is always showing off his pearly whites.  He does sure smile a lot.  I look stupid when I smile.  His smile seems confident.  Mine seems defensive.  

I'm overanalyzing it.  What I meant to say some fifty or so words ago is that the great writers drank at night to kill the thinking part of the brain and let the emotions take over.  I don't think I cry as much when I'm thinking.  

Oops.  I almost forgot what I was doing.  These reflection pictures might work better in color.  Color may give them more separation.  I'll have to try it and see.  

I read the headlines today.  It seems the only thing people want less than Biden or Trump is children.  Abortion rights are very popular.  I've always felt it should be mandatory unless you can pass a whole lot of tests, but that would be too regulatory for most people.  Hearing people talk about their children, of course, should be a deterrent to all pregnancy.  Every dumbass in the world no matter how stupid or mean or psychotic can procreate, but we romanticize it on t.v. and in films, and people are alway so saccharine when the talk about it.  All I can think is, "Ah. . . I see you've been fucking."  Somehow, though, we dissociate the two things.  We call one thing pornography and the other a blessed event.  But yesterday's vote is some indication about how people really feel.  Years ago, I read a poll of parents whose children were grown.  They were asked if they had to do it over again, would they have children.  The results were one sided.  Overwhelmingly they said, "No.  It wasn't worth the sacrifice."  

I know a woman right now who is taking care of her 104 year old mother.  She is in her seventies.  She fell and broke her arm and tore a rotator cuff in her shoulder.  She needs to have surgery, but she broke out with shingles on her arm, so they have to wait.  Her mother needs much care and she can't provide it now.  The woman has three grown children and a grown grandchild, but none of them are coming to help her.  Two of her children don't even call to see how she is doing.  

My mother is going to be 92 in a month.  She has many older friends whose children never come to visit.  

I'm just saying.  I think they should make more films about parent/child relationships like "Requiem for a Dream."  I'd say that movie is a far better representation of what really happens, at least in America.  

I'll give you GREAT odds on any sized bet you want that the children parents are braying about aren't perpetually telling their friends how great their parents are.  Probably never.  In my neighborhood, parents were to be avoided as much as godly possible.  When I went to college and hung with a different crowd, I'd be foolish enough to ask wealthy kids, "What does your father do?"  They hardly knew.

Oh, and immigrant children who grow up in the U.S. have far lower birthrates than their parents and the countries they come from.  

So yea. . . people voted for abortions.  Maybe they just don't think the Catholic Church is treating their children properly.  

Jesu. . . I shouldn't talk like that.  It is abrasive and shocking and won't make me any friends.  There are arguments against everything I just said, I know.  But, you know. . . the newspapers are full of Editorial and Opinion pieces.  

And I hate them. 

So feel free to be disgusted by my rant.  I tried to stick to the facts, but there are always other facts.  And that, as they say, is what makes a horse race.  

Just one more thing, though.  It all started in The Garden.  Sex was knowledge and birth was the punishment.  Now you know I'm not making that up.  Someone else did.  And the result was earning your bread by the sweat of your brow.  Book of Genesis.  It is a little contradictory, though.  In one part, God tells Adam and Eve to multiply and be stewards over the earth.  

O.K.  I'm no Biblical scholar.  Do with it what you will.  I'm not down with any of it as I am not a believer in Good and Evil other than as human constructs.  So. . . . 

There I go again.  What is this day going to be if I begin it this way?  I think I'd be best advised to keep my trap shut and not discuss anything in today's paper with anyone.  I have few enough friends left as it is, and only one who still loves me.  Maybe two.  And neither of them will be around to massage my aching knee today.  Nor tomorrow.  

And so, the day is wandering away from me while I squander my brief talents opining about most divisive things.  Forgive me.  Love me.  I'll be better.  I'll be good.  Just don't leave me now.  

Ho!  I should have saved yesterday's song for today.  But one last thought.  I know AI is freaking everybody out these days, but I love it, and I've decided that I am going to vote for an AI president this year.  That is, if the world hasn't blown up by then.  

I was right from the beginning of this post, though about the wrong thing.  The mistake wasn't in posting the pictures.  

Let's just forget all that now and listen to some happy, pleasant music.  Are these guys really Texas?



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