A Gentler Life

I bought a pizza for dinner last night.  It was good and seemed to cheer my mother up a bit.  I cook too much healthy food, and though it is often very tasty, it is not like pizza.  I bought one with "everything."  I always feel guilty eating it, but I have to admit. . . .  Sometimes you just have to have a pizza. 

We ate out in (hillbilly speech) the garage/porch.  With cocktails.  It was swell.  Some things just make you happier.  

This all came at the end of a busy day.  I had a lot of business dealings, but first I went to the gym for a cardio workout--arm bike, incline treadmill, stationary bike, and stair stepper.  I didn't kill myself.  A little of each.  I'll tell you the results in a bit.  

I've been doing something for my blood pressure that may be working.  Dead hangs, planks, and wall squats.  There is much evidence to show that these exercises lower blood pressure, but often what works for others does not work for me.  Still, it is worth the try and no harm will come from doing them.  I've had to finally realize that my days of intense exercise are over.  Moderate is fine with me now.  I'm not going to be one of the rough boys anymore, even pretending.  I should have done this long ago.  Now, as my spine collapses with age as all spines will, my muscles will shrink, too.  But, and here is all I can hope, I will feel good, better maybe, for not beating myself up all the time.  I think I am finally able to accept a reduced version of what I thought I was or had hoped to be.  I'm giving up on my Olympic goals.  

Deride me if you will for whatever reason you like.  Here's the thing, though.  I've been a hillbilly hippie all my life.  A well-educated hillbilly, one who over time learned to eat with the right utensils, etc.  But I've always believed that you had to stand up to the brutes who use physical intimidation as their one and only tool.  On my very good hippie basketball teams, I was always the one who. . . got punched.  

While the other boys cried, "oh. . . don't fight."

Thanks, chaps.  

They, rather, countered violence with a strong letter to the editor.  

Now, friends, I will count on you to keep me safe.  I never really liked any of it anyway.  I much prefer museums and bookstores.  

And so, after a long hour of cardio, I showered and got to work.  It was mostly finance.  I'm trying to move money around, and this is something new for me.  I never had any to move around.  The movement of my money was always from my hand to someone else's.  Now, as I've said, I'm starting to learn the lingo a bit.  Not too much, but enough to teach me this--banks are robbers.  They count on people's ignorance and loyalty.  But the whole time, they are stealing from you as much as they can.  

To wit: the interest you can earn from a bank on CDs, annuities, and the like, varies from region to region.  O.K.  You know this.  I'm a naif.  What surprised me is that through a broker, you can earn MUCH more on something as simple as a CD from the same institution.  The difference in the CD rate from my home bank and the broker's ability to buy a CD from the same institution is pretty large.  I don't understand why, yet, but I will.  

Again, yea, yea, yea.  You scoff, but I truly used to refer to something I never bought as that "four oh thing."  

My twelve year old wife knew more about money than I did.  

Whatever.  Dealing with moving money took up my afternoon.  Rushing to one of my mother's banks just before they closed, I drove by the big structures erected in the park and north pasture for that night's biggest village social event--Cows and Cabs.  Yup.  Dumb name.  It is an outdoor eating and drinking and flirting and fucking affair.  Everyone dresses up--in cowboy clothes.  It is a charity event.  Tickets go for $200.  That gets you inside the fence.  If you bought that ticket, you get to wander around with all the others who are outside the "VIP" area.  There you can see the aging real estate lady flirting with every man she sees.  She will be sloppy drunk by the end of the evening.  You expect it and accept it.  It is an annual event.  

And more.  Much, much more.  It is a big night for the working wealthy and those who want to be.  I know the people who will be there.  Not all of them, of course, but a significant number from my days tied to "socialites."  That was a long time ago, though, and that was a different country.  

Driving back from the bank, I called T. 

"You're missing Cows and Cabs, dude."

"I know.  I've been to every one of them.   But I'm over it.  I realized that last year.  It is really quite the bore."

"Sure, pal, but if you were still in town, you'd be going."

"I'll be there next Thursday.  Do you want to get together for happy hour or dinner."

Of course I do, but it has to be early.  My life is not my own.  

After pizza and cocktails, my mother and I watched the news.  Stephen Miller is the Devil.  He portrays himself as a conservative Christian, but he is Satan incarnate.  I'm amazed that the press is only focussed on his relationship with Trump.  This guy has been a conservative cretin far longer.  He is mastermind of some of the worst policies this century.  Trump doesn't plan on working with democrats.  He plans on them working with him.  I think he is going to crush the democrats with an evil iron fist.  They will look like ants scurrying around an anthill you just kicked over.  If you are a dem, you really need to be careful about being gleeful.  It won't be pretty.  Those republican voters who voted against republicans have not become what you think they have.  They were sending a message, but their core values haven't changed.  They have not become progressive trans bohemian peaceniks.  They are not going to sit with you holding hands and singing Kumbaya.  

This is just a warning.  I'm just saying.  

Later we watched the last episode of "Nobody Wants This."  Again. . . whatever.  It was a fun show at first, but it ended with a whole morality religion thing that I just couldn't stomach.  I like "cute."  I enjoyed the first couple seasons of "Emily in Paris," the ones before they tried to please the critics.  I LOVED "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel."  Call me names, I don't care.  The rest of my life is heavy, and I like far darker things than most of you do, too.  

I like to think I am "well rounded."

I was full of pain last night when I headed off for an early bed, and I wondered if I should take something. And I did.  And again, the hydrocodone with the booze and the Willie's had me itching all night long.  However, I didn't hurt.  And so I lay in a semi-conscious state thinking about what I would do today.  I am going out with my Leica to three different markets starting with the big, great Farmer's Market way out of town.  I want to get there early-ish.  And so, when I glanced at my phone and it was 5:30, I got up.  How did I feel, you ask?  O.K.  I thought I would have damaged my lower back, hips, and knees with the cardio workout yesterday, but when I got out of bed, I felt practically spry.  And I have to say, my spirits felt lifted.  

Is this the start of my new life?  Shorter, easier workouts, more self-kindness.  The kind of guy who can eat pizza and not feel the need to purge?  

Well. . . you know how things go.  By tonight, everything will have changed.  But for right now. . . . 

I like ellipses.  I learned that from one of my very weird graduate profs.  He often trailed off in lectures just as he was getting to the important part.  You'd be writing notes furiously, then . . . .  You'd just have to intuit what should have been coming.  

Within the year, he had turned his life over, left his wife and many daughters, having fallen for a female graduate assistant who, I think, enjoyed ruining his life without ever succumbing to his "charms."  He had to be escorted off campus after a blow up with her, and he was put on permanent leave.  He became homeless and you could find him most days hanging out in the park.  

After awhile. . . . 

Ha! 

Truly, I love academia.  

I've been reading a Cormac McCarthy bio that is really horribly written, but another has just been published and I will order that one, too.  A copy of Lawrence Osborne's new novel and another that I haven't read will arrive today.  I looked at my order of digital books from previous years and saw that I had purchased but never read e.e. cummings "The Enormous Room."  That goes in the queue, too.  

So you see, for the next moment or so, I feel a bit brighter.  Fingers crossed.  I only hope it can last.  

This will help.  How about some new jazz that sounds like something old?  Yea.  This is just the ticket for starting a brilliant Saturday.