Eternally Speaking …

For the longest time I have wakened with a sense of puzzlement and unreality each morning. As is my wont I have been trying to mentally construct a coherent whole of my world and life, but without success. I am without a gestalt.

The world I live in is in disarray, plagues lap at my door, gangs of idiots roam the streets in Confederate flag-festooned pickup trucks, the media shouts unbelievable things at me from first light to dusk, the days are so hot I cringe indoors lest I stroke out or mummify myself, my tomatoes are being deformed even as they ripen, and my image in the mirror is daily stranger and stranger to me.

But today I finally figured it out.

I am in Hell.

Apparently I popped off on the night of November 8,2016, although I have no recollection of how it might have happened. Presumably my body could not physiologically handle the horror of the election results. Then later when all my sins and peccadilloes were totted up, the celestial triage team bundled me up and sent me down the bizarre pathway I am presently on.

As you can imagine, for a baby-Buddhist like myself to find that I’m in Perdition is quite a surprise, since I don’t believe in it. But this morning there seems to be no other way of making sense of the last several years. So I will swallow my wounded pride at my error and make the best of things. If this is Hell, I think I had better keep my expectations low, don’t you?

But hey, hmmm, you guys are here, too. So what did you do to deserve your punishment? Of course, I could be hallucinating and simply going nuts, crackers, barmy, bonkers. More than a little likelihood of that.

It’s a lot to digest, and perhaps I should be taking smaller bites, shallower breaths. Yes, that’s what I’ll do, I’ll go to the grocery store and take my mind off what I’ve learned for a short while. Let’s see, where did I put my mask … but do I really need to wear one … if I am deceased and all?

What to do. What to do.

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From The New Yorker

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Perhaps I would not have moved all the way to western Colorado just to listen to station KVNF, but now that I’m here … what a treasure it is! Much of it is musical programming, of the kind that was last available more than 50 years ago. Where each DJ made up their own playlist, following their own hearts and minds and musical tastes.

So we have programs like Free Range Radio, Undercurrents, Saturday Night Soundtrack, et al. There is jazz, blues, classical, big band – each program put together by a volunteer DJ who plays what they love, without corporate interference.

In the spaces between the tunes, it is an NPR station. Gotta love it.

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I finally finished the Studs Lonigan trilogy, and oh my, what a depressing third volume that was. Only bad things happened to the “hero” and each of them was long presaged before it actually arrived. It is that close to being a perfect “downer.” I had to ask myself why it moved me so when I was a twenty-something? I must have been more of a depressive than I remember. Sheesh.

I gotta do somethin’ to get that big blob of literary hopelessness out of my head, but what … let’s try this. It’s always worked before.

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