It is a hot, kinda sticky day here in the San Fernando Valley. There’s a light, intermittent breeze, but it only serves to push the heat around. Otherwise, it is stagnant. And I feel stagnant. There are literal piles of work sitting on my table, waiting, and I have no desire to work on any of it. So I’m just stagnating. My apartment is a little stewpot.
The day started out promisingly enough. I woke up early even though its a Saturday. I made breakfast, or what passes for breakfast for me. Then I sat here, looking at my piles. Hundreds of pages of schoolwork to read, dozens of pages to write and the time I have to do it in shrinking with every second. Meanwhile, the cat lulls in a sunbeam.
I tried lulling in a sunbeam for awhile. Tried to take a nap. Couldn’t. I haven’t been feeling well lately. Run down. My own fault. I’ve been running again, a lot, but I haven’t found the proper diet yet. My body is tired in a way that is new. So I’m tired all the time.
I try to give myself time to adjust. Try to be generous with myself. I’m thirty-five after all. Three times closer to forty than I am to twenty. When did that happen?
There isn’t much I even remember about twenty. The foot locker where I used to stash wine coolers because I hadn’t yet been introduced to whiskey. The big bed I used to have then, with its big, heavy wooden headboard. Then later, living with my first roommate, no more headboard, but a little room covered in pages I’d clipped from magazines. There are other things I remember from twenty. The green light bulb I had in my room. The way it softened and smoothed out skin wherever the light fell.
I don’t remember if that apartment had an air conditioner, but I remember how hot the summers were. I think we had a screen door. I remember how loud the music was some nights when I got home from work. I remember how noise it was and how often our neighbors called the cops, which is why I refuse to call the cops now ever, on other people’s parties. I have to get right with karma. And besides, the rhythms and midnight laughs of other people’s parties never annoy me, just make me feel alone.
The grown man I am has no problem with being alone. I’m a student and single and so I spend most of my time alone. It is an acquired taste though. A learned skill. I don’t mind it, but also wouldn’t mind less of it.
That’s been on my mind alot lately. Less. I have much less in my life than I have at other times, and sometimes that is good. Less furniture, less cost, less, crap, less of that which I do not want. However, also, less of other things too. Less time left on this countdown clock of life. Less companionship than I would like. Less joy, though I do my best to find as much of it as I can. Far too less sex. Less chance, it seems, as every minute passes by, to do more.
That’s not completely true.
Last week I explained my philosophy for determining what things to blow off. The first rule is always to work to not acquire anything you might feel like blowing off later. Sometimes those things are unavoidable, so when you do have to make a determination, assess the value it adds to your life against the amount of life it requires to get it done. A classmate - who I think is twelve, though he can’t possibly be twelve because he is a grad program - asked why I seldom do this one piece of weekly homework that everyone understands to be busywork. I told him that it is not worth it because, unlike him, I am not preparing for the life I am going to live, I am actually living the life I am going to live. Saying things like this to people is probably why I don’t get invited to a lot of potlucks and Sunday barbecues. Which is fine, because I generally don’t go even when I am invited.
Curmudgeon is a word that probably comes up in my life more than yours. The people I tend to like tend to see through the curmudgeon thing pretty fast, which is why I like them. The great George Carlin said that behind every cynic is an idealist, and of course, he was right. Cynicism is created out of loss and disappointment, in much the same way that diamonds are created out of heat and pressure. But - if I can be permitted to stretch this metaphor to just about the breaking point - that disappointed piece of coal, if you crack it open, might just have a little diamond in it. Not the biggest diamond you’ve ever seen and probably not the brightest, but a sharp and sparkling little diamond nonetheless. Those of us who act like coal most of the time all already know this.
Heat and pressure.
It is still hot and sticky while I’m stewing in my little apartment. Too many gears going today. Too little work happening today. Too much and yet too little, all at once. Outside the little bit of breeze is annoying the big green fronts on the palm trees, but the palm trees themselves aren’t even swaying.
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