Eleven minutes left in this year. At Sandi’s. The next door neighbors has two paramedic trucks in their driveway. The end of the firecracker purchases are being used up before midnight. Climax? Guess they don’t need one.
The hillbilly psychopath living next to me at my place has been kicked out after the landlords’ wise decision not to renew his lease. The place looks much as it did P.S. (pre-psycho). The neighbors, the three I talk to, well, there’s a definite brighter tone in their speech. Creepo, Sandi’s name for Dave, moved there in 2013. All was well for a few years, Then he began to blow it with his changed attitude that dictated his opinion that since he was paying rent, he owned the property and, therefore, could do anything with it. The place became a junkyard, or, more commonly, a shithole. What a last few years I’ve had there, with his stealing hundreds of dollars worth of tools and actually coming into my house. It’s been awful. I also spent hundreds on closed circuit cameras and motion sensor lights and locks, the latter which he could pick easily, due to my spending days every week or so at Sandi’s. Whamo! Gone. I don’t care what happens to him short of physical disability. He has a wonderful dog who has been subdued to a spiritless existence from the necessity of coping with mistreatment. She’ll make it. I’m not longer surprised at the ability of people and animals to bear the bad that life has to offer.
Just turned midnight. They did have enough left over for a max noise show. Why do people love noise? A substitute, a stand in for creative activity? Maybe that’s one reason I don’t care for fireworks. It reminds me how shallow the public is, how mentally lazy. Am I being elitist? Nah, just viewing people from what I consider the normal, which to is live with an effortless peace.
Last new year point I remember being more philosophical and more verbally fluent. Okay, to expand. The Republicans take control of the House of Representatives in two days. Revenge politics will govern the news for weeks, if not months.
My health. Good shape. There’s just a lot wrong with me. My right ear is being eaten away. I notice a lack of admiring glances from women. Some fine day I will reach the point of not caring. How nice. Sandi and I are entering the we’re glad to have a good friend and let’s caress sometimes phase. Could be worse. Thankful.
In my December 4th entry a subject popped into my mind I should discuss, briefly. There’s just not to be said, or done, about mortality. The issue became one with the death of my parents fifteen years ago. As a little boy I had a vague notion that the security of those around me, my parents, my animal friends like Moppy, was not eternal. Someday, I thought, grandma Parris would die, Moppy would be gone, but the road to the death of Mom and Dad, that remained in the distant mist of imagination. The road stopped there. I don’t remember having any kind of thought of a life after them. Yet, here I am seventy years later. The mist has cleared along with the idea of my immortality.
Does this lead to a morose, helplessness? No, but I do pay attention to well-spoken lines about my place in the life-death scheme. Zen thoughts take me out of occasional flits of depression.
Re-reading this, my words sound like aimless blather, couched in clever wording. Why write? Why, in fact, attempt anything productive? Hmm . . because I still am. A scent in the life-stew. So, why do I write? I just do. In my previous date’s entry was “People want to belong. It’s how they function.” A couple quotes I wave in their faces. “If you see a bandwagon, run the other way,” and, from my father I think, “If the public likes something, it can’t be that good.” It’s a matter of if I can’t stand out, I can at least stand away. Or, put another way, if I can’t fit in. This has been the operating mode my whole life. There’s satisfaction in believing that being different, out of the fray, has a legitimate life purpose, that uniqueness is has value in itself. Does it? Well, as the say, it’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
At least, going out of bounds yields the possibility of being in a new place with new sounds, new perspectives. I’ve always found that exciting. It jiggles the creative within me. At times this leads to insight, at times to the mess I’m writing now. But, given the choice of 1) what are other people doing, like the Taylor Swift et.al. followers or 2) being alone with my thoughts to see where they lead, for me it’s a no-brainer. Thus, I shed the real possibility of new relationships, male friends or female lovers. Don’t I ever become lonely? Yes, but in a certain way. One standard of loneliness dictates the necessity of being with another for human body/conversation closeness in itself. I shun that. It’s like mental poison. And the phrase, “having fun with people” has little meaning. Noise, activity for it’s own sake has no appeal.
My loneliness is just as deeply felt, but peculiar to me. When my ego flounders on the cold rocks of daily experience, a depression sets in with a single notion — not being able to share. I don’t mean share a beer or a laugh or a concert attendance.
Being physically alone leads to much introspection, the insight that explains one’s place in the world, and this, in turn, engenders idea, creative experience. Exploration. New mental lands and landscapes.
My father was lucky in this respect. He had many friends in the music performance world. What did they have in common? Their need to understand the infinite possibilities of music and the joy of reproducing a significant few thousand notes of it directly from sounds of their instruments. Commonly, a “Hey, man, dig this!” was heard in my childhood. Dad would set up his Ampex
