“Faded Einstein,” (a short story I worked on in February,
finally, sort of had an ending tonight, when I put the t-shirt back on- I have a sky blue t-shirt we ordered online, with a barely-recognizable star-dust-based Albert Einstein-
and exercised, even danced, in the living room.
I put on Lando Burch’s “Summerfruit” and cut loose!
Things are freeing themselves from hibernation, even as the mid-April snows sequester us. But I had delight in taking the remote app photos, even if the Canon’s battery was quickly spent. I’d not checked if it was ‘bettery’ but I have all the beauty I can seek to capture, really, just dorking around my apartment complex. Nice to know things are safe here at Ashley- at Park Mesa, I said to the young man who said: “Good evening.” He recognized my hoodie: “Spider-Man!” Glad to see that smile. So “Oh! Yeah.” As though I’d been caught pretending to be Spider-Man, and in a way, am I not just middle-aged Spider-Man, standing there taking a selfie? Glad no one came up during that, though my pose was standard Silver Age cornerbox.
I remembered being exhilarated, enchanted by the lights outside on the snow. I caught just a few really beautiful pictures while experimenting further with my phone camera. The Canon’s superior. But, I’d yet to explore the b & w setting, though my figure vanished in the darkness. Fun, to set up the tripod on the apartment outside stairwell. I took it over to the snowy table, which showed a depth of maybe, four, five inches? That’s when I discovered the battery, dead. I shot a greyscale picture that made our apartment building look like a mock crime setting in a documentary, or perhaps, the site of a haunting. I made do with the phone, though catching in a frame the essence of the great feeling I see when I look upon our present home- well, a photo conveys great beauty, sometimes, and exposes some of its essence, even translates it. I hope I do not feel down too often looking upon this place: I think, keeping my heart rate up, crunches, push-ups, I can work through the soreness, but the mood-lifting!
See, that’s what I had to realize in “Einstein”
I was unhappy about the degree of loneliness and minimal opportunity I had, that made me sad enough to admit it, to the technically non-family member friend to stop by just to visit, my spiritual fellow traveler, Sabrina Cooper. I wanted the truth to be something better than that, but maybe I was not fully integrated to the Truth at that point, myself, or was at least aggrieved of the divisions that kept me apart from friends and family regardless of politics.
That sorrow- the feeling I had , about lack of day-to-day personal contact with friends, most of my years living again in my hometown- was accruing reasons that may or may not have been fair. The feeling beneath was getting worse, because I needed to keep my mind sharp. The online music performances did, at least, provide something of note. The stories? Great! I hope there’s more of ‘em coming post-haste. But “Einstein” ends with me taking responsibility to change how my life’s going, how I’m feeling in my body, how incredibly fortunate I am to have even an average body. Yet some people have shown greater character while differently abled, by doing what I must do: make the most of what I’ve got. (And try not to injure any joints.) So, the judgment didn’t matter. The better life I was not having, I meant to unlock every day, but I thought I was straining in part from lack of further social contact. There has been an openness here already which I should continue to explore in passing. The weed has always, dear Lord, been helpful with generally productive, normal Me, but there’s an exciting variety and inspirational impression this Boulder kindly conveys. I recognized everything rightly when I was 21: this was the place, she was the woman to bring here. So one opportunity slips away, the other remains, and now, we have them both. I didn’t realize the plan I’d blown by not attempting to come back here, sooner. I got in trouble being afraid I couldn’t manage a way to be myself in society. I took the gracefully-given scholarship advantage, only to really get willingly into too much debt. The job worth getting the degree was still painfully years away, and in managing, I’d embrace my art to a heart-breakingly sincere degree, but always become compromised in mounting the evidence my skills called for a big break.
Meanwhile, there’s much more suffering in the world by some others, and I’ve only made it even with them by the swing of my moods and fortunes, for it’s been a life with some good vantage points earned, taken, discovered. But when we’re ready to impose a new narrative onto Anywhere- a 2nd edition with a new ending- we don’t go through the years in lengthy detail. We don’t crawl along at the same passage of time through the intervening years, making a very long novel. Yet, we did find ways to make things romantic and inspiring, along the way. The willingness to be in Boulder, the earnest effort to try, after at least driving here had seemed once so simple, and just- try for a job, they’re everywhere in 1995 boulder. My fear that took us back there like her Dad’s before, changed the trajectory of our lives, which are easy to see being much better if we’d stuck it out in Boulder. I didn’t know how to take care of her, and I felt too bad and had stayed out my welcome, I felt, in Denver, having only went to boulder once, and then, too late. A serious effort to get a job there- here- and we would’ve come up here to hang on. Damn, we could’ve made it.
But I didn’t realize how good my plan was. And now I’m consigned to come back 26 years older, the time in my life when I should’ve flourished into a career, passed. Now the challenge is to make a new one. I paid a great price for my fear along the way- not going out in San Diego anymore, not staying out there and coming back to Georgia. We have lost enough to my cowardice and nerves. I want to radiate beauty, strength, understanding, and kindness. I still have the dream. That is so important! But the time in my life when it was acceptable for me to become anything, I admit, sometimes seems gone. I threw away so many opportunities, did not know how to get around, had some poverty-based limitation. I might consider it insane to keep trying. If I feel self-loathing, it might be because I denied myself becoming what I envisioned, before. I still believe it will never happen for me. And in those non-fun moments, to say the least, I am so sad, disappointed in myself. I must forgive myself for the 26 years I threw away, how I threw away the dreams of that young man because I didn’t know what I was doing.
Nothing quite makes amends. It’s all been a bunch of unrealized hopes, except for my love with Angela. I can’t expect her to really join me- and she might be too old and settled, too, which seems to be my own problem, why I am still so lazy here, and so, not use to getting up and doing those things I say I want to do, why I give in to denying myself and continuing my torment- until I stop menacing the proceedings. Plus we’re honestly at a point where I am the sole one working on the music, for example, so, just get it ready and she’ll be ready to try to sing, hopefully, by summer. Two months. Not that long to wait.
It’s that prejudice I share that a 47 year old man trying to be a musical performer, after no professional success whatsoever, is embarrassing. I am tempted to give in and say, yeah, that’s right. But, if I can get rid of the physical evidence of sloth- if I can remove the unhealthiness- then, I can see in me, just anyone, like anyone else, and not someone over the hill. I thought 47 was over the hill when I was a kid. I am actually playing and exploring the guitar better, and I need to buckle down on recording it in some form. I have drawing tablets to use, too. I am sometimes too tired and old and sick to really care about things anymore: I am on my way towards death and only want not to be a burden. I can layer it over all I want with exuberance, happiness, energy, but I make contact with my self-consciousness every day. I could still have my songs to live in, and save myself the embarrassment of finding out, no one really wants me to be the beautiful angel.
I am too fat, old, decadent, white, old-fashioned. That’s my limited spiritual warrior. I want to save myself the horrors of feeling rejected. But I lay around grumpy and disappointed, then. But that’s why he’s limited. He’s not a vivacious redhead, and he can’t understand why one would want to mess with him outside of a porn plot. He’s just a vain, dirty old man, with a good side that brightens up, leaves all that aside, and teaches children, and is sweet to his wife. An embarrassing denial of Death.
So, is that the worst I have to offer myself? Probably! I am too lazy in my limited spiritual warrior, tired from doing nothing too much. Content to lie around dreaming the best and the worst, no longer sharpening the intellect, just taking in more information at the same level, seeking the pleasures of laughter and some emotional release from the feeling that: I’m just too tired. And so sometimes, I wish I could get my mind to stop, for the fog to pass, and it seems a bit like I’d just like to die, and start over with life ahead of me, and the failures of potential ended. Never mind how the potential for that sort of life remains limited around the world, nor that the daydream of its fame or even of its activity is enough to content a man as lazy as I. As full of expectations as I. As entitled, as privileged, as I. No wonder she wants to put on Laurenzside and just listen to a woman be funny, creative, and uninhibited. It’s great when I am like that, too, though it’d be ridiculous to be ‘on’ ALL the time, and unbalanced. So full of Anglo-Saxon snobbery about being Right about things that don’t amount to pragmatic help, only lording over some communications style information, meant to be used by rulers to put others in their places. I see in myself some things that do not deserve me feeling sorry for myself. My shadowside desires, which are only shadow because I’ve done so little to fulfill them. Easier to lie around on my bed, than do anything to hurt Angela, or fail.
But that’s why she warns me, the Anger is the part I do not need. It’s one thing to feel injustice on a social level, or to see others done harshly. But the baby-like me, me, me, always down about some injustice done to me in a world I’ve heard is not fair, anyway. If there’s something I don’t need, right? I have to understand the Limited Spiritual Warrior, who is too weary of doing what I can until I again become too scared or am rejected. Weariness and entitlement, together, make the sort of agedness I wish to acknowledge in the form of the Limited Spiritual Warrior. Now, I want to take that fearful self and set him down…it’s good to try to work out what might be the most perfect experiences and sensations people will appreciate in my songs or stories or speech, but it’s morally weak to fear invalidation and to contort myself as to be somewhere I’m not wanted or appreciated There’s the paradox: How can you be afraid what people think, and yet be arrogant and entitled?
And what is it people see in me, where they see me Aspire and believe I should?
They see an unlimited spiritual warrior. They see a talented communicator with pleasant values and just words. I am petty, injust, racist, chauvinist, classicist, and a dupe of the system according material things, supposedly always on merit. I was surprised to see that in myself, and it seemed to get worse from living in Rome! But if I write about people with those traits, it will either make them stronger in me for lack of balance and empathy and understanding, or expose them to myself, or even help me, help others understand better the beast in others which frustrates them so.
I think this morning, I’ve outlined what thoughts and impressions I have, in my self-centered world made that much worse by Covid isolation, perhaps, that part of me small enough to betray others over my jealousy for control of them, the way I lie around fantasizing about the other person as a compliant part of my life that I imagine seeing, but rarely hearing. It could be, the aspirational self I’ve always wanted to project was too idealized, and would require adherence to some kind of spiritual system to guide me away from the quixotic dreams and aspirations. I strove to told the truth, but was it, and that, by itself, a lie, that would be exposed up close and personal?
I think I have a pretty good grasp of what I’m doing, while trying to figure out if I have it in me to make music that’s popular, fiction others want to read, and so on. Yet, the love of the activity, without concern for all those after-effects, nor how it will make me more relevant and help me fill the hole I’ve continued to carry that makes the mechanism work, is the humbling truth I seek. Turning outside to others isn’t the way to live, energetically I make and generate what I need. It was weak of me to admit I was seeing it like I could’ve been so much more if I had some active support and companionship from others. It got so bad I let David live with us, lying to us from the start.
But I had to set that weakness aside. And possibly, figure out how to keep myself open and growing, because I had a strong hunch I’d be socializing in Boulder.
If I admit how much power those things have had over me- how much I’ve let my self be ruled by the limited spiritual warrior- then the creative stasis will break. It’s like asking Christ to come back into my heart, because I need a higher spiritual presence to deal with the self I’ve encountered. And what many people feel is a loathing reaction to the media that is telling them they may not be all-wonderful, too, and so they really hate that crowd, see them as re-programmers. They do not want to join in on the sort of self-loathing they perceive in white liberals. They would rather loath them in passing. Trump making fun of those people allowed them to give him a pass no matter who he was said to have upset.
So, I really do seek visions of the future, and while as Angela said, that same faction wants unbridled hedonism without caring, I look forward to a bit of hedonism, as well, but also, I hope there’s beautiful energy and not only drunkenness and lust. There is still part of me that still wants to be proven meritous as a mate, and by extension, as a sex-partner. Is that still part of my personal self worth? Is that some of the gloominess, that I wanted to enjoy the sensual attention of more women? Like I wanted them for anything else? I am glad there is a part of me that is visionary, filled with ideas (such as poking under this gloom for motivations behind my ‘tiredness’ and impatience), and kind, and fair, and cool, and able to speak justly with the Marc Kane. There’s a limited spiritual warrior because that’s what it is, an embodiment of the lazy part of me that wants to avoid challenges but also wants to whine about not succeeding or being properly motivated The question is, how honestly healthy is your motivation in each thing? You work that out, and you’ve done the work of a therapist. The opportunities to surround myself with peaceful, creative, wise and playful people are coming. There was a time when I grew to enjoy my time in my own company. It was because I found a way to be less selfish in my thinking, and it’s all there in my book. Now, I can only cruelly conjecture I would’ve hung on here to play with others and become a successful songwriter/ performer and healthy individual living here. It is the scarcity of opportunities to avail myself of other experiences that should nudge me to open my mind here at home, as I have with the songs (so filled with lust and an earnest desire to preen for acceptance), as I can with my writing, if I will say, “I’m no longer going to live in fear. I’m going to spend the time looking for opportunity and learning and honing my craft, and continue to look for ways to be kind, but also, not to worry myself over much about how to distract myself in the name of either nobility nor arrested development. The grocery card this month, and the Refugees next month. I needn’t feel I am scum and hate myself in order to do good things and be helpful. It is true, my unpredictable schedule has been one excuse for not offering myself for distance learning help these past couple of months, but I kept feeling that weariness. I think I have found the limited attitudes and ideas that I both reject and indulge and therefore, should depict, and circumscribed them. I can spend more time learning, if I get in the regular habit of trying to learn a bit more. That’s why I’m glad I finally messed with the cameras a bit.. Can the Nanoloop pedal be far behind?
I keep believing in myself, despite the presence of those lower, baser self tendencies. Hearing about the America First Caucus paper did tell me how my region helped shape my attitude, and I thought what many a smart person from there might have thought. I am enamored of figuring out how to form a more or less complete rejection of the self I have worked to build, because that’s what happened with Ronald and many many people. Identifying the conflict outside in society as the conflict existing inside me- from the fed-up shooter to the cynical Trumpite versus the most selfless and talented person I can be- will make my writing great, not just those magnificent statements I use to strive for. I used to sit down to write, and find in my ability to regenerate self-confidence, forever found in my writing, the words I needed within just a few sentences. It was as though I didn’t want to think about why I’d have those other attitudes, just, leave’em behind. But dealing with those fragments will help me as a unified whole. I turned off a lot of FB commentators because in a way, I could easily just agree with them. It is part of my laziness and entitledness.
So, if I can accept that is part of me, despite all the wisdom I display, and the life-shining talent of amusing myself, at any rate0 that might be all my powers are good for-
There’s a chance the exercise, the meditation, the quiet stillness that does not moan of sad things nor push me to try to compensate for what never happened from my meager efforts and understanding-
Will heal me. But I realize it’s nothing to take for granted. I simply can’t be sad over not being perfect, of being so limited. But that is not all of who I am, either. Perhaps, with those things settled, and available to tap for understanding, I can write again, as I have in these journals, with great excitement and anticipation. Maybe that is all I want, a good daydream to love, and a bare minimal of help to lend, while I pick apart some of Angela’s peace whenever I need more energy I was too lazy to self-generate.
But if I can look upon my tendencies to do all this, and forgive myself, while opening myself to change, rather than trying to keep things here at the beck-and-call of my angrily-influenced daydreaming and occasional, but insufficient, activity, then, out of that same mess, the best person I could be emerges, rather than a defense I am presenting lawyerly, but without genuine conviction of its truth (wow, I can be harsh in my disdainfulness!), that what I settled for deserves to be treated better. But if I really want to treat myself better, I have not been here primarily as an actvisit, but mostly as a teacher, a fucker, a budding hiker and tennis player, and any of a number of things I am too lazy to learn much about, as I want to see how I can do from my natural ability to understand and manipulate. Oh, and an Artist, but one daydreaming of being an artist. There is a fine line, because an Artist must also have a time and place for their dream. Here’s a good law: And it harm none, do as thou will. And that’s what I need to do.
