Maggie in the Sky with Subpoenas

With American political news podcasts in the mornings, followed by crime dramas on the TV screen in the evenings, pouring into my brain, I think I might be suffering from ongoing deafness/blindness to my own impulses and thoughts. I dream for what seems like ten hours every night, and that’s the world in which I feel most comfortable, despite the aforementioned inputs. It’s a world influenced by my memories and the few real-world happenings that affect me these days, such as my former boss texting me a request to pick her daughter up at school. It turned out (that day, anyway) that the child’s grandmother was available to pick her up after all, but the damage had been done. Lillian had injected herself into my mind. My dreams that night featured a party at her house that I was obliged to co-host. It doesn’t matter that the party might have been dreamily strange and amazing, or that the location was dreamily strange and amazing. This was a scenario I’d lived out before, just a few years ago. I woke up feeling depressingly under her thumb.

And yet, I am wondering if my personality actually seeks being under someone’s thumb, or at least seeks someone to do things for. It’s the rare occasion when I invent my own projects. If I’m in a situation where inventing my own projects is encouraged and expected, then I’ll invent my own projects. Just hanging around my house does not facilitate my creativity, though. Well, OK, I do create new dinner offerings occasionally.

The huge project that whines at me in the face all the time is the crying need to remove all this “stuff” from my house. But it’s mostly Russell’s stuff, so I hesitate. I also hesitate due to lack of (positive) energy. Mostly I look for excuses to go on errands, or to the gym (where I either swim or walk on the treadmill without much enjoyment). My sister (11 years younger) is still doing CrossFit over there in Spain, despite having broken her foot weeks ago and being obliged to do rehab exercises for it. And my nephew Tomas has won a CrossFit competition. These people are trying to set a good example, eh? But I had an athletic era of my own when I was in my 50’s, so wasn’t that enough? A dozen trophies for running far and fast are sitting on a shelf. I’ve had eras of many kinds, from innocence to jadedness, from ambition to dogged pursuit of the mediocre, from laziness to nervous activity, from musical adventures to no-music. Once in a while I’ve tried something new, hoping it will ‘stick,’ but nothing does. Writing always comes back. Music is currently back. But that feeling of having something to say is long gone; now I’m into writing about the past and learning some technical things about music and singing. I know by now that nothing I write or sing will help anyone, and in fact, the wanting to help anyone is very faintly felt. Barely a pulse.

I am not sure this is a result of, or preceded, my going on the wagon. I’m off alcohol and onto kombucha, which has sugar in it. That sugar is augmented by a new craving for spicy gumdrops, even more sugary. I don’t think I’ve gained weight beyond the ten pounds I slowly put on after retiring in 2016, but I’m not svelte. I am still flexible, though. I am attending what’s called Yin Yoga, led by my friend Joy, on Monday nights at the strangely elegant house on Holmes Avenue (near UAH) known as The Center of Light for Applied Metaphysics (formerly the Light of Christ Center). And I do meditation there every Friday, also led by Joy. This provides me with the necessary dose of being in my friend’s presence, although we rarely get together just the two of us. There are things she doesn’t like about me, and of course there are things I don’t like about her. We both persist in not changing for the other (not that we could). My notions of Friendship, and my notions of Love and Marriage have morphed so severely that I couldn’t define either at this point. Nor could I define Family.

I no longer have my parents as a reason to travel north, and of course, there’s the dog, whom I couldn’t bear to leave for more than a long weekend. I’m stuck right now, but I am the only one to blame. I just need some motivation. However, given my age (nearly 70) my idea of motivation will have to morph also. There is no future to be prepared for or personal adventure to hope for. Anything I do will have to be its own reward. And I was never able to take in that sort of reward easily. At least I still enjoy petting Maggie and watching the sky.