Can’t figure out if stress or a food allergy set my sometimes dysfunctional digestive system off today, but I came damn close to just staying home because I didn’t feel like dealing with it.
But I had said I would show up in a few different places and didn’t feel like failing to come through on those things. I am often hard to pin d0wn but if I say I am going to do something I try hard to not make it an optional priority.
The cold weather hasn’t help take the edge off and if anything has made me less tolerant of some of the nonsense. The weather app says it is 28 but that it feels like 15 which reminds me of Lewis Black.
Anyhoo, the more evolved members of my family got the hell out of the cold places we lived in and moved to warmer climates. Obviously if you are among the long time readers you know I spent decades living in one of the places with the best weather around.
Wasn’t always perfect, but weather wise it was superior to what I have here in Texas. Don’t mistake that to mean that I regret moving here because it had to be done.
Some things weren’t going to get better without radical change and some questions wouldn’t be answered if I didn’t get out of dodge.
A couple of people asked recently if I knew more about some of those than I once did and I laughed. I know a ton more and I know not a fucking thing because I don’t believe what I have seen.
Don’t trust it one way or another because it is too soon to know and too late to change.
They asked me if I could be more explicit and more descriptive and I said yes and refused to say more than sometimes we rely upon the Power of the P to be the most rational and logical tool around.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means what it means.”
“That is not an answer.”
“You are right, it is not and if you don’t want to find out what happens when I really lose it you’ll let go. Be smart and give it a rest. I did.”
“Will you answer one more question? Are you just frustrated or are you angry?”
“Don’t ask me if you can ask another question if you don’t plan on waiting to see if I say I will answer it. I am already frustrated and I am already pissed off.”
“But how can I help if you won’t say what kind of help you need.”
“You can’t help.I have done all I can do and now I have to live with it until I don’t.”
An old friend tells me he thinks I ought to think twice about burning bridges and salting the earth.
“I know why you are angry but I think you have accomplished quite a bit. Sit with the accomplishment and see where it leads. It might surprise you.”
I tell him I am not sure I can deal with surprises right now.
“Frankly there is no backstop and no support other than me. I am it and sometimes I feel the weight more strongly than other times. I won’t ask for help that won’t come and or won’t be given freely.”
We go back and forth a little bit more and I tell him I set up the appointment with the eye doctor and scheduled a few other things.
“What I really want is for people to get out of my way and just let me do my thing. No more nonsense, no more lies. Done.”
The silence extends past the call and I think about what I have to do. Some things are clear and some are less so.
Later on I’ll think about whether I should have rented The Grinch instead of First Man so that I could have hung out with another creature with a tiny black heart.
****
My daughter and I keep making eye contact as we work on our respective projects. She is finishing up an extra credit project and me, well I am blowing off steam because anticipation about the morning news has me fired up.
Somewhere in the ether I here dad tell me to remember you can only do your best but it offers no more comfort now than it ever did. It is truth and it is reality.
But at this moment it is not what I want.
My daughter says I make faces when I write and says that sometimes I look very intense and sometimes silly.
I don’t tell her part of my frustration is tied into concern about the world as it is now and how to best protect her. Or more accurately it is concern about antisemitism already experienced and that which I suspect might come.
It wasn’t part of my childhood in the same way as it is for her.
So today at the gym I did two extra sets of one exercise and three of another because I have to maintain and or improve physically who I am for as long as I can.
It is the end of the innocence all over again.
