The Lost Pedestrian

People keep asking me … some people … if I’ve made any decisions yet. And I say, no I have not made any decisions yet. And they want an explanation. I don’t have an explanation. But it helps when they get more specific and ask if I’ve made any decisions about a potential dog yet. And I explain that the dog remains a potential dog and really there is nothing else to explain.

Just as with people, I have no idea what I am looking for. Dogs, fish, partners, linens, books, movies, exercise, napping, planning in general. I just don’t have it in my blood. It’s not in my infrastructure. I wish it were. I wish I had something else to write about. But then if there were other options for what to write about, I wouldn’t write at all because it would be impossible for me to decide up on which one to go with.

Back to the dog, I don’t even know if it matters really. Having a dog matters. But the breed… I think any dog that planted itself upon my sofa would be loved by me..

sort of a continuation of my previous nothing session. inane characters I have seen on inane Netflix series interpreting my half dream thoughts

aging

so strange that I am thinking of material things and inane TV/movies I have seen more than art or creative or sex or relationships

Rather scary actually

tonight’s sad basketball game

wondering if my not totally cutting off J from my world is inhibiting me from opening it up to other people. Or maybe the universe will not allow that to happen until I really truly cut things off.

this 3 year old Bracco Italiano that might be for sale

maybe it would be a wiser move to adopt a 3 year old dog than buy an 8 week old puppy

fighting off sleepiness. heavy heavy sleepiness.

the effort required to fend off falling to sleep is definitely doing something

But if i let myself fall asleep, i will miss the entire experience of nothing or attempting nothing

attempting nothing

Glass Onion. Both the movie and The Beatles Song

John Lennon

The end of the song Glass Onion, with the string quartet. what could be more brilliant?

the art that could be on the wall

the wrinkles in the sofa

dread of work tomorrow

my haircut. whether I should tell the hair stylist to text me if she is running late, or whether that would be rude.

remembering to subtract the cost of the haircut from my budget

should I or should I not buy those boots

Thursday night with Barrie. I feel this pressure to be working on something or have enough entertaining things to say to get me through a dinner

the dishes that await me

the lack of sex drive

the fear of losing the spark. any kind of spark

the pounds i have added to my body and wondering if and how long it will take to shed them

Ada and Ariel and Sayward and Ryan and our artist group that once was and how I miss them all and wonder if anyone will take the initiative to bring us back together because when I tried to bring us together, it did not work so well.

the shame over the poundage

my butt beginning to hurt from sitting so much today

should I shave tonight or tomorrow?

the itch in my eye. at least it’s the left eye and not the right eye, which I am not allowed to itch

when will my glasses be delivered? I keep forgetting to check the tracking number.

My landlord and what she might be wondering about the very large box I have placed in the hallway clearly labeled with a dog crate even though I have not officially told her I am getting a dog.

But I am not deceiving my landlord since at this moment there is still no dog

So strange to be so preoccupied with dog and weight and The Beatles and the unfinished novel I’ve been reading for at least 6 months and all of the series and movies and all of the characters inhabiting them and fighting off sleep while never being able to sleep when I want to.

And that spark? Where did it go?

I can recall the time when someone once asked me if I was making any new years resolutions. I think that was about 10 minutes ago. And I replied, when do I not make new years resolutions? I probably make new years resolutions every day. The completion of this sentence is a rare resolution fulfilled.

My friend/spirit guide/mentor/student Lisa has given me an assignment to sit still and do nothing. It’s not meditation, it’s not focusing on the breath or trying to quiet the mind, it’s not intended to be anything. She told me she had tried it for 4 hours and it affected her in profound ways. I am giving it a try for 1 hour. Here’s a list of what passed through my consciousness in no particular order

how quiet it was on the street. so quiet it felt like a relief when there was sound to disrupt it, like a car passing by or a dog barking

are those real sounds or imaginary sounds?

the episode of the trashy but sort of entertaining series I’ve been watching on Netflix. Except that the actors were performing the dialogues of my thoughts.

the letter I started to write to Emily and then I started to think that maybe I should do a regular letter writing exchange with Lisa and other willing friends and how that might be a way to get me writing more, or to at least like writing. but first i should really make time to finish that letter to Emly

the list of thoughts i would write in this blog

Ernest Hemingway. I’m not sure why. I never think about Ernest Hemingway. Maybe it was a thought disguised as Ernest Hemingway

The dog issue. whether i should make the bold move of adopting this dog.

And the road trip that would be required to retrieve the dog.

And how the current owner sleeps with the dog and wondering if the dog will expect me to sleep with him, or demand it

New Years Eve and what to do about it and wishing certain friends would invite me to do something

All of these little mini-semi-awake dream scenarios I would drift into that made absolutely no sense and which I cannot remember

The chair my sister and I thought about getting my mother and my mother’s refusal of allowing any new new furniture into her home, even if it was more comfortable for her and made it easier for her to stand up and down

The price of the chair and whether we could find a used one on ebay

cleaning up the clutter in my apartment such as the shirt that lay on rug in front of me.

the wrinkles in the sofa

the clock and then trying not to think about the clock

whether I would be able to handle sitting here doing nothing a second longer. whether I was capable of meeing my 1 hour goal

my breath. my shallow breath. why was it so difficult to follow breath?

stop thinking about breath. that isn’t what this is about

my bladder

J and her expectations of me and our relationship and how she will feel tonight when I don’t call her or don’t make a plan to see her this weekend even though it’s New Years Eve

What a jerk I am for being so mean to her

Gosh, I’m such a jerk

my sister and brother-in-law

last night’s dinner with my sister and brother-in-law and mother

the bad tv i watched with my sister and brother-in-law and mother

how great it was just to sit here in this room and do nothing.

aging

my friend Barrie and a friend of hers i had never seen or met who possibly did not even exist

coffee. i’m out of coffee and I forgot to buy coffee for the 3rd day in a row and maybe the first thing i should do after I eat the pear is to order more coffee

what to do about the wrinkles in the sofa

Gordon Setters

Great Danes

The Great Dane breeder I spent an hour with on the phone yesterday

where to put the dog crate when it arrives

a pear. i had one pear left in the refrigerator and the first thing I would do after doing nothing would be to eat the pear.

there is no such thing as doing nothing. you are always doing something. nothing always counts as something but I don’t think it’s possible for something to count as nothing

my heating bill

my bank account

the deluge of tasks that await me and the expectations that i will complete those tasks when I return to work next week

the dread i feel about the above

whether they would move me to another department or not

forgetting to respond to Bob Levy’s invitation to join him and their friends I have never met on New Years Eve and this ‘beautiful, intelligent woman’ he thought I might match with

The photo he sent of this woman which I was attracted to not in the least bit

how strange attraction is. how some people find some things and some people attractive while others do not. And what right do I have to judge anyone based up their attractiveness, whatever that is

the dishes

all of those plays being performed in my head whenever I am not thinking and how I should try to document them in some way.

maybe the fact that these plays exist is an indication that i am meant to be writing them

that dumb series i was talking about on netflix and what I would watch tonight

i watch way too much television. so much television that the characters on tv shows occupy a good third of my thoughts.

the darkness of the room. the perfect darkness with just the right amount of light emanating from the aquarium

last night’s Chicago Bulls game

shoes. should I buy those shoes?

i’m sure there was more.

I was at my current workplace. This person I did not recognize was sitting in the cubicle across from me. I was surprised because I did not know there was a cubicle across from me. Most of the people in the department are women in their late 20s/early 30s, and they are all white. This person had none of those characteristics. He appeared to be about 42. He looked at me. I looked at him. But we did not speak.

Eventually he moved to a table directly next to my desk, which I also was not aware was there. We started to chat a bit. He was the new guy in the department, assigned to do something with MLR (medical/legal/regulatory) reviews.

One of the women in the department stopped by to chat a bit. I am not sure what we conversed about But at one point, the woman said, “Well, that’s because you guys are old.” To which I replied that I took offense and that I would submit a complaint to HR. She was speechless and just stared at me for about 30 seconds before I said, “Just kidding.” Even though I thought that maybe I was not kidding.

It really bothered me a lot. These days I am obsessed with aging and more and more anxious that time is moving much too quickly for me. I am paralyzed by fear, in a muted way. In my conversations with friends, whenever we talk about things we hope to do in the future, I have gotten into the habit of saying that maybe I will do whatever it is ‘before I depart from this earth.’ My friends think I am kidding. But I am not kidding. I wish I were kidding.

I guess this dream was about finding things.

The first thing I found was the glass bowl I regularly use for my regular breakfast of oatmeal. There was just a tiny bit of oatmeal remaining in the bowl and I was trying to remember if I had eaten my breakfast today, or if that was yesterday’s breakfast. And I did not want to eat 2 breakfasts. It was too distressful to contemplate and I don’t think I arrived at a decision.

The second thing I found was a pair of noise cancelling bluetooth headphones that has been missing (in non-dream life) for several weeks. It was under a table and I swear I must have looked under that table 10,000 times. And then in non-dream life, I had thought that perhaps it was stolen. I don’t think any of my friends who had visited would steal it. Or if they did, they would tell me about it. Which would make me glad because then I would feel like I was giving something to somebody, instead of taking. always taking. Perhaps I deserved to have things taken away.

And then I thought about the one non-friend who had been in my apartment. This young man or woman named Casey who I hired from Task Rabbit to assemble a piece of furniture that was beyond my mechanical aptitude. Perhaps the headphones were in the room where Casey was assembling and they just happened to slip into their toolbox, either purposefully or unpurposefully. I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt most of the time, but there was something off about this person. something not quite right. Although they did an excellent job with the furniture and I even gave them a 5 star rating.

And then, in the dream, once I found the headphones, I thought that this meant I could return and get a refund on the replacement headphones I just ordered from Amazon. I sure could use those $200 which I really should have used to pay off credit card debt.

Not once had I thought about donating the $200 to people in need. Perhaps Casey was there to tell me I did not deserve the headphones, or the oatmeal or the $200 refund. I should probably thank them for that.

I’ve been viciously beset with an acute attack of unrepentant consumerism and I’m not quite sure what to do about it. Any remaining shards of creativity have been eclipsed by online shopping. The research skill that was once my forte is now directed at finding the best possible products at the best possible prices. It’s a shame. I had so much promise. Sigh. People who have not completely forgotten me may wonder ‘whatever happened to that guy … why can’t I think of his name?” And they will be surprised when I overhear them and interject that they cannot think of my name because there are quite a few people with name and it is so easy to forget who is who. I know I can’t keep track of that.

I seem to be having these sporadic missing time experiences. Perhaps it’s from sleep deprivatio. Or maybe brain degradation. Or possibly generalized atrophy disorder. One moment, I am walking south on Clark Street. The very same Clark Street I have walked along each and every day of my life. Maybe the only street I have ever walked on in my life. And I’m trying to make it to the bank, to the one bank with an ATM that dispenses cash without asking for anything in return. I hope that one day I can be like this ATM.

But that is a problem other than the one I am trying to describe. This walk on Clark Street to get cash,, for what I seem to have forgotten. I know I need it. I need some cash for something. And I hope I will find that something along my walk. But it was not very long before I had a realization that I was Clark Street without any sense of l how I got there. I must have been doing something earlier that led to this walk. I could not just have materialized here out of nowhere, I don’t think.

And was that you who was waving to me from your car and was it me who was waving back? Or was that somebody else? I was thinking such thoughts when I noticed I had strayed from my path, even though I was still on Clark Street. Was I walking north or south? How long had I been walking? Was I far from home? Which home? And which city is that home?

Eventually I found my bearings but they were not at the bank and they were not at home and they were not on Clark Street. They were somewhere in between, I guess, if there is such a pace. if there is such a place.

Is there a limit to gluttony?

I have not heard of any such limit.

I like to think I will never reach it.

I guess that might count as my aspiration for the day.

Each and every day, I want to unearth a mystery. Float over a hurdle. Do something fulfilling in some way. And when that does not happen, I sleep not a wink. I must answer to myself or else I will stumble

I’ve been reading through old journals hoping to excavate remnants of things that might latch on to remnants of other things. And I read page after page of this barely legible scribbling that is barely legible because at one time I did all of my writing on bumpy busses on bumpy roads. So it’s a real challenge to decipher it.

But then I had a realization. A realization that all of this scribbling was very easy to decipher because for years and years and years I was scribbling the same sentence over and over again. On different roads. On different busses and trains. With different writing utensils. Wearing different shirts. With different shoes. In different seasons. Using different words … all of them amounting to the same sentence.

“I wish I had more to say and more time to say it.”

The end.

I awakened from a movie dream, a dream about a movie I may have played a part in, or maybe I was only the audience.

People in the dream were turning into grotesque and violent ‘aliens’ (as, in aliens from the movie Aliens). They had tentacles and their tentacles would slide out and kill people.

Certain people would be taken away and then turned into these mutant creatures. The creatures were ruled by robots who would change into any form and the mutant humans and the robots would have sex, but mutant humans had no control and the sex would get so heated that the robots, in erotic human form, would begin to melt… like a dented car would look and the mutant humans turned into these grotesque, horrible monsters with huge skulls and stick figure bodies.

Such evil evil dreams back in 1996.

Seattle, WA

I must find out where Allen is. I am not able to accept his death. Being murdered–the violence of writing that word is too much to bear. Inconceivable.

Perhaps he overextended his innocence and the world crashed down upon him.

Perhaps he truly escaped from reality and eluded us all.

Wherever he is could be unthinkable and mortifying.

Or perhaps it was unthinkable and mortifying, but then it stopped.

And he is gone.

Some of us have a fear of empty white boxes.

Some of us have a fear of boxes that once were empty but now have been prefilled with all kinds of stuff. Appliances, old CDs, bad art from former friends, cables for electronics that were donated to the Salvation Army decades ago, mismatched gloves, mismatched socks, metadata, pens with no ink, pencils with no erasers, empty bottles of white out.

Some of us like to keep a gratitude journal.

Some of us prefer to wallow in hurt, embitterment and resentment.

Some of us see the expansiveness of the universe.

Some us see a world that once was expansive but is now closing in on us faster than we can ever imagine and fell helpless to slow it down to a reasonable pace.

Some of us are attuned to connections and interconnections.

Some of us live in a state of panic as we watch connections and interconnections float away, just out of grasp.

Some of us stare at fish.

Some of us are embarrassed to be caught staring by the fish we are staring at.

Some of us are people of action

Some of us are people who wait for action to come to us.

Some of us are convinced that waiting is an action in itself.

Some of us are tired of waiting, but do our best to ignore it, to brush it under the rug.

Some of us prefer to nap on a memory foam mattress

Some of us prefer to nap on the memoryless tile of the bathroom floor

Some of us wonder what this place is called… this place between napping and not napping. This place between foam and floor. This place between memory and non-memory.

Some of us believe that language is overrated.

Some of us cannot find the words to argue otherwise.

I don’t know why I swear at my computer to the extent that I do. I have a tendency to get impatient with how slow and uncooperative it can be, but I’m not really certain if yelling ‘come on, motherfucker!’ raises its processing speed or makes it any more productive. Maybe I am really telling myself to ‘come on, motherfucker!’ in the hopes that this will push me somewhere I would not go were I not there to yell at myself. I’m just relieved there are no children around. Not really relieved that I do not have children. Because not having children is one the biggest regrets of my life. I like to think I am not the kind of person who would call my children ‘motherfuckers.’ And if I did call them that, that they would have the sense to not take me seriously. If I could have had children who did not take me seriously, I could have been a truly great parent. I’m convinced of it. Maybe the world is a better place now that I have not had children, especially children who took me seriously. The thing is, I would have taken them seriously. I say this not as a speculation, but as a statement that is evidence-based. Based upon how seriously I take each being that dwells in my aquarium. If it wasn’t so late in my life, my caretaking of tropical fish could have been great preparation for caretaking of children. Except for the part about me forgetting to feed them. Except for the part about one of them dying every couple of months. That… I know I could not have handled that. I think about that a lot these days as I ponder getting a dog. Vacillating between a couple of challenges. It would not be good to have a dog that outlives me. And it would not be good to have a dog that I outlive. Stuck in this zone, between doglessness and childlessness. It’s not a place I would recommend.