February 22, 2019
This world just doesn\’t seem to be made for all-of-us…
I am battling (as many of you are) the latest flu (or cold) that\’s going round. Giti is going on her third week of it.
I haven\’t completely succumbed — but I\’m not at my fighting best either, and the weather hasn\’t allowed me to get recharged in the surf.
I am reminded of the Six-Fingered Man\’s advice (from The Princess Bride [as played by Christopher Guest {who I believe is still married to Jamie Lee Curtis}]) — when he said: if you haven\’t got your health — you haven\’t got anything.
And as I gaze at the World outside my microcosm — I realize that it is predatory: if you move too slowly — you will be eaten…I seem to be moving very slowly at-the-moment. And though herbivores don\’t have to move fast to get their food — they have to move quickly to avoid the carnivores.
Everything on this planet consumes something else to survive…
It\’s no small wonder that L.A. County sports 40,000 homeless — who I feel have been broken-on-the-wheel of our social arrangements — stripped of the skills required to keep a roof over One\’s head but maintaining a drive to stay alive. On average, 1500 nameless and unclaimed — who have died on the street (having exhausted these last, tenuous skills) — are cremated and buried en masse each year in a Lost Angels graveyard.
Sting\’s words echo in my ears: How fragile we are, how fragile we are…
Studying up on Alfred Adler — so I could lecture on him — I was reminded of his stance on the meaning of our dreams. Adler suggests that between the ages of 6-and-8 we each create an Ideal Self and live our lives pursuing this fictionalized goal of \”being.\” If we somehow make the goal too lofty (too fantastic) we come up with excuses as to why we stop pursuing the goal. And our dreams point out what we perceive our obstacles to be.
My dreams, as-of-late, see me struggling to get things done — unable to successfully complete projects and tasks. Is it this flu/cold? Is it the weather (decidedly un-Californian)? Is it because I can\’t write the lyrics to new music or that my music site languishes? Is it because I chickened out of playing at an open mic night? Or is it because this middle-class American got spanked on taxes this year — a year that was supposed to herald a glorious tax cut?
It\’s too easy to blame it on the months of Trump…
The social matrix is driving me down. Do I need to become an automaton to survive my mortgage; my home insurance; my life insurance; my car lease; gas; home repairs; property taxes; car registration; car insurance; phone(s); internet; domain names; helping out my youngest Son? I could come up with many more predators taking a bite out of me and triggering TIAs (my Son excluded, as he is actually doing quite well in the world We Boomers have left him) but you get the picture…
Or should I blame my apathy on the macrocosm and it\’s increasing hate and intolerance? Climate change? Pollution and toxins that the new EPA suggests are good for US? Madness in the White House and on social media? Mass shootings?
One has to be supremely fit to deal with these beasts on a daily basis…
We always think the rich have it easier than we do. In a past life — I counseled enough rich people to know that they have the same problems every wo/man has — except for a single factor: money creates a buffer between the rich and the predations of this life. So when the rich wake in the morning — they don\’t have to worry about chasing their food or the threat of being eaten…
No One here gets out alive…