Forgetting, Remembering, Forgetting Again

     So I was adrift.  Waking in the morning, feeling good for an hour or two after coffee, washing, shaving, working, coming home and watching the clock, waiting for the time to come when I could return to the temporary oblivion of sleep.  Whiskey helps.
     There were times, often, when I weighed the options: do something, do nothing, don't choose.  I could not think of any reason for this ennui other than the usual reason for ennui: I stopped doing, then wanting, then being.  There were moments when I saw some hope, when I heard a song that took me away, when I was at church, when the morning and the coffee and the sky and the birds all sang in me but these were moments without substance, I could not see that they were the unasked for blessings that abound for those in tune.  Again, I don't know why I forget what I sometimes have known, why I forget entirely what it is that tunes me.
     While forgetting is the cause of my having gone astray it is not the first cause; it is a passive symptom of my own personal original sin: knowing what makes me happy and what makes me sad and choosing the latter.  (I am working on a theory of individualized original sin for those who believe in God and such things. A perfect God could have made perfect beings but decided not to.  If He/She has gone to this much trouble to make imperfection, perfection being the norm, then it seems reasonable to assume that He/She has made many different types of imperfection, hence a variety of original sins.  But I haven't really thought this out yet and besides this has gotten far too heady and off the topic for me.)
     Empirical evidence:  most mornings when  I woke up and for most of the day, often till the end of work when I was driving home I was resolved not to drink booze, then various discomforts psychic and physical convinced me that what I needed was a dose of medicine: Jameson 12 year old is very fine medicine indeed and whatever wrinkles remained could be smoothed out with a bottle or two of Guinness extra stout and for good measure, as well as to secure sleep, some red wine, then sleep, repeat.
     Looking at what I've written it is clear that even the most obtuse observer would be able to formulate a preliminary diagnosis for my ennui saying, "Well that's not a good way to live, maybe that's your problem." or such like.  And in truth, I often thought to say such myself but the allure of oblivion was strong in me which sounds like what was said of Luke Skywalker, the force being strong in him but my gift was unlikely to help me defeat the evil empire and besides I didn't have the energy.
     The evil empire:  Having grown up in the sixties, I was born in 49, I knew all about the evil empire that scooped up people my age, disproportionately black, and sent them to kill Asians in rice patties.  I took to the streets, to guerrilla theatre, to sit ins, to teach ins, to rage against the machine, which is now a band that won't let the Republicans play their music.  I had a cause and a purpose, we had a cause and a purpose but it went terribly wrong, ultimately sex, drugs, and rock and roll no matter how delightful were not enough.  We lost our way and those who believed that ass-kissing obeisance was the righteous rite of passage until they too rose to become the ass that was kissed eventually took over, i.e. Karl Rove et.al.
     So I knew what to fight but was too lazy to do the heavy lifting.  How this all came about and how I eventually returned to the fray will have to wait for another day as this is as long as I would like it to be today.
    
    

Begun Again, having learned a few things about myself.

     With the full understanding that I am likely just talking to myself I resume my blog.  My disappearance was the result of two, unrelated, causes.  The first is a syndrome that no doubt has a psych name but I don't know it.  This is what happened:
     The exploration of the "Locomotion"  began to grow in breadth and significance beyond my ability to keep up with it for various reasons which I have forgotten.  Somewhere between my conscious and my subconscious there was a deal made that I would not post anything new until I had completed that line of thought.  In the meantime other demands called to me: dissertation prospectus, a writing conference, the compilation of a book of poetry, sorting out my income tax, bills, family events, etc.  So I put it off and by doing so put time betwen my intent and its end.
     As is often with me and I imagine others when time is so put, the return to the pursuit of the end becomes more fearful as it begins to work on the imagination: was it all folly, did Google dump me for inactivity, does anybody care, why am I even bothering to write when I can spend the rest of my days peacefully awaiting death.  These sorts of thoughts.
     Earlier I said that the two causes were unrelated but I'm likely wrong about that as I see now some connection between the state of mind occasioned by delay and what subsequently enveloped me.  I had a mid-life crisis.  This being my second I recognize the symptoms and ultimate result.  The first occurred to me in my fortieth year.  My wife was pregnant, I felt keenly that I had not accomplished that which I ought to have accomplished by that point of my life (though I knew not what that was), a deadly sameness had swallowed me.  I had to change something.  I was unable to afford a hot red convertible or any convertible for that matter and in truth I didn't care much for cars, my wife was adamantly opposed to my growing a beard or shaving my head, I couldn't decide on a tattoo, and I thought I would look silly with an earring or any other decorative piercing, so I quit smoking.
     I had never gone a day in my life from the age of thirteen till then without a cigarette.  Smoking is a pattern of life I was very fond of and I knew this fondness would never leave me, I liked everything about it except the end: cancer and/or emphysema.  And while these realities were troublesome I felt the tradeoff was worth it.  But the psychic need to make some big change and the thought that when this latest child, our fourth, was twenty I would be sixty and having by then smoked for forty-seven years, having a history of weak lungs (my mother never gave me permission to smoke because of that), and having Irish heritage on both sides (they all seem to die of cancer), convinced me to stop.  Not quit, stop, with the intention of some time in the future resuming the romance with tobacco.  I have a cousin, Joanne, who also stopped with the intent to once again resume, I wonder how many others have done so just to keep the door open?
     But this is off the topic to wit: why I had been so long away from the blog and why I have now returned.
     Mid-life crisis II:  While the first crisis might have been aptly named, as twice forty is eighty, a reasonable life expectancy though beyond what any known male relative of mine has been able to achieve (seventy-eight is the record so far) the second crisis, coming at the age of sixty-three cannot rightly be called mid, unless I live to one-hundred-twenty-six, an unlikely prospect.  I am working on a theory of serial deaths and rebirths but until I have it a bit more solid in my head I'm going to go with a variation of the common phrase.
     This mid-life rebirth followed, as did the first one (I), a period of drifting.  Now I am one committed to drifting and under normal circumstances would be content to drift but there are different states of drifting and I was in one that would be more correctly called being adrift.  The distinction lies in the end of each state: the former has some intended end, the latter does not.  Let me explain, but first I will post this because it has grown as long as I would like for a single entry.  I will return much sooner than the five months previous pause.