Sunday’s Theme Music
Mood: glum
After greeting us with sunshine this morning, Sunday, October 22, 2023, has served non-stop rain to Ashlandia, where the fresh air is never canned and the drivers are extra-distracted.
Well, first, my apologies. I’m glum today, even irritated and moody. This is due to my illness. It’s plagued me for over two weeks. Nothing deep nor serious, just enough to be bothersome. After convincing myself I was rid of it, the sore throat, lethargy, and headache parts all stormed back. Just depressing, you know? And irritating.
And frustrating. Did I mention that? I’d entertained visions of industrious editing and revising and this damn sickness just undercut all intentions. I’ve been gritting my teeth in a struggle to will myself through it. Instead, I just want to sit back, feeling sorry for myself, reading and chilling. Heavy sigh emerges after I acknowledge and type that.
I’ve tried to edit and revise twice; it’s a challenge today. Some of this is because I’m dealing with a very abstract notion toward the novel’s end. I’m attempting to transition it from its abstract roots into something real and authentic. Patience, deep thinking, and persistence are needed, and I’m struggling to generate those today.
Today’s theme music is “Black Hole Sun” by Soundgarden. I came up with this by myself, without The Neurons’ help. It came about from watching clouds move in and overwhelm the morning sunshine, undermining my enthusiasm for the day. These days come, of course. It’s not necessarily indicative of anything except a crappy-ish day. It’ll pass.
Meanwhile, I’ve always enjoyed “Black Hole Sun”. It comes across as a declaration to me. The words are sort of contradictory — “Black hole sun, won’t you come, and wash away the rain” — but that somehow springs some defiant hope in me. Perhaps it’s just the plaintive way it first comes across before exploding with brashness, a tone and mood reinforced with hard guitar chords and rolling drums. Besides those elements, weariness is wired into the verses such as this one:
Stuttering, cold and damp
Steal the warm wind, tired friend
Times are gone for honest men
And sometimes far too long for snakes
In my shoes, a walking sleep
And my youth I pray to keep
Heaven send Hell away
No one sings like you anymore
h/t to Genius.com
It’s a stream of consciousness of spent energy, which is much how I feel today. I should warn you, it’s a bizarre video.
Stay pos — at least more positive than me, please — and be strong. I’m trying to move forward; hope you do as well. More coffee, please, black as the sun, hot as ice. Here’s the music. Cheers
Wednesday’s Theme Music
Mood: inspired
We’ve gravitated to Wednesday, October 18, 2023. Will it be one of those days? you ask. Thinking about what’s going on, I wonder as well. How will this day be remembered by us in five years and more? History will have one perspective, and each of us will have our own variation of what this day was like in hindsight, just as we do with absolutely everything that happens.
I believe that in a year, this day will be lost in the existential mud for me.
It’s 61 F with fog out there in Ashlandia, where the rockers are old, and the dancers are above average. From my window’s vantage, there’s not a scintilla of fog marring the blue, sun-fed expanse. Temperatures promise to live up to the sunshine; forecasters are announcing with some pleasure, it’s going to be in the low eighties today.
I was thinking about how difficult getting out of bed was when I was sick during the last two weeks. Every day was worse until something broke on Sunday. Then it gradually improved until it’s much better today.
The Neurons heard me thinking. That inspired them to inspire me with “Moving in Stereo” by The Cars in my morning mental music stream (Trademark inspired). The song’s forbidding techno beat always gives me pause. Combined with the voice inflections in the song’s early verses, it inspires robotic movements.
The words themselves capture some of the essence of my life views. I hear in them my thoughts about how we so easily succomb to our problems and often magnify them.
It’s so easy to blow up your problems
It’s so easy to play up your breakdown
It’s so easy to fly through a window
It’s so easy to fool with the sound
[Verse 3]
It’s so tough to get up
It’s so tough
It’s so tough to live up
It’s so tough on you
[Verse 4]
Life’s the same, I’m moving in stereo
Life’s the same except for my shoes
h/t to Genuis.com
I hear myself magnifying my issues in things like me muttering to myself, “I feel so sick.” Well, it’s a relative thing, innit? I was not dying, just coping with some mild to strong symptoms that affected thinking, breathing, and moving.
I ended up mocking myself about those things. I always like to see those you-are-here depictions of our planet as a miniscule dot in the galaxy, and the galaxy is a tiny dot in the universe. That restores my perspective. Or some of it. It’s a relative thing.
Stay positive, be strong, and cling to whatever optimism you can muster today. Fortified with black coffee, I will do the same.
Here’s the music. Cheers
Tuesday’s Theme Music
Mood: spirited
The crescendo you might have heard earlier today was Tuesday, October 17, 2023, arriving. We’ve now passed half of the tenth month. Many are gearing up for the holiday season to launch.
It’s 53 F in Ashlandia, where the animals are feted and the people drink coffee all day. It feels curiously warm and pleasant. Forecasters expect our temperatures to crest at 71 F. We may see another degree or two at our house. Where and how we’re situated in relation to mountains and sunshine often results in a little more heat found in my space.
Beautiful out there, though, with stingy white clouds drifting through a strong azure sky and an invigorating sun.
A friend forwarded some humor to me. I plucked a few out for your morning jollies. They seem relatable to modern life and might distract us some from the wars and political messes swirling through October.
I’m feeling much better today. It’s been days since I’ve had any energy. This illness drained and wearied me, and became a stanch reminder of how often we don’t appreciate things until they’re gone. In my case, it was energy, willpower, clear thinking, and being pain free. I hope I never reach that state on a regular basis. So many people live like that with diseases and sickness. I saw it regularly when I visited Mom and witnessed her enduring and coping with multiple issues.
I also see it with my buddy, Larry, who lives on an oxygen bottle these days, Most painfully, I see it in my wife as she fights with flares of pain and stiffness delivered by her auto-immune issues. I took my own decent health too much for granted.
The Neurons have “Love Will Keep Us Together” looping in the morning mental music stream (Trademark flabbergasted). Although Neil Sedaka was co-writer and originally released it, I have the Captain and Tennille cover from 1973. As I said the last time I shared this song, back in 2018, it’s not my style but it was being played frequently on the radio stations where I lived, so I heard it all the time. I don’t know what prompted The Neurons to bring it out of the music vault but I fear I must play it for others or it will keep going around my head.
If you read a previous post this week, you might remember that my wife and I couldn’t remember what I thought I might buy Mom for her birthay. Well, one happy tidbit is that my wife pulled enough out for me to recall all the details. See, two brains are better than one.
The converasation was about genealogy. We were specifically talking about the Mayflower and William Brewster. Three of us are related to him via DNA. In my case, he would be my great-grandfather by ten. From that conversation, I thought buying Mom a gift to the General Society of Mayflower Descendants. I wonder if they shorten that to ‘the society’ or ‘the descendants’ in private conversations?
Stay positive, be strong, and keep optimistic. I’m up for coffee. Anyone else?
Here’s the music. Cheers
Monday’s Theme Music
Mood: unenthusiastic
Monday came in for me like a snail runnin’ the hundred meters. It’s October 16, 2023.
53 F now in Ashlandia, where the wine is local and the Pinot Noir is pretty damn good. An unrelenting, unhappy wind is assailing us under a dull gray sky. Rain is due. Fall is assuming its familiar form. Leaves changed color and now they’re dropping off trees, piling up again curbs and in yards, and zipping past windows on a zephyr motor.
Birthdays are pending. Cards and gifts must be purchased and sent. October is our family’s heaviest birthday month, with one past and eight due.
Mom’s birthday is one of them. I’m not sure what to get her. Sitting and conversing at Empty Bowls on Friday, someone mentioned something. I said, “Maybe I should get that for Mom for her birthday.”
Beside me, my wife brightned. “That’s a great idea.”
Neither can remember what ‘it’ was. We’re still working on pulling it out of memory. Sometimes it takes two minds to remember things. LOL.
Still sick. Stayed in from writing yesterday. Mostly read and napped, watched some NFL football.
Sore throat is gone; yea. Energy, though, is really tanked. Like someone siphoned it away. Headache was there and ears were hurting this morning. But I drank coffee to kick start my energy. Surprise, the head and ear pains fled. So hurray for coffee, once again.
Locking into my mood, The Neurons have positioned “Ridin’ the Storm Out” by REO Speedwagon into the morning mental music stream (Trademark ignored). The 1981 song emerged when I was stationed with the Air Force on Okinawa, Japan.
Okinawa is a narrow island and subject to typhoons/tropical cyclones. These were often endured with ‘Phoon Parties’. You tape over and board over the windows with what you can find. Then you raid the booze store on base and the Commissary to buy provisions. While the aircraft were evacuated, we prepared to survive a few days, possibly without electricity.
My wife and I were fortunate in our first three years. We had a tiny off-base apartment in a tiny apartment building. The landlords lived on the bottom floor, and a dozen US couples lived in the apartments. During a ‘phoon, we could visit each other via the inside hallways, so we’d play games like Uno, or Trivial Pursuit, or visit to chat and borrows stuff.
Time to light this Monday. Stay pos, be strong, and keep well. Here’s the music. More coffee, stat. Cheers
Sunday’s Theme Music
Mood: unenthusiastic
Sunday, 10/15/2023. 66 F now, 74 F later, sunny, bluish and grayish sky with some bleak, skulking clouds, blustery.
Based on symptoms and energy level, I apparently have a cold, which is shorting my energy. Guess it’s a cold: tired, scratchy eyes. Headache. Sore throat. Some sinus congestion. Good appetite, though. Sounds like a cold, doesn’t it?
Yes, it could be something else. This all started last week, on Wednesday. I tested negative for COVID yesterday.
In honor of my physical condition, The Neurons are playing the 1977 10cc song, “You’ve Got A Cold”, carrying it on in the afternoon after starting it in my morning mental music stream (Trademark strained). They may have tapped into something, right?
Stay positive and be strong. Here’s the video. Cheers
Friday’s Wandering Thoughts
He told his friends, “With all the recent smoke, I’ve added some things to my morning routine. Now I spray each nostril with saline spray, and then put eye drops in. I can’t help myself from thinking when I do, is this the smoke, or getting old, or functions and tissue breaking down?”
His friends replied in unison, “Yes.”
Monday’s Wandering Thoughts
First you must learn how the human body works in general, and what’s expected of it. Then you learn what your body can do, and its exceptions and variations. Then you’re often forced to understand how the body of those you love and support works differently. Few of us have a body that doesn’t come with quirks that split us away from being ‘average’, which becomes specially true as you age, because it changes again. What you could once do or eat is suddenly — and sometimes, dramatically — different.
Friday’s Wandering Thought
Tinted by smoke, the sun was a tangerine as noon rolled up. A short man walked through the warming, stifling day. Someone caught in middle age’s trenches, hard-edged in his slenderness, pale as a grub, bald as a newborn, walking fast. Unbelievable sight in this nasty air. White-grey ash collected on surfaces, dulling car polish, stinging nostrils with high magnitude burnt-wood flavors, usually encouraging tears, runny noses, sniffing, coughing.
But this guy walked down the sidewalk like the town’s proud owner, the only one out there, protected by sandals, a white tee-shirt, and light blue denim jeans. He also sucked on a cigarette and blew out his own smoke.
That might explain a lot.
Wednesday’s Wandering Thoughts
One of the strangest aspects of life in the United States that I’ve been reading about recently is that a growing segment of men aren’t wiping their asses after doing their business. Or they’re claiming that they’re not. Yes, it’s a strange thing to write about — a strange thing to think about — but it’s out there.
Let’s ponder what’s going on for a minute. Men consciously and deliberately decide, “I’m not going to wipe my rear. Or, “I’m going to tell others I don’t.”
Strange, strange, strange image to cultivate.
But their reasoning is that wiping your ass will make you gay. This is something that they say they claim. Bizarre. Seriously, WTF is wrong with them? Have they lost their minds?
Don’t believe me, then do a search. Go on Reddit. Read the complaints. The insanity is out there, and it’s documented.
Michael Seidel, writer 