Through Early Morning Fog

 

These so-called cigarillos come five to a pack for $1.29; with 6% tax added, rounded up as taxes are, they're 27.4 each.  Being classified Disabled and on a fixed low income gets me a Lextran photo ID and 50 cent bus ride each way with one transfer per leg included, so if I smoke three of these in a day but don't go anywhere I'm ahead by 17.8 cents.  By the math of secondary poverty anyway; what expenditures are not required for survival and contribute nothing to future gain should be avoided, if prolonging your misery is your primary goal.  The deserving poor have no vices, they thank God for what they have rather than complain about everything that's out of reach, they greet every morning as a precious opportunity to practice virtue, and they look forward to not being tone deaf in the heavenly choir.  To hell with that.  My Daddy did raise a fool,  but some things didn't take.  

  

So after being out of bed for about two hours I put flame to the threat of cancer. And I started typing this. 

"Writers write," it's said.  And those who want to be read should practice every day, even on those days when all that presents itself to digital transcription does not accord with the writer's particular goal.   If you can't write a sonnet then make a shopping list; if you can't come up with fiction then bang out a journal entry.  Most professional writers these days go out of their way to credit their muses and their editors, their spouses who support them and those who take their musings and make them readable.  I have neither, so all my output may be labelled Before.  When you have no expectation that anybody would pay for what your write you needn't have an After.  

 

So this is my life.  It's what you get. 

   

My father spent his whole life trying to make something of himself, to do something useful, to justify his presence.  When he finally got disabled enough from a spine shaped like a question mark he didn't sit around watching TV and washing down his many medications with cheap beer like a normal shlub,  he went back to college to work toward a four-year degree.  He was taught the obligation to accomplish something and have something to show for it.  He didn't live long enough to finish, but if anybody was keeping track got good marks for effort. 

 

That didn't take either.  Before I traded pimples for stubble I gave up on that idea.  It was obvious that whatever striving I did would be done alone, and that all I'd gain is more to lose.  "The bigger you are the harder you fall."  There was no reason to believe I'd go splat and then get up, that I'd pull myself up from the potholed pavement and wobble away to heal -- only to try it all again; nor had I any expectation that inching forward toward worthiness would justify the damage even gainful effort does.

 

To just get through the day.  That's the only goal I could afford,  the surest bet there was to make.  For a long as keeping on wasn't too much trouble.  And anyway nobody but me would deserve to give a damn.

I will not sell myself, I told myself repeatedly.  I will not be punked out by The System.  If I must be a fool I'll be nobody's fool but mine.  Their road is best not taken.  What did that get my Dad?

 

So here I am, 61 years old, waiting comfortably to die.  In a small apartment that rents for 30% of my income, leaving enough unspoken for to waste as I see fit.  What I manage to squirrel away in Savings is my profit to date; I might on occasion invest in something that might get me more, so in the future there might be days that are easier to get through, if there might be a future.  But getting old is getting old, I'm tired enough already.

And what, you might ask, brought me to this?  (If there is a you, indeed.)  The answer is simple: there has been a catastrophe for the world in general, one that I could never do anything to avert: a sociological tsunami, an electoral earthquake.  They have elected him again, that stupid charlatan, that raving idiot.  The Orange King off in the head, the senile fool they should have left drooling in his rocker. 

 

The new world order is collapsing into nonsense; the future will be worse than my times have ever been. 

 

People do not make their lives out of whole cloth but from what scraps they find where they can think to look.  Every person is a quilt of whatever comes to hand.  And when every rag is tatters there will be few prizes won.  Under these conditions you'll be lucky to even warm yourself. 

 

I've seen too much of that already, and there's always more to see.  But there has been beauty in it, though diminishing each day, and there has been enough of me to be enhanced thereby.   I could usually tell myself  that there were compensations, that all I had to do was look to see something pretty.  But it's already late November and that joy is almost over with, soon the ice will settle. 

That fool will be sworn in on the 20th of January, in the middle of my Winter,     when my sap is at its lowest. And what the equinox will bring is longer days of horror, more hell I'll have to hide from.  The world out there will suffer the demise of its "democracy," and I won't want to see it.  My skin is just not thick enough.  And I'm too damn old to go through four more years of that.

You've really done it this time.  By that you did me in.    

You should be proud of yourselves.  You've proven me as right as I'll ever need to be: I did not want to be like you, I saw where that would lead.  At the end my father was round down by pain, curled up from his crumbled spine, taking nothing with him and leaving less behind.  That's what all that got him, that's all there is to get.  And what about you?  What kind of future do you see?  Is the humping you're getting worth the humping you're getting?  Do the words "in vain" mean anything to you yet?  How stupid are you, anyhow?  (No, I don't want to know the answer to that, I'll find out soon enough.) 

 

So.  These are the words I've got to write, this is all that comes to mind.  For now anyway; until you're sure I'm gone don't expect me to shut up.  Hearing myself type is my favorite noise, and my present state of mind and the likely immediate causes for it are my favorite subject.  It's all about me.  But you might as well start considering anything you read from me from now on as a bonus, a blessing, insult added to injury.  From here on out know that I've understood that it just ain't bloody worth it, nothing I can say will really mean anything to you.  Nothing ever has.

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Caring Costs

Earlier this month a Facebook friend asked for $18 for her old dog's prednisone; of course I came through for that. How could I not? This one Facebook friend once spent $500 fixing a feral cat's fucked up foot, getting his shots, etc. etc., because I asked her too. That's hard to beat. Then because I knew she's broke and Thanksgiving means turkey I put in a pickup order for one at her local Walmart, $14.37 well-spent.  (I've got my own turkey, and a ham, and a pork roast, so I'm set to feast all I'd really want to.)

And then just recently somebody posted that they're broke and need food, so because my SNAP/EBT is now pretty low I decided to put off buying things I can do without like vitamin E and no-sew buttons for suspenders and sent her Paypal for $26.85, leaving Checking with a nice round number that ought to do me for a month. That'll have to be it for "charity" for a while, but eh. I look forward to having my credit paid off and nobody needing anything so I can build my savings back up, but for now I'm still better off than the last year or so on Kees Rd. For one thing the thermostat is set for 75,  I don't need to bundle up inside. There's no sense in complaining about my life these days.

Of course I could have spent what I've given away this month on cheap booze and spent half my time all tipsy like I did in 2020. But then I spent a couple hours every morning hung over, which was stupid. It was that having 2 or 3 or 4 dogs to walk when the weather was suitable meant I had to be mobile and sober from say 1pm till after dark most days, so I had a responsibility I didn't want to shirk. Technically I could've afforded to never bother being sober if I'd bought rotgut vodka instead of bottom-shelf bourbon. You might think otherwise, but I find no moral virtue in being sober simply for its own sake; it's a matter of having responsibilities, or not. Like when I was house-sitting for this one lady friend for two months I never got too loaded (or too hungover) to take care of her dogs, to feed them and let them out and have quality time with them. (I dimly recall one bad dream about being too shitfaced to get myself and the dogs out back while the house burned, that was all that took.)

Anyway. I might make more attempts at fiction available so y'all can verify that in fact I can't write for toffee, on which you should feel no need to comment; as far as I can tell people's opinion of my intellect is low enough already. And I don't anybody to really  the essays I post to Facebook, except for a couple of similarly bored old men everybody's got better things to do. Fine by me, I write as if it's a symptom of Tourette's, because holding it in is harder than it should be. I'm not smart, just fucking crazy.

I've already outlived one ex-partner's father, who went out about a month and a half after his 61st birthday.  To outlive my own dad would take another three years, which at the moment seems like too much trouble for no purpose. Maybe I'll try harder for a longer time if I ever do after all produce some fiction that somebody whose intellect I respect might conceivably pay to read, or maybe if I can afford to get implants to snap my dentures onto so they can get rid of this annoying plastic palate, but either of those seems pretty remote. Readable writing would be a lot of work, and that dental work would probably mean paying off my Discover card for the rest of my life, and I've gotten this far for this long without either. And I never will have a cottage with a fenced yard for a dog or two. So this is apparently the la mas vida dulce I can reasonably expect, and under another Trump term yet. Fuck getting crippled and senile in that kind of society.

Anyway. I've got plenty of coffee and a CorningWare percolator. That should keep me awake long enough to read more highbrow shit and/or get more out of my Hulu subscription; last night I went to bed before midnight and spent 12 hours in bed, reading when not sleeping. Hibernating. Peacefully and painlessly. Till the vernal equinox that'll be fine & dandy, if it's possible, if nothing happens to fuck me up or stress me out. If I can't expect at least that much out of life...

 

 

A P.S.

 So I still need laxatives to poop, with that it's easy enough. 

 

Which reminds me of something. Quality of life is very important to me and after watching all the degrading debilities my crippled parents went through, especially towards the end, I've got pretty high standards for myself. By my standards I see people everyday in this building who by my standards are better off; of course that's none of my business, and I doubt anybody will last my opinion, but just for me that's how it is. For example I think I might be able to put up with not going walkies very often, but I insist on being able to get to the toilet by myself.

So anyway, I had to get out and do something, but it's clammy and wet out here, dreary very dreary, so it wasn't much. I've decided those five for $1.29 cigarillos are okay for now so I bought a pack, then I found out that apparently the markdown Halloween candy is all gone already, and then I marched my achy old ass all the way around the block. I figure that's about half a mile, maybe more. It wasn't actively raining so halfway through I took off my vinyl raincoat, sweating isn't fun.

Mentally speaking so far I seem to be handling recent events okay, okay for me anyway, but then it's just the prelude. Getting through Inauguration day is going to be an ordeal, that's also the four-year anniversary of my beloved Joey's death, so I reserved the right to get through that however I damn please. As for after that, we'll see. As I previously said, don't expect too much.

Sometime between now and then I'll get my new glasses, and I'll find out if Medicaid will pay for my hearing aids, and this Friday I'm going to see what the dental school can do about my dentition; and ordered a pair of glasses with fancy progressive lenses, which ought to be here in the next week or so, and tomorrow I'll call the audiologists' to see if thy have any news yet. For now my day to day functioning isn't very impaired. I'm even resisting going out to buy myself  an allowed pint of beer, which ain't that hard because it seems fried ripe plantain has a laxative effect, something I'll have to keep in mind.

 

All I can say is that I should be able to carry on okay if nothing bad happens to me. I don't know how much more stress I can take, and I don't want to find out.

 

I wish you all good luck. We're going to need it. 

 

 

"I Think It's Pretty"

In my latest dream, before the storm warning announcement woke me up, I was explaining to someone that I'll just have to learn to get over bad things that happen, or at least the relatively small bad things anyway. I've already spent the past two POTUS terms being slowed down or sometimes staggered by what they call current events, not to mention the innumerable annoyances that went on in my so-called private life, and I'm still here to remind y'all that 'you had been warned'; it might be fun to stick around long enough to remind you that 'you can't blame me for this one either' till I'm sure you've really had enough. Maybe I'll try to refrain from suggesting things you might try to improve the situation or just aid in coping, fools never listen to good advice either. (Hi Jonah Earl Thomas!) And it might be beneficial to me to ease up on the 'doomscrolling', I did enough of that during the first Trump pandemic.

And I have decided that it's okay to have an occasional dose of ethanol from time to time, but I'll keep taking the naltrexonel--the original dose that didn't stop my bowels completely--because the original motive for drying out was lack of sufficient funds, which after the end of this year will be rectified, and because there were a few things that needed doing, which have been getting done: the credit bills are getting paid off, and I have just one more appointment scheduled, a dental visit this Friday, and then this year's To Do list should be over. It would've been finished earlier if I'd known that this state's "satanic socialist" governor had indeed ordered that Medicaid pay for hearing aids, glasses, and more dental work than was previously covered; of course that can't last very long, so I'm going to try to hold on to some savings and to keep my credit bills down and my credit score up.

My decades-long reliance on SSRI, bupropion, and caffeine should keep being enough to get me through most days, and the added naltrexone should help keep my weight down and render booze optional instead of a daily must-have (and even during the 2000 lockdown I wasn't starting the day off with a drink). Unless something happens that really knocks me down, simply continuing to have a mundane existence won't be an insuperable problem. For as long as I can say motivated anyway: the past few years of aging has been wearing and wearying, and there've been no lack of opportunities to just give up already.

I've proven to be resilient enough to carry on so far; it's maintaining motivation that's been the main problem. That requires both a goal to strive toward, getting assistance when needed, and a few rewards along the way. And the list of things I had been doing, of resources I'd been counting on, has been steadily diminishing along with my energy (there is a correlation anyhow), and I can tell you that running on bitter spite and noxious fumes hasn't been much fun for the past decade or so. It ain't been easy, and I can't see that improving.

So if anybody out there has some investment in my person or feels a need to offer me something you're welcome to let me know. And episodes of mutual commiseration might be a good idea as well, and there might be some assistance I can render you if need be. (It can be fun to be helpful, and I do have a conscience to assuage.) But I must warn you that if your problems are worse than mine and/or your are resources fewer you'd do better to turn to someone else. I'm depleted enough already, already it's gotten difficult to maintain those contacts that had been established. (In fact most days it's all I can do to be around people for an elevator ride.) I've always had trouble keeping up my end of things, there are probably several people reading this who can attest to that, and it's not like 61 years of weathering have done me a lot of good.

But. However. As I rarely tire of demonstrating, I am by nature a self-absorbed semi-solipsist with chronic depression (leavened by fits of unjustified elation and a tendency toward useless paranoia), and being "realistic" is complicated by my on-going bad attitude. If you can't handle my "negativity" you'd best fuck right off. Nor will I venture any promises to keep carrying on, not for my own sake much less for any of yours, unless my situation unaccountably improves. Or unless somebody needs me more than I need them, which has been so rare an experience that I might no recognize it if it plops down right in front of me. (And even my lordly dog lived with somebody else who could afford to do right by him in that way, another debt I've had to carry.) So I will continue to do the best I feel up to, given whatever givens I'm up to overcoming.

All I'm saying is if you want something from me it better be good. I can't be bothered very much, and there are often days when I won't bother at all. And, as has happened in the past, if I'm ever all you've got you're in very bad shape -- so maybe you should just quit. My usual condition ain't been much fun to be in, so being more pathetic than me maybe ought to be illegal.

Until further notice I shall be accepting suggestions for good things you might offer me and/or good things we might do together. Of course I can't promise to take anybody up on anything, but there must be things I'll do well to consider. But you'll have to go first: in my current position suggesting or requesting anything would feel too much like crawling, and I did way too much of that before turning 30 in 1993. Surviving on spite requires a good deal of pride, and if you take into consideration all the things I won't suffer and can't be bothered to do you'll realize what a proud son of a bitch I really am, in my own special way. I've had to be. That has been obvious for quite some time, though few of you are able to see it.

Y'all who might need to have heard all this will do well to keep it in mind. You can't expect me to keep repeating myself for much longer. And even I get tired of putting up with my shit.

I'll post a link to a blog entry containing this so you'll have an easy time saving it for future reference.

From The Archives: Nov 1, 2010, 5:23:49 PM

 Why I Support The Death Penalty

Davy

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Nov 1, 2010, 5:23:49 PM

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The following quotes are from Wil Wheaton's "The real war on Christmas"
essay on Salon.com on Dec 22, 2005, quoting respectively Wil's father
and Wil:

"They get satellite television, and weights, and free meals, and
jobs, and a library ..."

"And raped, and beaten by guards, and sold as slaves by prison
gangs," I said."

Think about that: any self-respecting person would think that's worse
than death.

This, besides that they're stupid enough to commit what are usually
stupid crimes and stupid enough to get caught, is why I have no respect
for the average convict: because they don't have whatever it takes to
put themselves out of their misery (and ours). No, they'd rather suffer
behind bars, with the only recompense being making other people behind
bars suffer too. So why is Society spending so much money, time and
effort on these people? Put them down, I say.

Note that I'm aware that innocent people get convicted, that the
penalties are exaggerated (prison over a couple of joints is unjust),
and that a lot of them have their charges "upgraded" by political DAs
aiming for higher office (having two joints in a baggie does not mean
you plan on selling either of them); the point is that even somebody
who's been framed should know better than to put up with prison time. I
don't have much respect for non-criminals who choose to suffer like
that either. If they're guilty it's punishment, if not it's euthanasia,
and in either case it's better for all concerned.

Wise up: in the present-day U.S.A., as everywhere else on the planet,
life is cheap. There would be much less war if it wasn't, much less
cancer and much less stupidity; nobody's life is worth a plug nickel,
not even mine. Anybody who thinks otherwise is an idiot duped by
bullshit propaganda.

So why do we have prisons? So that people "on the outside" can enjoy
sadistic fantasies about the horrors that its outcasts undergo and so
that really marginal types can get jobs inside them -- especially as
guards who can give free reign to their own criminal sadism. Most
people don't think cons can really be rehabilitated, that prisons are
for punishment, but they don't think further to learn why they're so
willing to pay so much for these fine penal establishments. Think about
this too: you pay for food because it tastes good, you pay for booze
because it makes you feel good, you pay for gas to run your cars... So
why do you let so much of your tax money go to the penal system? Why
else but to make these stupid cons suffer. (You sadistic bastards.)

Death, whether as penalty or reward, is preferable to prison. So I
suggest that the death penalty should not only be kept, it should be
expanded to cover a whole host of non-fatal felonies as well: any crime
that merits more than say 2 years in the slammer should result in a
sure, quick and painless death.

Okay, perhaps there should be an alternative to prison or death: I
propose penal battalions in our United States Armed Forces. Instead of
taking our their violent stupidity on normal citizens or fellow cons,
if insist on being too soft-headed and/or too sadistic to go for simple
execution, let the criminal types have their jollies at the expense of
non-Americans our Government has designated The Enemy. The government
can always find some foreigners to "liberate."

In any case, face it: it's so easy to get wise to you that even I can
do it. You might give facing up to yourselves a try too.

Ya got all that?

***HUGS***

Davy

From The Archives: Sep 5, 2011, 12:13:54 PM

 

David O'Lantern

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Sep 5, 2011, 12:13:54 PM

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Lately I've been preoccupied with the realization that I've never had a
single close friend, that it may well be that nobody has ever felt any
deep and abiding affection for me. And that this might well be my fault.

Or perhaps "fault" is not quite the word for it; perhaps I should say
that this fact of friendlessness is due to some fact or facts about me,
that perhaps I'm simply not the kind of person who has friends. That if
it's a skill I'm unable to learn it, if it's a talent I don't possess
it.

It could even be that it's the rest of the people I've been surrounded
by for 40-odd years who are responsible, that I'm alone on a planet of
people who are unable or unwilling to appreciate my "special" qualities.
(This won't be a very popular idea.)

Regardless of responsibility, the facts are that I am alone now and that
I have always been alone. The available evidence indicates also that
this condition is now permanent. If there ever was a time when having at
least one close friend was possible that opportunity will not recur;
however interested I might become in a person it will again come to
nothing. No one is likely to want to be my friend, or at least likely
enough to tolerate or disregard whatever deficiency or disability causes
this condition. The distance is unbridgeable: I am cut off.

This idea is not new, merely the acceptance of it. Years ago and for
many years I railed against this fact, refusing to recognize it as
irrefutable and seeking to escape it. As one might expect if we are
truly a social species naturally inclined to be sociable together.
Assuming of course that I truly am the same species as those who are not
my friends: subjectively it has always seemed that that is not the case,
that I am a species sui generis. Perhaps I'm a mutant, a "sport," a "bad
seed." Or perhaps my space ship crashed and left me stranded here, or
maybe I've blundered over from an alternate universe that I'm unable to
get home to.

Certainly it's always felt that way, ever since I can remember: any hope
I've ever had of not being all alone here had more to do with finding
another such mutant or mutants with whom I might bond reciprocally and
mutually, not that I would ever prove to be a "regular, normal" person.
It did not take me long to learn that one should not strive to surmount
the realm of natural fact, that it's simply not possible for a pig to
fly. (However worthy of flight the pig might be.)

What's changed lately, besides that this knowledge has finally sunk in,
is the realization that however this isolation has felt at times it has
always been possible: however hard to bear it was I have borne it
nevertheless. Regardless of how others might perceive me I have my
persistence to be proud of. I gather that this quality or achievement is
not at all common, that most of those who might read this cannot or will
not say that: you would have been unable or unwilling to endure such a
condition for over 40 years, you would have crumpled and crumbled long
before. You would be reduced to self-abnegation or self-destruction, or
worse, gibbering idiocy.

But I remain. I, I, I am a rara avis. Hear me type: I think it's pretty.

 [The bastards want to poweder me. What I'm thinking of sending them goes like this.]

First of all, SSI pays me $914 a month because I'm disabled; that's my only source of income. The utilities here run me about $150-200, and of course I need basic incidentals like cleaning supplies, laundry, hearing aid batteries, bus fare to medical appointments, etc. I simply can't afford a rent increase of $175 a month. The most I could squeeze out is $600, and that would hurt. 

Secondly, I've been looking for other places in case you did this, and I don't make three times the rent. In 2012 the manager at the time accepted my SSI and the fact that I'd been paying rent on a place on High Street as evidence I could pay the rent here, which I've done without fail. But repeating that act of kindness in today's rental market is well nigh impossible, as I'm sure you know.

I've been looking into subsidized housing for Disabled people, and I'm on the waiting list for two places. There are quite a few people ahead of me,  they tell me to figure at least a year. In two years I'll be 62, old enough to qualify as Senior too, which will increase my options with other buildings and improve my odds where they've let me apply to get on the waiting list. I've been hoping to hold on that long. 

I'm a sick disabled old man with nowhere else to go, and you've given me the choice of paying a $175 increase and being penniless after that, or being homeless at my age in my condition. That is, simply put, you've told me I must suffer penury here or die in an alley. Is that really what you mean to do?  

And furthermore it seems you want an additional $250 security deposit in addition to the $250 I've had on record since 2012. Is that even legal?  The $650 rent and additional $250 security deposit would leave me with $14 of the check for August, unable to pay my utilities.  

Again, I'm 60 years old: my Daddy died in 1994 and my Mommy in 2017, so I can't go squealing "home." It's here or nowhere. 

And furthermore it seems you want an additional $250 security deposit in addition to the $250 I've had on record since 2012. Is that even legal?  The $650 rent and additional $250 security deposit would leave me with $14 of the check for August, unable to pay my utilities.  

Again, I'm 60 years old: my Daddy died in 1994 and my Mommy in 2017, so I can't go squealing "home." Nor do I have anyone else. It's here or nowhere. 

What I can afford, barely, is $600 a month. An increase of $125, or a mere $50 less than you ask. Would doing without $50 a month hurt you nearly as much as surrendering it to you would hurt me? Do you mean to totally destroy me? What have I done to you? 

​