Author: Sysadmin

I pace a lot. It is a bit crazy, but I just think of it as a form of exercise.

I think it is better than other nervous habits like smoking. I tried smoking a bit when younger but never got addicted to it and stopped.

There is a good short play by Samuel Beckett about pacing called “Footfalls” about a woman walking back and forth while being haunted by the memory of her mother.

I think my parents’ greatest disappointment in me is that I didn’t become a priest.

I could get into the reasons why I didn’t, but it would be too personal again. There was also the whole pedophilia scandal that made people wonder if priests were just weirdos.

I don’t think most are. I never had problems with them. They just seemed like scholars to me.

What is it that happens to our bodies over time? My face has gone slightly lop-sided recently. I think it is just age.

I think my body is okay otherwise. The baldness is annoying, but it happens. “I grow old, I grow old. I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”

I think one of the bad things about Western/U.S. society is we don’t treat older women well. “Too many Barbie dolls, too much porn.”

Thinking about pop music. I have listened to too much of it, but it is just poetry set to music.

There is an essay by a Chinese writer called “Against Music.” And heavy metal lyrics and, I guess, drugs and psychological issues drive some young men crazy.

“Everything in moderation.”  The bromides are true, one of my old bosses said.

 

I usually try to keep it to one blog per day, but I just re-watched “Memento”. I think it was one of the best movies made in the past few years.

Some of the best lines:

“There are things you know for sure.”

“How am I supposed to heal if I can’t feel time?”

“So you lie to yourself to be happy? We all do it.”

 

Have been a bit too personal again in recent blogs. Shall try being more abstract.

In poetry I really like villanelles. There is something about the repetition of the lines that seems musical, even though I don’t have real musical training.

“The House on the Hill” by E.A. Robinson or “The Waking” by Theodore Roethke are very good. You should be able to find them on poets.org

“Take it easy playboy.” Someone said something like this to me recently.

She was right. I don’t think I am really a playboy, just have a difficult past. But we do need to take it easy. Playboy has connotations in the US with pornography, which is a bit sad.

All of this is a bit sad. I should not be flirting at all.

Don’t want to talk about George Floyd anymore. It was very sad what happened.

What is the difference between the public and the personal? I think most of us face the issue by how we behave at work. Not harassing other co-workers.

But what we do at night does affect what we do in the day. I think most managers know that. So sometimes they want to know about your personal life.

Thoughts on the George Floyd killing. Mainly I am surprised by the amount of rioting. Of course the killing was wrong, but sometimes it just seems people are looking for an excuse to behave badly.

At least the riots don’t seem as bad as the Rodney King riots. King was not even permanently injured by that incident, and people went crazy. I guess they were letting out frustration from other grievances.

Police and other authority figures can often abuse power. There is a good play by Eugene Ionescu called “The Lesson” about a teacher who turns out to be a homicidal maniac.