Category: Uncategorized

Memory is on my mind. We are trying to help an older family member with memory problems. I have my own. I heard a social worker say once that no one has fully integrated memory. Made the off-hand remark recently, “what are we but our memories?”

But we are more. Every new day matters. I was bothered by a line in Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” when the hero says something like, “you can take my soul, but don’t take my reputation.” Disagree. We are more than what the world thinks of us.

Whether what the world thinks is right or wrong.

 

Hughey Long said something like “my campaign will only be ended if I’m caught with a dead girl or a live boy.” Haha.

Thoughts today about the primary importance of physical health, as I see it. We are led to think of intellectual excellence as more important in the school system, but there is a saying from the novelist Samuel Lover in my book that “a hungry stomach has no ears.”

Hungry or, in my opinion, an out-of-shape one. I watched the Chris Farley “van-down-by-the-river” skit from SNL recently. He was sad because he was really funny but was mortally in bad shape. Self-deprecatory humor is a divisive issue.

A sound mind in sound body. Anima sana in corpore sano.

This blog is maybe too personal, but I am almost 50, and you start to stop caring about keeping secrets at my age.

I lived in Singapore in my 20s as a reporter. I respected the local women. I went to Thailand on vacation, scuba diving and beaches. I met a local woman, half Thai, half Japanese. We went on a few dates and she gave me a hickey I think my boss noticed when I got back. Haha.

I know there is a “sex tourist” cliche about Western men in Thailand, but I think we really liked each other. She was my first, and I tried to find her later. But she was gone.

This is going to get a bit explicit, so you might want to tune out now. I am not trying to be gross, just honest.

Masturbation is better than rape. I think most agree on that, even though masturbation isn’t ideal. Neither is flirting, but most people do it. In Irish literature, James Joyce famously implied the act in his early short story “Araby” and was more explicit in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and basically came out and said it in Ulysses. Samuel Beckett said one of his most famous plays, Krapp’s Last Tape, is really about masturbation.

Pro-creation should be the objective of sex. Consensual pro-creation. But we have to deal with reality.

My thoughts today are about vanity. One of the first subjects of my dissertation topic writer was Samuel Johnson’s “The Vanity of Human Wishes.” As a current blogger, I feel there is a certain amount of vanity in what I do. And when I was a teacher it felt a bit vain to demand young people’s attention.

I was fascinated with Jim Morrison when I was young. He said something like the symbol of the 20th century was someone doing something unpleasant in front of a mirror. Morrison was an odd bird. Apparently read a lot but acted strange on stage and basically killed himself while young through an overdose.

The difference is between self-respect/self-confidence and “mirror, mirror on the wall”-style vanity. I think Trump, as much as I dislike him on some levels, has been able to tell the difference. Have a good weekend.

Just watched “The Lodge,” a new psycho-horror flick that seems to be based on the basic premise of “The Turn of the Screw,” namely a possibly insane female authority figure overseeing a boy and his younger sister. It was a good mood piece, the sadness of snow and all. The religious overtones may not be to everyone’s taste.

We don’t get snow here, only sand. But the sand still makes it possible to have a “White Christmas.” Non-white people have used “White Christmas” with me as a possibly ironic comment on racialist preferences. I hope it’s not true.

Not much else to say. Happy Thursday.

Update: they have red flags out on the beach again, but it appears to be a warning about rip-tide, not virus. I got caught in rip-tide once. It’s tough because you have to let the current take you out to sea for a while before trying to swim back. “Negative capability” is the phrase in literary theory.

Got censored for the first time today by Facebook. Got into an argument unwisely with a truly obnoxious hacker on my professional FB account. Among the rude memes he posted on my account was a photo of an overweight person’s posterior. In anger, I said something like, “You are an ass; we can at least agree on that” and questioned his psychological well-being. My policy now is not to engage with people of ill will at all. I think women know this intuitively from having unwanted affection from men.

The economy is reopening. The local beach that serves many people from the inland has taken down its beach-closed red flags and re-opened its parking lot a few days ago, and some lunch places now let customers eat indoors. My store clerk buddy says the loss of guacamole at restaurants during the virus was “a first-world problem.”

Walked on the beach. An attractive woman was having her photos taken by a man. When they were out of earshot, I commented to my walking companion, “I think he was just her photographer, not her boyfriend,” and got the reply, “you never know.” Indeed, I never know.

It’s 5/5 in 2020. Some find meaning in numbers. I remember a modernist painting of the number 5, possibly referring to the five senses, the reality of being alive. And I can’t be the first to think of perfect vision when I hear 2020. My own own vision is far from it. I needed to wear glasses to get my driver’s license earlier today and wear other ones to see small print.

The driver’s license trip earlier today made me appreciate the normal. Most people dread going to the DMV and administrative delays and costs. But with all the lockdown, it was a relief to interact with people if only through masks and administrative small talk. And, hey, my driver’s license photo doesn’t look as bad as my passport one. Simple blessings.

Working through a manuscript update for my book. There weren’t mistakes in the first version that would warrant refunding buyers. Anyone interested enough to buy it should be able to recognize a few typos. But we are trying to fine-tune it. I think Hemingway said something like writing is an endless learning experience in which we are all apprentices.

An update: the full quote is: “we are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.” It’s from a work called “The Wild Years,” which admittedly I haven’t read.