I left the house yesterday to go to Aldi to pick up something I needed badly, something to write about. I no longer blog to process my life but live my life to supply fodder for my blog. Earlier in the day I had televisits with my psychiatrist and therapist. My psychiatrist appointment was supposed to be in person, but he slipped up when he entered it into the system, so it was by phone. I thought it was in person but when I went to make my therapy appointment I was told it was by phone. I thought I had mixed things up, but the psychiatrist accepted the weight himself. I gave him a pass; I give everyone a pass in the time of COVID-19. We are all learning to do things in new ways and the systems put up on the fly are not robust. It’s a tribute to competence that things work as well as they do.
The two appointments were back-to-back. I hung up with the psychiatrist and five minutes later the phone rang. I was about to launch into my session when the person on the other end told me it was Diana, the receptionist. There was an emergency and my therapist was going to be 15-minutes late. I’m Mr. anxiety but this is the kind of thing that I take in stride. If someone is having a psych emergency, of course they should take precedence over me. When my therapist called she said that our session would be in two 15-minute pieces as she had another patient in 15 minutes. I was fine with that. Then she decided to call an audible and just pushed back the next appointment 15-minutes. She said that the other patient would not even remember that she had an appointment, but I still felt a little guilty. It did make the session easier. My homework this week is homework that I also gave myself, it helps hearing it from someone else. It is fighting the little voices that make me insecure about how my friends feel about it. I had already discussed it with a friend that I’m less insecure about and she said the same thing. Everyone agrees but the little voice. James Branch Cabell knew all about the little voice. In Jurgen the titular character is granted his youth by the Leshy, Mother Sereda, the goddess of Wednesdays and mediocrity, who bleaches all things. Unknown to Jurgen she also gave him her shadow that watched everything he did with his youth. Far worse it whispered to him of his insignificance and so robbed him of joy. I have friends that hate the book, but you should take the chance and read it, especially if you have an artistic temperament. Jurgen is a poet and that invests his worldview. Twenty years ago, when I started blogging there were frequent mentions of Cabell. When I kept this blog on Diaryland every entry was headed by quotes; one was always by Cabell. The one I was using when left the site was this:
What I have been telling you, from alpha to omega, what is the one great thing the sigil taught me — that everything in life is miraculous. For the sigil taught me that it rests within the power of each of us to awaken at will from a dragging nightmare of life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits, to see life as it really is, and to rejoice in its exquisite wonderfulness. If the sigil were proved to be the top of a tomato-can, it would not alter that big fact, nor my fixed faith. No Harrowby, the common names we call things by do not matter — except to show how very dull we are …
The Cream of the Jest
Another Cabell quote came up in my Facebook memories today.
“Listen,” Francois said. “Yonder is Paris,–laughing, tragic Paris, who once had need of a singer to proclaim her splendor and all her misery. Fate made the man; in necessity’s mortar she pounded his soul into the shape Fate needed. To king’s courts she lifted him; to thieves’ hovels she thrust him down; and past Lutetia’s palaces and abbeys and taverns and lupanars and gutters and prisons and its very gallows–past each in turn the man was dragged, that he might make the Song of Paris. He could not have made it here in the smug Rue Saint Jacques. Well! the song is made, Catherine. So long as Paris endures, Francois Villon will be remembered. Villon the singer Fate fashioned as was needful: and, in this fashioning, Villon the man was damned in body and soul. And by God! the song was worth it!
The Line of Love
Oh right, I went shopping so I’d have something to write about. Did I have something to write about? There was one incredibly selfish and clueless driver. I take a bus to Aldi. When it came time to make the turn onto 231st Street the bus didn’t move. Then the driver started leaning on the horn and I looked out to see what was going on. There was a car stopped halfway through the turn blocking all traffic in the turn lane and on 231st street. I thought his car stalled, but no. The drive decided to leave his car there while he left the car to run some errand. It wasn’t even on the corner where he was turning as there’s nothing there but a playground. I know this as I saw him return to his car from across the street. In a just world he’d have been struck down by lightning and his car disintegrated so traffic could flow. There and no TANJ justice.
I tried something new last night, making my plantain in the air fryer. It works great. I did 10 minutes at 360º F. I might try it ether hotter or longer next time, so it becomes more caramelized. It was delicious just as it was. I have gone from making most of my meals on the stove top to predominantly using the air fryer. I also made my kielbasa in it. That was great, so much less cleanup. I made both items on the same rack
I had a nice night’s entertainment. First I watched The Sea The Sea do a livestream highlighting songs from their new album, Stumbling Home. Go to their website, https://www.theseathesea.com/ to listen to the album. You can still see the livestream on their Facebook page. Then I watched a brand-new Phineas & Ferb movie, Candace Again The Universe. On the P&F scale it was mediocre but that makes it much better than 90% of what you can see on TV. It was too derivative, there shouldn’t be a second time that Candace is worshiped on an alien planet. If there is then there should be jokes referencing that fact. But like I said, it was still P&F and therefore great.
One last piece of joy. For breakfast, this morning I had hameggandcheese on a salt bagel. To make it extra good it was pepper jack cheese. I have said this countless times, and I’ll say this countless times in the future, it’s such a gift that such a simple thing can make me feel so good. I know there is too much misery in the world. There’s too much misery in my own life, but that’s no reason to no relish pleasures, simple and otherwise. I’d say it’s more reason to appreciate them. There’s no reason you can’t fight for justice and be happy at the same time. It doesn’t mean you care less. It means that you understand what you’re fighting for. More than that, it shows that you are afraid of being a human being, filled with complex emotions that overlay each other. On that note I’ll leave you another quote that I often headed my blog with.
The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy – I mean that if you are happy you will be good. ~~ Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
Wise Madness 