A month into the year. Buying this and that to maintain what I have, though I’m not sure what I have. It’s like being on a ship that sails around the world, or through the world, looking, sometimes expecting. considering building or creating with nothing particular in mind. Just looking, swept by the waves and wind. Keeping the ship afloat without knowing why beyond the fear of sinking. “Old Man River.” Tired of sailing but scared of sinking.
I rarely realize joy anymore. Sex brings some minutes of physical pleasure. That fades, along with the endorphic delusion that life is good. Brandy numbs out the ugliness that flows in and out of my mind — loss, death of friends of all sorts, all four-legged. And the next day I’m presented with the same maintenance tasks as the previous, to keep the ship afloat to avoid painful alternatives.
Hmm . . . and this is only the first month of the year. Funk, in its many iterations, describes my state of mind. How to free myself. The nightmarish image of how I see myself came to me a couple days ago. I, my memories, me, are on a train. People get off at unscheduled stops, death, and I will do the same. A large number of celebrities have departed this vehicle over the past months, each a reminder. Where is the zen in my knowing?
Yes, there is writing and there is podcasting, but my writing has slowed to simply gaining ideas for story settings, accompanied by a first few paragraphs. Sometimes it seems as if I’m in an asylum with a canvas in front of me next to a palette of watercolors. An imaginary nurse wanders by to assure me that the blue blob underscored by random lines in red and green are a good start. She pats me on the shoulder, “That’s good. Keep at it.” I dip the brush into some brown paint and fill an irregular shape on the way to a finished piece. There are dozens of large white sheets in the pad lying on a table to start afresh toward another creation, equally as bland, as pointless as the one I’m completing. She’ll be around again in twenty or thirty minutes with more inspirational words before class ends when we’re led to the lunchroom for our meal of oatmeal and sugar substitute.
Reflections on my youth counter to a small extent the fullness of my depression. That was a time before experience replaced imagination. A time when the blue blob held a universe of meaning, when a mark on the canvas signified the projection of ideas. That was a beginning, and this, the ship, the creaking planks, the waves stretching to the horizon feels like the end. It’s a life only by definition. Existentially, this might be all there is. I should be satisfied with it. Am I depressed because I expected more? If so, where is it? In front of me? My mind searches the sea’s horizon for an island, a mountain, land, any convincing evidence of even the fractured remnant of a reason to continue.
I can’t write any more of this.
