Disparagement

While I am expected to publish here disparaging remarks about certain known persons and institutions, I must disappoint you, dear reader, because my attorney has strongly advised me against doing so, or else. See you in court!

Extra Strength

Feeling lonely, socially rejected?

Take an extra strength non-aspirin pain reliever (acetaminophen)! http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091222154742.htm

The Bell Tolls

"It's not over," said my ex last night, as we were watching a disaster of a film, For Whom the Bell Tolls, a 1943 gory Technicolor opera, with Ingrid Bergman and Gary Cooper, personally chosen for the roles by Ernest Hemingway himself, filled with mountain scenes all shot in the studio, over the top musical score by Victor Young, which was nominated for nine Academy Awards, and managed to win one (for supporting actress.)

So why, this morning, I think it is? One more letter to send...

~

She said, "Be of good cheer!"

Ghost

A ghostly looking woman, who said she believed in reincarnation, but does not intend to die anyway, told me that she had read in a flyer handed out by Jehovah's Witnesses, that God answers all prayers, except that God operates on a different time from the human time. (Makes sense?) I only nodded, and she then asked me what my astrological sign was.

Recently, I reported to a friend that Anglican Archbishop James Ussher had estimated in 1650 that the Earth was created October 23, 4004 BC (Julian), 9PM, and my friend asked: "In what time zone?"

Walking across the second floor pedestrian bridge between buildings yesterday afternoon, cold rain falling on both sides, I felt like a ghost myself, faltering, devoid of energy, life. I took the elevator down, stepped into the gym, and in the locker room met my old Chinese friend H., who immediately asked where I had been. I briefly mentioned personal problems, and he patted me on the back.

Today marks exactly two months since the shipwreck,

The newspaper reports that Roman Polanski, under house detention in his Swiss chalet, is editing there his latest film entitled Ghost. Tiger Woods in the meantime, is hiding on his yacht, named Privacy. The other day I told somebody that I wished I had had their problems.

Strategy

"I do have a strategy," Reagan said after one detailed briefing on the challenge of the Soviet Union: "We win, they lose!"

(From a Wall Street Journal article From Berlin to Baghdad by Fouad Ajami, Tuesday 11/10/2009.)

King Kong

Up, down, up and down, up then down, like a rollercoaster, someone described my present life to me. It's not what they call a bipolar disorder, it's what country singer Randy Travis called on his first album the storms of life. One friend's family is all shaken up because a brother committed suicide hanging himself in his guitar shop, another acquaintance is traveling to Brazil to marry his sweetheart. Happy, lucky man. Normal reactions to events. Me, I'm on a rollercoaster. Events of two, three years ago are ancient history now, and even their lingering consequences don't bother me any more, but events of the past 5 months are what has been throwing the ship on the rocks. Metaphor mix minestrone.

You were like King Kong four weeks ago, said a friend reacting to my story, you were on top of the Empire State Building, before the airplanes flew in and knocked you down to earth. Lower than the earth, I tell him. I find myself in Hades, abandoning all hope. You're vulnerable now, says the friend whose relative killed himself. Indeed, I answer, I have four opportunities every weekday to jump in front of a train. See a professional, advises he, echoing a close relative. I recently wrote another friend living abroad that among Californians faith in therapists runs deeper than faith in God Almighty. I refuse to confide in a stranger with a diploma hanging on a wall. Done that once.

In the state of utter despair, you realize for the first time how little matters in the world where your life is concerned. Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Today a memorial service is being held for the victims of the Ford Hood massacre. Headlines and news of disasters, killings, accidents, anniversaries, flu vaccinations, medical discoveries, arts events, births and deaths, celebrity rumours, nothing changes the situation you fell into, nothing affects it, improves it, worsens it. You're alone.