kvetching up

It's strange how music that you listen to for decades can suddenly acquire meaning, no longer ear candy, but strangely biographical. I've watched Loudon Wainwright perform this song in the Village at The Bottom Line before it was closed by NYU. I have seen him perform it at the Woodland Park Zoo during an early 90s Zootunes, where he walked through a narrow field playing his guitar, like some sort of magical music video.  (Rufus Wainwright covered this, and flips the meaning entirely and makes it his own, unsurprising given his beautiful and at times languorous tenor voice). It never crossed my mind before Jenny was diagnosed that I would be a widower. So, this song was just a fun play on words for me, Loudon making fun of himself for being a narcissist and for being alone and how selfish that can be. The song now comes at me as if, when I listened to it before, I was listening to someone speaking in tongues. It wasn't nonsense  blather, just devoid of any meaning that I...

Entry 1 "Unless suffering is the direct and immediate object of life, our existence must entirely fail of its aim. It is absurd to look upon the enormous amount of pain that abounds everywhere in the world, and originates in needs and necessities inseparable from life itself, as serving no purpose at all and the result of mere chance. Each separate misfortune, as it comes, seems, no doubt, to be something exceptional; but misfortune in general is the rule."                                                                                    - -Schopenhauer  I mean.   .    . I should have read philosophy earlier. I spent a good deal of time reading and not understanding Nietzsche as a teenager and in my early 20s. I had some notion,...

Entry 1 Sunday mornings are as hard as Kris Kristofferson warned they could be. I'm listening to Anna Scouten cover John Hartford's Tall Buildings . It's a sad song about giving up childhood dreams and succumbing to the drudgery of typical American life. I remember when I was excited about that prospect, when I realized I could actually do such a thing. I have missing years. Not Somewhere in Oregon, 2014ish . like Jesus, more like a low-rent Lazarus, some denizen of the original skid road . A particularly apt description, given my Seattle origins, my preteen retreat into drugs and the attendant abandonment of same nearly 10 years later at the ripe old age of 20.  These Sunday mornings are all the more brutal with the advent of spring and daylight savings time. In the darkness of winter mornings, it takes my brain longer to wander into memories and suppositions about what was, what is, and what could have been. In the cold light of early spring, pain shines like a beacon. I...

 I have fond memories of traveling with Jenny. The fondest memories, as I have written about before, involve traveling together.  Sitting at the airport this morning, her absence is acutely felt. I hate the enormity of the space that can't be filled. I am still in this place where I'd rather be alone for 10000 years than risk my heart.  I am alone. I miss her. I am lonely. But I am so damaged, I can't be anything but a burden to anyone. This is normal, I think, given the depth of loss.  I am not wailing into the digital void, at least that truly isn't my intention. I am not crying out for solace or sympathy. However, no matter how much I lie to myself, it's more than a clinical observation.  I miss the touch of a hand, the slight annoyance when we are seated at the gate and I am grumpy without enough coffee on board. I miss people watching, engaging in meaningless chit chat while we stare at the person pacing with the alligator skin neck pillow fully deployed. I...