Sunday Morning

The temperature did not reach down into the thirties, keeping within the forties. I am not very surprised. In fact, I never did break out Big Blue last night. It was, however, cold enough for the heater to start kicking on, which was enough for comfort. It was even ideal, the way I might like it every night. I certainly slept well. To be sure, there are still the bathroom runs every couple of hours, but it was always heaven to come back to bed and wrap the bedsheet and blanket around me and fall almost immediately back into sleep.

5 Days

Pop went to go downtown to see his car show, as expected. I was eager to take care of my second wank. He left just a little before my lunch time, which meant that I had a late lunch, a very late lunch. My luck, it would have to be my 'big cooking day'. I had to make chili. It couldn't be the day when all I have to do is reheat some leftover chili. No big surprise: I shot my day down. Sexual addiction is not pretty. Especially when you don't have a partner. Nap time was at four, after which I was finally able to get back on track. It's Sunday, and I was just reading "Magic Mountain" anyway. At least I am now set for my five days of abstinence. I feel like I need these five days. My dick has practically disappeared on me. But I am very relaxed.

After Paris

Watching the news shows. It's still all about the Paris attacks and what ought to be done. People apparently want Obama to change gears into Rambo mode. He has refused to do so.

A good line: "President Obama is commander-in-chief, but he is not very commanding."

A cool hand sounds good to me. Playing cowboy may always look and feel good at the beginning, but after the first few hundred casualties and the first few billion dollars, it becomes wearisome quick, to watch our country flailing again in another quagmire. Listening to our Republican candidates, if they had their way, it would be World War Three already. I cannot help wondering if Obama is hoping that the reinvigorated air of post-9/11 might simply die down of its own accord in a few weeks, provided that there are no major attacks to fuel that fear and rage.

We cannot afford to let the terrorists succeed in turning this into a full-scale clash of civilizations. We cannot fight a war against a non-country. That would be like fighting a ghost. You cannot win, but you might be able to lose.

The Car Show

Pop makes it back from the downtown car show. It's after six-thirty, later than I expected. I was in the kitchen, just finishing up another pitcher of my cold-brew tea. I asked, "You didn't come home in a new car, did you?"

He shakes his head. "No ... but I wish I did." After a pause, he adds, "I tell you, money talks. The prettier the car, the more money it costs."

River

I finished the final episode of "River" starring Stellan Skarsgard. Loved it. I am not sure about how re-watchable it is, whether it is something I would like to see another dozen times in my life, but I cannot remember the last time a show made me cry like that. It is a detective show, but it does come with a twist. Although the concept of seeing the dead is not exactly original, even overdone, it is subtly done. This is not Patricia Arquette's "Medium".

One of the hooks was the way they treated the issue of his talking to people who were not there. He had to seek counselling for being a nutter, a mumbler, for having voices in his head and talking to them. It reminded me when I had a somewhat serious issue with that, my original Hallway Dialogues. I was struck by the realization that, although I still have the occasional Hallway Dialogue, it is nothing like the ones I had in the early to middle 90s. Those dialogues would put me in compromising positions, as I was caught a number of times in full conversation and in full gesticulation mode, though no one else could see my interlocutors. My first thought, thinking about it now, was that it was my entrance into the blogosphere that put an end to that, but it occurred to me that it actually ended before then. When did it stop? Is it possible that it ended when Jack and I had that fight on Thanksgiving of 1996 and I actually talking to Dr. G. on the phone? Did the reality of that real voice blow out the need to create those voices in my head? It is a pat answer, but I am skeptical. I wonder if I just got tired of it. Maybe those dialogues were played out. I have no idea. I wonder if I just lost my imaginative power as I got to my thirtieth birthday. I feel some regret about it, as those dialogues at least gave me something to write about, like a kind of dream, a waking dream, but, on the other hand, it is not good to give people an easy reason to dismiss you as mentally unhinged.

Rereading the above, I gave the wrong idea about the show, as being more about talking with the dead than with his actually just having 'voices' - the visual as well as the audio. I think it is pretty clear that these 'others' are indeed his own projections. It's definitely not like "Medium". It's just that the people who made it into his 'hallway dialogues' are dead. Each brain is its own universe, and some of us just have a different way of trying to put it all together and make sense of things. In this detective's case, it was a good way, a special way - the power of television and fantasy.