Sometimes people anger me. I am not such a narcissist as to believe I am unique in this; however, in my case anger carries great risk. Anger is precipitous; it moves one towards actions one might otherwise never consider. Furthermore, anger is a relatively uncommon trait for me lo these past several centuries, particularly anger with individuals. I suspect that anger of that sort is partly rooted in expectations: when an individual disappoints, anger can come more readily to the fore.

I am not an easy person to disappoint. I tend to gather the measure of those I meet quickly and fully so that I am well aware of what I may and may not expect from them. Should I seek more than some person is truly able to deliver on some personal level, well, the fault is then mine, is it not? If I am to take the position that I know people so well, it seems to follow that I should know better than to expect greatness from the mundane, romance from the stoic, honesty from the base, or brilliance from the dull. You are what your genes and your lives fashion you to be and it would be passing strange were you all shaped to meet my hopes and needs.

Why did I murder Clayton? Make no mistake; it was murder, for that episode need never have come to pass. He was no threat to me, nor was he my responsibility to contain. He was nothing. Why did he anger me so?

Corollary to that, why have I at times become so angry with humanity as a whole that I would lash out indiscriminately? For I have done so in the past, and I have come close at other times as well.

I have made passing mention, mostly in comments, that I might take to pruning the vile from the tree of humanity. I implied I might view such as sport. The most difficult thing for me to face is that this is truly how I feel… when I am angry. This forces me to view anger as a dangerous indulgence and now, more so than at any other time in my existence, I seek to maintain a level of calm detachment. I succeeded in this to a fairly substantial degree by keeping the outside world at arm’s length.

Needless to say, I now find myself in a terribly dangerous place. When I began this experiment I approached it as a method of sampling but a dram of the world outside my protected little bubble, doing so in relative anonymity and at little to no personal cost. In a mere eighteen months my life has been transformed from that steady state where all things outside are of minute meaning and negligible impact into a maelstrom of confession, revelation and terrible, wrenching doubt. Nearly every day I find myself tied down further and further, my freedom to act constrained by my attachments to people who are at worst ephemeral and at best destined to leave my side in a heartbreakingly short time.

I should end this. When I take stock of my situation, weighing the pros and cons, that is always the conclusion I reach. Were I to walk away now I could count all I have done towards the good and the small harm my leaving might inflict would be of little consequence. I cannot escape the notion that all of this, this journal, the house, Edna- all are a mere manifestation of some arrogant selfishness and foolish self-deception. Those are fearful thoughts, moving me towards a familiar and comfortable conclusion, the very same conclusion that drove me from this place over one hundred and fifty years ago. I hold that fear at bay by sheer force of will, choosing action over contemplation, engagement over isolation, and hope over anger.

I do not expect any who read this to understand. All of this, all my plans and maneuverings, they amount to little more than a desperate ploy. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, striding out in to the Bolivian sunshine to meet their fate; they would comprehend my actions implicitly. Others must surely be confused; a product of their times, where the world obeys Laws and the nature of reality is laid out in terms both repeatable and expandable. I am not such as you- my world has so long been one of superstition, suspicion, and raw trepidation that I sometimes despair of it being else. My rational mind embraces the modern, but everything I know of people and power tells me I should fear, and fear greatly.

Hope is my only shield against such fear. With any luck these days mark my ascent to freedom and acceptance, but that darker, more rational part of me fears I have merely set the stage for great and terrible acts to follow.

Posted on July 4th, 2004
Filed under: Miscellany | 1 Comment »

I have horses again. It astounds me just how much that has come to mean to me. The modern world is so very fast paced, so technical and cold- you have forgotten what it means to travel, inured from the reality of it by machines that whisk you along in pampered comfort to any point on the globe. The idea of mounting a horse or, God forbid, walking from say Harrisburg to Philadelphia is an abstract concept. It is something one considers for purposes of raising money to treat children’s cancer, or protesting against the outrage du jour, but never as a mere necessity. Never as an aspect of everyday life. I once walked from Southern California to Jefferson City, Missouri. Why would I do such a thing? It was the only way to get to one place from the other.

Just contemplating such things saddens me somewhat. I do despise sounding as a Luddite, for I am no romantic pining away for the lost and irretrievable past. The modern world is a place of wonders, a tangible utopia for those whose perspectives are properly attuned. You expect to live unto the morrow as a matter of course, even under the worst of conditions. I envy you that certainty even as I share it to some degree.

Enough of this pointless maundering over thoughts and notions- I have horses again, three to be exact. With the stable completed and the opportunity to act upon me I was suddenly moved to unaccustomed haste. My accountant is horrified, bleating on about the difference between liquid and hard assets and the erosion of principal. So long as the checks clear I could not care less. I have three beautiful Arabians, two bay geldings and a stunning grey mare, all just three years old and full of energy.

Why am I moved almost to tears to have them here? I had not thought to mount a horse for other than the briefest moment for nearly thirty years. Now I cannot keep myself away from the stables, reveling in the smell and the labor much to the amusement of my newly hired hands, a girl of twenty-one named Heather and her younger brother Thomas. They work for a reasonable wage and the opportunity to ride, assuming they show themselves responsible. I harbor no doubts of them for in these matters my judgment is as sound as can be, but I shall hold back so as to avoid seeming easily swayed. They take my presence in the stables as a manner of measuring their worth, but Heather has seen me standing at the paddock, gasping as emotions well up unbidden, and she wonders.

I call the mare Melody. It is a bit of hopeless nostalgia, and silly upon its face, as I have never been particularly attached to horses. I like them, mind you, but to find myself moved to do such a thing leaves me open to questioning my motives and perhaps even my sanity. Yet when I took my first ride, just a leisurely journey to feel out the land and see what trails there were to follow, it was occasioned by a wrenching sense of dislocation: it felt wrong to be alone in this place, in this way. Astride my Melody, rocking with her sure and gentle gait, it was so easy to lose sight of the real world and sink back into memory… and realize just what was missing.

I passed him on the way back to the stables. The cemetery is now well groomed, the iron fence replaced with its gate repaired, the stones all cleaned and straightened with fresh flowers to adorn them. I paused there, rooted in place by my sudden understanding. This place was returning to life- the house, the land, and the people. These are all good things, but they are not what I want most. What I want most is forever beyond my reach.

But I have horses again.

Posted on June 27th, 2004
Filed under: The Present | Comments Off on I have horses again…

Tourists liked the place and old man Malloy had certainly been the beneficiary of the Luck of the Irish the day the State of California laid out the Pacific Coast Highway and ran it directly past the front door of his little diner. I landed there for the same reason the truck drivers and tourists did- late at night, tired from driving and wrung out from the events of the last month I had seen the brightly lit Diner and decided to stop to stretch and have a bite to eat.

The last three years of my life had culminated in a funeral I had had no wish to see. I owed those people nothing now, any possible obligation laid to rest with the man now planted in the earth for eternity. Three years of my life were no great sacrifice, and I made it willingly, if only for the son, whose grief had been more than I ever wished to experience. It was good that it was now done.

I was tired and unkempt. I must have had the look of the pathetic upon me when I walked in for Angus Malloy had come to me and asked what a young lady was doing all alone at two in the morning on a deserted highway. It was kindness and concern, and touching in its simple way and I had found no desire to rebuff him. One year later I was still there, wearing a ridiculous little pink dress with an apron and taking orders from drivers who stopped by on their voyages up and down the west coast. It satisfied an urge towards the bizarre for me to speculate what one person or another would think had they known the pretty little waitress serving their burgers and fries with cherry colas was a creature both ancient and grim.

As metaphor it presented a rather apt model of my life: all those travelers flowing past me, some I would touch oh so briefly before they were gone, never to be seen again. Others would linger for a while, returning again, but still so far outside my life, removed from who and what I was. There was a certain philosophical calm to be found in it and as such it suited my mood.

There were other attractions as well. I was given ample opportunity to indulge my assorted appetites, what with the nearby beaches, clubs to patronize, and of course, men. I took to the local surf culture fairly readily, even going so far as to learn though I did not care for it: it seemed pointless and I preferred to remain on the beach.

And there was Will Travis. Twenty-one years old, tall, blonde, blue-eyed and in love with the beach and drag racing. He stopped by one afternoon on his way to a race and I flirted with him just a bit. After that he stopped by nearly every day I was on. I did not dissuade him even though I was not particularly interested in any kind of relationship that might last longer than a week. He had the soul of a poet, and even though he spent his time indulging himself, he was possessed of a certain firm core of determination that marked him as a man to be reckoned with. Conversations with him were never inane, even when he was simply trying to coax me out on a date.

His madness in climbing in to these incredibly powerful machines to tear down a straight track dovetailed quite nicely with my own need for a taste of wild abandon. The ?Sexual Revolution’ had yet to fully break upon this generation, making my carnal proclivities something of a shock even to his rebellious soul. We formed an unusual pair for most of that year before I was forced to bring it to an end, mostly for his good. Time with me was time wasted for a man who wanted a family.

In the end 1959 was a year spent drawing a fine, bright line between one chapter of my life and the next.

Posted on June 20th, 2004
Filed under: The Past | 2 Comments »

Life is more than a mere collection of events and happenings. There are those who would argue against such a notion, those who believe that a human being’s journey through most of a century of time is little more than a process of genetic replication and propagation. Man as animal, lacking anything of the spiritual, moves through the world at the mercy of his instinctive needs and desires, rendering all intellectual and moral postulation as mere devices to either enhance his own prospects or reign in those about him. In this view, there is no meaning in life. This denial of meaning is the mark of a diseased soul.

No one (at least no one of any note) denies that the rational creature that is Man is a work in progress. From birth unto death Man grows, building upon the previous days, being shaped by his triumphs and his failures, nourishing his pride, husbanding his shame, all hopefully driven towards making him if not a better person, at least a happier one. Such changes through life are profound even amongst the most mundane. I speculate with some justification that any person past the age of forty or so can look back upon his youth and see a virtual stranger. It is not that one undergoes some great metamorphosis; rather it is the accumulation of experiences that transform the understanding of what is important and what is not.

The eighteen-year-old youth has fresh perspectives seemingly unpolluted by the weight of years. His intellect is new and vibrant and he revels in the ability to wrest meaning from the abstract. It is understandable that he might view those who have made these same mental transformations decades before as somewhat stultified, for they have in essence abandoned the wild optimism of youth in favor of an understanding of what is possible. It requires little of imagination or empathy to understand how the youthful mind can reject the counsel of those perceived to be ?set in their ways’. It is the function of the youthful mind to prod and press against such notions, for being young and undisciplined he must somehow form an understanding of what is real and what is worthy, versus what is false and despicable. This is a process prone to error and tragedy. Such is life.

The older Man is a creature whose life has given him perspective. He remembers the idealism of his youth. If he is of the fortunate, he retains that idealism even as he recognizes it is perforce tempered by his refined perception of what is both real and important. He can look back upon his youthful enthusiasms and be both proud and somewhat amused by them. Some will have persisted, others will have given way to cold reality, but all will have formed a part of the creature he is. When he looks upon the new generations following behind he can be wistful for their energy, concerned at their stridency and appalled at their na?vet?, but if he has acquired wisdom he can also accept that they shall make the same journeys as has he, and perhaps they shall bring some portion of their new thought and new ideas forward, as he believes he has done, and add to the tapestry that is the living society of Man’s existence. The desire to resist sudden and sweeping change is a part of this process for the more experienced are mindful of the destructive nature of new ideas. It occasions that such resistance can become habitual, lacking a basis in experience or wisdom, and flowing instead from an unfortunate ossification of attitudes and desires. Such, also, is life.

It is within the intellectual space bounded by the juxtaposition of these two forces that Man defines what he is. The interaction of these drives is what transforms a mere collection of experiences in to something that can transcend the mundane aspects of existence, taking what some would insist on viewing as a mere confluence of happenstance and deriving from it that most precious of all things: meaning. The Man who believes life has meaning is a primal force in the world. The Man who rejects such a notion is for all intents and purposes, dead.

Man can know such meaning through myriad channels. Religion could hold no sway in human society were there not a fundamental need for meaning. The true atheist can find meaning in his devotion to Man as a species, or through pursuit of knowledge; he does not need religion to give his life meaning, but he desires meaning all the same. For many, it is the simple act of looking backward upon their lives and seeing the tortured path they followed from their youth– that in itself conveys meaning upon them. Human beings seek meaning as surely as they seek food, water and companionship. It is a necessary component of the soul of Man.

Posted on June 13th, 2004
Filed under: Philosophy | Comments Off on Life

I enjoyed Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Whereas others were aghast at the notion of an actor as President, I saw it as a fitting evolution. I never cared for him as an actor, but that says little, as I have no real attraction to the cinema. I was in California when he was governor and I was rather taken with him then despite my affected bohemian ways.

I admired his optimism. That alone made him the best solution to the malaise of the late 1970’s. I admired his commitment to his beliefs and his belief in the ideology of his nation. He was an implacable foe to communism and his stand against that soul-destroying cancer would have been enough all by itself to endear him to me. He is one of the very few political leaders I have ever had any feelings for.

Rest In Peace, Mr. President.

Posted on June 5th, 2004
Filed under: The Present | 1 Comment »

In the comments to this post, Mr. Renick takes me to task for my inhuman and murderous ways, then asks:

“By the way, do you even believe in God? He may judge you one day you know.”

Mr. Renick,

What am I to believe in? What would you have me believe in?

God. If I assume you mean by God anything resembling the all-knowing, all-seeing creator of the universe depicted in the Bible, Talmud and Koran, then I am afraid I must disappoint, for I have no real ability to relate to that concept in any meaningful way. I worshipped many gods in my first two thousand years. I was worshipped as a minor goddess on and off for a pair of centuries. I have seen the religion complex from both sides and I am left feeling drained and unimpressed.

I know that religion offers much to those who believe. Faith is an immensely powerful force in the lives of Men. It can motivate entire nations to greatness, and even when we accept that the converse is also undeniably true we can still sift through the results and reasonably conclude that belief in God is a Good thing.

I am unimpressed by those who hold religion as maleficent influence in the affairs of Man. Yes, I am aware of the Crusades. I am aware of the Inquisitions, the Heresies and the auto-da-f?. I witnessed many such in my time and had reason to suspect that I might be on the receiving end of such un-tender mercilessness. Nevertheless, this was not the doing of religion- it was the handiwork of Men who used religion as an excuse. Lacking God, they would have found some other handy tool to flog the populace in to a frenzy of fear and murder.

I am no atheist. I do not pretend to great knowledge in the spiritual realms inhabited by such as you. I am denied such things. Your fears are not mine. Your failings are your own. That which I carry as an aching weight upon my heart would burn you to ashes in but a moment. That I might bear such burdens is by virtue of long practice and I undertake it without much in the way of joy or satisfaction. My life slowly becomes such that I wonder at my ultimate purpose. Perhaps I merely seek that one final act of contrition, that thing which might set the scales to balanced and allow me to fairly contemplate my own end in the sure and certain knowledge that what great harms I have done are finally, mercifully, put to paid.

God. If He exists for such as I, perhaps he might be so kind as to answer a simple question:

What did I do? What made You so terribly angry with me?

Posted on May 29th, 2004
Filed under: Immortality, Philosophy | 8 Comments »

I generally avoid staying in one place too long; however, Boston has become somewhat of a touchstone for me. I have had an apartment there since 1970 and it makes for a convenient place to meet lawyers and whatnot. I suppose it is coming time to leave that behind as well. These days with their computers and registries and databases… suddenly thirty years becomes an eternity of paper trails and evidence.

I fled the events in the desert that decades-past summer feeling the scrutiny of the police upon me. They had been kind in their own way, and amused at the idea that this “little slip of a thing” could have dealt out such mayhem and destruction. They were willing to be deceived as I told them tales of my father teaching me the proper handling of a pistol and gifting me with his souvenir Army Colt .45 because he refused to let his little girl head out in to the world untrained and unarmed. Some of those men had tears in their eyes as I recounted those tales. I am a supremely skilled liar and raconteur- I showed them what the wished to see, and they accepted it readily.

First to California, into the embrace of friends who knew me for what I was, then back to Boston. As much as I dislike urban living, I could think of no other place to be and I took some small comfort from familiar things and well-known streets. I dabbled in university classes and oversexed coeds with too much money, too little history and overblown concepts of self. Given the backdrop of local strife those diversions fulfilled a need, but provided little in the way of real satisfaction. If anything it merely served to lull me in to a sense of complacency- a dangerous state for me.

I lose track of time. This is a recent development, something I began to notice at the onset of the Twentieth Century. It is not a matter of simply becoming engrossed and passing a day without intending to; rather it is the loss of months, even years at a time. It nearly always manifests itself when I feel myself at peace with my surroundings- life takes on a certain comforting rhythm and the days fade in an out from one to the next until I take note of the world once again to find that I have passed as much as a decade with little regard.

All of this is in sharp contrast with the past few months where each day has presented something to be confronted directly. To be certain, these are not life-changing events, they present no realistic danger and can hardly be called matters of import, but I find my life cluttered by dealings not easily left to the hands of those not privy to my unique concerns. I am unaccustomed to such distraction. It seems to have consequences beyond my mere displeasure.

My sleep is tortured. Long ago I ceased to be troubled by dreams. While I am certain my unconscious mind continued its nightly reshuffling and sorting of events, memories and motivations, those activities were no longer partially visible to my waking awareness. Instead, dreams seemed to become portents, warnings of some kind, or prodding towards or away from some course of action. Rare were the dreams I remembered, and those were always vivid and unmistakable in their intent.

Not so now. My nights are filled with visions of the open sea, a hunger for that one thing I fear most in the world, or else I feel myself lost and seeking solace, seeking that which I might call “home”. That is an odd desire, as I have no real home. There are many places I live, but nothing yet is home. I have hopes for Pennsylvania… Yet I must consider just what Home would be?

Perhaps simply that place where I might pass those sudden decades without care or concern.

Posted on May 22nd, 2004
Filed under: Immortality, Regrets, The Present | Comments Off on Boston

Just an administrative note-
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Posted on May 18th, 2004
Filed under: Administrata | Comments Off on Comments

It was such a beautiful summer morning: very hot of course, but there was a breeze that let the dry air cool the body without being so strong as to send the dust flying. I reminded myself to keep an eye on everyone since my young friends had a tendency to forget to drink enough water. They were young and idealistic, and very, very foolish to have set out to live in the desert. If they had not encountered me they probably would have been dead within a week, yet here we were a year or more later and our little community was alive, if not completely “well”.

It was a constant struggle. They had had no clue about survival, let alone the challenges the desert could present- just hazy notions of living in some secluded place away from “the grind” and “the man” and all those pieces of society that seemed so negative and constricting. With my help they had built not a paradise, but at least a quiet place, off the beaten path and free of whatever imagined evils had stalked their lives.

“Something’s coming down the road,” Gina said. She and I were up on the roof of the barn, trying to get the patches finished before the sun became too much to handle. Of all the kids, she was certainly the one most likely to actually do any work so she naturally gravitated towards me. Tall and curvaceous, with dark, curly hair and wide gray eyes she was quite the contrast to me and the boys liked to refer to us as “Built for Comfort” and “Built for Speed”, respectively. She was more amused by it than I, but I was hardly offended.
Read more…

Posted on May 14th, 2004
Filed under: The Past | 6 Comments »

What follows is purely political in nature, so if that is not your cup of tea please do pass it by.
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Posted on May 10th, 2004
Filed under: Politics | Comments Off on November, 2004