Asia arrives today. I'll go pick her up at the station later this evening. Before that happens, I'll need to go to the store to get a few things for dinner. I'm nearly out of stuff for the morning. It feels like I've written this same post before. That should give you some insight into how boring and repetitive my existence has become. As toxic as drinking is, at least it generally provided some interesting stories. Maybe this is why middle-aged people (typically men) resort to alcoholism. What else are we supposed to do with these middle years? We're all just melting through time, working, watching the wax drip down.
The wick shortens and the flame begins to flicker.
It's harrowing stuff and alcohol is a decent distraction. Last night a friend came by. We were supposed to watch a Polish movie involving a donkey. Instead I started showing him Stable Diffusion and blew his mind. We played with it for what felt like hours. He was quick to see the potential and understood how the technology will affect animation and video, special effects, graphic design and art. Once we got our fill of this new generative-art magic, we spoke of life and relationships and love and loss.
The same thread about those middle years arose, not from me, but from him. He said that in the absence of a relationship, or some task or a piece of work larger than ourselves, we just spend our time working and eating and sleeping and repeating, and it creates this unsettling inescapable emptiness. Loneliness, too. When we are unfulfilled we are dull and broken, unanimated. A few years back I watched a bunch of videos which were part of a larger set of videos called The Meaning Crisis. The author, John Vervaeke, spoke at length about how not just middle-aged people, but our entire society, seems to be suffering from a serious crisis in meaning making. The video series is worth a watch. Admittedly the videos are dense, and the series is long (I think there are 40 or so parts) so I never finished it. I should perhaps revisit it to see if I can gather any useful insights to help right my way. Man's Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl is also excellent and worth reading if you haven't already.
For your daily weather update: it's shite. It's grey and wet and dark and has been all day. As for my plans for the remainder of the day - they are to run errands, finish work, cook, clean, study for Monday's German exam, pick up Asia, and go to bed. The day is already bought and sold. At the moment I've got a little bit of tenderness just inside my asshole. I'm hoping I'm not about to experience a fun flare-up of the hemorrhoidal kind. I've been doing a bit of strenuous activity these last few days; planks, pushups, yoga, core exercises. Maybe I strained a bit too much and inflamed something in there. I was talking to Q a few weeks ago and he told me he remembers when he got his first roid. He said he was in his twenties, at the gym lifting weights, and that he could remember the precise moment when he forever changed the topology of his lower rectum. You've probably heard those big muscle heads at the gym grunting and groaning while they heave huge dumbbells and barbells around. Well, the sound comes from a place deeper than the diaphragm. It bellows up from the colorectal nether-region, the anus. This grizzly growl, or baleful bark, depending on how much weight and how much struggle it entails, signals the scream of a trapped roid trying to claw itself free from 'the other womb.' The fruit of their womb is foul, veinous, painful and swollen. The grapes of wrath. It bulges like a purple barnacle bolted on to that sensitive sphincter and it will not relent.
Next time you hear the howl, have some courtesy, sympathy and some taste.
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