Karlblog

Dear Friends,

I must have been tired in some fashion yesterday … I slept twelve hours. I think this is a feature of my depression, but I am able to sleep more than was my custom. I seldom sleep longer than two or three hours, but can do so nearly any time. It gives my plaints of sleep-deprivation a hollow tone.

I find my complaints have begun to seem nugatory and to ring false in my own ears. I wonder if I have sounded so to others all this time? I now have the habit of feeling bad even when I don't … of complaining without need. I am not, emphatically not, saying that I don't feel bad — just that it has begun to sound false in my ears. I once read that one of the three best ways to lie is to tell the precise truth so unconvincingly that you are not believed. I seem to have fallen into this mode. How odd to possess verity without verisimilitude. I wonder if hypochondriacs are disbelieved because of the frequency of their complaints or due to their tenor?

For those of you stomping your feet, the other two ways to lie is to tell only part of the truth, or to say nothing at all.

How does one lend verisimilitude to veracity? By not speaking, I suppose. Pleonasm cheapens words. Ambrose Bierce once defined Pleonasm as an army of words escorting a corporal of thought. Yet is there value in silence? To make a commodity more rare is almost invariably to increase its worth. Why should this work with words? To make low-fat milk you add water until the fat content is adulterated to your taste. Will an amalgamation of words with silence produce low-fat speech? It would seem so.

I talk too much. It would appear I think too much about it as well.

I find my life measured in bitter installments of late. I am sensible as well of the failing of my will and of my ingenuity. Still, I find revivification repeatedly. I do not know its source. I'm pleased that it is so, but I lack proper comprehension of of both the source and the process. I will have to think on it awhile.

My session with my therapist was longer than usual today. Circumstances dictated my early arrival for my appointment and his availablity at that time. I feel as though I was more open with George than my usual. I don't really hold back in any significant way in my sessions, but I seldom find much of importance to say. Recent sessions have been vaguely validations of my thought processes and a pleasant break from the inanities of my daily contacts. I hope to move to a more productive stage in my therapy. I want to re-learn my ability to succeed at things and to put plans into action.

My memory cheated me of hours of my time today. I visited my medical doctor at ten o'clock and discovered that my appointment was for one-twenty. I called my sister to pick me up but was forced to leave a message. Needless to say, she did not check the messages and did not come to pick me up until I reached her subsequently. The same comedy was repeated in the afternoon following my correct attendance upon my physician and my later session with my therapist. Hours were wasted, but I have little else to occupy my time. I should not be irked, but feel so.

I am concerned about the caprices of my memory. I am uncertain, of course, of the degree of my lapses. I plan to find a way to gauge the state of my memory but have no real idea how to go about it.

I'm tired this afternoon. I'll write more later if assaulted by the muse.

Today has been defined by coffee and lucidity. I woke early this morning.

... Forgive me a brief digression. "Early" to me used to mean "before 5:30 am". Now it means "before 8:00 am". How strange to lose a habit of sleep — waking at 5:30 — after 30 years or more.

In any event, I woke early this morning, around 6:00 am. I started the day with a double shot of espresso in my hazelnut creme coffee. That's a good thing. It's now after 18:00 and I've finished the pot. I'm not sure that's a good thing.

While drinking coffee I've updated my Poetry Journal and my Prose forum. I'm not particularly proud of either effort, but at least it is an effort. I feel like writing for the first time in a long time. Correction: I feel as though my impulse to write may be practicable for the first time in a long time. Now that is most definitely a good thing.

I find it difficult to finish anything and that has been a deterrent to even beginning creating. I find myself thinking "What's the point?" or some equivalent when I decide to write (or draw or whatever) something. I am sensible that such negativity has long infused my thinking and my actions but my awareness of such is only now impinging on my more organized thought processes. I've long been aware that my thoughts are fragmented, my memory unreliable. Today I'm experiencing a lucidity that lets me know this and its extent.

I wish I had near to hand someone who knew me in the '60s. I'd like to compare notes and see if they see the same changes in me that I perceive. Now I'll grant you 40 years would change anyone, but the acuity I have lost since those days seems to me to be appalling. My memory of favorite books was so extensive that I could quote "chapter and verse" from Lord of the Rings and (Oh, for pity's sake!) In Cold Blood. Mother Earth News was high on my list of "authoritative sources" and I was enthusiastically Athiest.

I'll have to cut this reminiscence short. My sister has returned from a distant grocery with hams for Kim and Mario's upcoming wedding. Fool that I am I went down to help carry them upstairs. I've thrown my back out … again.

My thoughts tonight turn toward family and holidays. The two are intertwined in my mind, inseparable, commingled. In my youth, I celebrated few holidays. Christmas and Easter were the main ones. Little family association was present in those days. As I grew older, I became more closely associated with my parents and siblings. Birthdays became important and attendance mandatory. To Christmas and Easter we added Fourth of July (also my brother's birthday), Armistice day (my sister's birthday), Mother's day (my birthday, often), and Father's day (often my father's birthday and usually only a day away from my parents wedding anniversary). My mother's birthday was the 23rd of December and I recall that she always felt cheated because she often got "combined" birthday/Christmas presents. A mistake I never once made.

Because so many members of my family celebrated birthdays on or near holidays, the two were as one to me. Now that those people are not much a part of my life, I find myself reflecting on the holiday aspect of celebratory dates rather than their personal implications.

July 4th means little to me as a celebration of our nation's birth. I'm as patriotic as the next fellow and take some pride in being an American. Our celebration seems crass to me, though. My sensibilities are not offended by the hoopla that often occurs in conjunction with this date, but I am distressed by the things that are stressed and by the people who do so. The fourth should not be "Will Smith Movie Release Day". I don't like that. Politicians should be prohibited from campaigning within a week of the fourth. I dislike a man running for some ignoble office co-opting the actions of our founding fathers to make his mean achievements seem somehow more grandiose.

My idea of a great Independence Day celebration involves the Boston Pops.