life continues

MIldred Lisette Norman wrote:

"Anything you cannot relinquish, when it has outlived its usefulness, possesses you. And in this materialistic age, a great many of us are possessed by our possessions."

I am constantly imagining letting go of all of my stuff, especially that I don't want anymore. I don't seem to do it. I can't decide if it is more about the effort, or the attachment. What's odd to me is that I seem attached to things that I don't even want. As though the clutter gives me comfort and chokes me in the same breath.


Criminal Minds: Isaac Asimov said:

"In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate."

That is the flaw in living through TV. Movies end, TV Series stop, but my life goes on. Repeatedly living in the past moments or in episodes I have seen before, is a shallow comfort, but it is not non-existent.


Yesterday, was a day I was looking forward to for a long time, because my neighbor has brought me dinner on Thanksgiving. She did not. I know I was hoping to ask her and her son to look out for me this winter, if I got too snowed in, but that's no longer possible.


Yesterday, I told my son that I had turned off my long distance to save money. I need to do that today. My daughter didn't call. I could tell by her email the other day to my request regarding following up with my mother and the car payments that she would not talk to me. I made a mistake. I am so sorry.


Criminal Minds: Mother Teresa:

"Life is a game, play it. Life is too precious, do not destroy it."

Suicide indicators (per criminal minds): prior attempts, period of deep depression, withdrawal from family members, spontaneous proclamations of love (to family, sort of like a good bye). Except for the prior attempts, which I only do in my mind, I fit this. I imagine what to leave my children and I always tell them I love them.


"It gets better." Unless it doesn't. I does not always get better .... There sometimes are only moments of reprieve.


On the other hand, my daughter's song is probably right ... I never take that final step ... home.


Criminal Minds: C. S. Lewis:

"Experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn. My god do you learn."

What do you learn is the more interesting question. I learned not to ask for help that was out of my control, that could make things worse. Then I just turned 18, but I learned. That hospital was brutal 3 day lesson ... actually it was late Friday night until Monday morning, but it seemed like an eternity, Had they been more competent, they would have known, that they kept me just long enough to break, to consider that is was better to give in and to want to. I don't expect I showed that to them, but I showed it to me and that's all that really matters anyway. Then I didn't want to die. I wanted help. I was in such desperate need. But never again have I let my guard down like that. At 18 I was naive. Losing control, letting go, falling into the abyss, that terrifies me. How else could I endure suffering so long. Letting go is worse. But it is not about afterwards. If I just teleport to afterwards, I would already be dead. There may be a lot worse than how I am, but the humiliation and disgust and the complete lack of any redeeming quality of how I suffer, seems worse, but that may be because I endure this type of pain. Maybe I would change my mind if I suffered what I could not endure.


Criminal Minds: F. Scott Fitzgerald:

"Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy."

I am no hero ... my life is not a tragedy .. it is waste and insignificant ... worth nothing but overlooking.


You would think 44 degrees would be too cold. But it is warmer inside now, at this temperature, than it was. It seems positive somehow that I endure... and depressing and disgusting that I still don't do anything about it.


Criminal Minds: Helen Keller:

"Many persons have the wrong idea of what constitutes happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose."

If your own life is not a worthy purpose, you can not reach for or effectively pursue anything higher.


Criminal Minds: Painter William Dobell:

"A sincere artist ... tries to create something which, in itself is a living thing."

The full quote is:

"A sincere artist is not one who makes a faithful attempt to put on to canvas what is in front of him, but one who tries to create something which is, in itself, a living thing."

I write poetry and journal as a substitute for living life, to try to breathe life into my own life. I am self-absorbed. But in those moments when I am creating, I am not. There is a brief reprieve in distraction and in involvement.


Criminal Minds: Ghandi said:

"I have seen children successfully surmount the effects of an evil inheritance. That is due to purity being an inherent attribute of the soul."

My parents did their best to protect me and to give me the best childhood and education. They still as an adult came to my aid when I needed help. But they have given up. But not the lack of willingness and trying. My father understands that he is too old to change. What he doesn't know is that he never could change in any way he didn't see as right. He stopped smoking cold turkey one day, when his doctor convinced him that he would die if he did not. What he sees as right he does. It may look like a change of course, but it is always what he believes is right. My parents gave up because I let them go and made it easier. My father could not bully me into being different, and I knew that I could no longer be nice or kind while he continued to do so as long as I did not change. One could easily say that we are alike (both stubborn) and that I am more stubborn than he is, at least I am more effective ... sort of ... because he has not changed either.


I am eating less. Yes, I am running out of food, so I make it last, but I also eating less and not being hungry or wanting to eat. My nose is extremely cold and so are fingers which are red, even as I type. And I think the struggle against the cold feels better ... or makes me feel better somehow ... like the way pain can at times. I know I am not doing well today. I am moving deeper into the abyss.


Criminal Minds: Benjamin Franklin:

"To follow by faith alone is to follow blindly."

Even when you see the bigger picture, stubbornness is blind too. It is an illusion to believe you understand all the forces in play. Faith is blind, knowing is an illusion. In between the lines of what is unsaid is hope and hopelessness.


Princess is tenacious. She has no intention of giving up on me. She has a more limited lifespan than I but how limited is unknown and she may not walk, but she showing no signs of giving up or wanting to let go. I believe she knows she is needed and wanted and loved. Hard to know which of these motivates her more. She just wills to live.


Criminal Minds: Ayn Rand:

"Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it."

Plausible deniability. Am I sane or insane? Do I follow reason or have I abandoned it? I would say: beware of where reason lead you, as you may not wish that you followed, for having followed, there is no turning back.


Criminal Minds: Thomas Fuller:

"A fool's paradise is a wise man's hell!"

That sounds deeper than it is. Only a fool would a vacation is paradise, without debt, hell. Only a fool would find reprieve in what others would call hell. Inherent in black and white is a lack of shades of gray. I do suppose though, that a wise man's hell would be ignorance. If this is not was meant by the quote, it surely could have been. However, knowledge has limitations, it has its own kind of hell in what is not able to be. But a wise man would know that and would not find that hell. He would not find hell in his ignorance. I do enjoy irony. Like I said, the quotation is seductively deeper on its surface.


Criminal Minds: Poet Phaedrus:

"Things are not always what they seem; the first appearance deceives many; the intelligence of a few perceives what is carefully hidden..."

I utilize this truth in the way that I minimize interaction, and thereby leave an impression that is very far from reality.  And then I haunt or perhaps taunt those who love me, by brutally telling the truth, in minimal doses, in a way that makes hearing it nearly impossible. What they hear is not believed, because they believe they have seen evidence to the contrary. The evidence that validates the truth is easily overlooked no matter how blatant it is. It is also easy to substitute memories for the current reality of what you see or use them as evidence to contradict the truth. Also, glimpses of contradictions are grasped on as evidence; it is only human to always grasp onto evidence that supports what we want to believe, especially when the truth is so impossible to want to know or have be real. Besides, it not only takes intelligence, but also an unbiased desire to see what it real, to want to really know.


Sometimes I think by living I torture my daughter. I think being open to her advances is a good thing and that cutting off mine is a good thing too. I am sorry that I have overburdened my daughter, but I am not sorry for that which I have not burdened my son.


In our brief conversation, I felt his innocence and his love, and the child I love so dearly. He is precious to me. Christie is precious to me as well. I feel guilty that I relied on her more. She didn't deserve that. I think I pushed her too far. I am so sorry. I didn't mean to find her limit; in a moment of weakness I only wanted her help. I was cold. I'm colder now, but not as weak. Besides it has warmed up to 45 degrees in here.


Read between the lines, between the quotes and comments to see how I am truly living. Today, it is Triple Yatzee and Spades ... over and over and over ... that is how it is every day ... the in between that is unseen. I live in the in between; in between moments of pleasure, of memories, of TV, of eating, of sleeping. In a real way, everything is in between.


Fighting the cold is just something to do with my time.


Criminal Minds: Bob Dylan once said:

"I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can't touch with decay."

It's getting dark and it is starting to get colder ... didn't quite reach 46 degrees ... and now it is getting colder.


I would like to thing Christie can have a great life and be untainted by me. The longer I live, the better equipped she is to do so.


Criminal Minds: Sigmund Freud:

"No mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips. Betrayal oozes out of him at every pore."

There is no need to be able to keep secrets when no one want to listen anyway. But still I am careful. I tell people just enough to be safe and still hope for help.


Irony from my favorite comedian Craig Ferguson at http://yfrog.com/j6ufw0j :

Hollywood from behind the facade.


No one would like to see what I am behind my ugly obese facade. 


Criminal Minds: British Historiam C. Northcote Parkinson

"Delay is the deadliest form of denial."

I had not this before even though I has seen this episode, this didn't sink into my memory. Delay tactics are used in politics. But in life, delay is all about avoiding ... delaying going to the store is denying I have no real intention of going. I delay day by day and it stretches into weeks and then into months and now years ... I hold onto this negative, "not doing" behavior, like one might cling to cliff edge or to a rope so as not fall, and feels like stubbornness, almost like a pissed off child, as though in a tantrum, like saying I will never grow up.


Criminal Minds: Winston Churchill said:

"There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues of human society are created, strengthened, and maintained."

That is nothing profound in this when you realize that is both the best and worst in us that comes from family and home.


Criminal Minds: Mario Puzo wrote:

"The strength of a family, like the strength of an army, is in its loyalty to each other."

That is true about any human relationship including the one with oneself.


Criminal Minds: Stuart Chase:

"For those who believe no proof is necessary. For those who don't believe, no proof is possible."

This sounds true, but it only for true believers and unbelievers. No proof is possible for that which requires faith or belief, so ... This is more of a definition than insight.


It is now 6:11 pm and I have come to the end of the criminal mind shows recorded. Life continues... or I thought I did, but I have just caught up to the marathon and now am live ... that's ironic.


Criminal Minds: George Bernard Shaw:

"The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."

No matter how I tell my story or what I tell, unlikely communication will have taken place.


One of my favorite Criminal Minds quotes by Jacques Rigaut:

 "Don't forget that I cannot see myself, that my role is limited to being the one who looks in the mirror."

Maybe the true blessing is that I cannot. Looking ahead, the episode marathon plays on through 3am.


Mt toes are numb and I can't get them warm.