It's Knowing That This Can't Go on Forever, It's Likely One of Us Will Have to Spend Some Days Alone

 

 

What I write doesn’t matter a whit.  A year after I am dead a few people will mourn the anniversary of my dying with some real sense of pain.  Five years after I am gone a couple of people will have a space inside their hearts where a dull ache remains when they think of me.  Fifty years after I am gone virtually nobody will even know I existed. This is the way the world has always been and will always be. My words will mean nothing to those strangers that follow me on this orb.

 

Don’t get me wrong I am not sad or depressed. Put simply this prospective anonymity is a numbers game I accept. Today as I pound away at my keyboard, I am just one of 7 billion people on earth. On the day I did I will be just one citizen in that small city of 150,685 who passed that day. But if anyone cares to know my mind either before or after the day of summation, it is here to see. Chances are they won’t.

 

So why do I write?

 

I published my first blog post years ago, March 23, 2008 to be exact.  My first blog was entitled A Space True and North. These writings are still out there and can be found at onetruenorthspace with the addition of .blogspot.com.   Facebook will not allow me to put the actual link up in any form because A Space does not meet their community guidelines, but more on that below.

 

Moved to write by several friends telling me that I had to capture some of my amassed stories in written form, I began to type.  The orally shared tales in question were tawdry. Quite often the telling included matters obscene, immoral, fattening, profanity filled and replete with descriptions of behaviors oft times on the far side of proper or legal. What can I say, life was fun in the seventies.

 

My writing at onetruenorthspace has slowed but not by choice.  While I liked to share the stories I posted there, I no longer am able to do so. Some Facebook algorithm (or a person who reported me to the FB police) found the things I wrote objectionable.  As a result, any FB post with a hyperlink to A Space will be blocked with a message saying the blog violates community standards. 

 

I don’t know what could be so problematic when I was just talking about having sex in the college dorm shower room, taking acid on a church retreat, running wild on the streets of the beach town where I spent my youthful summers or wistful thoughts on the meditative and calming nature of the north Atlantic’s waves. Still before Facebook got all morality cop on my tail, I rattled off a goodly number of stories about my youthful debauchery.  

 

As the years went by my stories began to change.  As my kids grew, the boys provided me with new stories, wonderful (sort of) stand-alone anecdotes.  The captured narratives range from one of them puking on my head while I waited in line at a store to a meditation on whether Jesus picked his nose occasioned by son’s knuckle deep nasal scratch during the church Christmas play. Our family’s challenges with autism and OCD were set out, sometimes funny and as often as not heartbreaking.

 

A few work stories found their way onto the blog.  While I had my own stories to tell, I could not let be lost the often jaw dropping tales from recovering alcoholics and drug addicts I saw every day for twenty years.  I was very careful to change the names if I used names at all, but I tried to capture the essence of what was said in a true a way as I possibly could. Literally I would find myself shaking my head in near disbelief after hearing some of those stories.

 

As I aged and came to face cancer and the real potential of an early death a different series of stories came out of me.  The tandem fears of growing old and dying or of not growing old and dying ugly found expression in what I was writing. A philosophical vein began to pop up.  Stoic and eastern thoughts worked their way into many lines I put down.  When my brothers died the heartache I felt, found as clear an expression as I could muster, in what I said on the blog.

 

With Facebook blocking me sharing anything on A Space and with time on my hands coming from retirement, coupled with internment of uncertain duration due to Covid, I created a new blog. The New Plague Journalgave me an outlet for all the emotional upheaval I was experiencing. I am guessing we all felt the gut churning from the great not knowing what to do to survive in a pandemic era. Writing about what we all were experiencing was an anchor to my day when we all were adrift in uncertainty.

 

When I began my writings some fourteen years ago, I was a bus rider.  Each day I would carry a small note book and I would scrawl kernel sentences and directions on what to find next and where to find relevant quotes on narrowly lined paper.  Between the waiting time for the bus and the ride itself there were several years when I had a good half hour five days a week to grab the wild hares running about the corners of my brain and capture them on paper. 

 

Now I am retired and I have a desk in my home where I try and force myself on an almost daily basis to work on my writing.  In some ways it is not as easy as when I was on the bus.  Here there are a thousand tiny things that pull me away on a daily basis.  Some are routine.  Some have importance.  All are distractions from writing but still I try to create something new every single day.

 

Because I am not a vampire my mortal frame will return to dust soon. Could be this year, could be five years from now or it could be twenty years from now. If the glowing orb of the world wide web now surrounding Gaia survives my children or their children will be able to find my musings. My heirs of course will be using some incredibly sophisticated software engine, the post Google device which will be able to discern my written voice out of the billions of possibilities which will by then will exist.

 

I have nothing profound to say. I just offer observations of an average human living in a world at odds with itself.  Maybe when those following me write a paper on the transition from midcentury American democracy to post millennial autocratic apathy in a climate changed world, they will be able to offer up some quotes from dear old great grandpa. Would be nice to be a disembodied voice in a paper or a multimedia presentation like those read over sepia toned photos in Ken Burns documentaries. 

 

In the end my writing may be all for nothing.  To quote Robbie Robertson in a fractured sidewise way, maybe it is just written on the wind.  But I feel compelled to talk and this seems to be the best forum for me. Hey the chances are better my descendants, if there are any, will find my thoughts here as opposed to finding an old notebook in a box which just by sheer chance has not been trashed or recycled.