Some long and meditative thoughts in the middle of the night in Daydreaming on the Porch

  • July 21, 2024, 1:48 p.m.
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  • Public

Back in pre-Internet says, there were only three broadcast networks from which people got their nightly TV news, and the daily newspapers in most of the larger cities. I remember highly anticipating delivery of both the morning “Times-Picayune” and the afternoon “States-Item” in New Orleans when I was a nerdy teenager. It’s a wonder I didn’t deliver the papers on my bike. In the Sixties, I was avidly pursuing pastimes that none of my peers even knew existed. For example, stamp collecting. I think my brother must have wondered what planet I was from. I might have even occasionally read my father’s Harper’s Magazine, which, by the way, is probably the most interesting of all magazines today, from the times I’ve dipped into my print editions.

But I wasn’t overwhelmed by news as I am now, plus a thousand and one other distractions. I put all the distractions aside for a short while most nights and sit out in the balcony around 4 am or so. As is the case most nights, I never take my phone with me. I sit and rock and look at the few stars I can see in the unfathomable night sky, and try to think the deepest thoughts as I’m mulling things over, constantly projecting on my inner-vision screen endless little snippets and vignettes of my life. I was just thinking that without the phone in my hand, I feel a bit blank and depressed, realizing that all I do out there is have little mini life-reviews, thinking to myself, “This is really it. Life as I once knew it when I was working and caregiving, and living 36-hour days not too terribly long ago, is gone, and engagement with the world gone with it.” There are no children and grands to Face-Time with or enjoyably keep up with. There’s just me and the opaque night sky. It’s not even satisfyingly inky black as it would be in the country covered with twinkling stars.

My life has basically been lived and I’m having trouble deciphering the “secrets of the universe”from among the multitude of podcasts, articles, YouTube videos, Web sites and communication gateways all over this vast Internet. Not to mention the increasingly pressing need to start reading the books I have carefully bought over the past ten years, which I feel sure will open up the cosmos — inner and outer — and allow me to more fully tap into the Universal Consciousness. These possibilities are all highly anticipatory and both fun and stimulating to think about. Getting fully involved reading and researching and informing myself about even a fraction of what’s out there is the hard part. But it will happen.

But where is the time? My life in one sense is just beginning anew in another dimension here in the city where I’ve lived for 30 years, and yet I find that I want to drag myself over the coals of past horrible decisions and work experiences, however brief, and actually and almost literally live in the past rather than the mentally and intellectually overwhelming present. Mentally, not emotionally. In old age I realize I have weathered enough storms to keep me comfortably numb, except when I read the horrible news every day.

Then there are all the manifest worries about aging, decrepitude and dying. Aches and pains of old age? Yes, they’ve started. I just bookmarked a “Frontline” documentary based on Atul Gwande’s book, “Being Mortal.” Another book beside my bed is practically begging to be read. Its title: “That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour.”

It’s about time to go out on the balcony and look up at the overcast night sky, so different from last night when a bright, near-full moon peeked in and out of clouds. All I want to do, though, is start watching a new movie on my iPad and try not to think about the looming possibility of post-election chaos and civil war. Not to mention the slow-moving, global-warming train wreck up ahead in the near future, as any sentient being can plainly see is very likely to occur. I feel I am trapped inside this summer, as being outside in the afternoon for only a short while, even a few minutes in this hellish July heat and humidity, induces visions of heat exhaustion or even heat stroke during this summer of our national discontent. Thank God for the night and the peace and quiet of 4 am to settle into the final lap of Internet fiddling and canoodling until I go to bed.

I stay up so late because it’s the pattern of nocturnal wakefulness and creative pursuits and meditative thinking that I have perfected over the last 30 years. I don’t have any good friends I can sit down with and have long talks or hang out with in an in-person friendship way. I don’t know what it’s like to have company because I’ve never have any. My “company” for the past 25 years has been a passing parade of virtual friends, with several becoming very good friends, but only virtually, which for me has worked well, and yet is sort of like a void as well. . No frozen dinners to fix for visitors or solving the eternal problem of where to put books stacked everywhere. Books, read and unread, mostly looked through and cherished, are my friends.

My return to meetings of a writing group every two weeks has somewhat lifted me out of a four-year period of solitude and virtual life in cyberspace, and into the world of flesh and blood, in-person people. At least for the time being. I am enjoying it, but it’s not something I have to have in my life. Or maybe it is. I’m conflicted. My little stories don’t seem to resonate that much with the other attendees. Maybe I’m too unusual, too eccentric, too odd? I don’t know. This doesn’t make me feel bad, and I am not at all surprised by this. I rarely if ever have the opportunity to discuss the writing I’ve done over the past 25 years with anyone. There was one notable exception when last fall I had an opportunity to talk in-depth about myself and my long-time journal writings/essays with two visiting academics and researchers from Europe. They have included some of what I’ve written, as well as materiel from extensive interviews, in a large research project they and others are doing. It has been an immensely gratifying and self-validating experience.

A small number of people read my writing. I’m content with that. I told someone the other day that if only one or two people actually read any particular online essay that I post, I am happy and grateful. Writing and photography are my life in retirement now. I’m at the point where I mostly write for myself, whereas in years past it was for an audience online, however small.

Four years, Including the recent Covid-19 pandemic, is a long time to be a near-hermit, weekly supper visits to my brother’s place not withstanding. Those visits to a house on the beach our family has enjoyed since the 1960s are the highlights of my week. I get recharged and realize there are other people out there. I love playing with their two dogs. I laugh a lot, have a delicious home-cooked meal (my only one of the week), take walks our sit out on the beach after dark, buffeted by strong but gentle sea breezes. I look up a night sky that has more stars to gaze at than when I’m in the city.

I can manage well by myself, but it can get pretty lonely not talking to anyone for days on end. I should go out to the beach more often but it’s a 20-mile round trip. That’s the irony. I enjoy the times when I am a social being around loved ones and friends, and it happens just often enough for me not to succumb to real loneliness depression, apart from my usual aloneness.

Communicating online is all I do, but gosh, being in the company of others makes me come alive in a whole other way. I’m not trying to be self-pitying here. I’m just being a realist, and now at my age I accept myself the way I am. I’ll still follow objectively foolish dreams and indulge in little fantasies, but who doesn’t? I seem to be dealt heavy doses of karma or something about once a week in the form of weird, scary and disturbing dreams, actually nightmares, like last night’s bizarre sequences of acts in a play that I couldn’t shake or forget for hours. I won’t even hint at what it was about.

My thoughts out on the balcony at 4 am get deeper, and the constant life reviews continue out there, with a small fan blowing and the stars obscured.

Honestly, without my writing and photography, I’d feel rather bereft and empty. I enjoy writing more than reading. People constantly disappoint and disillusion, but they probably say the same about me. Deep down they live in their own little walled-off bubbles, alone, whether they admit it or not, and so do I. Why not change all that? Because I have no desire or inclination to do so. Earlier in life? Yes. But at 73? No.


music & dogs & wine July 21, 2024

I think it's great you're meeting with that group, it's important to us to have some interaction with people. Maybe that group isn't the best for you for now, but you can find another? I'm just happy you are trying to get out there! It's rough to do that sometimes.

My friend in Berkeley recently joined a pottery making class and he is loving it. I was thinking of looking into something like that too. I have friends, but we don't hang out all the time, and it would be nice to go do something on my own.

I agree with Arbi, you should be proud of all you have done. I am sorry if you are feeling lonely or down ♥️

Oswego music & dogs & wine ⋅ July 22, 2024

Thank you for this nice comment. So encouraging. Sometimes I get in a very introspective mood, and entries like this just pour out. I mostly am content to just be by myself, but there are times in the middle of the day, and the heat index is 107, and I feel trapped indoors, dependent on the AC, that the solitary artist and writer life starts to get me down. But it passes. We’re also living in very weird times, as I alluded to in my entry. So there’s a lot going on in these strange time. Getting old and feeling it doesn’t help either.

music & dogs & wine Oswego ⋅ July 23, 2024

I get it! These are strange times indeed. I must say I am feeling more hopeful now that Biden stepped down. I think that had a lot of stress on me. Like we don't have enough to worry about in our own lives, but have to worry about politics too? I hope things get better for both of us 😍

Oswego music & dogs & wine ⋅ July 24, 2024

You are so right. Biden’s departure was a great relief and I feel much less stress now about the election. Kamala has all keys in Alan Lichman’s prediction model, or will have them! Maybe we won’t be an autocratic srsre after all, governed by the sorriest set of loonies to ever disgrace the political state of this wacky country!!

music & dogs & wine Oswego ⋅ July 24, 2024

I had never heard of that guy, just looked him up. Hope he's right again!

gypsy spirit July 22, 2024 (edited July 22, 2024)

Edited

yes, the power of the internet and its influence on the lives of us all cannot be underestimated.....although to be fair most of us sometimes would have middle-of-the-night thoughts that kept us awake even back then.
I differ from you in that I am not normally someone who would be considered nocturnal, I'm more of a daytime person....especially in the latter years. But still can be tempted if wide awake at 3am to scroll a while on my phone...its not ideal, and yes - news can be overwhelming.
Another downside of the internet is that it also has de-socialized many people, yourself included it seems. Thats not uncommon but certainly unwise. Humans are basically social creatures, and if we truly wish to change the world and bring people together in unity and peace, we actually do need to relate face-to-face and interact with neighbours and others we see regularly. Its not just about family, we all have a neighbour or two, and encounter people in stores and cafes.....perhaps its worth offering a word or a smile and break the ice to combat loneliness. Sometimes we humans can be our own worst enemy. ((sorry about all the cliche statements...lol). take care my friend, and be brave. hugs p

Oswego gypsy spirit ⋅ July 22, 2024 (edited July 22, 2024)

Edited

Nothing wrong with a good cliche!! lol!

I agree about humans being social creatures. If I weren’t, I wouldn’t spend so much time here at PB and for so many years at OD. I love good people I am able to meet online such as here. That said, I have for a lifetime been a person who lived by himself, excepting the ten years I was caregiving. Solitude seems to be a component of my genes. Most of the time I don’t really want to be around people, as my normal state of existence is to be alone. That, and I’ve never been a joiner of any sort. When I was in my 20s, a bit perhaps. I was active in an environmental group I believed strongly in.

I try to smile at my neighbors and be as friendly and chatty as I can be, and a smile from another person, a stranger, lights up my day. I think if I had had my own family I would have, by necessity, been a much more social person. Also, remember, and as I tried to emphasize in the entry, old age has a way of clarifying who you are. I no longer feel guilt about my lack of engagement with people face to face. I feel I simply want to be “me” and take whatever comes. No need to rush hither and yon to avoid being lonely. I’m content in my apartment literally surrounded by books. But at least once a day I venture out into the “Real World.” Lol!!

One other point, I rejoice in the fact the the internet, rather than “de-socializing” me as you suggest, has actually made me much more outgoing and social, albeit from a distance, as cyberspace is, crudely put, a “virtual world” in the literal, Computer Age, technology sense, but in every other way it’s very real and meaningful to me, and always has been, considering its limitations, and on balance worth the huge amount of time and energy put into this “parallel universe,” if you will.

Take care, my friend! :)

gypsy spirit Oswego ⋅ July 22, 2024

good for you......and solitude, as you say, is just as vital at times. thanks p

Telstar July 22, 2024

Most of what appears on the internet isn't news.

Oswego Telstar ⋅ July 22, 2024

It is if you know where to find it! :)

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