July 26: Going Crazy, Too Many People, Fortress of Solitude

While he examined the boy's eyes, Billy told him matter-of-factly about his adventures on Tralfamadore, assured the fatherless boy that his father was very much alive in moments the boy would see again and again.

"Isn't that comforting?" Billy asked.

And somewhere in there, the boy's mother went out and told the receptionist that Billy was evidently going crazy.  Billy was taken home.  His daughter asked him again, "Father, Father, Father--what are we going to do with you?"

Billy is trying to comfort the boy.  The boy has lost his father, who was killed in Vietnam.  Time traveler Billy knows a different kind of reality, not limited by time or space.  Death isn't an ending in Billy's reality.  It's just one moment along a continuum, along with births and weddings and baptisms and graduations.  Billy wants to pass this knowledge along to the boy, so that the boy knows that his father is still alive, and will continue to be alive, forever.

I've written about Vonnegut's concept of time before.  It is quite comforting.  The only problem is that, as a human being, I can't experience all these different moments over and over.  I am on a straight line toward my inevitable end.  I won't ever see my brother or sister again in my lifetime.  Their moments have passed.  I will never hold my infant daughter or son again.  Those moments are gone, as well.  Time takes all things away.

I am not trying to be fatalistic.  I will admit that I'm not in the best of moods.  I've had to deal with too many people today.  I've used up my daily quota of kindness and compassion, and I'm quickly devolving into misanthropy.  I have a couple more days of forced human interaction, and then I will be able to retreat for about a week into the Fortress of Solitude in my mind.  By the end of next week, I'm hoping my batteries will be a little recharged, and I may like people again.  Maybe.

In the meantime, I will try to avoid talking about aliens or time or war or Trump or anything that may require me to be removed forcibly from my place of work.  I will try not to go off the deep end.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for the solitude of headphones and music.

February 8: Duck Pond, Dance Competitions, Snow and Dead Frogs

All this comes to mind at the duck pond, because the duck pond is rapidly turning into a landfill of its own, a landfill paved in frogs. There are a million frogs here, bullfrogs hopping all over each other on tangled mats of algae.  And the pond is filling up.  Small ponds don't live very long, especially in the South.  Decaying matter piles up on the bottom, depleting oxygen, and the shore plants march to the middle.  In another couple of centuries, if no one interferes, the duck pond will be a hickory forest.

It's not a very beautiful picture Dillard paints.  A pond being eaten by the bodies of frogs.  Bullfrogs.  Piling up like snow during a blizzard.  The water dies, depleted of oxygen, and vegetation takes over.  Imagine the stink.  It's a story of decimation and reclamation.  Death and rebirth.  Rebirth and death.

I have had a bad day.  In the coming two months, my daughter has two dance competitions, one in March and one in April.  I will not be able to go to these competitions with my family as in years past.  I can't get the time off from work.  That means, for the first time since my daughter has been dancing, I will not be there to see her dance.

This morning, I shoveled my driveway.  Tonight, I shoveled my driveway again.  The snow will pile up again overnight, and I will have to shovel again tomorrow.  The frogs pile up, and the pond dies.  No matter how hard I work, how much I love my wife and daughter and son, I will be alone during those dance competition weekends in March and April.  There are things I simply cannot change.  Like snow in winter.  Dead frogs in a duck pond.

If you can't tell, my mood is a little fatalistic at the moment.  My life has not turned out as I planned.  I try to be a good person, hard worker, loving husband and father.  I treat everyone I meet with kindness, never act in anger.  I'm not perfect.  Far from it.  But I am not an asshole or abuser or Republican.  Yet, disappointment follows me around like a stray cat.

That's all I have to say.  The snow is falling already.  I will have to get up early tomorrow to shovel.  Probably have to shovel tomorrow night again.  Because that's life.  Or that's my life, anyway.

Saint Marty is tired of dead frogs.

I laugh because it's true