“A friend is turning 54 this year, my brother 50. Count yourselves lucky. Soon AARP will not leave you alone. Having turned 57 this year the end of this questionnaire is one of the most depressing things I’ve seen thus far, another crack in my Narcissus mirror”
“Quarantine has washed away my best personae. You probably feel the same. What had been composted, hoed, tended, and then whipped has been erased. Once again, I feel lucky. It helps me sit. And I’m grateful, I’m in a place where the murder statistics are a sad but distant fact. Just a decade ago it might have been very different”
“Knowing me now, even with my murder mystery obsession, I hope you’re surprised my life was so stormy. Early on, when I first studied zen with a teacher, the hardest lesson was being fully and deeply responsible for my life. I thought I knew what it meant, but it changed dramatically over the years.”
“A great deal changed when a trusted Oracle asked me ‘Why do you always have to be the good guy?’ I realized over time, the ‘Boyscout’ syndrome was a mechanical reaction, a particular lock easily opened by those with a particular key. It led me to be unnecessarily cruel, prolong suffering for myself and others, and was used to excuse abysmal behavior by the Magickal Third.”
“I’m not saying it’s gone, rather I’ve taken responsibility for it which makes it less impactful, I can be nice with less restraint now that the BS or BSS is no longer a major circuit in my personality simulacra. This morning, I understood branding is simply a way to align oneself to certain psychopathologies, automating empathy, caring, explanation in the same way sociopaths learn to imitate real human emotion. Your company ‘story’ is an autofiction, with an emphasis on ‘auto’ a mechanism releasing you of the burden of authenticity or human emotion”
“As Roshi would probably say “So what you understand? it doesn’t change anything’ And slowly, slowly I begin to see it’s true. The dessert above is backyard rose petal whipped cream, with allulose over organic blueberries. Understanding the why will never capture the taste. The question remains does anyone under 40 understand the ‘slowly I turn’ reference in the heading? If not it behooves you to taste the air we grew up in with 3 network stations and eventually a single local PBS:”
Well, y’all, “Slowly I Turn step by step” I once thought I was Costello, for a while I wanted to live the extra-large life of the fool, now slowly as I turn, I want to be…
