GLOOM AND DOOM...

Rainy coastal weather today and I've just come from my physical therapy for recovery from torn rotator cuff surgery. Almost done with it and will soon just have exercises at home. 

Sitting at Tulley's, having me wee bit a caffeine and thinking (always trouble) about this writing thing I'm struggling with again. Every time I approach the idea of working on my memoir, I feel conflicted (tense), then when I decide I won't write today because I don't feel like it, I feel conflicted again. I used to struggle the same way back in the drinking days, long ago. Can't win for feeling, yet I've got to get a good way of proceeding or I'll stop again, just like I've stopped so many other times on long projects. Part of my trouble is that I can't imagine this having any outcome but for myself. No realistic idea of publishing it, and without that aim, I find it hard to justify the work I'll need to put into it. Already have more than 150 pages and far enough along not to stop, but this is where I've stopped so many times in the past. If I try to tell myself I'm doing it to give to my progeny on flash drives, then I hesitate to put some of the stuff I need to put into it for the sake of honesty. 

A WHOLE IN ONE

The other day I had an insight as to the whys and wherefores of my life. I think what I have to say might sound almost mundane, but like so many things in a man's life, I may have known something for the longest time, but until I actually focus awareness on it, the real force of the insight remains lost. 

I've been an atheist probably as far back as I can think, with some lapses and backsliding into belief under the duress of painful times. In short, when I am most weak and helpless is when I make decisions about gods and powers of greatness that I normally would not make. 

I don't know why I came to be an atheist, but as a teen, I probably said I was an atheist in order to shock people. The other day, though, I understood something about atheism that I'd not noted before. I was thinking about the book I'm writing and was trying to phrase a central theme of it when I chanced upon the following thought: my life seems to be directed toward the purpose of seeing myself as I truly am beyond or outside of the consciousness of a judging god. 

To live godless builds a truly human way of evaluating life. I think atheism is allowing me to quit having a split nature, seeing myself at one time as a human animal and at another time as a constructed creature at the mercy of a whimsical god like the gods of the Bible or Koran. The end of dualism is the end of being split, coming to live within existential doctrine. I'm sure that's what the existentialists were hoping for—to quit living as dual people and to be as one. 

To think as an atheist one escapes the duality of good and evil. As long as one is encumbered by the good versus evil continuum, he cannot help but be judgmental. His consciousness is bathed in good and evil thinking rather than in evaluating life on less onerous and practical terms. 

WRITING FROM SPACE

Long time since last entry. 

I'm at Tully's in Vancouver. Just got back from the Humanists of Greater Portland meeting. At the meeting this morning, I felt light-headed and couldn't follow the talk on "dark matter" very well. Suddenly I was struck by the thought that I didn't belong among these "smart" people so I didn't go to lunch with the sub-group that always meets for lunch following the Sunday presentations and drove straight back here to Vancouver. On the drive back I was filled with fear and a sense of worthlessness—fear and worthlessness, my old nemeses from college drinking days. As soon as I pulled into Tulley's, a place familiar to me, I was okay again. 

Like most fears, this morning's fear gathered strength and spread the more I indulged it. First thing I knew I was imagining my old age, myself in a nursing home, whining for help, trembling and begging. Not a pleasant set of feelings and imaginings. But that's just the way it goes with me sometimes, rather fewer times than in my old drinking days and in early sobriety. But my bouts with insecurity seem to be increasing in frequency again. Maybe stimulated by working on Boomed Out? Dark matter indeed!

ANOTHER DAY ANOTHER

Just dropped a buddy off at PDX (Portland's airport). He goes way back to the 60s after my first divorce. First I taught him in high school. Then I left that school, then got divorced, then moved in with Carl and his hippy friends in a walk up apartment on Main Street in Dayton, Ohio. Thus began my long journey to now where I sit in Vancouver Washington in Dolce Gelato, making this entry. Don't know how to talk about the visit. It seems that our relationship has not changed one wit for all the progress as a human being I think I've made. We quarreled and debated and got frustrated with one another, just like in the old days. Carl will, of course, be a big entry in my current book, Boomed Out.