The Days You Forget

It's Friday the 13th.

I have been keeping a journal since 1989. I probably average about one entry in my journal every five days. I was thinking it would be interesting to write a blog in which I compared an entry from five years ago with an entry from ten years ago.
Oh what a pitiful endeavor!

Apparently my main concern in 2003 was to quit gambling. I wrote the words, "As far as I'm concerned, I'm completely free now. Free of the casino vice. Completely free!" Then I go on to delineate how I'm going to purify my mind by censoring what kind of things I watch on TV. Finally I record that I'm going to "Read Doctor Faustus until I fall asleep."

I have it in good confidence that I was not so particularly free from gambling at that time as I wishfully asserted. Last year I remember setting a record for abstinence by going 142 days without gambling. Currently I'm on a quest to break that record, but I still have 80 days to go... oh... now it's only 79!

But in 1998 I had not even begun to struggle with that vice. I was in my last year at MTSU and it so happens that there are no casinos in Tennessee... heck... I didn't even know what an Indian Casino was in 1998. Instead I was celebrating my 10,000th day. You see, I had an assignment in my history class requiring me to visit a cemetery and to study the inscriptions on the stones. I spent a couple hours there and recorded my thoughts onto a hand held tape recorder. I guess I had some kind of second class epiphany because I was contemplating how strange it is that our lives once they're over are summed up in how many years a person lives. Decades is too vague a statistic. To say I was born between three and four decades ago would be annoying. More helpful to know it was 37 years ago. But no one really wishes to know that it was specifically 13,650 days ago, do they?

And that puzzled me a little. It seemed to suggest that not necessarily every one of those individual days was very important, but would you be willing to take any day from next week and negate it before it happens? Hopefully you balk at such a notion. Who would want to say... I'll skip Monday (easily my first choice if I were forced to pick one)? Even though, historically, Mondays are the day in which I will look like hell and get a traffic ticket and sustain a sore throat and say something stupid to the girl I most want to make a good impression on! Still... what little optimist there is in me cries out that next Monday could be the greatest day of my life. It could be the day that I finally start writing my novel in earnest. Could be the day I meet the girl I get married to. Could be the day I save someone's life. Could be the day I quit my job. Which doesn't sound like a good day at first, but you never know what could come from it.

But in 1998 while doing that report in the cemetery I realized I would be celebrating my 10,000th day that June. And I mentioned it in my journal. But, as luck would have it, the day was a bad one. The girl I was interested in, Carla, was unhappy... an achievement for which she demonstrated a prevalence. I worked in the kitchen of Tennessee Christian Medical Center and burned the cornbread. I left the lights of my car on all day and thus killed the battery. The journal mentions the only bright part of my day were my dear friends Kenny and Patrice but it doesn't say how or why. Still... it's easy enough to imagine that they were just there for me inasmuch as that was always the case since first I befriended them... Ahh... Patrice... always more an angel than a person to me. And when she reads this... it's not just because her steps barely touch the earth when she walks... I'm thinking more of an afternoon on the phone when I broke down and she was at the other end listening with all her heart even when I could no longer articulate coherently. But I'm waxing cryptic now.

The 1998 entry goes on to say: "You know, I don't hate anyone. My life has been charming. I haven't met the perfect one for me yet, but I've loved many imperfect people and after all ~ I'm somewhat imperfect myself. We all want desperately to be happy. I myself persevere, but with what chance of success? Are the chemicals not against me?"
By which I suppose I meant to address the possibility that I might have a chemical imbalance in my brain causing me to be unhappy.

It's a strange thing indeed to share only two days from a collection of so many... I write differently for an online audience than I do for an audience of myself. Though I suppose in either case I am likely to manifest loquacious ostentation rather frequently.

Friday with Fur Puddle

Fur Puddle is my most recent nickname for my kitten (21 months old). Tonight I had two things to do. First I wanted to finish reading Of Human Bondage. It's one of the best books I've ever read. One of my favorites. Deeply philosophical and yet easily read. Delving deep into the psychology of humans. Reading this book reminds me of Roberta Flack's song Killing Me Softly. What does she say?

I felt all flushed with fever, embarrassed by the crowd,
I felt he found my letters and read each one out loud.
I prayed that he would finish but he just kept right on ...
Strumming my pain with his fingers,
Singing my life with his words,
Killing me softly with his song,
Killing me softly with his song,
Telling my whole life with his words,
Killing me softly with his song ...
He sang as if he knew me in all my dark despair.

Of Human Bondage talks to me relentlessly about my journey. About the futility of loving the heartless. About the struggle to survive in a society too busy to give a flying fuck. About regret. About insecurity. Off and on today I have plopped myself down unceremoniously in my recliner with a lamp nearby and have pored through the pages... about ninety of them. I was aiming to read 30 per day, but that's when I found out my dear mother had passed me. Previously I had been nearly a hundred pages ahead of her, but then today I read an e~mail indicating she had only 100 left to go... while I still had 130. Later in the day another e~mail revealed she was down to fifty! So it's a mad dash to the finish.

But the other thing I had to do was to watch The Great Debaters directed by and starring Denzel Washington and based on the true story of a Black college debating Harvard in the mid 1930's.

Now for whatever reason, I cannot read a book for a great duration without becoming unbearably restless. Likewise I have a difficult time sitting through an entire movie without interruption. Therefore I alternated between reading the book and watching the film. And here's what kind of makes the whole thing rather amusing. It seems I don't really notice it at first, but while I'm reading I'll suddenly realize that there is a kitten curled up on my lap. Occasionally I will read an extra chapter more than I would otherwise just because she seems so comfy and cozy... Disrupting her repose is not a thing to do lightly. But then when I'm watching the movie guess what happens. I'll get to a good stopping point and reach for the remote control wherewith to push pause when I realize that once more I have a kitten in my lap or, more accurately, on my belly.

Anyway, she's the sweetest though her meowing is far too incessant and irrational. And even though her purring is almost undiscernable. This blog is my tribute to her. The best kitten in the world.