Two Hundred and Seventy Five

I had another dream last night.

In it I'm young, and starting my first job, as an apprentice.  My boss tells me to go to one of our vendors and pick up an order.  He assumes I know the way, but I've never been downtown before.  Reluctant to admit that I don’t know the way, I ask another employee—a older woman who's been friendly to me—for directions.  She offers to come with me and show me the way.

We get in my car.  But instead of giving me directions, she puts her hand on my knee.

I realize she thought I had invented the story of not knowing the way as an excuse to be alone with her.  I apologize for misleading her, but she refuses to believe it was unintentional. 

Then the scene changes. 

The pandemic seems finally under control.  The opera house has re-opened, so I drive downtown to buy tickets.  But it’s been so long since I’ve been downtown that I don't remember the way.

I see a well-dressed distinguished-looking older man walking down the street.  I pull over and ask him if he can direct me to the opera house.  He offers to come with me and show me the way.

He gets into my car and I drive off.  When we arrive at the opera house, he gets out of the car and goes inside with me.

I ask the ticket seller for a season’s brochure.  The man and I examine the brochure together.

I tell him I’m looking for an opera my wife would like.  He looks startled, as if I’d struck him.  I realize he's gay, and thought I was, too.  I apologize for misleading him, but he refuses to believe it was unintentional.

Two Hundred and Seventy Four

I had another dream last night.  In it, I seemed to be in a government building, being shuffled from room to room because I lack identity papers.

I thought at first it was a hospital, because my clothes (and papers) had been taken away and I was wearing some kind of robe.  But instead of white gowns and surgical masks, everyone there wore black, and masks like dominos that covered the upper half of their faces instead of the lower. 

One of them looked like the woman who strip searched me the last time I crossed the border.

I woke depressed and ready to reconsider suicide.

Two Hundred and Seventy Three

I’ve had two dreams since I spoke with Justin.  One would be remarkable enough, because I almost never dream now.

In the first dream, Justin was a monster from a Maurice Sendak children’s book.  He didn’t seem to be in the second, but there was someone in it like him—someone I hadn’t seen in years, and barely remembered—who telephoned me and asked me to join him on a cross-country road trip.

In the dream I speculated why he had chosen me, because we had never been friends.  But I’m friendly with everyone, or try to be; and often people without many, or any, real friends attempted to turn our relationship into a friendship, or something more.

Most people don’t have many, or any, real friends or real lovers, and settle for sex because they can’t find love.

I used to hear them crying out in my dreams, like souls in Hell; but I almost never dream now. 

Two Hundred and Seventy Two

Should I write about this?  Should I examine—no, dissect—my only remaining relationship?  Why not?  What else have I got to do?

Yesterday Justin showed me a Zoom presentation he’s created for our prospective clients.  It’s a well-made presentation.  The problem is the presenter.

I haven’t seen Justin in years.  We used to Skype until I got fed up with his bigotry and told him I was done with him.  Eventually I relented, but now we talk only by telephone. 

I can see from the presentation that he’s changed, and not for the better.

Some people of mixed-race ancestry have an exotic beauty.  Justin isn’t one of them.  Nevertheless he’s vain, buys expensive fashionable clothes and boasts of exercising every day—which may be true, but he's gained weight over the years and now looks soft and flabby—which makes his boasted prowess with women sound ridiculous.

As I watched him host the presentation, he stuck a finger up one nostril and started picking it as unselfconsciously as a toddler. 

Justin is one of the least self-aware persons I’ve ever been involved with.  Is there something about me that attracts people like this?  Probably not.  Most people lack self-awareness.             

Two Hundred and Seventy One

 What is truth? asked Pilate.  Only those who followed Christ believed the answer to that question was self-evident, and they’re all dead now. 

All gods are dead now, because all those who used to believe in them are dead now.  We worship the state now.  Not the real state, but an idea of the state that’s as insubstantial as a god—and that, too, is dying.

Nietzsche said in all of history there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross.  I agree with those who claim he died voluntarily, but not because he believed his death would save others.  Only a fool believes he can save others by dying for them.  That’s even more foolish than believing we can save others by living for them, as Buddha did.  I think Christ died voluntarily because he realized he could do nothing to save others, and despaired.  He was wiser than Buddha

Nietzsche called Christianity a religion for slaves, but all religions are for slaves.  And whatever we worship—science or art, money or the state—no longer consoles us for the knowledge that we’re all slaves, the most foolish of whom imagine they’re masters.  So we despair.

Two Hundred and Seventy

I can’t read anything anymore—not a magazine article, let alone a book—so I went into the library and looked for one of the books I’d read when I was a child.  It would be a matter of remembering it, rather than reading it.

I found a copy of the Buddhist scriptures.

I remembered my grandmother dying on my tenth birthday.  I wanted to die, too—but instead of killing myself, I decided I would live, and try to help others.  I would become a bodhisattva. 

As I reread the scriptures, I saw how I had learned from them the words for what I already knew.  But they’re only words for children now, like the one I used to be and am no longer.

Two Hundred and Sixty Nine

To know myself and my limits, the limits of others, and of the world in which we live.  I am a part of that world, and can only be what it allows me to be.

To know that because we're limited, what we know is and always will be less than what we don't know.  What we call the truth can therefore be no more than a guess—hopefully one based on the best evidence available to us, but still only a guess, to be revised as more and/or better evidence becomes available.

To know that the best evidence available to us is not always the best evidence, and assuming it is may mislead us.

To know that what we call the truth is most useful because it enables us to act.  If we wait to act until we know the truth, we will never act.  But we must act.

Not because our cause is right, and we must fight for it even though we may fail.  We can’t know it’s right any more than we can know it will fail.  What we call right is usually no more than what we believe to be right for us—and we don’t know ourselves well enough to say, with certainty, what‘s right for us any more than we know our world well enough to say, with certainty, what’s right for it.

Not because we can trust ourselves to know what’s right, or even what’s right for us.  Certainly not because we can trust others to know what’s right, much less what’s right for us.  How many others agree with us and/or how many others we agree with isn't proof that either of us knows what’s right. 

We must act because only by acting on our beliefs can we know whether we're right.  We must act because not to act is not to be.  We must therefore persuade ourselves that although we don’t know everything, we know enough to act.  

But most of us don't.

Even if most other people agree with us, and/or we with them, that’s no guarantee that they will join us in doing what we both agree is right.  Most people find the struggle just to survive difficult enough. 

I no longer think about killing myself because I consider myself already dead in every way that matters.  I now exist as most people do, doing no more than is necessary to survive.

We know, as soon as we know we’re alive, that we’re part of something greater than ourselves—something we don’t understand, much less control, any more than we understand or control ourselves.  We also know it’s broken, therefore we are broken.

Our history is a record of our attempts to repair it, and ourselves.  Both have changed, but only in small ways.  Each revolution merely replaced one ruling class with another, equally parasitic. 

It may or may not be repairable; but as most of us no longer attempt to repair it—are, on the contrary, damaging it even more—there’s nothing fools like me can do to repair it. 

Only fools love others more than they love themselves.  We should let them die, if that’s the punishment they think they deserve, and accept that this life, in this broken world, is all we have.

Mine was the last generation that believed it was possible to repair this broken world.  When I was young, what struck me about my peers was not their optimism, but their naiveté.  They underestimated the magnitude of the task, so they declared victory and gave up.  

I try to be content with the world's ruins, and the ruin that I now am, without regretting what we could have been and done and resenting them for not being and doing what they could have been and done—accepting that they've given up, so I should, too.

I used to tell myself that I wanted to die with them, but that’s a lie; and my self—whatever that is—is tired of lies.  I want to live, but not in this world.  This isn't living. 

All our dreams are dying, as are those who preside over them.  Trump and Biden remind me of the senile old men who pretended to rule the USSR during its last days.  Everyone in the USA waited for them to die, knowing their empire would die with them, and imagining we and our empire would then be free to remake the world in our image.  But I knew that when their dream died, ours would follow. 

Americans endured Trump throughout the pandemic not despite his inaction, but because of it.  They saw that behind his painted clown's face was a death’s head skull.  With his pretense of youthful virility, Trump is the perfect figurehead for  a dying empire pretending it still rules the world.  Now one senile old man will succeed another, just as Chernenko succeeded Andropov.