Superman stuck in my head.

I don’t know what is going on, but the cracking continues. I feel like something wants to break open, and I keep trying to hold it together with duct tape and the thinnest of sewing thread.

There’s a vague feeling that I want to describe which needs some kind of acknowledgment, but I keep pasting over it with the wallpaper of distraction: podcasts, audiobooks and TV shows. I call it Thought Replacement Therapy, or TRT, but is it really therapeutic, or am I just hindering the process?

There is a tinge of melancholy, a sentimental sadness for other days, and not necessarily better ones, but familiar ones. Everything is just so damn precious. I guess I am just a hoarder at heart. I can’t bring myself to throw anything away because attached to each one is a memory of a different time, a record of my life. I’ve had an abundance of experiences, painful and otherwise, so why is it necessary for me to attach meaning to a paperclip or a push pin, a scrap of paper or a 10 year old answering machine message?

If I could get behind the belief in time travel or the notion of a cosmic deity with infinite memory, then perhaps I would gain some comfort in the idea that all these things which appear so transient can still exist, the natural process of birth and decay can be obviated, and there is some kernel of something that lasts forever. 

It is so hard to wrap my head around endings. Perhaps decrepitude is my silver lining. When the car has racked up enough miles, dings and broken parts, it becomes something from which it is easier to finally walk away. But in my case, in the case of us all, what is it that walks away? It seems like the decision to live at all costs is the default we have programmed into us factory. Letting go is against our nature.

I know I will never build a tower or bridge or monument that will last beyond my years. I'll never write Beethoven's 9th symphony. I will likely leave my less than sentimental surviving friends and relatives little more than an annoyance of clutter needing to be sorted through for potential monetary value.

Who will go through my pictures, my audio recordings, even these pathetic ramblings, and why would they want to? There’s no one as sentimental as I for the things that are all so trivial.

And should I delete the record of my failings and defects, who would I be impressing with the curated version? 

 

I’m walking down the road, and I pass the dried carcass of a dead cat. It has been there for months. I remember when the cat was a spry and friendly adolescent kitty, allowing me to cautiously pet it. Now it is just dehydrated roadkill, withering on the asphalt. I have pictures of this kitty. One is the street scene above. Another is an action shot of her leaping from a rock, caught in mid-spring--so full of life, now just bones and fur.

I have plenty of other pictures in my photo collection which capture the beauty of youth, the pride of some shiny new object or place in the springtime of its life. But now I see the inevitable end of summer, the biting of winter and the death of all things green. You can’t fight mother nature or time. It doesn’t mean that you don’t try, though. 

I just passed some llamas and goats, a little more aged than the previous year. Seeing them makes me sad. One day they will be gone, or I will. 

Just ahead there is a blind curve where oncoming traffic cuts into my walking path, oblivious to the possibility of pedestrians. Regardless of the time, manner or place of my demise, it is a certainty. It’s just a matter of time.

So back to my mountains of things. Who will care about all of that? Relatives will have scant memories of me to reminisce over because we bonded little, due to distance and disparate interests, or simply through lack of effort, for which I’m partly to blame.

Part of me just wants to cry because that is my brain's most frequently used the emotional circuit. I’m certain that this grieving is part of a process, but it seems to be a place in which I  frequently remain stuck.

I treasure my deeper friendships, the very few that I have managed to hold onto, especially E____. Of all the people in the world, she is the one person who I feel most gets me, although there are volumes of unpleasant history and corners of my life to which she has not been made privy. Perhaps that is why we’re still friends. I guess I can be a good curator, hiding the unseemly side of the of the tapestry from view.

That is it from me today. I have nothing but ramblings, and not a lot of wisdom can be squeezed out of this over-wrung sponge. 

Here's your titular earworm: Superman