Lockdown Diary - Saturday 1st May 2021

The return of 'normal' Saturdays.  On the plus side I am fit enough to go shopping and do all the other chores, give or take the things I need wait two or three more weeks before doing.  Unfortunately today looks like being dominated by rain, though it did hold off until after son #1 and I had done the shopping.

After shopping, as we ate our breakfast together, son #1 and I sat and chatted for a while, mostly about music (what else?) after my update on his mum's state of health.  In a strange echo of something I wrote yesterday, I found myself discussing the Led Zeppelin curse, Aleister Crowley, the alleged curse on Jimmy Page (is Robbie Williams his nemesis?), and Boleskine House on the shores of Loch Ness with him.

After that interlude, son #2 returned to bed, and I got on with the washing. Do you actually exist if you don't do washing? Discuss.

Over the years since my wife became seriously ill and as she - as in the person that I first met, married, enjoyed life and had children with - has been slowly submerging beneath a sea of symptoms, to the extent that she almost is the embodiment of her condition, my personality and my attitude to life has been changing.

There have been simple changes: there's not much I worry about these days - I just deal with things when they happen (there's is a darker side to this in that I am increasingly fatalistic, to the extent that one day I fear I might push my luck); little things that would have bothered me no longer do - I used to like things being done a certain way, now the only thing that matters is that they are done, eventually (there are a few things I cling to - I do like some structure to life, even though chaos dominates); and, lastly I am open to more things, to trying things I'd never have considered in the past.

The biggest change, however, is my attitude to relationships. No one knows how long anything will last. It might last a week, a month, a year, five years or more, but however long it lasts, if it is good for that period of time it is worth having, worth experiencing, rather than it not happen at all. One hours happiness or joy is better than weeks of mediocre nothingness.  You have to seize what you can, while you can.  If it works for all parties while it lasts, then that's as much as anyone can expect or ask for. The concept of forever, is exactly that: a concept.  Forever only exists in an abstract sense about abstract things, and has to be consigned to the realm of the abstract. As soon as you start thinking of 'forever' then you are only moments away from staring into the abyss. You can care about someone forever (until you cease to exist), but that doesn't have an equivalence in real life, in the physical world. Neither existence or the physical feelings of happiness (all those jolly chemicals coursing through your veins) are forever, but must be enjoyed here and now, for it's the only time they exist, like some transient sub-atomic particle bursting into existence then vanishing as quickly.

It is time to put theory into practice.

Apart from pondering the imponderable, I have found time between wash loads to read the papers and do some other chores. 

I could not be arsed to go for a walk as the rain was just putting me off too much.

In the evening I started dinner to the accompaniment of my main playlist on random. It is, of course, film night, and it's son #3's choice.

Son #3 chose a film called 'Us', which is in the horror genre, I guess. It was OK, but had some horror film clichés along with the odd plot inconsistency. I made the fatal mistake of taking my anti-depressant too soon, because 60 to 90 minutes after taking it, it will kick in.  Accompanied by alcohol, it's a guarantee of sleep, at least initially. Nevertheless, I watched most of the film, enough to know I'd not be rushing to watch it again, though under highly improbable circumstances (~) I might.

Tame Impala / 'It Might Be Time' / 'The Slow Rush'

[This came up on my random play and seems to be quite timely. On the one hand it's about getting older, not being able to do what you once could etc.  For me it's a call to arms to do the reverse: now is the time to seize opportunities]

[Is there a debt to Supertramp in there somewhere?]

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