Real Life

Sorry I've been somewhat neglectful here recently...compared to my usual.

I've been indulging in real life for a change. What a concept! Among other things, I actually read a book, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions (which I highly recommend).

As I told Alphadog, who was kind enough to inquire as to my health and welfare as a result of my underwhelming activity...I haven't read a book in what seems like months. Reading takes time and thought and attention...and I've been spending those resources here.

But is it better to keep spouting my already formed opinions here instead of learning new things that might make those very opinions better informed?

It's a weird paradox that evades solution. If I spend a lot of time reading and getting smarter...so I can post more intelligently, by the physical laws of the universe, I'll post less.

Either I can post more with less knowledge, or gain knowledge and post it less.

Quite unsatisfactory. But being subject to the laws of physics, I can't find a loophole.

The missing and important element here is time. It turns out there is a limited supply! Being a working stiff, I spend most of my life elsewhere, doing elsewhat. I have a household to run, a garden and pets that depend on me for sustenance and nurturing, things that get dirty and undone which need to be cleaned and redone. And I actually do have a few friends and some family that would like some of my time and attention.

I'm in love with blogging. And I adore making the new friends I have as a result of it. The idea that one can sit in one's little room, speak to the world and reach like-minded people in far-off places is a miracle. Forget water to wine or loaves and fishes. This is seriously miraculous!

And yet...and yet...there is real life, if you'll forgive the expression. The things I can touch and am responsible for, and the people and animals I can hug really do deserve more attention than I'm giving them.

And yet, the lightning pace of the artificial, the shallow, the meaningless, i.e., politics, is what captures the imagination here...the newest revelation, the stupidest comments, the lying liars, the wannabe idiot kings scrabbling for power.

They are the cheap fast-food of the intellect. One tires of them and their clownish antics. One yearns for deeper meaning and substance. And yet...it is they who will enhance or destroy our lives. It's a conundrum. I don't want to know this anymore. I want to be able to ignore them and their primitive idiocy and pay attention to things that matter.

But, what matters more than freedom? Nothing substantial or meaningful is possible without it. Love, wisdom, joy, hope....without freedom, just words. And freedom is precisely what these thugs threaten with their every word, act and thought.

I am conflicted. I am heartsick. I am furious. I want to do and talk of things that matter. I want to spend my life ignoring Hill, Obie, Mac and all their ilk. I want to never think of them and their evil, stupid, mindless ambition. I want to love my friends, shoot my guns, hug my cats, watch my garden grow in peace and freedom.

I want to ride a motorcycle without a helmet on a mountain road on a hot summer night.

I want to have a smoke at the bar while I sip good whiskey...or over a latte at the coffee house while my friends and I solve the problems of the world at a small round table.

I want to drive a muscle car with a big engine down the highway with the windows open and the stereo blasting some sexy male rock & roll voice and a pounding beat, catching my breath at the sublimity of speed and music...guessing it's what heaven feels like.

I want to stop and eat a greasy burger with fries and onion rings, loaded with trans-fat or saturated fat or bacon fat...or whatever makes it taste best; and a whole-milk chocolate shake with 1000 calories.

I want to carry a gun responsibly as a free American grown-up citizen.

I want to live in America. Not a hodge-podge of third-world ghettos populated by "illiterate peasants".

How hard is that? How simple? How obvious? Why do I have to spend my life struggling to make these things possible? Why are we in a fight to the death to survive as a free people? Why am I forced to forgo all those things in order to preserve them?

Why is freedom so fragile? Why do so many want to destroy it? Why has the world gone so crazy?

Why is it so difficult just to live a modest, responsible, decent, free life in America?

Perhaps it is this generation's job to NOT enjoy the benefits of freedom in order to guarantee them for coming generations. Doesn't seem quite fair. But I guess those who died preserving my freedom didn't exactly get a fair shake either.

So, I am where I began: wanting to live in the world rather than spending all my time trying to change it. Yet if I do that, it will be (as it has been) inexorably changed from the world I love to one not worth living in.

I suppose if I scream, "It's Not Fair!", someone very like my mother will say, "Life's Not Fair".

The Gunslinger