joe.

I am trying to find every reason on earth not to write a word here (or anywhere, for that matter, since here is the only place I write lately, if I write).  And I have found almost all of them—reasons to not write, I mean.  Here is a partial list.  Review access logs; go to the bathroom; check e-mail; make coffee; muse on the potential of various scripting tools to do wonderous things with access logs; drink coffee; check blog to see if anyone has commented (I am a comment-whore); visit sites that link to me; visit sites that sites which link to me link to; visit all the usual sites; drink more coffee; go to bathroom, again; give passing thought to numerous pressing responsibilities; review more access logs; take the top off my scanner and rearrange all the lighting in my apartment so that I can scan my face; post the resulting image to blog; go, late, to work.

Do you think it is easy being a mute blogger, with an undiagnosed anxiety disorder and a spastic bladder, trying to hide from life while living—all without any Ativan at all?  Yeah, you’re right.  It actually is pretty easy being me, all things considered.  (Oh, that’s another one.  I can listen to NPR instead of blog.  Add that to the list.)  I mean, I could be like Yasser Arafat, with tanks and bulldozers trying to knock down my house?not to mention short and ugly.  Or I could be like Margaret Thatcher, with not only bad hair, but also too old to talk.  Instead of being just figuratively paralyzed, in my hopelessness and fear, I could be actually paralyzed like Christopher Reeve (who, by the way, is actually quite a Superman in his real life).  Or I could be dead.  A condition which, despite all of life’s frightful dark imaginings that seem to recommend it, would probably disappoint.  If everything—and I mean everything—disappoints me now, what on earth (or anywhere else for that matter) would make me think that I would find happiness in being dead?  Nonsense.  I would find disappointment in death, not because there is anything wrong with the experience itself, but because there is something wrong with my disappointment detector. 

My ‘disappointment-detector’ is like an unplugged TV.  I turn it on, and get nothing but a smoky black image, and conclude (quite prematurely) that Light no longer exists.  I am thus disappointed.  No matter that my conclusion is illogical; I am able to see the device which is telling me that Light has abandoned us.  And no matter that there are things like windows; though they are somewhat less entertaining than TV used to be, they still tend to indicate that Light is continuing on.  But the fact that Light is not gone from my life is somewhat more painful than the alternative.  I cannot explain exactly why this is.  The reason is not explained by the over-simplifying phrase ‘misery loves company.’.  On the other hand the problem is not so complex as to be unsolvable, though it often feels that way.  The best way I can explain it is to say that the loss of my magnificent life, which was lost long ago (the reasons for that are another story entirely), feels like it is survivable only as long as I pretend that there is no magnifence anywhere in life.

There is, indeed, magnificence in life.  That makes me cry.

And here am I, wringing out these tears and discovering these truths in one of the most un-original and un-novel of forums, a weblog.  Magnificent.