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Incidental Bliss
Aug. 9th, 2016 09:44 amHey? What if our immortal souls are a design flaw, like the way styrofoam is accidentally eternal, and heaven is merely a landfill where we are all stored for eternity in a state of incidental bliss?
I’ve been drunk on this weather. Simply drunk. Running around outside just as much as possible. Long, long tromps along the river. Not even listening to podcasts. Just taking it all in – the trees, the meadows, the ripple on the water. The dusty flowers of the unassuming plants that put off blooming until the summer is two-thirds through. The critters. Deer, of course. And then yesterday, I saw a skunk careening crazily around in broad daylight. Rabid, I thought. And tried to find a park ranger. Went inside the old Vanderbilt Stables that have been requisitioned as a base of operations: cracked white tile with the Vanderbilt crest and the stone heads of the Vanderbilt lions, filled with John Deere machinery, but the rangers were all someplace else. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.
When I finally go back inside, it’s like I’m brain dead; I can’t concentrate. Close my eyes, and the woods and the waters are painted in a kind of psychic tempera on the underside of my eyelids. Very pleasant. But very unproductive.
I can’t think.
I don’t care!
I should care.
But I don’t.
###
I binge-watched The Last Kingdom last night. Extremely well done TV drama about the British Isles in the Dark Ages when Danes and Norsemen were launching colonial expeditions against the Anglian kingdoms of Mercia, East Anglia, Northumbria, and Wessex every decade or so. (“Wessex” survives in literature as Thomas Hardy’s placeholder for “Dorset.”)
I like history in general and British history in particular, and this particular show was exhaustively researched, so I was captivated.
But the real reason I kept watching was because the actor who played King Alfred was a dead ringer for Steve ________ whom I loved and lost – wow! Two score years ago.
“You know, I think Steve was the great love of your life,” Ben told me once.
To which I ought to have replied, “No, no, no, my darling – you are!”
But I didn’t.
I’ve been drunk on this weather. Simply drunk. Running around outside just as much as possible. Long, long tromps along the river. Not even listening to podcasts. Just taking it all in – the trees, the meadows, the ripple on the water. The dusty flowers of the unassuming plants that put off blooming until the summer is two-thirds through. The critters. Deer, of course. And then yesterday, I saw a skunk careening crazily around in broad daylight. Rabid, I thought. And tried to find a park ranger. Went inside the old Vanderbilt Stables that have been requisitioned as a base of operations: cracked white tile with the Vanderbilt crest and the stone heads of the Vanderbilt lions, filled with John Deere machinery, but the rangers were all someplace else. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.
When I finally go back inside, it’s like I’m brain dead; I can’t concentrate. Close my eyes, and the woods and the waters are painted in a kind of psychic tempera on the underside of my eyelids. Very pleasant. But very unproductive.
I can’t think.
I don’t care!
I should care.
But I don’t.
###
I binge-watched The Last Kingdom last night. Extremely well done TV drama about the British Isles in the Dark Ages when Danes and Norsemen were launching colonial expeditions against the Anglian kingdoms of Mercia, East Anglia, Northumbria, and Wessex every decade or so. (“Wessex” survives in literature as Thomas Hardy’s placeholder for “Dorset.”)
I like history in general and British history in particular, and this particular show was exhaustively researched, so I was captivated.
But the real reason I kept watching was because the actor who played King Alfred was a dead ringer for Steve ________ whom I loved and lost – wow! Two score years ago.
“You know, I think Steve was the great love of your life,” Ben told me once.
To which I ought to have replied, “No, no, no, my darling – you are!”
But I didn’t.
