UN

Why does a dog dig holes, or scratch at the crack under the door with its swift little claws.  Maybe it will get somewhere, escape, run free.  Maybe outside that door the world has changed, and it is always windy car rides and ball chases and play fighting in long grass.  

What value does it have, to you, to me? -- this blog, these posts.  It is pleasing to create something, out of emotion and vocabulary, passion and rationality.  Bodily functions must be attended to, and to a much lesser extent, functions of the mind.  Basal metabolism is minute by minute.  Heartbeat, breath, something else no doubt I can't be bothered to list.  I must never forget to do these things.  The rest can be neglected.  

I fell silent as I've said, not that you noticed, for a number of years.  I was not too busy.  It wasn't a why do I bother thing.  It's not so much complicated as detailed, and I can't be bothered.  Pettiness is one of my themes, but only when the mood strikes me, when I am in that particular giving vein.  My take on politicians or historical trends, well it's like a dog digging up a hole.  Maybe there's a bone. I know there's one somewhere.  

It's in me to pursue the facts [insert dog hunt metaphor here], not fearlessly, because what would fear have to do with facts.  Not about integrity, because we can be whole without having every detail.  Curiosity, certainly, about the world and what I can do with it.  It's just exercise.  A way to use what I have, with some result.  

Why do you return to these pages?  Because it's a conversation.  Not you and me -- me and the world.  And observing people, not unguarded but honest, is interesting.  

I am what critics and professors call an unreliable narrator.  One of my sock puppet personas is arrogant and belittling.  How might one deal with that?  This is practice.  Not so much illustrative as training.  I am the difference between tv and reading, if there still is tv.  Passive or active.  But up a notch.  I am the difference between reading and reading that is demanding.  

Could I make it easier, with my parentheticals and my tonal switching?  It's not about you.  Like God, I have my own purposes.  There's a way that this really is what it's like inside my head.  

I'm reading Bukowski now.  I'm giving him a chance.  No chances for Burroughs.  I have slightly conflated them, which prejudiced me against Bukowski.  So far he can write grammatical sentences while relating events.  If I was an alcoholic, I'd have many friends.

I had to clean up some shih a few days ago.  Very powerful dry heaves.  I haven't puked since 1984, but there have been a few dry heaves.  I'm sure it's something I could adapt to, desensitize that reflex, amyagdala.  Sounds like something Jung would have written about.  But more of a Freud thing, shih.  It would be wise to desensitize oneself to shih, living in this world as we do, it being what it is.  That's not all it is -- we are not adolescents -- but it's how we enter the world, not infrequently, and it's the mess we make that others need to clean up.

What.  What.  That ... what I wrote before?  You didn't believe that did you?  Shih.  Haven't you learned yet?  Didn't I just say it?  Unreliable narrator.  You didn't even catch it: an honest unreliable narrator?  You're the dog.  I'm the one pretending to throw the ball.  And there you dash off, then bewildered, then trotting back, hoping.  That's how your brain is wired.  You understand that being tricked is just another kind of rain.  

J