(no subject)

 Uncanny how it becomes a matter always of parents & children, parent & child.  I saw my kid off to camp & then I faced realities of family regarding my own parents.  Where once these weren’t thoughts so vigorously rooted, they’re now a kind of basis for all other considerations.  The strange & unrelenting substrate that courses beneath identity & coerces compliant thoughts.  Always there is this – that you’re part of that continuum.  Somewhere along the way there’s a broadening of perspective & the sense of being only a rung in the ladder takes hold. 

Not that I especially like it.  Over the weekend was my #1 niece’s birthday.  #2 niece was also in attendance & her father, my brother in tow.  So I made my way to the party & ate up the food and had many pineapple ciders.  Then the night drew on & children were put to bed and sister & brother & I talked into the night while my astonishment grew.  Sister is in a fighting mood & can’t abide brother & I’s assessment of our father’s impending demise.  She insists he’s alright.  A shocking, sincerely held denial – she raves on other matters & the sense of delusion emanates is something that I still haven’t been able to accept.  It’s hard to watch her in crisis because she’s no good in a crisis.  I have confidene she’ll find her way through but I have a bit of sorrow for her for what she’s got to face yet.

Brother, sister and I all with daughters & exes.  None of us married, none of us successful in that.  I speculate about the nature & meaning of success as I crush younger brother at games of trivia.  “What about you – have you done all the things you’ve wanted to?”  I get the sense that if he dwelt on this like I do that he’d likely find the same despair I’m prone to.  Good for him, he doesn’t much care.  I’m steady on with my current project of setting a thing to do each day & doing it.  Thus I succeed.  Each day, in some paltry form & the aggregate of these insignificant victories is meant to be an avalanche of savored accomplishment.

But again my perspective swings too wide and like problems of life being in fact problems of family problems of thought become problems of culture.  And I see culture through the lens of another continuum – the rise & fall of states & even species.

There’s nothing that matters that won’t stop mattering.  Nothing that is or is made or thought that won’t stop being one day.  Which thought kinda dulls ambition – at least grandiose ones.  Best to do what you want to do, I think.  And then think less of those who’ve come to the same conclusion without the existential dread.

I decided to help my friend write his book, or well, make his book – he can write the dang thing, I’ll do graphics & whatnot.  We talked about it last night while failing to roll the dice – settling instead for an actually really amusing Choose Your Own Adventure boardgame, or table-top game anyhow.  Fun.  But I thought on it, and then today I put my big old mitts to it & now the man’s got a nicer book.  I feel a quantity of joy, having a thing I can do well & for others. 

Tonight there's a vigil downtown for the death of american democracy.  In case posterity ever looks at this.