SOUND AND FURY, SIGNIFYING NOTHING

It's kind of cold this morning, and there are the sounds of saws. One house over workmen are doing something significant. Which has become commonplace during this pandemic; why not improve your real estate when things have necessarily slowed down and there's little else to keep you occupied? What it also highlights is that people are moving out of the city.
Well, young white people are.

Which is probably a good thing. Less partying, no dining out at hip restaurants, and exercise studios are shuttered, as are beauty salons and nail-spas. So inevitably there is no point to being in a metropolis, and any profligate sleeping around is by oneself.
Hip venues, trimness, and promiscuity are things of the past.
Everything meaningful to them has become impossible.

People like me are staying. We never were into the hipness thing, exercise comes with regular daily living, and wild sexual abandon required too much effort and dealing with people we didn't like. Plus parties. And that right there was a problem.
Loudness, strobe, lights and watery beer.

Outside of birthdays and holiday events, the last party I actually attended was mostly middle-aged men quietly admiring the deceased person's book collection and objets d'art.
It was very nice.


My equivalent of 'profligate sleeping around', has been drowsily reading a book in bed before falling asleep. Promiscuity? Well, there ARE multiple books on the bed .....


Relationships I've had have been long term affairs, and few. The stuffed animals would have frowned on anything else. They like a strife and stress-free enviroment.
For most of my life I've been alone.


One thing that is severely inimical to developing a romantic relationship is that one must at the very least tolerate the other person's belief system. So anti-vaxxers, religious people, vegans and vegetarians, and Marxists or Republicans, are automatically out of the question. Conspiracy theorists and other illiterates are anathema.
Must like stuffed creatures.

Life is about teatime, twilight, and not being overly concerned about finding any meaning in a bleak and random universe. There is no meaning. Life doesn't have a purpose. If when you die you leave a better world than it was when you began the journey, and you are a better person than you started, you will have substantially succeeded. In the meantime, eat and drink sparingly but with enjoyment, piss off the assholes if you can, and be kind.

Oh, and put sambal on evertything.

With that in mind, my purpose today is to do some laundry, puff some tobacco, and purchase fresh vegetables across the hill on Stockton Street. Then have tea, enjoy the twilight, and fix myself something of which my doctor might disapprove for dinner.
Before then and afterwards read a bit.

It is quiet in the apartment now. The working men outside have stopped sawing, my apartment mate has gone to work, the stuffed creatures aren't quarrelling or rambunctifying (remarkably, they do that mostly when she's home), the sun is out and I need another pipeful.

Strong milk tea, flue-cured tobaccos, books, and hot sauce.
Life during pandemic times is mostly peaceful.
It's worked out rather well.

TOBACCO INDEX


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