9.14.06, Cont'd Disconnection and Upcoming NCPB

Blog.

[Background music tonight: Monk’s later years work under the 2001 title Thelonious Monk: The Columbia Years, ’62-68. I’m going to give it a few good listens and see if there’s anything to some of the critiques some people have made about his later work being too tame. Too, there’s a historical angle, too, in that it jives with music, culture, politics, etc. that was around when I was born—something I’m trying to work into a sketch of the historical moment into which I was born. 1968.]

To respond on Disconnection. (The hot chocolate was at Vivace, btw, never had it at Bauhaus.) The emotional states or states of being I feel alienated from—a very apt term because I do feel I’ve been a life-laborer and now my time-work has been put in and someone else is getting the profit and/or utility from it, but if life is a metaphor for capitalism, who are the capitalists? Hmm—those states seem to be the so-called normal ones for most people. I’ve always felt like a nonconformist inside; not to claim I’ve always or simply unthinkingly been one, but rather that I think there’s an inherent value of thinking like one. At least. So in a sense my alienation isn’t new. It is, however, extreme these days.

Seeing the daily routines people have can be horrifying at times. And thinking of death so much more presently than ever before exacerbates this for me. Whether it’s materialistic attachment, ambition for ambition’s sake or for power’s sake, or all the fronting. Trivial matters also occupy so much of people’s lives, simple priorities. Now when I’m “out there” watching or dealing with people, I just feel like I see more. It all sounds trite to put it into words, but the experience is real and all I can say is that nothing in the world looks like it used to. Work, for example, is just that. Work. And I spent a hell of a lot of time “working,” and sadly doing a lot of work I thought I should be doing. When that normative superego of Work takes over, for me, the pleasure of it gets lost. Worries over superiors, evaluations, the power of the masses or “customers,” all of these become tyrannical. Seeing all this more clearly is in large part what disconnects me. (Feel like I’m spinning my wheels here, trying to get this out…)

As for the wanting of conversations to end, of mouthing certain words and thinking others or simply waiting waiting waiting for it all to end, this is clearly something I’ve felt too. Part of good old fashioned misanthropy, on the one hand. (Which, B. you should get a lot of in anthro now…no?) On the other, it’s another testament to the fact that we do live in a camera obscura world, just like Uncle Karl says.

On a different note, I wanted to follow up on the pain management issue. I’ve decided to go through with the NCPB (the neurolytic celiac plexus block) procedure, and have it scheduled currently for early October. I might switch this up to late September but we’ll see. This means I get one more hose shoved down my throat and they inject absolute alcohol into the celiac plexus. Then it dies. The theory, in three out of four cases, is that when it dies, most of the pain in that area dies. Fingers crossed, I move ahead.

Also, I’m moving into a new place come October. Very close to my old place so the neighborhood routines can continue, even though I’m much less of a bon vivant than before. It means more space and numerous other good things. More on this as it comes. For today that’s enough from me, in my little disconnected world.

Franky Scale today was pretty good, let’s say 7; though I spent half the day at school (thus “work”) and there’s an odd physical feeling about being “out and about” that I haven’t fully adjusted to. I’m realizing again, too, that it might be good to get myself doing this more regularly because the values of the distraction seem valuable.

A P.S. The comments the other day in the post "Writing Your Own Eulogy," and this might be a hairsplitting point, but this title was only metaphor. Though I am working on a memoir, I'm not trying to write my own eulogy. There's a lot tied up with eulogies, and eulogies are for the living, so when it's time for that it will be somebody else's job. Not mine.