PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE AND MAKING AMENDS

June 8, 2011, 3:06AM

Well, I guess the last post went over like a lead balloon or zeppelin, and looking at it now, I guess it was pretty awful.

What I need to do is keep the reader in mind, and I am losing sight of that, as one very kind reader has correctly implied.

In other words I am sounding too esoteric and cryptic.

I have noticed that a lot of readers will hang on for 8 minutes at the most, which is a lot to ask for really, and it is, after all,  actually quite a feat to get someone to take time out of their busy life to read something one has written. 

So I think I need to keep things short and sweet, and I think I will re-post the Allstate interview story that way.

I have to remember the medium. It is a blog, and not a novel. Maybe more like a reader's digest, and I recall from when I was young, the Reader's Digest regularly featured at least one story, among the others, that was a bit sensational: a tale of survival perhaps after skiiing into an icy crevasse and unable to move until a rescue party finally arrives a week later. Or perhaps a tale about some sort of parasite picked up on a children's playground, which caused abscesses to from in the brain, and consequent madness.

But anyway, I am awake in the wee hours again. But only from an allergy attack, and not from having raised blood pressure and/or sugar levels from a few beers last night (I didn't drink anything in other words)  and I have slept very deeply, and well thus far, which is always the way it is when I take care of myself and do not drink.

During Lent I did not have any beer, and slept like a baby, and felt and looked much better. I'm still not a bad looking fellow, even at my age. With my hair a bit longer, I seem younger, and I now get that old feeling like I am being observed, and sometimes look up and catch the stares of women of different ages-particularly the middel aged ones--when I am out and about, and am reminded of something I read in a book by a psychologist: ""Women seek comfort and security from their husbands, and excitement from their lovers."

But I ain't about to have an affair with no married woman. That is pure trouble. 

Anyway, as far as the drinking goes, it is just a matter of breaking the old habit and getting the momentum for the new habit. No different than quitting smoking, which I have done successfully. 

I suppose I have put on quite a show by now, since Easter Sunday, when I had cracked open a tall boy for the first time in some six weeks. Which reminds me of the character Michael Henchard from Thomas Hardy's novel" The Mayor of Casterbridge, and how Henchard had resumed drinking after a 20 year lay off. 

But Henchard had flaws in his character, and his decline had started before taking up the bottle again. I hope I may be able to identify mine, hopefully with the help of key people from my life, and prevent a similar slide.

So I think I'll be OK.

Nutty as my blog can sometimes get, I feel that I should leave the lapses into irrationality and emotional drivel, up.

I somehow feel that all of it might be helpful for someone who is contemplating taking on Student Loan debt.

Recently I tried to make amends with my past life by contacting several people, and have met with a cool reception at best.

Why I attempted to make amends I am not really sure of altogether. Perhaps it is because I read in a Tony Robbins book that it is beneficial to do so for the sake of one's soul. (I had also heard that in the AA years ago) Perhaps it is because I am having a mid-life crisis, or perhaps it is for other reasons.

I am always willing to take the losing side in a lot of situations, if it means that I will emerge with a clear conscience.

I have also noticed that many people have a desire to "Win" in most everything they do, and I have arrived at the conclusion or observation, if you will, that winning, per se, is not always a good thing. Maybe Marriage taught me that.

Maybe our culture or society instills this idea of winning at all costs in us from an early age, and all one needs to do is take a walk around the local grammar or middle school ballfield, while a game is in progress, to come to that realization. At least that was my epiphany one day when I saw a bunch of small kids in expensive uniforms playing pee-wee football to the accompaniment of hollering adult coaches in a manner very much akin to military basic training.

And I felt dismayed, and thought of how we sometimes, somehow extrapolate all of the competitive conditioning we were reared with, and apply that competitive spirit or, call it hardness, to our interpersonal relationships.

In other words, what I am saying is that there are times when the best thing is not to win, especially on the domestic level, and maybe that is key to understanding why half the marriages end up in divorce nowadays. There is no compromise.

With respect to the larger family, maybe that is why some parents fail, and end up with children never speaking to them again, and not even attending the funeral services. Or a brother never speaking to a brother again. Or a sister likewise estranged to a sister. Or old friends etc etc.

If my hopeless Student Loan Debt has accomplished anything that may be said to be "Good", I guess it has made me feel compelled to try and look at the true foundations of happiness in life, both married and career wise, and also to notice how much family relationships play into that happiness and can affect the peace within one's soul.

I will never have all of those anxious years of mounting student debt back. All those years of guilt, and shame, and remorse for having gone to law school. Years of stress and worry, and feelings of deep failure.

And after all of that stress, worry, and feelings of failure I have arrived here, typing (mostly first) drafts into a blog at 3:54AM.

I feel a very strong need to set things right in my soul, and to make amends with the past, as well as the present. Then I feel I will be better able to face the future.

Does that make sense?

I have a whopping 300K tag on my head, and it nags at me all day long and every day. The fact that the debt is growing and will grow as I grow still older over the next 20 years or so to 500K and beyond fills me with anxiety and very palpable fear, and it manifests itself, as you can see, in my blog posts that wander in and out of lucidity.

I just feel that, if I can make amends, somehow, someway, and tidy up or "clean out the old closet" or whatever, I might be OK for whatever comes.

The debt gives me a very strong sense of my mortality, and again I need to make things right with God, and my soul.

Then I can go forward.

Call it the mid-life crises of one that is deeply in debt.

I know I said I would let the current post run all week, but screw it, I changed my mind.

This is a blog after all, and not a newspaper or a magazine, or a book, or TV, all of which will condemn one forever for sure.

Last night, as I was listening to the Robert Penn Warren Audio book I keep mentioning, there was a very heart rending section involving a young woman slave that was sold by her owner into the hands of men that were going to rape her, and of how a friend of the former owner unsuccessfully tried to buy her back in order to prevent the tragedy from taking place.

It was very unsettling and upsetting, and sad, and a sad reflection upon Human Nature, and maybe I went to bed and digested the whole thing and came up with this post. I don't know.

There is a rather sad Irish ballad I have heard in the past that has, as its theme, the story of a young man that, among other things, got involved in the African slave trade of the 19th Century. I had that ballad in my head as well when I woke up with the allergies this morning, and I am going to try and locate it-perhaps by writing to the DJ of the College station that plays the Irish Traditional and Celtic music in the Bronx, Fordham University.




And this clip, maybe not so much about Student Debt as about the passage I read or rather heard about slavery last night. It is a poor copy I know, and will search for a better tonight. I have always found it to be a very haunting number, though, strangely and melodically beautiful. And, after all, the word slavery is often used on these blogs.

Anyway, I'm late, and I gotta go paint.