Eros on recumbent bicycle

So this is much-delayed, not because there is so very much to note by way of erotic interludes or concupiscent conquests or flirtatious forays. It's just that I've been taking things and people (read: women) as they come to me rather than forcing the issue. And to my surprise, they have come, albeit not necessarily in the form that I'd choose ultimately. But then, as part of the New Model, I tell myself simply to relax in the face of the future and await that which will come. Clearly, this cannot continue forever (stasis is in any case never a real option in human lives), but as an orientation against obsession with the past and the empty future, it marks a real advance.

All of which is not to say that the past does not intrude or that the future does not loom darkly at times.

Someone at work asked me a few weeks ago if I still thought about my ex. I had to fight the urge to say, "now that's a fucking stupid question." I mean, sure, days will go by when I don't at all, but then there will be stretches of days when I'm thinking of her a lot - sometimes with sadness, sometimes with humor (we laughed a lot, so there are a lot of things, places, etc., that I associate with something funny that we said or did together), sometimes with residual resentment. Not really anger exactly, but a resentment that comes up for me about the ugliness that got chosen over something more human and kind. Still, I care about her. Why? Mostly because I'm a moron, I guess. It's nearly six months since we've had any sort of contact at all and at this point I think I'm wondering whether we ever will again.

And of course there's my father. This weekend was harder than I'd have thought. The conjunction of the Blue Angels zooming around (he was a Navy pilot and I watched a lot of Blue Angels shows with him) and the baseball playoffs just drove home the presence of his absence, a constant reminder on the periphery of whatever else I was doing that I could not pick up the phone and call him to talk about the game, politics, my job, or anything else. I was able to keep the really bad memories of his last hours out of my mind - it's impressive what we're able to suppress when we have to, I suppose. I've found myself sometimes in dalliance with the superstition of the atheistic - "if you are around somewhere, Dad (though I actually don't believe in any such realm), I love you." This is obviously more for me than for him, because he's not here anymore, but there is that ineluctable trace of the child hedging his bet, just in case, hoping a barren hope.

If I were made of sterner rationalist stuff, I'd feel really stupid about this. Instead, I choose to hew to the Roman poet Terence's wonderful declaration: Homo sum; nil humani mihi alienum. I am a human being; nothing which is human is alien to me. Including, I suppose, my own fleeting superstitious shimmer of thought about my Dad hovering somewhere else, or that stubborn aching feeling of connection to my ex that still persists, despite it all.

And the future isn't always rosy either. I had a bad day, the first bad one, actually, in a few months. It was the old tape playing: future as failure, as loneliness, as lack. I was able to recognize it for what it was and beat it back, but I was surprised by the strength the fucker had. I guess I thought two months locked in a closet might've vitiated his attack, but he was in fine fettle. And I was reminded of that insight I had sometime during the outpatient program: there will be no "after depression" for me. I have to get used to this bastard coming out of his closet, no matter how long I've had him locked up in there. I just need to remember that I can, with effort, get him back in the closet at some point.

There's been some good stuff, some kinky stuff, some weird stuff, but I'll save that for the next post, in which Eros gets on the Stairmaster and works off a few calories.