A Carnival Setting

Saturday, 21 Feb 2009 – The Start of Carnival. My thoughts…what are thoughts? Oh boy, today is not a good day for me. Whatever thoughts are, perhaps the neurochemical firings of the synaptic endings inside an organ encased in a hard shell, they amount to junk.

So much flashing through these thoughts. Brief images. The increase of Latino gang activity in North America. The stock market plunge. Greed, greed and more greed. The detainment of Chinese dissidents during Hillary Clinton’s visit to discuss the triumph of economics over personal freedom. Brouhaha over a cartoon. The gangland murders inside Dublin pubs. The waste of energy to fight a “war” in Afghanistan that won’t ever be won (a few thousand years of history has proven that, in case you missed it). The continued reversal of investment in stock markets. Led Zeppelin songs on a record player. A “bill of rights” on facebook.

Today, I wish for a blank slate to begin new thoughts not influenced by mass media or pop records.

My wish is granted. Turned off the TV. No more surfing the ‘Net on general websites like google or yahoo that used to be an excuse to look for bargain stocks. Like my thoughts, the stock market is simply junk right now – I can wait a few weeks to buy or sell and probably won’t miss the bottom.

Instead, I’ll just sit and watch the bare trees swaying in the wind this afternoon. There’s always tomorrow. The luxury of not being human is not worrying about how to make money everyday or what to do about other mouths to feed. Today, the world can completely take care of itself without me. I just want to take care of myself, selfishly, deliciously so.

I’m going to enjoy Carnival by doing something I absolutely, positively enjoy more than anything I can think of – nothing!

No more journal/blog/facebook/twitter/plaxo/linkedin/comment entries for a while. Whenever I feel like getting back in front of this laptop computer, I’m going to work on a novel in progress. I put aside the novel to entertain others online, in the process ignoring me for too long. For now and a while longer, I’m disconnected from the online world, and will be kind to the one person who appreciates what I do, think, and see more than anyone else – me. I’ve spent too much time creating a surrogate “me” that I forgot the real “me” is here and needs his own special attention, especially from me. Call me a nerd, if you will, but I like me…a lot. And in my nonhuman world, “me” is all I’ve got!