Muscle relaxants are niiiice…**

ADDENDUM**Take prescribed medicines only as prescribed.**

Sigh.

Well.

So, my back has been bothering me and making it difficult to sit for any length of time, and moving around has also been a pain. No major problem. I did begin a new exercise regime, though, and that plus another situation and my muscles are spasming. Spasm.ming… My muscles are in spasm. My back.

Oh, the pain.

But muscle relaxants are nice. I mentioned to the doctor that the low dose pill he gave me didn’t seem to affect me at all. Even though I am very fond of the pale pink color of said pill. I like pale pink I think it’s pretty. And restful. So he upped the dosage a little.

Sigh. So, the back feels better but clearly I cannot drive, and I feel all deletorius amourphous… I feel all bloopy. Yes, of course bloopy is a word. It is an onomantopea… you know what I mean. It’s a word that sounds like the bubbles from pop-up-video if that sound was the feeling in my arms and legs. Bloopy. Grin. But then again maybe they’re just bloopy because I’m chubby. They feel bloopier today.

So, blogging will be giddy, random and drug-addled if indeed there is blogging at all. Somehow I am confident that the world will continue to spin in its sphere whether I drop my vulgar and simplistic deathless pearls here or go lay on my bed with Georgette Heyer’s A Civil Contract which is today the greatest book I’ve ever not written. There are many, many great books I have not written, both fiction and non. Many great columns, poems, speeches and recipes I have never written. Because I am a sad uneducated failure of a girl and I have no discipline and the damdest case of introverted shyness in the whole world ever.

But today, in this mood, A Civil Contract is the greatest of them. Those books and things I have never written. When I am off the muscle relaxants then maybe it will be another book. I once wrote a very nice romantic scene in which a hero managed to get a bummed-out heroine to eat a meal without her noticing. It was very sweet and nurturing part of a novel I’ve never had the balls to try to publish and it languishes now in a desk drawer and it probably says something that I find it romantic to be fed. Is everything about comfort food? No wonder my arms and legs are bloopy. But even then, Joe Torre’s stupid, stupid, stupid stupid what were you thinking, Joe, to bring in Wang on three days rest when he’s never, ever pitched on three days rest before and starting him in this incredibly important game, instead of Mike Mussina? Stupid! WHAT were you thinking? You pushed aside experience and emotional steadfastness for a kid who will probably now be convinced that he sucks in postseason forever? And who never it can’t be said enough, stupid, pitched before on three days rest? If you’d started Mussina we could have won that game; we could have been contenders! Instead of bums with one way tickets to palookaville which is what we are. Stupid! I hate baseball. I hate it like I hate when my kids are fresh because I love them but want to smack them across the mouth Irish-style, with the backhand, so the wedding ring leaves a mark, but I never do because I love them, and that’s how much I hate baseball. It is my favorite game, and I especially love it because it has no damn timeclock, but Bart Giammanti was right when he said it breaks your heart. It does break your heart. But Giammatti’s son is a good actor. I liked him in Cinderella Man which also had the very good Russell Crowe who has nice eyes and one of those voices I like to listen to. But I think Christian Bale would be better to play Thomas Merton if they ever make a movie of his life, which someone should.

Alright. I have a headache. I’m going to go eat lunch and be very depressed about the Yankees and go read Heyer and you should too. Somehow I think all the cares and troubles of the world about which I can do nothing will still be here tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time and… and I celebrate myself, and sing myself, and what I assume you shall assume and what Whitman described is in a weird way pretty much what the world has become, isn’t it? Especially the blogging world? A singing and celebration of self and an urging toward all to think like I think dammit and assume what I assume? But as Felix Unger proved in court: when you assume you make an ass out of u and me. You’m and meme.

This the problem, too many memes. Too many people who cannot distinguish between tuum and meum. Or worse, nobody gives a damn about anyone or anything anymore except themselves and their pathetic little opinions and conclusions and I count myself among the pathetic and small. And you should too. Or, maybe not.

I hate to tell anyone they should do anything. I have always, always hated the language of the shouldists. You know the shouldists. They’re the ones who should all over you. They love to say “every person in America should think this way or feel that way or be concerned about thus and such.” So here I find myself becoming a shouldist, and that is a damnably sad and unforgivable thing but sometimes maybe a should needs saying. I personally think every American should be concerned with her press – the great and remarkable treasure of her free press – which is being subsumed by advocates and partisans who do not seriously question anyone whom they do not hate, and who therefore betray the public trust (and themselves) and leave the whole nation wide open for something which by the prickling of my thumbs something wicked this way comes. And I’m not even talking about Hillary although some of you likely think I am.

No, I’m talking about the pain I feel every day when I sit here and read stories in the press that don’t jibe with what my own eyes and ears tell me, or when I see the press completely fall in line with a narrative (“Bush wants little children to get sick and die”) that is intellectually insulting and untruthful, and never ask a politician, “hey, why are you suggesting that 25 year olds are ‘children,’ and how can you say he’s cutting the program when he’s trying to add 4 million poor kids to it” why doesn’t someone like Russert ever say stuff like that to anyone? Why have journalism and politics and the academy all sunken into a kind of vague slog whereby every piece of reality and history is laid onto a stagnant wadi of settled muck that we all have to haul ourselves through, every day, until we’re all so tired of it and looking for a way out of it or a stupid distraction that we – everyday – allow more and more to be lain on the muck and absorbed and distorted and finally disregarded because one can’t possibly keep track of everything. The sheer volume of added muckery each day overwhelms and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought and enterprises of great pith and moment with this regard their currents turn awry…and lose the name…of action. I love Hamlet. God, I wish I could write like that. I wish I could just write at all. I wish I could drown in such words.

Nevermind. It doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t matter. As Bill Murray advised in Meatballs: “it just doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t matter. Even if we win! Even if we play so far above our heads that our noses bleed for a week to ten days – even if God in heaven above comes down and points his hand at our side of the field – even if every man woman and child held hands together and prayed for us to win it just wouldn’t matter because all the really good looking girls would still go out with the guys from Camp Mohawk because they’ve got all the money! It just doesn’t matter if we win or we lose. It just doesn’t matter!”

Heh. MacBeth and Meatballs, do you see the crap that rolls around in my head at any given moment and how the sublime lies immediately akin to the ridiculous and it all crashes together into a roiling cacophony that leaves me stupid and paralyzed and thus conscience makes cowards of us all? Am I an unholy mess of a girl or what? “An unholy mess of a girl,” one of my favorite lines from The Philadelphia Story. James Stewart, Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant why don’t they make movies like that anymore? With actors that likable? Ah, well…it just doesn’t matter.

Because, as I’ve said, half of what we see is illusion and the other half a passing trend. It’s so hard to figure out which is which, isn’t it? But as Julian said, all shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well. And if it’s not, then still don’t worry because as Teresa of Avila said, “Let nothing disturb you, let nothing frighten you, all things pass away. God never changes…” and as our late great John Paul II said and the angels continue to tell you, every day, “be not afraid.”

Be not afraid. We are in autumn, beautiful, crisp, fragrant autumn, season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. But still, always be aware. Childe Roland to the dark tower came. My Elder Son loves the Dark Tower series by Stephen King. My son Buster declares if he ever has sons he will name them Roland, Edgar and Dante. I’ll have to live through it. I love everyone.