A Day, A Moment, A Meaning?

  I thought about T yesterday. It was a moment of her in her little car picking me up at the Long Island train station. It was so nice of her to do that and I loved to see her there and get in the car and kiss her hello. T is such a fine and sweet woman. I miss seeing her and getting her texts every day. Yesterday I got an email from the manager of the art school where I work. They are shutting down for all of January. This time they are not going to pay for all the bookings we have pending. They are going to move to Zoom again which I can do so there will be SOME income. It’s a bit worrisome. I don’t want to sit in this apartment and go though all the money I have saved up. Should I leave the country, like, NOW? It all adds to the stress of the moment, the feeling or endings with only hints of hope of something interesting coming up. Meanwhile it is January and probably just as well to spend the time indoors dealing with what I need to. The school gave me four evening Zoom classes...

  Listening to a rerun on the radio from last winter. I had heard the program back then and can remember all the places I was in when I first heard it. It was in Long Island when I took T to Huntington Long Island for medical things. I would walk around the town. I was in a cemetery on the hill and the city park below when I last heard the radio show. I have to understand the level of stress I’m probably experiencing right now. A couple months ago, turning 70 and setting other changes into motion at the same time with ending the relationship with T, moving from Long Island, and the pandemic that everyone else is also dealing with. I feel very unsettled and might never be settled again until I die. I kind of like that. At least I’m not sheltered in false security that could evaporate at any second like all the securities in money, jobs, relationships. I’m on my own now and must find a way within myself to have peaceful moments.   I started reading Strangers When We Meet...

  I’m still upset about T shunning me. I want to write to her again even though I said that I would not.  I wrote her another email this morning but didn’t send it. “I'm so sorry that I hurt you so badly that you will not interact with me. I keep wondering what ultimately did that. Did it have something to do with me saying that I noticed my pot use is connected to my social anxieties.   I assure you that I was not blaming you for my use. After all I used it before you were born.  THe facts are ant the way I really feel about it is that are the easiest peopsrn ever for me to live with and I always felt totally loved and sheltered with you.” One of the other models who I told what is going on says, “She’s a strange bird.” Of course I defended her with, “Yes but she is a really kind person.” And it’s true, she is. That’s why I love or loved her, or tried to anyway. One thing she just doesn’t understand the weight of the age gap between us. That was a beautiful thi...

  I keep wanting to communicate with T. I saw her at work this morning and walked over to say “hi”.  She got up and moved away from me.  They are not using me at work today so I wrote this email to her: “I don’t understand why I need to be blocked and shunned.  I don’t see myself as aggressively abusive, but you are entitled to block who you need to. I will never look at you or approach you again. Sorry about this morning when you were just trying to show up for work.  (It makes the work situation harder with this added emotional pain.)  I had hoped that by moving out and being sober we could eventually have a better relationship than before. But that didn’t work out that way and I know I didn’t handle it correctly. Now I’m just heartbroken because you were the center of my life for many years.  Sometimes I wish Jill’s mom’s place never happened and I would have just stayed with you. But since it has come out how unhappy you were with me.  Anyway ...

  Riding to work on the subway from Harlem where I am cat sitting for another week. Same as last week. Standby for morning class where I usually have to hang around for 3.5 hours if they don’t use me.  Last week I got high in the morning which put me in nap mode in the cafe. This week I’m not going to use in the morning. It makes my days too hard to do that plus I have chest muscle pain when it makes me cough from previous violent coughing.  Still thinking about T a lot. I had a sort of dream where I was permitted to hug her. It was nice. It all it starting to feel like long ago I had this person I could be close to who loved me. It feels kind of impossible now. I don’t feel like the kind of man who needs to be blocked on Facebook. I was really quite loving toward T, it was easy. That’s the way I feel about her. I should have handled the past few months differently than I did. I let things unravel much further than I ever intended. I just wanted to live in NYC again, and ...

Saturday I have a day off today. Happy for that. Maybe internal dualism is not a good thing. “I’m in a good mood.” “I’m in a bad mood.” And who says we ought to me happy? Being an alive human is not a happy situation. That was what The Denial of Death by Earnest Becker was all about. Much of it has to do with the maneuvers humans go through with their minds and bodies to avoid dealing with the hard fact that we are here only temporarily and that what it actually is is a meat machine eating itself to survive. Becker keeps returning to the notion that a belief in something overriding, the position formerly held by God, can provide some, well, I guess, comfort, respite from the horrible reality of it all.. A groundless faith that it ultimately is being held together and has some meaning way beyond the comprehension of the little part of it all that human life is.  And one can’t will this. It has to come from “grace”.    Dec 12 I work today actually all Sundays until March in...

  Still feeling like I’m missing T. I was thinking about sending her a normal morning text, “Good Morning!” like we always used to do. I just don’t want her to think that I didn’t like her and love her, because I actually did. I can’t really meet with her right now anyway. I’ve been using pot and am not entirely present. This is also a big factor in my unhappiness. I don’t like what pot does to my emotions. It’s brings them way down and makes me feel incapable and lost. I wish T had avoided getting involved with this pot addict. I’m a hard person to deal with, because of that and because of the underlying things that cause me to go toward being high all the time. I think I have told T a number of times that I just think she is wonderful, which I do, and that it’s my own psychological problems that keep us apart. She is probably tired of hearing that. She is maybe tired of everything ME and anything negative I want to say about it. I would be. I put her in an impossible position. It...

  I just have to avoid becoming scared. Scared of being old and alone and cold. "That was the great thing about John and what I got from him, from all those years. He saw that we are not just in the material world; he saw beyond death, that this life is just a little play that is going on. And he understood that." George And I can easily get scared. There is every reason to be scared. After all I’m going to die and it might be very unpleasant getting there. I know I am not good at taking care of things. Of having insurance and assurance about the future. It continues to bother me that I never hear from T. It’s not like I’m that much of a bad person who one really needs to avoid. It does tell me something about her. Not sure what.  I’m hanging around on standby this week in the mornings. They haven’t been using me so I nap in the cafe a bit. It’s quiet in here since it never opened to sell things again. I miss her frequent text messages through the day, “Good morning” with pho...

  Things are actually pretty good for me right now. I have almost $16,000 in my checking account. I should feel happy and secure. But I’m really just set for some disaster. I really miss T. One makes a person the center of life and it seems like everything is over when they are gone. And she still has not responded to messages after saying that I will not hear another word from her. I really miss her love.  Loss of love feels like a sort of death.  It is good that I need to find my way alone now. Maybe I can find out what I’m really about. I spent a long time only looking at my reflection in them. It will be interesting to me to see if there is anything in me other than that narcissistic need to impress others. They can help me establish what is good in me worth keeping alive. Pleasing T and living in her love is no longer what it is all about.

  Thinking of the teacher yesterday wanting to do two portrait class with T and I posing together. This is Varriano. He approached me after class and said the you and I are booked into his portrait class together and he wants to move the furniture around and arrange so we could pose together.  I told him we probably couldn’t do that now. I don’t think I understand how much people love couples and are happy to see people together. I was wrong to be worried about the way it would make T look to be with a man so much older. It would make her look like a Daddy chaser. I gave T a hard time over that. It is really about my own self esteem. People want to celebrate love. See it and paint it. But I’m somehow ashamed of it.  I don’t want to pull a loved one down to the level where I have myself. I don’t believe in myself. In the past: I couldn’t believe in Jolly Ramey or any of the relationships I have been in. I can’t believe in me, so I can’t believe in US. Jolly Ramey could hav...