Perfection and death

December 16, 2018



So, the other day, I was thinking about my own aspirations and ambitions. Not just the ones I’ve got at the moment, but the ones I’ve had at various times over the course of my life.

Some of them I’ve realized. I successfully married and have been, well, I think, a passable if not perfect husband. I think I’ve been an acceptable father. And so on.

There are, of course, though, things which I have not achieved, and which, frankly, I never will. For example, when I was single I was not as sexually successful as I would have hoped. I was never athletic, nor tall and commanding. I was never a business success, nor have I won fame and fortune.

Naturally, I regret my failure to achieve these things. Indeed, my sense of self-worth has suffered because of it.

And yet, as I was thinking about it the other day, I was struck by how my aspirations were at variance with my identity. At its simplest, I cannot be taller and stronger without fundamentally and forever altering my appearance. And, then, on a deeper level, I couldn’t be a business titan, say, a Steve Jobs or a Mark Zuckerberg, without changing my interests and talents. I would have to be somehow fascinated by profit and loss, and competition in market—things which, at the moment, don’t appeal to me at all.

In fact, I wonder if, to achieve all of that, I’d have to be another person entirely—someone else, in effect. Someone who wasn’t Michael Jay Tucker. Maybe, indeed, someone I didn’t like particularly.

All of which is to say, well, I wonder about ambitions. Oh, they’re good and important to have. I value them in myself and in others.

But I fear, too, that if indulged too much…

They tend toward a kind of annihilation…a murder of self…

Akin to suicide, and oblivion.

My Special Shadows

I suffer from mild depression. Well, actually, it isn’t Depression. Technically, it is “persistent depressive disorder,” (PDD), though when I was first diagnosed with it, it was called “dysthymia.” I don’t know why they changed the name. I’m glad they did, though. PDD is so much easier to spell.

But, whatever you call it, PDD is defined (here quoting Wikipedia) as “a mood disorder consisting of the same cognitive and physical problems as depression, with less severe but longer-lasting symptoms.” I’m thankful for the “less severe” part. I’ve never had a serious, really deep Depressive episode. And, if it is all the same to the universe, I’d just as soon I never did.

Which isn’t to say that dysthymia/PDD is particularly enjoyable. It is “treatment resistant,” and, as the name suggests, it seems to last forever. I’m basically never free of it. Even the most intensely joyful moments of my life are a little shadowed. Usually it involves finding fault with myself—I’m not successful enough, I’m not wise enough, I’m not strong enough—and the incident which should be ecstatic becomes, somehow, a little sour, a little flawed…

I am taking meds for the condition. I have done so for years. Right now, I’m on Bupropion. Truth be told, it isn’t clear to me that it works all that well. I feel no happier when I take the medication. Yet, I keep taking it because when I stop I find myself experiencing deeper troughs and darker lows. I suppose you could say that the drug seems chiefly to restrain the shadows, but not remove them.

Which is odd, because when I first started taking anti-depressants (I believe it was Zoloft in those days) they worked quite well. For about a week, I was genuinely not depressed. It was a strange and curious experience…and it was (alas) quite temporary. I later learned that this is typical for those with have PDD.

There may be, however, a touch of dawn’s early light on the horizon. Some researchers are saying that tiny doses of hallucinogens—psilocybin (magic mushrooms), LSD—seem to have powerful anti-depressive effects. I’ve also run across several articles about using ketamine as a treatment for depression. I even read that some of these new drugs sort of reboot the brain, and that at least some of the people treated with them never have depression or PDD again.

Unfortunately, these are illegal at the moment. The hallucinogens are class one drugs. Ketamine, “Super K,” is a club and rape drug, and therefore carefully controlled. But, even so, I’m guessing that eventually you’ll be able to get those sorts of drugs as part of any normal treatment for depression.

So, maybe, someday, I’ll be able to try them. And, who knows? Maybe I’ll be one of the lucky ones and my PDD will vanish forever.

Maybe.

Or maybe…maybe more likely…it won’t work. The drugs might be fine, yes, but maybe they won’t work on me…because …because…

I’m not sure I can abandon my depression. I am not sure it is in me.

You see, I’ve had the shadows in my life for a very long time. They have been my constant companions. They keep me company. They fill up my day. They give me purpose and even an identity. They are, sometimes, I fear, how I define myself.

If I were somehow rid of them…the shadows, and all the things that dwell within them…all the teeth and claws…

Would I still be me?

Or someone else?

Someone that I, and others, would not recognize…

And might not love?

Political Considerations (and otherwise)

I have been thinking about this blog, and the essays that have appeared here, and which will appear here in future. Last night, I looked back over the postings. I was startled to realize how long I’ve had the blog — since 2005! — and by how often I’ve posted here. In 2005, for instance, I had 42 entries. In 2012 I had no less than 73! That’s more than I usually did each year in the emailed version of Xcargo.

The 2012 collection has the most essay-like stuff in it. That was when we were moving from Massachusetts to New Mexico. My mother had had a stroke. My father was in ill health. So off we went to care for them. The material I wrote the year is somewhere between a very personal diary and a travel log. I am actually looking forward to making it into a book.

But many of the other postings from other are hardly as interesting. Much is highly political. I believe I was working on the assumption that to gain readership, I had to address current events. This I did with a passion.

I think that was a mistake. You see, writing about politics is all very fine, and I will continue to do so, particularly now that I’m writing for a political blog, Liberal Resistance dot net.

However, as I look at the pieces I attempted, I am distressed by how unoriginal they are. What I said was what everyone was saying, at least those of us on the moderate left. The 2005 entries (which I’m just re-reading now) cover a number of topics which, indeed, were vital at the time. I wrote, for example, about the consequences of the Second Gulf War, when George W. Bush and Cheney went into Iraq. I pointed out that we were attacking the wrong country, at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons.

I was pretty much right. But so what? Everyone, except the most strident of Neo-Conservatives and the most venal of oil company executives, knew that the invasion was a mistake and had been mishandled. After five years of war, we also knew that we were going to be in it for a very long time, and with little to show for it afterwards. (We are still there now. And it has been, what? Something like fifteen years as I write this. And there’s no sign of an exit any time soon.)

But, all that was obvious…to everyone.

Thus I had nothing new or unique to add to the discourse. I could only be one more member of the Greek Chorus, proclaiming to the audience the disaster that everyone already knew was coming…

Which had, indeed, already arrived.

I return to Xcargo

And so I consider returning to Blogspot. Or Blogger, of you prefer. Though I was never very fond of that name.

Either way, I’m not sure that I should. I’m told that blogging is dead. And that even if it isn’t, then Blogspot/Blogger is certainly dead. I’m told that no one goes here any more. I’m told that the future lies in Tumblr, or Wordpress, or on the “micro-blogging” sites, like Twitter, to which our current president (alas) so regularly goes to comfort his supporters, and terrify the rest of us.

But, then, I missed the blogging boom back in the early years of this century. I’m always a bit behind, it seems. Or else just a little too far ahead. My timing is notoriously bad. So, why not? I shall return to explosive-cargo, my blog, which was based on my e-zine, just when such things are entirely passé.

Anyway…

I will try to post here at least once a week. At least, when I have the energy to do so, which may not be all the time, I’m sorry to say. At sixty-one, I seem to have somewhat less vigor than I did once.

But I’ll try, because I want to focus again on my own writing — personal essays, chiefly. That’s what the original explosive-cargo (Xcargo) was all about. I find that, now, I want to return to that sort of thing. I want to, once again, write short pieces, dealing with my life and my observations of that life, however myopic my observations may be.

I might as well use this space, at least for a time, to begin.


*

I must confess, though, I am uncertain whether to remain here, on blogspot. And I’m uncertain whether to keep the name “explosive-cargo,” which was the name of the ezine, and of the newspaper column before that (a long story which I’ll tell you someday). I’m uncertain about the name because I’ve always had the vague feeling…a superstition, really…that there was something ill-ill-fated about the name itself, and that if it had been something else I would have been much more widely read, maybe even become a professional columnist. As I say, an irrational concern, but maybe there’s something too it. A professional marketer could tell me.

As for Blogger, it never felt really right to me. It seemed a little cumbersome at the best of times. And it never really motivated me to write. You see, with an e-zine you get feedback from your readers. In a blog, you sometimes do and sometimes don’t. And when I tried to restart Xcargo as a blog, it felt as I were shouting into a vacuum. No one seemed to hear.

I suspect I won’t be heard now, either. I suspect the only hits I’ll get will be from bots, and half of them Russian, in search of a mark.

*

Why do it at all, then? I guess because it is a way of getting myself back into motion. Even if no one reads this, I will at least publish something. And, then, afterwards, perhaps I’ll include this material in a self-published book.

Which may or may not be read, either. But that’s fine. At least I’ll publish it.


*

But should it be here? On Blogger, I mean? I begin it here because, when I started, it was about the only game in town. And it was (still is) owned by Google. Which is pretty impressive.

However, if I had to do over again, I think I would have done it on Tumblr. It has a better look, and rather better technology. I’d be tempted to restart this blog on Tumblr, in fact, but Tumblr just terminated all its adult material. I have nothing that could be considered “adult” on my site, but I worry. Could, someday, my political opinions be considered controversial? And could I be then shut down.

That being the case, I’ll start posting here, and then check around a bit — find out what else is out there. If I find something better, I’ll switch. Then I put lots of links to the new site in my last post, here.

*

So, stayed tuned. There is more to come.

As I used to say twenty years ago…

Onward and upward.