25 till nil...

I'm contemplating how to hunker down for the last quarter of my life, I am of course assuming I have that time left usable. I've basically been inept as far as monetary success and really see little need to expend much more energy in a lost cause. I've thought of hermitville, a place one of curmudgeonly fortitude retreats to when hermititis sets in and the world as it is valued makes no sense... like it ever did. Denial works that magic. We want to believe that which cannot be true of ourselves... we want to fit in, we want acceptance. I die many deaths for the opportunities to contribute. Unfortunately, contribution is in the eye of the beholder and the beholders that be find little value in my attempts.

A return to minimalism has crossed my mind. Remove the leverage and remove the constraints. I attempted it once several years ago, but I could not elevate that part of my consciousness beyond the greed of need. I could not surpass the majority of my surroundings. Their will was greater than mine. Another failure. I have begun a submergence into a poetic philosophical realm, a dangerous one, a place where I have more to lose than gain, where standards cannot apply and the comfort zones of others are severely stretched. They accentuate outcome. I accentuate journey. These differences could be deemed irreconcilable and thus damaging. Freedom versus abandonment and exile. That is a two against one scenario.

I continue with the war, and it is a war whether with yourself or with an external foe.

I love this quote:

"Strange pleasures are known to him who flaunts the immarcescible purple of
poetry before the color-blind. -- Clark Ashton Smith, "Epigrams and Apothegms"

And immarcescible; what a word. Unfading, incorruptible, and quite French. I wish I could be that pretentiously smug and comfortable with it... or maybe that confident and comfortable with it. I too often feel I am amidst the color-blind. I cannot make them see what they are missing. I cannot make them feel what they touch. I've launched a thousand dreams into being only to see them wither away back into the nothingness from where they sprang, buried forever, dust blowing in the wind, rust eating its way into nothingness. I am not manipulative that way. And there are punishments. So my dreams are written, and they are either read or not. They can be erased, burned, tossed, or ignored; but never retracted, never censored before the ink dries, and never reprinted without permission. They can be dispelled, dismissed, and challenged beyond recognition; but never before the ink is dry. And I get to decide when the ink is dry.