Finding Meaning in A Smiley Face

Most people go through life searching for that elusive thing called "meaning." For them it's not enough to just be. They've got to do. I certainly have been in that camp for as long as I can remember, but lately, as I get nearer to the end than the beginning of my time here, I grow less interested in doing a goddamn thing. All I really want is to lose five pounds, not be depressed and keep my heart from attacking me.

I have arrived at this uninspiring state after seeing how little my greatest achievements have meant in the grand scheme of things. This is certainly true for all of us, with very rare exceptions like discovering the cure for polio and the invention of the garbage disposal. But not being scientifically gifted, I have yet to do anything that anyone will remember for more than a few days after I'm gone -- a week if I'm lucky.

So, understanding the folly of striving for fame and/or fortune and especially meaning, I have concluded that what really matters after all is to "have a nice day," which is ironic since I dislike that expression, especially when uttered by the bagger at the supermarket who robotically tosses it in my direction as I'm walking away with my groceries. Yet it is now my number one goal.

Go figure.

Forget Your Troubles....

There are so many books out there on how to live. Not just survive but how to live well, and how to be happy. It's nuts. Like anyone knows! You just get up each day and hope for the best. Or if you're lucky and blessed with good health and have no addictions to hold you back, weigh you down or sap your strength, you do more than hope: You strive, or in some extraordinary cases, accomplish.

But, after wading through many of them I'm convinced that reading those books is just a waste of time. After all, who knows better than you what's required for you to feel happy? So write your own book and then follow the author's instructions.

Get With the Program

As I see it, Maine goes straight from snow everywhere to bugs everywhere. My husband says that optimists see things differently, that we go from fabulous skiing to glorious flowers and lots of daylight. Well I don't ski and flowers bring bees to which I am allergic. Okay, I'll give him the long daylight hours, that's nice, especially since that means fewer hours to lay awake in the dark, scratching my bug bites and thinking about death.

Yes, thinking about death. Everybody does it, no matter the season, and if you don't you're in for a big surprise. Like last night, my husband and I were watching Killing Eve on TV, our latest fave out-of-the-box weekly drama. It was the last episode of Season Two, and Eve (played by Sandra Oh) suddenly and unexpectedly is killed! Shot dead, there she lay -- blood seeping from her lifeless body, alone in the middle of nowhere with no rescue possible since the psycho murderess fled the scene.

As the camera pulled away and the final credits rolled, Mitch and I looked at one another, eyes wide open and mouths agape. How could that happen? WTF? "I did not see that coming," we muttered in unison. But then we both suddenly focused on the title of the show. Funny we never saw it coming.

Out of the Loop and Loving It

I am nothing if not out of the loop. One way I know this is when I leaf through the pages of People magazine and I don't recognize anyone. Staying out of the loop these days is not easy, believe me. What with the Internet, which I am on frequently, it takes a fair amount of diligence not to know everything. Also, peer pressure is a big deterrent to staying clueless. Yesterday a friend of mine invited me to a rally being held in downtown Portland to protest the new anti-abortion law in Alabama and I didn't go. I figured A, I'm not pregnant and B, I've never been to Alabama and have no intention of going, and C, I don't understand protests. Like, what are you supposed to do at one and how does it help?

Anyway, my out-of-the-loopness is one of the most unique things about me and possibly could get me into The Guinness Book of World Records. Here are just a few of my considerable accomplishments:

I have never seen or heard Taylor Swift or Adele perform. I have not heard the soundtrack from Hamilton. I have never seen one episode of Game of Thrones, Mad Men, Orange is the New Black, The Big Bang Theory, The Handmaid's Tale, The Crown or This Is Us. I have never read any book that was on the New York Times best-seller list. (Naturally this includes any of the Harry Potter books.) I have never had a kale smoothie (or any kind of smoothie), a Bloomin' Onion, a Starbucks Macchiato or a Margarita. I have never watched the Superbowl or been on a cruise. I don't do yoga. I no longer watch Saturday Night Live, or any late-night TV shows.

Despite all that, I live and breathe. I make art and read books that I enjoy and watch reruns of old comedies on TV. I have friends and the occasional good time, although not the amount of good time you see in all those TV commercials where people are drinking Margaritas and eating Bloomin' Onions and laughing joyfully as they navigate a climbing wall on a Carnival cruise. Still, I believe I will stay out of the loop for the rest of my life. It's cozy there.

Dumb Computers (Part 2)

Computers think they are so smart, but really they aren't. They're all the way to dumb. For example, my computer thinks I am obese. It sends me ads for plus-size clothing, and I am not plus-size. (I am, if anything, non-plussed size, if there is such a thing.)

This rumor got started a few days ago when I clicked on an ad showing a fat girl in a bathing suit. I was appalled by the image and had hardly had a chance to take it in, but then, as ads do, it went away. So I Googled "fat bathing suits" and found a wealth of them. Again, I was appalled. I mean I fully support fat people going swimming, but I think a degree of modesty might be in order at a public bathing spot. Anyway, enough about that.

Then today I Googled a line of clothing from a label on a shirt I bought a year ago from a second-hand store that I really like. It's one of my favorites, and I thought I would check out some of their other offerings. The thing is, the shirt is marked "S" and I never wear an S in anything, certainly not a clingy knit top. Still, I was surprised to find out that the brand is specifically a plus-size line of clothing. So now my computer got even more grist for the fat mill, if you will, and the fat ads are just pouring in.

I am not even going to tell it the truth. Ha!

Beam Me Up, Scotty

I hate paying taxes these days, and here's why: The people who are running our government are a bunch of egomaniacal ninnies who likely couldn't figure out that in order to make a cheese omelet you need cheese, and of course eggs, and that you need to break the eggs.

Seriously, most of them are losers who never learned a proper trade and so run around kissing strangers' babies in diners to get a job where all they have to do is keep kissing those babies, eat funnel cake at state fairs and show up for the State of the Union address every four years.

And yet they have the audacity to vilify our duly elected president and his family with abandon and no punishment besides "censure," which means having a finger wagged at you while someone above your pay grade says, "Tsk, tsk, tsk." For example, here is a snippet of today's news found online:

"MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama lawmakers abruptly adjourned after one lawmaker called for the censure of another over comments that included calling the president's son "evidently retarded." 

Republican Rep. Arnold Mooney of Shelby County on Wednesday went to the House microphone to read a letter seeking censure of Rep. John Rogers, a Democrat. Mooney said Rogers brought "shame" on Alabama with comments he made after debate on a proposed abortion ban.  Rogers used the slur to describe Donald Trump Jr. and also suggested he should have been aborted."

We should immediately redouble our efforts in outer space. There must be more intelligent life somewhere.

Film Review: BOOK CLUB

Okay, I suppose I deserved it. I mean what did I expect from a movie about some old ladies (who don't look old because they are actually Hollywood stars) who find romance and hot sex late in life -- depth? Starring Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen and Mary Steenburgen, Book Club is a bit of fluff revolving around four friends whose lives are turned upside down after they read "Fifty Shades of Grey" in their book club, and suddenly they all want to be tied up and have multiple orgasms. Not with each other, which might have made it more interesting, but with men. You know -- the old-fashioned way.

Here's what you will see: Diane Keaton, who for her whole life has been exactly my age, inexplicably plays a woman five years younger. She still dresses like Annie Hall and is still very adorable, although quite wrinkled. Jane Fonda, who is a decade older than Keaton, is alarmingly smooth and taut, thanks to her all her plastic surgery. She plays herself. Mary Steenburgen is as dull as dishwater, as usual, making one wonder how she got anywhere in the movies to begin with. Candice Bergen, looking mannish, plays a federal judge. She is unconvincing in the role, looks puffy and is not aging well.

Everyone in this tale is very rich and lives in a beautiful house worthy of a home decorating magazine. They all drink lots and lots and lots of wine, yet none of them go to AA meetings. There is no clever dialog and no action to speak of. For those reasons, I can't believe I watched the whole thing. (In my defense, Andy Garcia plays Diane Keaton's love interest and he looks great and is still sexy.)

Keeping Up with the Times

I just learned yesterday that the term, "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen," as a way to welcome an audience, is now considered to be both insulting and politically incorrect since it is "exclusionary," leaving out those who identify as both or possibly neither, or as pandas, wombats, zombies or kitty-cats, or maybe plants or trees, a planet or a dead Hollywood star like Gloria Swanson, Clark Gable, Charlie Chaplin, River Phoenix and/or Mae West, to name but a few. So keep that in mind the next time you are addressing a large group.

Secrets and Lies

You think you know someone, and then out of the blue you learn something new about them that makes you rethink everything. It's unsettling, to say the very least. This happened to me last weekend when my husband of 32 years confessed that he "doesn't really like" Meryl Streep.

In fact, he divulged further that he actually dislikes her, going into vivid detail about all the reasons why this is so. His amazing revelation came to light after we watched the 2008 film Doubt on Netflix together Saturday night.

It was my second viewing in as many days as I had first watched it when Mitch was out of town, then wanted him to see it so watched it again with him. In it Streep plays a bitchy, mean, borderline evil nun who carries on a seething vendetta against a gay priest, played by Phillip Seymor Hoffman. Their respective roles won both actors an Academy Award nomination.

As the film ended, I marveled aloud at how Streep, considered to be America's greatest living actress (nominated for the Academy Award 21 times, winning it three times) could transform herself into any role and be thoroughly convincing. It was then that Mitch shrugged and said, "I never really liked her."

Having witnessed Mitch enjoying so many of her movies, or at least seeming to, I am still in shock. How did I never know this about him? What else is he hiding?

A Fairy Tale Ending

There once was a man named Bruce Jenner.

He was an Olympic gold-medalist married to a wealthy, beautiful woman. But he was very unhappy anyway, since what he really wanted to be was a hot babe who could wear makeup and high heels and go to fancy parties. So he underwent hormone treatments and surgery and turned himself into a sexpot named Caitlyn Jenner.

Today, at age 69, Jenner has a 22-year-old live-in girlfriend who is also a hot babe and is also "transgender." Essentially two drag queens who go to fancy parties together, they are living their dream, hopefully for ever after.

It's a nutty world we live in. I want to be a cat.

Do It Now

A few months ago, when it was still snowing outside, I purchased a new pair of bedroom slippers to replace the old pair that had a hole in it. I loved them and wore them often around the house. Soon after I got them I had a severe "toe-stubbing" accident which caused a tiny hole in the toe of the right slipper that was just like the one in the old pair, owing to the fact that the big toe on my right foot is, well, a big toe, bigger than one might like, and presses more insistently into the fabric of the slipper.

Anyway, that tiny hole slowly morphed into a bigger hole, but since the slippers were almost new I kept wearing them. But, planning ahead, I ordered another pair for that day in the future when they would become unwearable. The new ones arrived the next day (thank you, Zappos!) and I looked at them lovingly before stowing them in the back of my closet.

Meanwhile, I hated my slippers with the hole in the toe but still kept wearing them because they were in great shape, except for the, well, you know. Then this morning I spoke with a friend who recounted a sad story involving the unexpected, out-of-the-blue death of one of her oldest and dearest friends, just about a week ago. Sad for her loss, I commiserated as best I could.

I had met the newly-deceased woman while visiting my friend a few months ago, and had enjoyed her vibrant company at a group dinner. When we parted, I said I'd surely see her again in the fall when my husband and I would again be visiting. Only now I won't, because she's gone. Just like that. It was quick, a heart attack perhaps. No drama, no 911 call, Dolores just went upstairs to do something and when her husband went looking for her, there she was. Dead.

So today I got out those new slippers from the back of my closet and put them on, and packed away the old slippers with the hole in the toe. I figured, why wait?

Bagels for Bernie

Being a child of the sixties, I remember all the fuss about JFK becoming our first Catholic president. Mitt Romney was a Mormon, a fact that likely sank his candidacy from the start. And when Obama became our first African American president, the entire country went wild in celebration of that broken barrier.

Today, identity politics is bigger than ever before. With declared candidates Harris and Booker running around being black, Ocasio-Cortez basking in her Hispanic heritage, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren touting her minuscule drop of Native American blood, it's clear that being something other than a WASP, like the super-white Joe Biden now ahead in the polls, can help a candidate find a foothold. Yet there is barely a blip on the radar that Sen. Bernie Sanders is a Jew. His Jewishness can either be a big help or a big hindrance, but nobody can argue that it's not a big deal. Still it's oddly hush-hush.

                                                     Illustration by Tim Hamilton

Come on Bernie, we all know you eat bagels with a schmear! How about a shout-out to your fellow Jews? With the alarming rise of anti-Semitic gestures popping up here and around the globe, it couldn't hurt.

REVIEW: Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened

This film is a hoot to watch, especially if you are into schadenfreude. In case you're on the fence about whether or not our species is getting dumber by the day, this documentary about the failed Fyre Festival of 2017 will help you understand once and for all that it is. Directed by Chris Smith and released on Netflix in January of this year, it shows in stunning detail how people are slowly losing, or have already lost, the ability to think clearly, think for themselves, or even think at all. 

Today's younger generations, let's say people under the age of 40, seem to be little more than farm animals who follow the herd, revere the shepherd, do as they are told and willingly drink whatever flavor Kool-Aid is proffered. Through interviews with many of the people who worked on the project, Fyre Festival: The Party That Never Happened depicts the events leading up to the eponymous monumental failure, which involved fraudulently selling tickets to an event that simply never came together. It is both shocking and amusing, and like a car wreck at the side of the road, it's almost impossible to look away.

The disgraced mastermind Billy McFarland, leaving court.

The Fyre Festival was billed as a fabulous concert like none other, located on a private island in the Bahamas. Concert-goers were given a choice of staying in luxury suites, private waterfront villas or fully-furnished, over-the-top, carpeted tents on the sand, all including incredible meals from top chefs and three days of music by a standout list of performers. For all of that they paid handsomely. Only they got none of it.

This being a documentary, everyone we meet is a real person, which is hard to believe. The 27-year-old mastermind, a man named Billy McFarland, is now serving six years in prison. Using live footage shot by someone hoping to document the next Woodstock, we see in vivid detail every misstep made by those blinded by McFarland's boorish bluster -- enough to go and work for him. The bait was a promotional video showing 20 or 30 of the world's top supermodels, these days called "influencers," cavorting on a fabulous yacht in teeny, weeny bikinis, who allegedly would be present and who maybe would become your new best friends if you went to the festival.

Once each of the influencers posted information about the festival on her individual Twitter account, things really took off. The concert was an instant sell-out, even before a final venue had been located. In fact, tickets were sold to more people than could even fit on the island that was finally chosen as the site.

Watching the film, surely with your mouth agape, it's hard to tell who is dumber: The concert's wealthy backers who invested millions with McFarland based on nothing but his outrageous chutzpah, or the vapid young adults gleefully boarding crummy, no-name airplanes -- certainly not the first-class accommodations they had been promised -- in search of three days of sunny, tequila-fueled, drug-stoked island bliss. The only similarity it all had to Woodstock was the pouring rain, which made a very bad situation even worse.

Read It or Not, It's Your Choice

I would definitely want to do that.

This morning one of my old blog posts was brought to my attention. Written in 2012, it was about bullying and told the story of how I was taunted and teased as a young teen for having big breasts at an early age. One of the comments I received on the blog was from someone named "Anonymous" -- always a brave choice -- who wrote, "It really is always about you, isn't it?" This pissed me off to high heaven and prompted me to write this entry.

Yes, it's true -- my blog is often about me! You see, it's a blog, the definition of which is "a short essay that provides commentary on a particular subject or topic, ranging from politics to sports. Others function as more personal online diaries, and others function more as online brand advertising of a particular individual or company."

Reading a blog is optional. If you don't like what you read you can stop at any point. It is free. It takes only a few minutes. What's the big deal if it's about me if the story A, makes a valuable point that can be applied universally or B, is funny and possibly brightens someone's day?

The word anonymous is simply a dressed-up version of the word coward. I wish the word did not exist. What's it for? Hiding like a little kid playing a game of tag? I'm pretty sure this is why I have high blood pressure. Oops, there I go again making it all about me.

Getting Old Is A Drag

Jane Fonda aside, aging sucks. Yeah, I know, I should consider the alternative. Well that's one major reason it sucks: there's no good alternative. It's all pretty bad no matter how you look at it:
1. Your face wrinkles and you look nothing like your original self.
2. Your body parts start to fail and so you never feel truly great.
3. Foods you once enjoyed now make you sick.
4. Sex is old hat, especially if you started doing it early.
5. Young people rule the world and they are usually dummies, or at least you see them as such.
6. New music is awful, but listening to "oldies" makes you cry. 
7. You can't even smoke anymore!
8. Many of your favorite people are dead, and the rest soon will be.

Harsh, but true. So kick up your heels today if you are still young enough to do it!

I'm Javaqueer

This morning I was scheduled for "fasting labs," which are the worst kind if you ask me. I awoke with a sense of dread, knowing I would be denied coffee for almost three hours -- until after I had my blood drawn. If I can just get a few sips of black coffee down my gullet, the day seems brighter. Until then a blanket of bleakness lays heavy upon my soul. After about 55 years of feeling this way, I finally had to see it for what it is: An addiction. My husband and son both suffer from this addiction as well, as did both my parents, making me wonder if it's a genetic thing.

I also wonder if we are entitled to any sort of special treatment because of it, as are so many other special interest groups. I'm thinking maybe a tag for my car that would allow me to park closer to coffee shops. And speaking of coffee shops, why not have a special line for us, like the PreCheck line at airport security, so we wouldn't have to wait for those non-addicts who get silly, recreational drinks like Cinnamon Cloud Machiattos or Blonde Vanilla Bean Coconut Lattes? Obviously our need is greater.

In fact, what are those people doing in a coffee shop? They should just go to an ice cream parlor and let us get our quick fix. After all, who are we hurting? Nobody, that's who. Eventually we could have separate bathrooms, for no damn good reason that I can see. You know, like the ones they have for the transgender/genderqueer people. As for my chosen pronoun, please call me "java."

Choosing Wisely

If I could do it all over again I'd be a hermit in the woods. Of course, I would hopefully no longer be afraid of bugs, snakes and other wildlife, and not have such bad reactions to mosquito bites and bee stings. But since this is a fantasy, I'll assume the answer is yes to all that. I say this because when I look back over my life I see how much of my money, time and emotions have been squandered, trashed, squashed and shredded by falsely believing that humans were the appropriate receptacles for those things.

I remember dozens of Christmases spent running around like a crazy person (i.e., typical Christian), buying gifts, wrapping them carefully, waiting in long lines at the post office to send them off, only to have them barely acknowledged. And now those past recipients of my heartfelt longing for a loving family are no longer part of my life, even though they still live and breathe. (The dead ones are forgiven, naturally.)

Hermits have it together, They can spend their time in nature and live blissfully with no knowledge  of the horrors devised by people born knowing they will and could die anytime but not when, and thus try to blot out that knowledge through bizarre activities that ignore the swirling clouds and the tiny new buds pushing up through the dirt and the bright red of a cardinal in a tree just starting to turn pink. Instead they put on 3-D glasses and sit in dark theaters with hundreds of other scared people watching make-believe stories on big screens, then go get pizza.

If I were a hermit in the woods I would definitely miss certain things. They are:
A toaster
The final episodes of VEEP and Killing Eve
My electric toothbrush
Electricity

Come to think of it, I don't want to be a hermit after all. Maybe I'll just stop pouring my emotions into the wrong people who give nothing in return.

Sitcom Therapy

Lately to relax, and possibly prevent another heart attack, I have taken to watching reruns of Friends, a late 90s sitcom that I completely ignored in its heyday. All the episodes revolve around six young and beautiful New Yorkers who live together and get into various funny situations. I don't know any of them and their lives are purely fiction, but it's a lot better for my health than watching the news, which is full of terrifying real stuff and equally terrifying real people. Besides, the show's theme song promises, "I'll be there for you," which is a lot more comforting than anything I've ever heard from anyone on CNN or FOX.

In fact, the world news is less relevant to my life than that silly sitcom, and will remain so until or unless they start killing Jews in the streets of America, or more to the point, Freeport, Maine. I don't see that happening in my lifetime, and if Bernie Sanders wins in 2020 it's even more unlikely. Also, I count on my husband and son, both news junkies, to let me know in plenty of time if I have to start packing my things and flee.

This Time Around

One thing I like to do from time to time is read my old blog posts and see how little I've grown. It's astonishing, really, when I consider how hard I try to change myself into a better person. But nothing happens. I still can't stand all the same things I could never stand. I still want to lose five pounds, and I still want a dog but won't get one because they eventually die or get sick out of the blue or get sick for a long time and then die. I've been through it before and I can't handle it again. And so, based on personal experience, I believe you are what you are this time around, and all the sit-ups, yoga, kale smoothies, meditation and prayer won't turn you into someone else. I say "this time around" because I believe that after death we keep coming back, just like those azaleas in the garden, and each time we have a new thing to master.

Just about the only way to change yourself is through surgery. While facelifts, nose jobs, fake boobs and tummy tucks have been around for years, now you can even get different genitals if the ones you were born with seem wrong. But still there is no procedure for getting a new personality. I would jump at that one, since mine is apparently an acquired taste. Sometimes even I don't like it.

How to Get Happy!

I read the paper first thing this morning and as usual it was filled with news I couldn't use. I mean really, what am I to do about the death and destruction going on all over the globe? It only depresses me, as it does most people, which explains why one in six Americans takes an antidepressant medication. As for those who don't maybe they should have, since suicide remains among the leading causes of death in the US. 

Feeling myself beginning to spiral downward, I took action. I recycled the newspaper to help save our dying planet, then went off in search of cheerier activities. This being spring I quickly found a few involving the glorious outdoors. Raking leaves, planting flowers, filling bird feeders and watering the garden are much better ways to spend time than learning which politician called for Trump's impeachment or what country's dictatorial leader ordered the death of hundreds of dissidents.  

Try it.