Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Lightning in the Clouds, Antique Golf Clubs, and the Whitey Bulger Trial

I've been reading a lot of Wodehouse these days, and enjoy most of the works. They are amusing.

I am in Tulsa watching lightning in the clouds.

The other day, I caught a glimpse of my neighbor in Norman, the quadriplegic who was paralyzed after an accident at some sort of moto-cross race. I was worried he had died. I wonder if he got sort of close to death. He looked very wasted.

This weekend is a retreat weekend in the woods of northeast Oklahoma. I think it’s a stone’s throw from where three little Girl Scouts were murdered in June, 1977. The murders were in the headlines, which made me think of summer camp at Camp Cimarron for Campfire Girls, Camp Kickapoo in Kerrville, Texas, and Camp NunnyChaHa in the Arbuckle Mountains -- all summer camps I had enjoyed when I was young. It was very sad. Later, I worked in Tulsa at the Amoco Research Center one summer when I was an undergraduate majoring in engineering.

Post Oak Lodge always makes me think of the murdered Girl Scouts.

I am pigging out tonight. I’m sort of in the mood for it. Full moon. Foul moon. Storm  and all. Have been enjoying P. G. Wodehouse novels. They make me laugh out loud.

I’m reading The Clicking of Cuthbert now. I like the way that golf reveals one's inner landscape and brings to the surface the true self. Tennis is the same. I discovered all kinds of things about myself -- things I would prefer not to know. One, I hate confrontations, and don't really like playing in matches. I freeze, and feel weird about the opponent's emotional flow (usually negative) and the overt competitiveness. Consequently, I play at a much lower level in matches than in practice. I was somewhat better with doubles, where potential reprisals and anger of teammates forced me to really scramble. Nevertheless, I become tentative when playing matches. I suspect I'd be a poor boxer as well.

I have a hankering to take up golf and play with antique clubs. I love the names of the clubs – my favorites are the “Mashie Niblicks.”

On a different tack…

I think that libertinism is a shortcut to a passionless Puritanism. Abstinence driven by desensitization.

What can one think of the Whitey Bulger trial??? He murdered a Tulsan, Roger Wheeler. What is interesting about this is that Wheeler was a neighbor of the woman I rented a room from in 1978. So, I lived almost next door to Wheeler, and it was possible that I may have unwittingly rubbed shoulders with underworld types.

What intrigues me about the Whitey Bulger trial is Bulger’s perverse adherence to some sort of code, as though it matters and anyone really cares. The Mexicans and the  Russians ruined the old Opera Buffa routine for everyone.

On another topic…

I hate the idea of useless, heartless libertinism, and I would rather run away from it. The utter senselessness of all of it just makes me sad.

I want meaning in life. However, nothing in life can withstand too much emotional pressure. Life itself starts to crumble away, when it's pressured to much. In that case, one's idea of life reveals itself to have been all about sensation-seeking.

No one should have to wake up with their pillow wet with tears.