Of Late

Of late I had my Dahon folding bike serviced. It is a sweet little thing, perfect for bicycling about this geriatric park I live in. I bike with my yellow Giro helmet. For more than two years the bike languished in my garage but now that I have lost 19 pounds in Weight Watchers it is time to include exercise as the next component. My pressure has been reduced to that of a young man’s. It is more a regimen than a diet which I can adapt to readily.

Clearly I purchase things and then it takes a really long time for me to use them. An interesting behavior I have repeated over and over, the good old repetition compulsion at work. Recently an interest in model trains has been reawakened in me. I went to EBay and bought locomotives, passenger cars, Kato Unitrack and some freight cars. I like the smallness of n scale. I am now surfing for a table to put a layout on. What is interesting is how I go about things. I buy. I wait, far too long at times. And it all comes down to fear. It is the risk of exercising oneself in order to attain pleasure. The Dahon is like that. As I have told Jane, I am much like the horse in the pasture who will shy away if you come near; however, if you leave a slice of apple or some sugar, and if it is to my liking, I will come for it. I cannot be rushed nor expedited, everything in my own time.

An idiosyncrasy of mine, I suppose. Let us deal with model trains. Returning to this hobby I see that I do not want to become obsessed with it. One can get lost in just “perfecting” a layout on a 4’X8′ table or door. There are all kinds of tracks, some realistic, some not; there are layouts which you can use and software on that; there is a whole array of kit structures, some made of resin, plastic or laser cut wood; and then there are the trains themselves — I am inclined to European makes, the workmanship, to wit. And then you pick an era, steam engine versus diesel, and all the other choices. At times I read and collect articles and all the detritus to get started. But I don’t get started. I delay. I amass data. I read, not too bad to do that. I learn, I dream, I configure. However, I may just fall back upon the simple idea to buy a starter set, throw it down on a table and watch the sweet harmonic lunacy of a model train circling in figure eights or ovals.

I did much the same thing years ago with stamps, revivifying an interest I had as a teenager. I read, I ordered panes and first day covers, a stamp book and began to collect only stamps that appealed to my sense of the beautiful — butterfles, for one. A whole pane of butterflies is like an art object. And then i wrote an article about stamps which was published. I may very well put it up on this blog as I may also put my observations about trains into a piece. I am not that good with my hands so that is why I don’t want to be consumed by this hobby; it is my eye that is my skill, my observational powers.

I wrote about a demented train set in The i Tetralogy which replicated Auschwitz. Gunther got off on that set as it reproduced his “halycon” days as a Nazi officer in the camp. I researched the Marklin catalog to select the correct “era” and the kind of cattle cars used to write about the set with care and expertise. And now I have to choose what trains and area I want to develop. I like the idea of long stretches for a train to chug along and that makes me lean toward the Southwest. I am beginning to consider to buy kits that model sheds, hardware stores and the like for this kind of route. And so again I pore over things, read more, dream and think more and try to not rush into it all. It may all be a temporary fling. I seek out other interests to keep myself “vital.” Cameras used to and still do that for me until they turned the way of digital which is an arcane mystery for me that I do not wish to explore.

As an example of the above, I recently bought Jane a nanopod, cute little device that holds about 240 songs. Jane is computer wise, but not savvy and she had a hell of a time going to the computer and downloading the songs. So here again Apple beautifully seduces and you have to be a Rhodes scholar to decipher it all. I find it ridiculous to buy a device and then spend hours trying to go to a computer and download it all. I can look at my photographs quicker than you can go to the screen and access yours. I  like the tactility of it all. Young kids on the block can understand the nanopod in a flash; I agree but unwillingly they are in the unconscious worldwide plot to do away with critical thinking.

I am too old or too long in the tooth to buy into the new as better. Human beings are the same old cro-magnon creature but this time arrayed with intel chips up its ass. The brain case has not increased; the devices have multiplied. We are still the infant with the rattle, but now infinitely more dangerous. Our bag of tricks keeps enlarging, but we do not. Wouldn’t it be loverly for every thousand years we could say that mankind has improved cerebrally, psychological and emotionally? We have not improved upon ourselves, not yet, that is; if you speak of civilization, also speak of civilization and its discontents and read a little Freud. Civilization is a pie crust containing a nether batter of Medusan snakes. Keep your eye on the snakes and not on Apple. What an interesting unconscious association — snakes and apples; make of it what you will, reader.

I watch myself interiorly, try to understand rationally, psychologically as I wade into my disappearance. I do not mourn my past. It was a given. Whether or not I spent it wisely is for me to determine and not my biographer. I try to do something meaningfully each day and this blog is in that category for it is an expression of a self typing onto a screen for you to read as you graze across the world wide web. I look at my self “filled” with all the personal things that describe who I am — a quick perusal, reader:

I scan blogrolls to determine if this or that site might be good to forward a query about Down to a Sunless Sea”; I nap; I read the Times, New Yorker that I am; I run to the computer to see if queries are answered; I Google my name or the titles of my books to see if there have been reviews; I nosh here and there; I order my papers, making folders and folders and folders to contain and organize all the flurry I put into print; oh, I worry, not excessively so; and I work, very, very hard on considering, reflecting, thinking about what to do with my daily life and the days ahead; I think of my son, Jordan, who recently jumped out of a plane at 14,000 feet (age 31), thinking he is a fucking Israeli — perhaps he is; I write some new pieces or struggle with them; I edit Gruffworld which is not going well; I make love to Jane; I shower with a fragrant soap which is my favorite; I shave every other day which is delightful, using a good cream from France; I go on Sundays to Einstein’s to have a bagel (6 points worth on the diet) with onions and tomatoes smeared with cream cheese; I pursue me. I feel as if I am the only Freese extant in this quadrant of the world, the asshole known as Green Valley, Arizona. I experience myself as a mammoth coming to an epic end. I do not obsess. I experience anxiety, dread and fear and am hapless and helpless in the face of these human feelings which are a given of my very humanity. I seek no fame, I seek without ambition; I have few friends, I take no prisoners, I am honest, I dwell within my own integrity. Not only do I march to the sound of my own drummer — godammit, I made the drum itself.

And of late my very integrity has been attacked. Although Martin Luther was a son-of-a-bitch and rabid anti-semite, he did say one thing which I admire when he was under assault for his beliefs: “Here I stand!” Bravo. And so I declare to the wolves at my door, Here I stand! I leave on that cryptic note, dear reader.