To be on your own, with no direction home
Bob Dylan – Like A Rolling Stone
Every time I turn off my lights at bedtime, I get this recurring lyric in my head of Bob Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone. I have already written two blogs on that theme.
My sense of order, and obligations have all but disappeared. I must get up to feed my cats, make my breakfast. After that I have to do nothing until I go to sleep at night. Sharing activities with Rosemary like going to Safeway or to plan a trip to Mexico are all gone. Philosophically no matter how many people tell me such neat expressions like “life must go on”. “find distractions”,"you have your memories", are all moot if you understand metaphysics. With Rosemary I used to tell her that we were WTD (waiting to die). Since her death as I prepare to modify my will, get an extra key for my bank vault so both daughters will have one, I have now modified that to PTD or preparing to die. There is no public relations expression that can possibly replace that or to smooth the idea from the reality that it is.
As I wait, I am plagued by problems of this century. My Epson repairman has kept my Epson printer now for two months telling me that he must first fix the printers for people who earn their livings with them. He is the only game in town. If anything that suggests that my photographic peers do not print and it explains why they show me their sunsets on their phones. I have to be patient as my only alternative is to send the printer to Toronto.
This present document has lost all its Microsoft Word 10 defaults and I have to manually pick the font size every time I open a document. I am beside myself in not knowing how to return to my customary defaults.
My Thunderbird email program no longer accepts whatever password I use for it so I must use Google Mail. This problem began a few years ago (it should have been a national scandal!) when Telus (a Canadian telecommunications company) ditched its Canadian servers and “migrated” to the US Google servers. Most of my many password problems have happened because of that migration.
When I send myself an email from my phone, it sometimes takes 15 minutes for me to get it on my computer. Telus has not been able to resolve this. Were I to shift to another company I would lose my now 30 year old Telus email.
And all this persists with new stuff happening every day. I remember well how my friend Abraham Rogatnick a year before he died of prostate cancer told me, “Alex I am not long for this world. I am glad.”
I think I can second that motion.
In this scanograph, illustrating this blog, I have included a little soap bar from the Buenos Aires Hotel Claridge where Rosemary and I always stayed. She had this frugal habit which I found charming and endearing of keeping the soaps and the little shampoo bottles to bring home. I have kept this little bar to remind me and it does help me to smile a bit even though I am on my own with no direction home.
