NOW WHO SHRUGGED?

When you don't have any money, job, or prospects, it absolutely feels as if you will never have any of these things again. The combined entropy in the negative space of those three vacuums or lack, is emotionally and psychically leaden. Whoa! Block that metaphor! Atlas holding up a spinning world is losing his balance. No one, nothing can help.

I wonder if Atlas felt trapped. That's the other feeling; you are in an ever-shrinking room with time speeding up. Close your eyes and imagine you are a trapped animal in pain. And then that the weight of the world is on you. Stressful, right?

I've long since been a solitaire player, but I had really given it up. Carl, my younger brother who passed away two years ago, was so depressed he played the easiest kind of solitaire, Klondike, and reduced his possibility of failure by turning over every card in the non-layout pile (I imagine there is a term for that pile). This was a person who seriously avoided challenges. When I was at my mom's visiting Carl in the hospital, I started playing again.

I play a lot of solitaire. I play as avoidance. I play to be numb. I play when I am musing.  I play when I am impatient on a telephone call. I play to wake up. I play before sleep. And I often think of my brother, unknowingly dying, growing progressively ill, growing progressively deaf and indifferent to life, obsessively playing one-turn Klondike. I think about him a lot when I play. It makes me so sad for him. And it does cause me to wonder what I'm doing, clicking away. Tuning out possibility.

On the other hand, it is a time waster, but hey, doesn't get you drunk, fat, or appreciably broke (just thinking one could be doing something financially productive with the time.

And just to end on a up note here, I got up read the NY Times and started writing. That's right, kids. First thing in the morning.