DECEMBER THE 4TH

Is it already the 4th of December?

Crazy.

Year's coming to a close and all I got to show for it are a thick wad of bills with red warnings stamped on them that are piling up by my front door. I guess at least it's creating a useful seal to stop the endless draught getting in.

I switch all the lights off now cos we're in an energy crisis due to some war abroad I don't pretend to understand. Sometimes I just sit in the dark on the stairs and pretend I no longer exist. It's actually kind of liberating. You should try it.

What's not so liberating is just how cold it gets here in the house at night. I've even managed to blow arctic smoke rings from my breath clouds, that's how damn freezing it is.

Now I see what all those ice bath devotees were preparing themselves for on those internet videos my ex-wife kept sending me from her new home in Poland. Not sure why she does that other than to remind me that we've been separated over ten years now. Mind you. I still keep the photos up around the house from our few golden years together. My sister told me to pack them up and start afresh but I don't see why. They're momentoes of the only successful thing I ever achieved in my shitty life. Loving Marie was my vocation until she essentially fired me from my job. Now I'm emotionally unemployed and if I was brave enough I'd retire myself permanently from life now. But I'm not brave so I'll just sit it out in the house, in the darkness until I get evicted and turfed out onto the street and end up like those ancient mariner types you see in empty shop fronts with disused soup cans waiting to be filled with spare change.

Back to the staircase for a minute, though. Embracing the infinite void of the universe is an effective way to forget you're completely fucked in life. Or so I have been told by this online guru I follow on YouTube. His name is Varkos. He keeps asking me to sub to his channel but I can't afford it so I just watch the free content he tosses out to us peasant losers with our patchy wifi.

Apparently, if you can actually afford the ten dollars monthly subscription fee he guarantees you'll find enlightenement.

I don't have a spare ten dollars though.

Besides, I thought gurus didn't need money? Anyway.  

I should be a guru. I'd be a good one. My spiritual ethos would be about the benefits of nihilistic poverty and how having absolutely nothing is a form of freedom.

Until, that is, until they put you in jail for not paying your bills.

Just got back from the store with some milk. Stopped by the local church to look over their annual christmas tree exhibition. Made me feel ten times worse than I did before I left the house, though.

Can you believe they ripped out all the pews? What chance does the Western world stand if there's no pews left in our churches? They had some weird, satanic disco lighting inside the old place, too. Thought I'd wandered into a hybrid community centre cum Hooters for a minute. Half expected to find some dancing poles installed with a Mary Magdalen stripper doing her bit.

Maybe I'm getting old. Finding it hard to see the joy in anything much lately. Then again, I've only got myself to blame. I should have taken up yoga with Hannah when she asked me to go that time. Maybe she wouldn't have left me for her instructor if I'd just shown some interest in improving myself. I can't blame her, though. No one wants to be with someone who doesn't evolve.

Varkos is constantly talking about how we need to break ourselves down repeatedly through life so we can be continually reborn. It's good practice for our future incarnations apparently. I would love to be reborn but alas it seems I'm like a needle stuck in the groove of a broken record. Can't even stand to look at myself in the mirror anymore for shame of seeing what I haven't become.

Back inside the house I half boil the kettle and fill up a flask of luke warm turmeric chai tea bags I found from last christmas that my sister sent me.

I've been holding out putting the television on as I'm trying to prove I can live without any modern appliances as much as possible. But it's Sunday; it's cold and I need something to take me out of myself. There's no heroin or fentanyl at hand currently so I'll see what's on the box instead.

Man. Does anyone even watch TV anymore? It's like a desert surfing through all the shopping channels, news propaganda bullshit and documentaries that have become obsolete.  

Hey. Wait a minute. What's this? 'Home Alone'. The first one?

Now we're talking!

I kick back in my push back recliner and bring the automatic foot rest out of hiding.

Sitting in the dark, watching a movie from a far happier time in my life, I almost forget we're in the year 2022 and the world is going to hell in a handcart. Only thing about watching this old classic at this juncture of my adult life is I find myself over relating to old man Marley who's lost all connection to his family and who voluntarily grits the streets in that super rich suburb, the kind you only ever see in a John Hughes movie. Maybe I should do that. Would be one way of keeping active this winter, I guess.

It's not yoga. But still.