Not Quite Right

Something is wrong but I can't quite put my finger on it, like wanting to use the word “inevitable” but not doing so.

The scrambled eggs, the toasted sourdough, the butter, the general look of things, another attempt at Trump’s life, the unnamed shooter, Zionists buried deep within the UK Labour Party, ex IDF members advising and funding the Prime Minister, the prices of things, far away war stories, the weird tone set by the BBC News, the death of the Royal Navy, pop ups on repeat, the Epstein Files, unread books in unread piles, not listening to Radio Scotland, the weather these days, the flavour of coffee, strange advertisements on Netflix, Google storage space, fuel costs, the way that people park their cars, the use of music in public space, insects, dental care advice, spam, the quality of socks, things just coming along and then going away, understanding AI, forgotten history, appetites; something in all these things and more is not quite right, but I can’t seem to put my finger on it.

The world has changed.

Sunday morning: I was toasting some sourdough bread and making scrambled eggs. The toast is in the toaster. It pops up just about the same time as the eggs are ready. I spread the butter on the toast. The toast is pale and the butter is golden. The butter melts into the hot bread. It kind of creates a stain. A yellow stain across the flat surface of the bread. Like a dog’s pissed on warm bread. The eggs seem fine but I overdid the cooking. They’re too firm and lumpy. I’m hungry so I eat everything, but it’s not turned out the way I expected it to. I feel a sense of unease. Coffee tastes odd too, but coffee taste has been in decline for a while now, so it’s a difficult measure to pin down. Why is that? There’s been a slippage in my method, my materials, my Sunday morning outlook. It’s on the edge of creepy. Possibly. But I move on. I have my small projects to keep me amused.

The world hasn’t changed.

Now it’s weeks later. In the period between periods I’ve written thousands of words. They didn’t really make the kind of sense I’d hoped for. Didn’t hang together. Failed to tell the tale. Didn’t say anything new. That was when I knew again what I always knew. The narrative of life is a rolling escalator going up, round and back on itself. Constantly. News is just the things people do to themselves or each other. Mostly bad or stupid things. From the Met Gala to the Straits of Hormuz. From the Odyssey to those Mormon Wives of Utah. From Cain to Netanyahu. Unitended consequences take control.

We sniff at any higher purpose.

As a younger man I read Ecclesiastes many times. God is never mentioned so don’t talk to me about him. Yet it made the cut to be part of the Christian Bible and the Jewish Scriptures. Saints and bishops and thinkers kept it in the final edit. A triumph for the unknown conspirators. Like some weird improvised track on a modern jazz album that misses the tone of all the other pieces. A puzzle within a puzzle. It subverts the very books that it is a part of. It takes the holy realm of thought into another dangerous directions. It accepts futility and the repetition of slack habits. It resonates with our common failings and a bleak outlook that says we’re in a loop of bad behaviour. Running on a cosmic treadmill. Alone in the unfathomable universe. Repeating mistakes and misunderstandings.

So here’s another sunny Sunday built upon unsatisfactory coffee flavours. The texture of healthy breakfast biscuits play with my taste buds. Hard to swallow. Like wanting to use the word “inevitable” but not doing so. Writing stuff on Substack or uploading more YouTube Shorts. Crashing in the same car. Learning but failing to apply the knowledge we gain. All while living our best but wasteful tiny human lives on a finite little planet, where despite being rooted, we still fail to grasp the precious balance of our depedencies on it’s fragile resources. There is no promised land. Well, there was once but that’s another story.

We shrug at the effort of understanding.

Vanitas

I guess, at my age, that I’m going to have to be fine with that. For the time being.