Warm Recollections #52 - The End
More from the Bitz Files
As introduced here, these Warm Recollections are cullings from thirty years of notes files…
The last one, at least for now. It’s been a whole year of weekly nuggets of… well, whatever the heck they’ve been. Two hundred and sixty pieces of brain dust. There’s more in the files but it feels like it’s time for a change.
Let me know what you’d like to see here to take its place…
The speed of mental states: yes, anxiety may sometimes be a slow-building panic, but it’s generally febrile and fast; and yes, depression may have harsh, sharp notes, but it’s often slower and more tidal.
And the two find it hard to comprehend each other. Depressives find anxious people annoyingly shrill, anxious people find depressives annoyingly mournful.
Often noted that time goes must faster as you get older. Something that comes with this, and I hadn’t considered (and haven’t seen mentioned) is this means that emotions may last relatively longer, too.
In your early twenties, three years is a long time. You change. You forget things. Emotions fade. I’m not sure they do in your fifties, at least in the same way — because it really doesn’t seem like such a long time. You can get stuck in a feeling for a while.
Priests don’t merely absolve sins — they witness them. Those sins were things we wanted to do but which are unacceptable to most people in our lives (perhaps all of them), and thus can’t be vocalized. By telling a priest — who will accept the reality of our acts, while not condoning them — we make a kind of peace with them, and with the person they say we are: in the important sense of allowing ourselves to access their reality (whereas for most of the time, we have to deny these things we’ve done and what they say about who we are, when no-one’s watching).
This isn’t an original observation (priest as proto-therapist) but is another example of the utility of organized religion, when not in the hands of grifters or crazy people. I’m not even slightly religious but I can see that — over and above its job as a storehouse of insights into human nature — it has a worthwhile societal function. Atheism may be correct, but it contributes little. Atheists don’t run bake sales for the poor.
You see a sour-faced old woman, not knowing: She loved once, loved deeply, and lost… then spent so long being sad it became written in her face. Eventually she got on with life but by then it was too late. Her looks are a dusty museum of lost love, of what was wonderful. What makes her sour is that she was once sweet; what makes her cold is that she was once warm. Now she is old, so none of this can have happened. She’s just a miserable old bitch, you think — but you’re a fool for thinking so.
Music, as some guy said, says what cannot be said in words. Which is presumably why it developed as we began to speak, because we needed language before we could truly understand all the things it cannot say.
As always, if you can think of anyone who might enjoy this Substack, please spread the word.
Well, dude, you're certainly going out on a high note. Every speck of this last batch was priceless. THANKS!
As for what you should do next? (Aside from re-running all of these from the beginning, cuz I'm afraid I missed some?) WHATEVER THE FUCK YOU WANT!!! Reading you is the textbook definition of being in good hands.
I’m new to Substack but not to your writing. I’m kind of addicted actually. The hardbacks are stacking up. What is compelling for me is your frank tone, dark wit and a combination of crystal clear prose and deep left-field insightfulness - a kind of visceral spirituality. I very much enjoy your collection What You Make It and was surprised by The Truth Game. I sheepishly suggest a series of haiku and head for the exit.