Bernards, New Jersey; between Sunday, September 20th, 2020 and Friday, September 25th, 2020
A portrait-sketch of a cool optimist named Alyosha Comey learning
how to relax– sketched from a compressed/simplified maximalist
perspective/point of view.
Alyosha Comey did not believe
in happiness per se, so he wouldn’t have called it that, but he finally
learned how to relax,
and feel free
of his previously substantial susceptibility to sensory
overload
and panic attacks, drinking till nearly blacking out; this novel relaxation
resembled for Alyosha a walk along a notably and newly crack-and-pothole-
free asphalt road, a newly erected bridge route
founded
on the uplifting
idea of significantly reduced doubt.
But what had his proneness to sensory overload and panic attacks even
been about? He partly blamed “postmodernism” and the Great Earth-
wide Information Flood of the Early Internet Age which had been inthe
midst of the Covid nineteen pandemic and The Great Culture,
Definition, and Meaning War––where, to quote Giuliani, “truth isn’t
truth”
and to quote my critics, “this isn’t poetry!”; “this isn’t prose!”; whatevs (?),
quoth Shakespeare: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose/ By any
other name would smell as sweet.” I wonder, is it me or them who is elitist or
are we both? Or neither? I’ve been trying to go more “folk” but maintain an
intellectual approach like the Great Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Dostoevsky,
Ginsberg, Lopate, et alia …
“We can hear the night watchman click his flashlight/Ask himself if it’s him or them that’s insane” sang Bob Dylan.
…So how did Alyosha manage to chill out in the midst of all that cliquish
oligarchic schismatic nationalism, and extreme isolationist hyper-niche
unique boutique mystique, “just another voice in the wilderness”
Groupthink-ism-ese bullshit and also in sight that nearly outright Fascism
—“Trump Won’t Commit to ‘Peaceful’ Post-Election Transfer of Power” to
quote the New York Times 9/23/20 headline… Well, he began listening to
classical music—Sergei Prokofiev–He had just happened to enjoy a tune, a
melody he happened to hear on a Spotify playlist he was listening to. (One
that played a random mix of things) “Who is this?” he said aloud, in awe of
the sound, so he wrote it down, and began Googling around to find out
more about this Prokofiev, so he could appreciate a closer listen, then that’s
what he did,
and it really just simply relaxed
him. His spine felt straighter.
His mind, (to the extent that we can conceptualize such a thing) instead of
racing chaotically,
felt as though a sailboat, methodically built for stability, sailing the vastness
of ocean in
tranquility.