When last we spoke, old friend, you asked “is there nothing you enjoy?” I deflected somewhat and talked about drinking. But drinking was not a thing that I intrinsically enjoyed, and speaking of it in such a way was deliberately imprecise.
I wonder if, under normal conditions, many others are able to recognize and to doubt their emotions simultaneously. Perhaps they do not feel relentlessly compelled to do so. Oh, envy. What always attracted me to alcohol was its ability to manufacture feelings of authenticity. It allowed me to believe myself in any situation— in whatever I was arguing in favor of at a particular moment, in imaginary betrayal, in the value and clarity of my feelings, in the safety of an embrace, in the necessity of violence. The freedom of this confidence drew me back repeatedly even in the face of its terrible consequences, chiefly because being sure of what I was feeling was such a delightful and foreign experience when compared to my customary paralytic existence- euphoria with a hangover of destruction and disappointment.
So to borrow liberally from literature and answer your question in a more honest way, I like the taste of coffee, the sound of a needle as it traverses a vinyl record, and the prose of Borges. Due to my preference for self-denial I had only one of those near my room, but I thought of what you said and so a few days ago I went to a store and bought a modern Victrola, then went to another store and bought what is a called a French press for making coffee (the first patent for such a design was, of course, issued to Italians) and whole coffee beans of Colombian provenance and a reasonably priced coffee grinder.
Now I sit in the morning with precisely measured dark coffee in a mug, Rachmaninoff’s Concerto no. 2 in C minor played by Cliburn and Reiner with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (1962) on the record player, and I must confess that the morning is better with these material comforts than it would have been without them.
There is more than one path. Once I was convinced that I chose the journey that was appointed for me, and now I am sure that I was mistaken. The air of this early December is unseasonably warm and so I walked a few miles around a local pond in the hour surrounding sunrise. There is nothing in my life that satisfies my desire to exhibit expertise and brilliance- nothing I can do that someone else cannot do better. But if there was, would I find an excuse not to do it? I have been trying to get the results I want out of a broken machine, instead of attempting to fix the machine. Is it any wonder that under such a regime, my body and brain and I are on such antagonistic terms? What is to be done?
