Maybe stardust tea?

I am planning, and expecting (based on a quantitative analysis of the vagaries of mood and emotion,) to be in a much better mood tomorrow.

Gabe noticed as I was tossing some ravioli in a pot for him. ”You seem mad,” he said. ”Yes,” I allowed, ”I am mad. But not at any people. Just mad.”

Yesterday, I was trying to study Genki, my Japanese book. It’s different when you don’t have a class to go to, and I had one of those flash moments--I am doing this for no reason, and that doesn’t work for me. This is also why I do not write the book I’d been working on--there is no reason.

It would seem, based on a study of myself, that humans are better off when they have motivation to do what they do. So if, for example, you would enjoy studying Japanese, you will engage in the pursuit with greater vim if you expect to be airdropped into Osaka with a napsack and an apple. Likewise, if you would enjoy writing stories, you will feel a greater yen to do so if there are other humans saying ”Your work pleases me! Please do more.” Short of this kind of feedback, or the expectation of being airdropped--or at least something analogous--I cannot think what motivates people to do what they do. And that seems to be what is making me mad today.

Yes, see...the cosmos didn't give me a function, and I'm pissed. I know. I know I have a neurodegenerating spouse who needs me, and I'm totally on it. No worries. But would that be enough for you? It's not enough for me. I was enjoying the delusion that I could--while taking care of my spouse, which is clearly in many ways a downer--take refuge and comfort in being someone who writes something that people want to read. But that would require what Tia Dalma in Pirates of the Caribbean calls (in a weird Creole twang) a "touch of destiny," and I have long since had to concede that--apart from a certain population of trendily named 80s babies--there is no one named Destiny.

Which leaves me, as far as I can tell, to invent my own sense of purpose, and there again, I am on a bit of a lookout for Thomas Edison's 1%. (You know--genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration?) The 99%, I can offer in spades. The 1% is like fleeting specks of stardust settling randomly but sparsely on the inhabitants of Earth. Chances are it will miss you.

So, make tea?