It’s a putrid August night in Brooklyn, with hazy orbs floating around the orange light from streetlamps lining a block of bars and restaurants. A dull murmur drifts up the avenue from young drunks limping along toward last call. For S. and me, chain-smoking over pints at our favorite pub, it’s a night like any other we’ve spent together over the past five years or so.
S. is a Black Lives Matter stalwart and budding antifa sympathizer. He’s also burdened with severe angst and around this time of night the gloom really sets in. He becomes angry and only wants to talk about love, or, more accurately, heartache.
It’s only in hindsight I realize that, back when I traveled in progressive circles, all my friends were as miserable as S. They have nice incomes, their own homes, their own businesses, good educations, loving families — all the things I desired. Their unhappiness was less a momentary condition, more a lifestyle. They were all in a perpetual struggle with their emotions.
It was infectious. One can be prone to misanthropy-- excerpt, rest at link above --
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
Unfrozen Cave Water Cooler
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The Unfrozen Cave
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Mon Oct 05, 2020 10:29 am
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