The customary sweetness, the afflection, and the Tao of Chris. Bonus Content: Some half-assed Stoicism.

It just simply flummoxes, these larger problems, from time to time.  Chris'll tell ya: its not worth your peace.  Chris knows.

It was all, "where was your customary sweetness earlier?"  And her, Batman to Trump's joker.

To make ammends, me cooking her favorite dinner, running a warm bath for her.

In the land of Nod.

Things you cannot control are called "indifferents", and you should hasten to ignore those things; and yet, we live in a system, a system of interconnections, such that the universe is tethered to us at various intervals, and we are bid to care.

"Aw look at that fat girl: she care!! ha ha!"

She had me crawl on the pavement under the bed of her little truck to check the spare tire, in the dark.  I had a pen light on my key ring and used that.  Pressure check, and all, and running the fingers along the tread, feeling the rubber was still supple with internal moisture: that was the thing that kept the rubber from weather-rot, the internal moisture of the substance.

"You know I'm just passionate about my ideas, Tina, baby."

The restless churning of the mass, one might can feel it sometimes, like an unquiet something, even in the quiet.  I could sit at sugarloaf on the entry road, where the volunteer oaks are like large bushes in the hardpack poor and drained Sandhills soil, and feel it, even in the quietude, that restless churning of humanity.

That's the thing, the affliction.  We don't just make petition for the brethren, the already saved, but the rest of them too, as unsavory and dangerous as they are--we make petition, that the scales fall from their eyes.

I think, what it was, a button was touched, an unusual little thing: that's what it was, an unusual combination come up at it put me to musing along a line that has some cobwebs, an affectionate little corner, where I keep my Japanese swords and things, my old stuff, the LTD II hood ornament and all that: Magic Mountain's box of memories.

I observe the Tao of Steve, and am in part perplexed.  I observe the Tao of Pat and am doubly so, perplexed, stupefied.  With enough caffeine, as an affectation, I approach the Tao of Chris, but these other, and really we're not using a Life Success yardstick, but a measurement of actual happiness, with no respect to circumstance.  "In whatever circumstance, whether I am abased or whether I abound..."