Although my younger brother arrived home last evening before his unspoken 8:30 p.m. deadline that I have in place for him, only a few minutes into the first episode of one of the shows we follow in common, and which I had tuned in via our Android TV Box, he was snoring.
The episode was for Preacher ─ specifically, season three's episode four titled "The Tombs".
Just as I was cancelling out of the episode, he choked on his own slobber and came to his senses, realizing what I was doing ─ I was cancelling right out of the Android TV Box and going to turn the T.V. over to its basic cable and leave him to drink alone for the remainder of the evening as he found whatever entertainment he could on T.V. (he doesn't understand the operation of the Android TV Box).
When he catches me in this act because he has involuntarily awakened himself through choking (or even sneezing) as he had done, he often tries to deflect my actions from himself by implying that I am the one unable to sit up any longer watching T.V. So as I tend to do when he does this, I held my voice at a calm level and with a small feigned laugh countered that it was he who was clearly unable to handle the programme through retention of consciousness.
He has come to realize that it is futile to seek to dissuade me from departing and going upstairs.
I came here to my computer and got involved with one thing or another, and was not to make it to bed until just after 10 p.m. However, it was still over two hours earlier than would have been the case had my brother managed to retain his senses and I had sat up with him fetching episodes of a few of the series we follow.
In due course I got to sleep, and then found myself aware enough in the midnight hour to be curious on the time. Upon making that check, I then rose to put work into the long, long post I am so very slowly building at one of my six hosted websites.
Once I had achieved the targetted content quota for that sitting, it would have been of the purest prudence to have then gone back to bed. But I did not.
I instead sat here until after dawn in a most taxing assault of my eyes, body, mind, and spirit, abasing myself to Old Scratch, once more demonstrating my fallibility and the strength of the doctrine of radical corruption.
I fear that where I am concerned as I draw ever nearer to the attainment of a full year and 70 in age, prevenient grace ─ if ever it was offered unto me, and if such a state does indeed exist ─ is no more an option that is 'on the table'. I have grown too senescent in every way, and no longer hold any potential that God deems to be worth bothering about.
I am on my own, treading down that road of Destruction with scant hope of deliverance.
There was some rain overnight.
After my return to bed, I remained there until beyond 10 a.m., and then rose to work on a post in my private blog that probably took me at least 1½ hours. My brother was already downstairs and reading the Saturday morning edition of the Vancouver Sun that I subscribe to.
I remained upstairs; and despite him coming upstairs once or twice to use the bathroom, he said naught to me as he passed by this wee room where I keep my computer, my back to the open doorway.
Eventually I needed to avail myself of the toilet, and it was whilst I was therewith involved that he finally came upstairs to seek some further bed rest ere he would leave for the afternoon to eventually resume his drinking somewhere.
Once I was done with the bathroom, I also required my own return to bed. It was late into the noon hour.
I evidently managed something of a nap, for when next I checked the time it was after 2 p.m., so I rose. My brother was already gone for the afternoon.
We had not exchanged a word since I left him at the T.V. last evening. No doubt, he is sensitive over the incident, and may even think that I am wroth with him. But I am not.
I love my brother, but not the drunkard he seems to want to become too very often.
Besides, I am beleaguered here in this household, unable to live a scheduled life because I must accommodate myself to the presences of the other four members who also are in residence. This beleaguering is more than my weak and fleshly self can equanimously contend with, and I easily find myself raging within at every perceived slight ─ despite my certain love for the others.
They are all family.
But I am so isolated. There is none to whom I can confide or share my travails. I have no friends near.
And as I grow older and see it less and less likely that I am ever going to be able to achieve whatever spiritual and physical potential that I understand does still exist deep inside me, I am less and less able to stoically withstand the impediments and inconveniences that I perceive the others around me to be placing before me.
I feel myself to be evermore ineffectual and impotent ─ and the worst of this is that so much of what I feel is genuine, and not imagined.
I had planned this week that ─ early this morning ─ I would make the two-mile hike to the nearest government liquor store to replenish my stock of strong (8% alcohol) beer by purchasing a flat of two dozen cans and hiking them back home.
I sabotaged that plan, didn't I? And I knew at the time that I was scotching it; yet I was powerless to follow a different course and get myself properly to bed.
As I type these words, it is 5:25 p.m., and I find myself in need of yet some further bed rest. It is essential if I am to handle a session of exercise yet ahead of me. I feel that I must discharge the session as a gesture or concession toward salvaging something of this day.
Perhaps it may even inspire me to more, but we shall have to wait and see about that.
It is approaching midnight now, so I must hasten to bring this post to a close. My brother arrived home around 8:20 p.m. and succeeded in retaining his sensibilities, so I have remained up with him to operate our Android TV Box.
My earlier nap ─ followed by a hearty hot caffeinated beverage ─ did me well. I had my exercising, and felt immeasurably better. In fact, I felt as salubrious emotionally and physically as if naught untoward had e'er taken place this early morn.
If only I could sustain this wherewithal of mind and body.
No comments:
Post a Comment