{∅, {∅}, {∅, {∅}}} : Rage Against the Meat Grinder

From The Dedalus Book of Literary Suicides:

He [The Steppenwolf, i.e., Harry Hallar == Hermann Hesse] recognized the truth discovered in the Magic Theatre, that "the conquest of time and the escape from reality, or however else it may be that you choose to describe your longing, means simply the wish to be relieved of your so-called personality.  That is the prison where you lie."

"I would sample its tortures once more and shudder again at its senselessness.  I would traverse not once more, but often, the hell of my inner being."

And one day he would be "a better hand at the game."

Senor Raul, my house is always in want of proper cleaning. I just do not have enough time and energy to clean it up. My father is having a terrible row with his boss in the office and is thinking of applying for voluntary retirement. I see him and I find that there is no light at the end of the tunnel.
I throw out the rubbish and the next day there is more. Mr.Gary is right when he says that the only true job on this planet is that of the garbage collector.
I hope your eyes are serving you well.Would you be so kind as to suggest something from the Paraguayan cuisine which is easy to cook, cheap as well as low in fat and sugar,because I dislike most of the food that I find over here.

To tell you the truth,I am confused most of the time and fail to make sense of the things which happen to me. I am afraid of most the people around me. I seem to be incapable to dealing with them at all.

What did Van Gogh say to his brother/to himself as he breathed his last? Sadness will last forever. It certainly seems to be true. At least in my case.My definition of heaven is to be left alone for all of eternity.

Life is a curse in the best of the circumstances. But to be born as a person who finds it terribly difficult to make sense of things is doubly a curse.

Take care and hope your eyes stay okay.

Haunting video, Senor Raul.  Thank you.  This is a nightmare world.

A real life, not a Hollywood story, but an actual living cultural entity in the flesh ... so very far away from Home, through no fault of his own.  Lost and abandoned to Fate, he may have been empowered by his choice to exit.   That such people have existed and, to a strong degree, still exist today, people trapped by economic circumstances in "cages" where they are paraded around or used-as-a-tool by someone else (as their PROPERTY), that we live in such a world, can any pill "cure" that? 

That some men own football or soccer teams or armies of soldiers and weapons of mass destruction is alarming, but people are conditioned to accept this as reasonable.

 

Senor Raul

Thank you for the message

In the evening today I was alone in the office & the widow of the colleague who recently died was leaving for her hometown
THE SUN HAD SET BUT IT WAS RATHER BRIGHT OUTSIDE AND I WAS FEELING TERRIBLY SAD
FROM TIME TO TIME THE MAN WHO DIED WAS KIND TO ME AND HIS WIFE WAS ALWAYS OFFERING ME FOOD TO EAT
PROBABLY IN THE HOPE THAT I WOULD HELP HER SICK HUSBAND WITH THE OFFICE WORK
THAT I DID DO AS MUCH AS I COULD
I TOOK CARE OF ALL OF THE PAPER WORK BUT SOMETIMES HE ASKED ME TO TALK TO SOME PEOPLE IN THE HEAD OFFICE AND IF I KNEW THOSE PEOPLE WERE SADISTS I REFUSED TO TALK TO THEM AND THAT MADE HIM VERY ANGRY

I KEEP WRESTLING WITH MATH PROBLEMS AND THEY SOMETIMES EVEN MANAGE TO KNOCK THEM OUT
ABOUT YOUR EYE IS THERE ANY NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE IN PARAGUAY WHICH HAS GOVERNMENT FUNDED HOSPITALS UNDER IT AND YOU HELP YOU OUT BY PROVIDING PROPER TREATMENT TO YOUR EYES>

I MUST CONFESS I DO NOT UNDERSTAND MOST OF WHAT IS HAPPENING AROUND ME
ALL I CAN SAY IS THAT ITS ALL QUITE WEIRD
MR GARY HAS STARTED TO APPEAR AGED
HE HAS VISIBLY AGED OVER THE LAST FEW YEAR
I REMEMBER QUITE CLEARY THAT IN JUST ABOUT SIX YEARS BACK HE LOOK QUITE YOUNG
WELL MAYBE I AM LOOKING OLDER TOO

TAKE CARE OF YOUR EYES

(MY KEYBOARD IS MALFUNCTIONING)

Holden,

Thank you for your message. I will have a treatment to my eyes probably at the end of the year because medical consultations are limited. Doctors say, if we believe them, that all the hospitals are crowded with COVID-19 patients. The China virus is the only issue here. You have cancer, diabetes,AIDS, kidney or liver problems, you had better start praying if you are Christian or if you have no money to go to a private hospital.
You are a young man but aged in spirit. You have endured much in this life. Wrestling with math problems, as you say, is helping you deal with this fatality called life. It will also help you stay away from the sadists in the office, in the neighborhood or wherever you find them.  As Arthur said this world is a penal colony and we all are fellow sufferers.

Take care.

Thanks for the Dead Kennedy's song, Raul.

As for the video Holden posted with the young woman joking about how the German language is sometimes perceived as "ugly," some notes from Dead End, Chapter 6 (Complete and Ruthless Honesty) give a clue as the why this may be so:

2005.04.19

The dark image of a sinister, aggressive, predatory, and militarized Germany only became prevalent in this present century. Before this, it was plausible to present the German as an impractical, dreamy, sentimental being, looking out with mild blue eyes into a cloud of music and metaphysics and tobacco smoke.

Stael portrayed (for the Napoleonic French of the early 19th century) a Germany utterly unlike the grotesque image later drawn by the Allied propagandists of the two World Wars. Stael’s Germans were a nation of “Poets and Thinkers,” a people of kindly, impractical, other-worldly dreamers without national prejudices, and, strangley, in the light of later propaganda, “disinclined to war,” kind of like Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Robert M. Pirsig, or even myself, for that matter (each "German-American").