John Swinburn

The most difficult and time-consuming aspect of painting walls takes place before the first roller is dipped in paint. Applying tape to protect trim and other materials on which paint is NOT to be applied is both exacting and mind-numbingly tedious. Properly covering floors to protect against drips takes patience. I know this because I have done it many times. And I am about to do it again, because my tendency to be frugal and miserly won out over wanting to paint the inside of our new house without personally intervening to do the work. When the quotes came in (between $5,200 and $6,200), I drew in a breath so deeply I feared I would suck in all the air in the room. The size of the bids sealed it: we will do it ourselves. That means, of course, the process will take longer than we had imagined. Such is life. Today, we will begin the process of transformation. Actually, the process began in earnest yesterday, when a contractor applied texture to the walls of the master bathroom; the walls, which had been stripped of wallpaper and painted dark, dark grey by the previous owners, desperately needed rescue. Today, I will apply tape, one of my least favorite of the tasks included in household transformations. Onward. After coffee. And after the sun rises.

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Yesterday began in what can only be described as a bizarre fashion. I got up around 4 and went about my usual things: making and drinking coffee, blogging, reading the news, etc. Three and a half hours later, my IC got up. Shortly thereafter, when she glanced down, a look of confused horror crossed her face and she pointed at my feet. I followed her gaze and instantly realized what had triggered the distressed look: on my left foot, I was wearing a flip-flop and on my right foot I was wearing a slipper. Apparently, I had managed to leave both pairs of footwear on the floor next to the bed; when I got up in the dark, I slipped one foot into the left side of one pair and my right foot into the right side of the other pair. I never knew it until my IC pointed out that I appeared to have transformed overnight into a demented old man who can no longer properly dress himself. I wonder: how wise is it that this same man plans to paint the entire inside of his new house? I suppose I’ll need to remind myself that the primer goes on first, before the color coat, and not vice versa.

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My fingers sometimes get ahead of themselves. That reality presented itself just now as I finished up the final sentence of the paragraph above. Instead of typing “not vice versa,” my fingers typed “nice versa.” It’s not that I left out letters, it’s that my fingers attempted to respond to my thoughts at the same speed I had them. My digits tried to outperform their abilities, resulting in gibberish on the screen. Usually, I catch such failings before I post my thoughts online, but occasionally I see the mistakes after I’ve already clicked on “publish.” And sometimes I do not realize what I’ve done until someone else points it out to me. And, I’m sure, sometimes I never know that I’ve published a piece laced with what may appear to the casual observer as a typo, when in fact it is a brain-finger-disconnect, which today I’m calling a “smattercast.” But I’m fine with calling it a typo.

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I came across an intriguing neologism this morning. Parigüayo. My understanding is that it’s a Dominican Republic bastardization of other words unknown. Its meaning has evolved over time, but I think it now refers, essentially, to person who is a dolt, a loser, a socially awkward jerk. I hope to retain my memory of the word so I can  use it appropriately in my writing in the future. Of course, using such a word invariably requires a follow-up, unless a definition accompanies its use. But what is the point of using a perfectly descriptive word if no one else understands its meaning without requiring an explanation? I don’t know. Maybe I won’t use parigüayo, after all. It might suggest I wear different shoes on my two feet.

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I got sidetracked. It’s late. I have to get a move on. Onward with the day!

Ranchman’s, the only restaurant in the tiny town of Ponder, Texas, opened in 1948. When I lived in Dallas, my late wife and I made the hour-long drive to Ponder many times. An hour drive was a scant price to pay to satisfy hunger for a superb chicken-fried steak.

I learned this morning, reading an article in the Dallas Morning News, that the restaurant has been closed for more than 660 days. But the owner insists he will open it up again when COVID and kitchen construction permit. The man, Dave Ross, closed it due to COVID and took advantage of the down time to remodel the ancient kitchen. Unlike many restaurant owners, Ross owns the building Ranchman’s occupies outright. He apparently does not need the restaurant’s revenue to survive. The restaurant opened in 1948 and has been in the same building ever since. Ross is renovating and enlarging the kitchen during the COVID shutdown.

The newspaper story reminded me that I was among the throngs of Ranchman aficionados who often took out-of-town guests to the place to show them authentic small-town Texas—and to give them a taste of honest-to-God real chicken-fried-steak the way it’s supposed to be. I miss that flavor and texture. The only place I’ve ever had chicken-fried steak that compared favorably was at Mary’s Café in Strawn, Texas (which, amazingly, may be about as good as Ranchman’s version of that wonderful food of the gods).  Seriously, I’ve enjoyed pretty good chicken-fried-steaks in other places, including some spots in Arkansas. But nothing (not even Mary’s) compares to the unique taste and texture of the CFS at Ranchman’s. I am hungry for that perfect chicken-fried-steak. Starved for CFS is a more appropriate description of the way I feel at this moment. Oh, how I miss that food and those memories.

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I do it all the time. I state, with unflinching confidence, that a person is acting in a certain way because he or she is feeling one way or another. I am certain of my perceptions, notwithstanding my understanding that, in reality, I cannot see the world through another person’s eyes. We cannot know what prompts a person to do what he or she does. We cannot legitimately attribute motives to others without actually being those people, which is impossible. I know this. Why, I wonder, is it so damn difficult to train myself so my automatic response is compassion or appreciation, instead of skepticism?

Yesterday, my IC and I had a conversation about acts of generosity that find their way into newspaper articles and social media stories. I have read about several such things lately. Some examples: An extraordinarily generous tip that provided restaurant worker with the money needed to save a home from foreclosure. Donation of a car to someone who could not afford reliable transportation. A waiter patiently helping an elderly and infirm restaurant patron by cutting the customer’s food for him.  The articles and news clips are numerous. And every one of them tugs at one’s heartstrings. Almost every time we come across such touching stories, though, we encounter comments that chastise the “good Samaritan” for promoting themselves by telling their  stories. People whose acts of kindness find their way into the news often are labeled self-serving, assuming they seek recognition for their good deeds purely out of emotional vanity.

During the conversation over breakfast yesterday, my IC suggested people who share the stories of their generosity may do so simply to model such behavior; to encourage others to act in the same way. Or they may have a personal, emotional need to be recognized for their acts of kindness. They may need others to see that they are decent, generous, good people. Or they may need to see those attributes in themselves; through public acknowledgment of their generosity, they may be more likely to believe themselves to be decent, generous, good people. Public acknowledgement of their acts of kindness may be among the only ways they can see measures of their value as human beings.

One of our friends recently saw a news or social media story about groups of people going out to eat together and, at the end of the meal, each leaving a $100 bill, giving an enormous surprise for the waitstaff. She immediately latched onto that idea and initiated it on her own. Despite having some misgivings about how the idea could be implemented, we applauded it. And, after the fact, we learned that it was done with no fanfare, no media pictures…no big deal. Even though I know I cannot see inside a person’s head, I know my friend.  I strongly suspect what prompted that act of extreme generosity was a deep, abiding goodness…the sort of intensely wonderful humanity that makes my eyes water and make me want to deliver a big hug.

My IC, by the way,  is incredibly generous. I’ve witnessed her leaving very big tips for people she “senses” really need the money. I’ve watched as she bought a young couple breakfast; again, she sensed it would help them in a way they needed help. She donated quite a bit of valuable furniture to people who could use, it instead of selling it as she could have; in one instance, she gave a couch and coffee table to someone just out of drug rehab and struggling to live on his own. She visits Habitat for Humanity’s ReStore frequently with perfectly good items she could have sold but, instead, donates because someone else needs what she takes in more than she needs the money selling it could bring. My point is that she gives. A lot. She does not promote her generosity, though. She does not seek recognition for it. She just does it. All of this is to say I can imagine she might feel that people who publicly proclaim their generosity may be self-serving. But, no, obviously she does not see it that way.

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Last evening, I tried to call my brother–the one who was just released from the hospital and is in a rehab facility now–but my calls immediately went to a rejection message. “The subscriber you called has not set up the voice mailbox yet…” I suppose I should call earlier in the day. Maybe he turns his phone off after 7 pm or perhaps he was on the phone with someone else. I must try not to get sidetracked today; I must call by mid-day. I wonder why it’s sometimes so hard to stay focused on something so simple as a phone call reminder? I wonder whether my increasing sense of forgetfulness is another product of my advancing age? Who knows? I certainly don’t, but I have my suspicions.

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It’s nearing 6. I’ve been up for almost one and three-quarters hours, yet I’ve had only part of one cup of coffee and nothing to eat. Although I usually do not eat until after my IC rises, I may break my fast early today.

Finally, after several grey days of clouds, rain, fog, and humidity high enough to drown aquatic animals, today’s expectation is for mostly sunny weather. The day is starting—at 27°F—with a decidedly frosty feel, but the forecast calls for the temperature to reach 50°F at the peak. Still quite cool, but when coupled with the sun and a comfortable sweatshirt, better than just tolerable.

A big window in the bathroom of the new house will let in enough light to permit me to see what I’m doing when I take down the master bath light fixtures in the new house. After the walls have been textured and painted, new fixtures will help transform the room into a somewhat more modern, inviting environment. But the removal of light fixtures will have to wait until tomorrow, when the weather is expected to replicate today, because today I have a competing schedule to follow. First, we’ll go to town to deal with errands: regular vehicle maintenance, along with handling a recall matter, for my IC’s car; picking up lighting and ceiling fan items ordered for the new house; and assorted other minor demands on my time.

Then, this afternoon, I return to my dentist’s office to be fitted for a device designed to hold tooth-whitening bleach. I hope to transform my life-long overly-yellow teeth into chompers with a whiter bite.

I know. It’s naked vanity. My objective is to draw others’ attention away from noticing my mammoth mid-section and direct it, instead, to my soon-to-be-brilliantly-white teeth, which may—as a potential downside—highlight my diastema. The thought processes behind my decision to whiten my teeth may help me fathom the rationale behind the application of make-up. I’ve never quite understood why women (mostly) use make-up so freely; it has seemed like an enormously time-consuming process that covers natural beauty with an artificial façade. I may have a better feel for it now; make-up is meant to highlight that natural beauty, rather than replace it. I suppose it’s something similar with my teeth, though they are not naturally attractive. Whitening may draw attention away from some of the unsightly aspects of my face, giving prominence to other elements of my outward appearance. Time will tell. It always does.

So, the light fixture surgery will wait until tomorrow. Speaking of surgery, yesterday, even with the drabness of a cloudy day, I was able to remove more than a dozen switch-plate covers for telephone wires  and cable television cables. It involved more than just unscrewing covers. In every case, the wiring/cables were affixed to the covers, requiring sometimes delicate surgical procedures to remove the covers without severing wires that could, some day, need to be connected again. I am proud to say I completed the surgery without, to my knowledge, killing any of the patients.

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Busywork sometimes keeps me from erupting like a volcano. I need to work on cooling that sea of magma within me. Busywork simply acts as a plug in a crater; unless the cauldron of molten rock beneath cools, the plug will pop like a cork, letting a rush of melted material spray like a geyser, The way to cool the flow of magma is to find alternate ways of releasing the pressure that arises from capturing explosive heat in a sealed vessel.

There should be a lesson in a metaphor. But, like some similes, the instruction sometimes is as clear as mud.

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Off we go, avoiding people as much as we can while conducting business with people who, often, do not believe in science as much as they believe in the divinity of idiots. COVID has not only revealed gaping wounds in our culture, it has somehow infested the wounds with maggots that feast at the site of the injuries, making the wounds ever larger and harder to heal.  What a cheery way to launch a trip into town.

August 24 is Knife Day. It is not too early to begin preparing to celebrate. For me, the celebration must involve paying homage to knives of all stripes, from the 8-inch chef’s knife if the kitchen to the pocket knife I carry with me every day.  The day should acknowledge all the other knives and knife-like devices in my life, too: paring knives, razor blades, boning knives, swords (I rarely carry one, by the way), machetes, carving knives, mezzalunas, scalpels, and all the dozens (or hundreds) of others.

[Note that I mentioned paying homage. According to Webster, it’s pronounced HOM-ij or OM-ij, not oh-MAHZH (I say OM-ij). The incorrect pronunciation is understandable, in that the Francophiles among us know the French word for cheese is fromage, pronounced froh-MAHZH. Even on NPR, when I hear the word “homage” mispronounced it drives me approximately insane. Unfortunately (in my ears), the mispronunciation is enjoying growing acceptance, so the erroneous noise may already have found its way into some dictionaries. Language is a living, changing aspect of our lives, so I should not find those alterations so offensive. I know. But I do, anyway. Dammit.]

Lest one think my mention of Knife Day is a superficial, off-the-cuff comment, let me say this: I’ve put this year’s Knife Day (it’s a Wednesday) on my Google calendar. I will pay special attention to our kitchen knives and my collection of pocket knives on that day.

Unlike many people, though, I am not a connoisseur of knives, nor of other things sharp. I do not have enormous numbers of them, all cataloged and displayed for all to see as if they were hand-written copies of the Bible, autographed by the authors. I am more of a casual aficionado whose attention span is too short to devote an inordinate amount of time to them. One day a year to celebrate is ample for me. I like knives year-round, but I try not to worship them.

Speaking of knives, a company I found online sells a line of knives call Deejo. Each knife can be personalized as to length of blade, type of handle, image embedded in blade, image on handle, blade material, and text printed on the blade. I was so enamored of the images I saw in the company’s marketing website that I almost ordered a “custom” knife. Until I realized the company sells mass customization. For some reason, that concept suddenly turned me off completely. It’s like I almost bought into being tricked into believing I was about to buy a knife made especially for me, when in reality I was about to buy into a psychological mind-game that could manipulate and read my desires. Ech!

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Memories do not always soften with time; some grow edges like knives.

~ Barbara Kingsolver ~

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My mind, this morning, shifts from serious to silly at the same pace that my heart beats. It’s odd, feeling deep sadness when I inhale and unmitigated joy with I release my breath. I shouldn’t say it’s odd; it’s actually fairly common for me. It would be odd if I sensed that other people experienced the same hyper-high-speed manic-depressive moments on a regular basis. To put it in other words that might be easier for me to fully embrace and understand: It’s like tears running down my cheeks. When they reach my mouth, I taste them and smile widely as I enjoy the salty flavor. But at a much higher speed than tears can stream down one’s face. Imagine that scene in a film; now, imagine it run at three times normal speed. Now, double it. There you go.

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I estimate that, over the years, I’ve owned a couple of dozen pocket knives. Several of them still sit, rarely used, in an open-topped box in a drawer. Most of them came to me as second-hand items. I do not recall how they came into my possession. I can only surmise I bought each of them from someone who attached a reasonable price (in my world-view) to them. Or they were gifts. Or I found them. Or they were found in retail shops; new and cheap and attractive. I am not a collector of pocket knives, but I feel compelled to latch onto them when the price is right. I lust after pocket knives. They hold a spell over me I simply cannot explain.

I would love to own an exceptional pocket knife, one that is both beautiful and functional and that exudes quality of the highest order. But I would be afraid of losing it, so I would keep it in my open-topped box. I have lost some very nice knives in my time; some of them beautiful and functional and that exuded quality of the highest order. The loss of more than one superb knife is the reason I cannot bring myself to buy the kind of knife I long to have. No matter how careful I have been with them, I’ve managed to let some outstanding knives disappear from my possession. So, instead of carrying an expensive, exquisite pocket knife, I usually carry a utilitarian cutting utensil disguised to look like a pocket knife. And I lose those, too.

For several years, I carried a rarity: an all stainless-steel knife (including the handle) I bought new. It was cheap in the extreme, but perfectly useful and reasonably attractive. Eight dollars, brand-new. When I found another one just like it, I bought it, as well. Finally, after losing the first one, I took the second one from the open-topped box in the drawer and began carrying it. A month or two later, it was gone, too. I don’t lose just the good ones.

The ideal pocket knife, for me, is small—between three and three-and-a-half  inches long, closed—with a bone or pearl handle. It would be a stockman-style 2-blade or 3-blade knife. The ideal blade would be of chrome vanadium steel. I searched for my “ideal” knife this morning on Deadwood Knives’ website. The Deadwood search yielded zero results out of 1300 knives with either a bone or a pearl handle. So, if I were to find my ideal knife, I guess it would have to be custom-made. Considering the cost of many of the knives I like quite a lot run from high two-figures to mid-three-figures, I imagine my “custom” knife would top $1,000. Not bloody likely!

The knife I’m using now is longer than I’d like; barely fits into the watch pocket of my jeans (which I treat as a knife pocket). The one it replaced, the replacement $8 stainless steel knife, was the perfect length. But it wasn’t a stockman-style; it had only one blade, but it was perfectly useful, nonetheless. I remember when I lost that first $8 knife and when I lost the second one. I was so angry with myself I could have slit my wrists.

No one but me cares what kind of knife I carry, nor the kind of knife I want. So I’m not sure why I’m writing about my knife-lust again. Just to write, I suppose. And to prompt me to be on the lookout for another inexpensive, short-handled Stockman-style knife. Something that will fit in the knife pocket of my jeans.

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All right, then. Let’s embrace the day, regardless of weather.

I sit at my desk, hands on the keyboard. Once I begin to type, I cautiously expect words to flow from my fingers like water from an artesian well. Sometimes, my expectations are met. Too often, though, words struggle to escape, as if the alphabet were holding them in a subterranean linguistic prison, waiting to release them until I pay an unspecified ransom.

The ransom, though unnamed, is obvious to me. The alphabet refuses to release the flow of words until I commit to removing my disguise, using tools crafted from words those letters will make. Frequently, I am too afraid to express those words. Writing those words would require courage beyond my capacity to be brave. On those frequent days, I dance around the truth beneath my disguise with self-directed insinuations and innuendoes; occasional glimpses of reality show through the shower of syllables. In the face of possible revelations, I divert my own attention by creating words of my own. “Insinuendo” throws a gauze blanket over the intellectual secrets I hide in plain sight, staring out from the litter of several thousand paragraphs.

My emotional armor is made of aluminum foil, strong enough to block out the sun yet delicate enough to rip in a soft breeze. Even a nearly invisible crack in that protective layer causes it to tear off in sheets, revealing that it took the place of my skin. Beneath that metallic membrane, a gossamer web of nerves reacts to the slightest affective tremor; recoiling in pain and embarrassment at the overly-sensitive creature who resides under the disguise.

When the words refuse to flow from that artesian cavern well of letters, I think of myself as a counterfeit wordsmith. A pretender whose embrace of the emotional capacity of language is limited and artificial. I think of myself as an imposter. But over time, even imposters can get so good at pretending that they make the transition between imposter and actor. So, too, with counterfeit wordsmiths. With sufficient practice, the stories they tell to hide their secrets can become indistinguishable from reality. With their words, they can fool even themselves. Fiction becomes reality. Pain becomes pleasure. Discomfiture becomes self-confidence. Secrets become revelations. Truths become lies.

Metaphors and similes are axes and firearms. They are like locks that keep secrets hidden away in transparent—or should that be translucent?—vaults.

I see my father in my face in the mirror. I never saw him there until a year or two ago. Maybe that’s because I was never this age before. When he was this age, I was nearing my twenties; that point in my life about which at least some of my memories remain relatively clear. So when I see this man in the mirror, I see glimpses of my father when he was my age. But I never knew my father well. Not well enough to have long conversations with him. Not well enough to know much about what was on his mind. Not well enough to know whether he worried then about the same things that worry me now. But I am pretty sure only a few similarities exist between who I am now and who he was then. We were always different people. But, today, I see faint shadows of his image in my mirror. I wish I knew more about what he thought. My memories of him are generally positive; they’re just not complete. I knew him briefly as the grandfather to my niece and nephews. As I recall that aspect of him, I wonder whether he was that same man to his youngest child.

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Through zeal, knowledge is gotten; through lack of zeal, knowledge is lost.

~ Gautama Buddha ~

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I have been following on Facebook, off and on, the recent travels of my ex-sister-in-law’s brother and his wife. Their experiences cause pangs of longing in me.  I feel a deepening desire to explore the world of this country far beyond my little part of it. But because we are in the midst of working on our new house before moving into it and before putting mine on the market, that longing will remain unfulfilled for a while yet. It has remained unfulfilled for most of the last eight years. But now that sense of needing to hit the road is so strong that I can barely contain it. A quick trip to Tulsa or Fayetteville or the empty corn fields of Iowa is insufficient. I feel like I am a balloon; the stale air inside me is expanding to the point that the brittle film containing it may burst unless I release it all. Little jaunts relieve the pressure for a while, but each time it builds again quickly and threatens to explode.

Even after 400 generations in villages and cities, we haven’t forgotten. The open road still softly calls, like a nearly forgotten song of childhood.

~ Carl Sagan ~

Carl Sagan, as wise as he was, may have lost his hearing. It’s not the soft call of a song of childhood I hear, it’s a piercing scream, a howl so loud and fierce that it threatens to shatter my eardrums and crack the bones that hold my body together.

The occasional day-trip, though, will have to suffice for a while longer. Even a day in Little Rock or Benton may have to do; those excursions may barely suffice. They may be the pressure relief valves that can stop the balloon from bursting.  Until then, my trips back to New Mexico—to Gallup and Española and Santa Fe—and to the Florida coast and to the desolate beaches of Padre Island in the dead of winter will have to wait.

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A story, online, about the one-game suspension of a coach of a girl’s high school basketball team highlights a key difference in personal philosophies—but the “correctness” of one philosophy over another does not seem so clear. The Catholic high school coach was suspended because his team won a game by a score of 92 to 4. Through three quarters of the game, the score was 80 to 0. Administrators of the winning team’s school apologized for the lopsided win, saying the school “values the lessons taught and cultivated through athletic participation, including ethical and responsible behavior, leadership and strength of character, and respect for one’s opponents.” Further, the school’s president said, the win “does not align with our values or philosophies.”

The point made by the school’s administrators did not align with the philosophies of many of the people who read the story. What should the coach should have done? Instruct his team to stop trying? Remove three quarters of his team from the court? Tell his players to refuse to throw the ball toward the basket? Offer the opponents free opportunities to get points, without interference? Some commenters assumed the winning coach sent in back-bench players when the school became so lopsided. Others said it is the team’s obligation to try to win big, not to attempt to give “participation trophies” to the losing side.

Clearly, the philosophies of the coach and the school administration were at odds. Their objectives were different. Who was right? Obviously, the answer depends on one’s personal philosophies about the purpose of school sports. But that’s not the only issue. The issue also revolves around how to achieve that purpose. And it involves deciding what tactics best suit even a shared, agreed purpose. Assuming that teaching “sportsmans-like behavior” is shared by coach and administrators alike, how does one teach that trait in such circumstances? Does telling the winning kids to stop trying work? Does telling the losing team that the winners are being instructed to “go easy” do the job? At what point, if any, should the losing team’s coach have decided to forfeit the game instead of playing to the bitter end? Same question for the winning team’s coach. And does a humiliating defeat teach the losers a more valuable lesson than would have artificially inflating the losing team’s score? The philosophies between supporters of the coach and the school are, apparently, quite different.

I think sportsmanship is knowing that it is a game, that we are only as a good as our opponents, and whether you win or lose, to always give 100 percent.

~ Sue Wicks ~

I do not have the “right” answer. While I feel sympathy for the losing team’s humiliation, I do not think punishing the winners’ coach is appropriate. Nor do I think it appropriate to effectively ask the winning coach or his team to effectively “throw” a significant part of the game simply to save face for the losers. But I would hope that, somehow, the players on both sides of the court would have been taught a deliberate lesson about the value of sympathy and empathy and humility. A public apology by the administrators of the winning team and the suspension of its coach seems, to me, an artificial and inappropriate lesson.

Incidentally, the teams were Sacred Heart , a Catholic high school in Hamden, Connecticut, and Lyman High School. The game was played on January 3.

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I’m in the mood for a conversation that expands into a long exploration of the thoughts and wants and experiences of someone I may know, but not well enough. That could be anyone, though, couldn’t it? But it’s not. I want to explore the mind of a reticent poet. An artist who must create. An adventurer who craves action but happily settles into relaxation as respite from frenzy. Someone flush with cash but struggling to buy food. A person seeking a way out, but gladly planning for ways to stay in. Everyone, that is. And no one. Ach! Errands and objectives call to me this morning and for the rest of the day, the week, and—it sometimes seems—all the rest of Time. Best to get on with more coffee, and a bit of breakfast. And a shower and shave to get the day off to a clean start.

Imagine, if you will, you and me sitting together on a worn wooden bench in a secluded area of a park-like setting. Miles from the nearest town, we are alone. This oasis is ours, alone. Only the glimpse of a deer darting into the underbrush in the distance or a bird silently slicing through the sky reveal the existence of any other creatures. It is just us. Sunlight drenches our shoulders in warmth and a gentle breeze caresses us with its soft touch. Aromas of wildflowers fill the air. We look into each other’s eyes, hoping to learn something about life. But when our eyes meet, we hold one another’s gazes only briefly. We’ve been taught, if only accidentally, that looking into another person’s eyes is permitted only between lovers, so we look away, but our gazes always connect again. Yet we keep looking away. Because we are not lovers. We proclaim our belief in universal love, yet we are not lovers. Ach! That is a conversation for another time.

Now imagine me transforming into a person you loathe. Hold onto whatever emotion held you while you and I glanced at one another. But now you see someone else sitting next to you. A person you despise. Yet you attach “my” emotion to that person.  Whether it is love or tolerance or simply friendly acceptance; you now feel something different about that “enemy” of yours.

Now, instruct your imagination to change that enemy into someone with whom you have an intimate relationship. But hold on to the emotional framework which began when you and I sat together. No longer do you feel the comfortable intimacy with that person. Instead, you feel the awkwardness you felt looking into my eyes; so you look away.

As you instructed your mind to see different people sitting next to you, what did you sense around you? And as you attempted to require your emotions to be stable, attaching them to someone you do not like and then to someone with whom you are extremely close, what did your environment look like? Did you continue to feel the sun as it bathed your shoulders in warmth? Did you smell flowers and see wildlife? My bet is that—if you were able to change the “partner” on the bench next to  you—you did not feel the sun or the pastoral experience you felt with me. If you had begun the experience sitting next to an enemy or someone extremely close to you, I think the environment would disappear with the changes in your bench partner.

Why am I spending so much time setting up an argument I can neither win nor lose? I wish I knew. I wish I understood what fascinates me about the psychology of thought and personal interaction. I wish I could see through the façades of context and into the heart of emotion.  And I wish those who actually attempted (whether they succeeded or not) the exercise would tell me what happened. But I do not expect it. Expectations lead to disappointment. And disappointment leads to depression. And depression leads to places we would wish on no one we care about.

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Another bizarre and deeply disturbing dream. Or should I classify it as a nightmare? At what point does a dream darken into a nightmare? I suppose there is a thin line beyond which fear turns to terror. Or are there gradations? Concern building to anxiety, then to apprehension, then alarm,  then to fear, and finally to terror? One more ribbon on the emotional spectrum? Yet another example of an affective continuum?

Many of last night’s (or this morning’s) details turned to vapor when I woke, but those I recall are these: 1) I was hosting a President and his small entourage in my home. 2) I had done something (I do not know what—but it was something minor in “normal” civilian life, but equivalent to treasonous in the context of the President) that, if discovered, would put me in danger of imprisonment. 3) I hid something damning among a collection of vinyl records. 4) One of the President’s entourage, a past acquaintance (a man from a long-ago job environment in real life), initiated a search of my vinyl LPs. 4) The searcher came across a Gatemouth Brown record he could not cross-match against some form of information that would prove me innocent of my treasonous infraction. 5) I tried to call Gatemouth Brown in the unreasonable hope he would corroborate my innocence (knowing he did not know me). 6) The person who answered the phone said Gatemouth  Brown is not taking calls.  And that’s it. I’m sure there were many, many more details, but that’s all I can remember. Except I know there was more. I know the President distrusted me. I know something preceded and prompted the search of my collection of records. I know there was a specific plan to unveil my bad deed.

They’ve promised that dreams can come true—but forgot to mention that nightmares are dreams, too.

~ Oscar Wilde ~

In my dream, I was almost paralyzed with fear that my simple treasonous act would be revealed and I would be both embarrassed and imprisoned. When I woke from the nightmare, my heart was beating very fast and I was shaking. Bizarre and disturbing, indeed. Embarrassed? Yes, I felt embarrassed for some reason. More embarrassed, perhaps, than afraid; though my fear seemed akin to both panic and terror. I was glad to be awake, when it was over. Perhaps I should say “regardless of whether it was over.” Because I do not recall how or whether it ended. I shudder, even now, at the sense of dread I felt when I entered a room—where I had earlier been in conversation with the President and his entourage—to find my long-ago colleague rummaging through my LP collection.

+++

My IC and I went to Little Rock yesterday, despite our misgivings. The wildfire-like spread of the COVID-19 Omicron variant concerns us. We have decided to minimize our contact with other people to the extent we can, while still taking care of necessities. Yesterday was a necessity—handing a recall involving an upgrade from 3G to 5G telecommunications technology on my Subaru, about which I was notified just after mid-December and which I was told must be completed by January 15 or the process would be at my expense (oh, I will write a scathing letter or two about that). What I first was told would take about two hours, then was told would be a 3-4 hour process, then was told would take “a while longer,” finally turned into six hours. And, after being promised a loaner car (verified late in the afternoon day before yesterday), I was told on arrival that no car was available. Thanks to my expression of dismay and low-level anger (and to the service advisor’s response to it), we were given a loaner. We did a couple of errands, keeping our distance from people as much as possible, then went to visit The Good Earth Garden Center in Little Rock.

I love The Good Earth Garden Center! Spending hours there is easy and soothing. I think I could spend days there. I could live there! Acres and acres of magic. Though huge areas of empty outdoor displays revealed the extent to which plants were missing, waiting for Spring, the place is a playland. Ceramic planters and outdoor art litter the landscape. Stone and gravel pathways steer the visitor into enormous hot-house sheds full of tropical and semi-tropical plants. A huge building filled with beautiful fountains of every size and shape prompted us to want to landscape our new home with paths and fountains. We spent most of our time at The Good Earth Garden Center outdoors, thanks to reasonable comfortable temperatures and lots of sun. If we were not the sole customers, we were among the very, very few. Though we did not buy anything, we know we will one day. If I win the lottery, I am confident I will buy a lot from that place. I may even buy the place and build a comfortable cottage in its center, where we will live, comfortably distant from the plague.

+++

I have a busy day scheduled for today. Whether being busy equates with being productive remains to be seen. Time—in its incredible ability to see through moments like they were made of the clearest glass—will tell.

Tenderness is rare compassionate warmth; a gentleness reserved for those for whom one feels deep affection. Or admiration. Or pity. Tenderness cannot occupy the same mind—at the same time—as the mind that harbors red-hot hatred or blind rage. Because tenderness feeds on the same emotional fuel required of those altered states. The mind distills experience in a manner similar to the way an oil refinery distills crude oil. Either jet fuel or petroleum jelly may emerge from the process, but not simultaneously.  Similarly, emotions can create either Florence Nightingale or Charles Manson, but not in the same person and not at the same time. Or can they? Can the manner of combustion of flammable emotional fuels lead to two very different outcomes? For example, will causing an electrical spark lead to a different fire than striking a match? The answer is as simple and straightforward as coffee is clear and sweet.

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Everything exists along a continuum. Whenever I think deeply about a subject—any subject—I come to the inarguable conclusion that the object of my thought is a tiny spot within an unimaginably long spectrum. Invariably, every item and every idea is inexorably connected to every other item and idea. The connections initially may seem tenuous, but with enough attention those couplings become as real and as unbreakable as the links in the stainless steel chain to an anchor the size of a planet. I can visualize the way everything is connected to everything else like this: On a globe of any size, select a spot. From that spot, draw a line that bisects the globe. Then, draw another line perpendicular to the first. Continue one, each time halving the distance between the lines until the lines are so close together it is impossible to see any spaces between them. Pick any other spot and do the same. Keep selecting spots until ever spot on the globe and go through the same process until spot has been selected. In every direction, each spot is connected to every other spot. Perhaps my description does not do the concept justice. Maybe the concept is suited only to philosophy and not to graphical expression. Regardless, I stand by my assertion. Everything exists along a continuum; a spectrum of connections that links everything with everything else. Now, what do I do with this “knowledge?” That question is what propels me toward the oblivion toward which we all hurl. There is no reliable answer.

+++

Imagine a world in which the future is dictated by the selection of a paint color. Choose green and the universe will unfold in one way. Selected grey and the universe will provide a very different experience. Pick red and the future will appear utterly different from the one arising from the other color choices.

Knowing the choice of paint color will determine the course of the future, but not knowing precisely how the choice will impact the future, how much time would you spend making the selection?

Every choice we make is like the decision on paint color. Every. Single. Choice. Picking salmon over herring for dinner can alter everything for all time. The blue shirt instead of the brown one; ditto. The discrepancies between outcomes may be imperceptible, but they are real. If you choose the brown shirt, you may be party to the exploitation of laborers in Guatemala…people who worked in slave-like conditions in un-air-conditioned factories to make your shirt. The demand for the product manufactured in that factory—your choice of a shirt—could be the trigger that leads to an uprising and a revolution. Yeah. And the choice of a paint color could lead to the decimation of Amazon rain forests. Or, by contrast, to the transformation of entire cultures from living in barely-survivable conditions to lifestyles of comfort for every member of the tribe. Choices have far-reaching consequences. And indecision is a decision, in and of itself. No matter how hard we try, we cannot escape either blame or responsibility. Or both. You might as well choose deliberately.

+++

An unexpected message can brighten one’s day. This one is for you. It can mean anything you want it to mean. This secret message is for you, alone.

Malignant populism found its moment with the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Whether that moment becomes a lifetime remains to be seen, but indications increasingly suggest it will last at least that long. Trump’s brand of populism continues to metastasize into what I am afraid may already have become a terminal disease. Democracy—already fragile from decades of abuse as a civic bludgeon, rather than a method of vesting the power of government to the governed—is morphing into a totalitarian tool. Both ends of the political spectrum are guilty of having used it to advance their narrow views of how society should function. Blame does not belong solely to the right wing fringe; it is shared equally by the left, which has been just as insistent on behaving in “my way or the highway” mode. Compromise could have served as an antidote to extremism, but both sides refused to relinquish their “principles” for the good of the people.

Many years ago, when I read the dystopian political novel by Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here, I remember thinking, “no, it IS possible,” but also thinking how incredibly unlikely it would be for the scenario to play out.  Trump’s defeat in 2020 did not end the march toward totalitarianism. In fact, the mindless support he and his henchmen still enjoy today suggests the struggle is, in many ways, just beginning. Today, open talk of civil war—usually by people at opposite ends of the current political debate power struggle—offers an eerie similarity to the novel’s story, in which civil war rages on.

Just like the gullible public in It Can’t Happen Here, today’s unsophisticated Trump supporters blindly long for and accept his and his followers’ promises of a “return to” patriotism, traditional values, and economic prosperity for the mostly blue-collar underclass. I wish I felt optimistic that the struggle might end peacefully and without authoritarian rule by economically powerful overlords, but I do not. Those with ready access to unthinkable riches and unchecked political power will, I fear, impose their totalitarian control over everyone else, including their most ardent supporters. Those supporters will not understand—that what little power they had has been taken away—until it is too late.

And on that cheery note, I launch into the first Tuesday of what may be the final tragic year of the remnants of democracy in the USA.

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If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.

~ Louis D. Brandeis ~

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Switching gears (because otherwise I will empty a few bottles of hydrocodone and slit my wrists), when I fell asleep last night, I was imagining upgrades and changes we might make to our new house.  New paint throughout the interior, new light fixtures inside and out, new ceiling fans, pressure washing the exterior, painting the paintable exterior trim (excluding, unfortunately, the hideous vinyl siding, which should be illegal), and various and sundry other updates and upgrades were on my mind. My imagination works a lot faster than my hands or my pocketbook, so realistically the process of transformation will be a long one. But, now that the holidays are behind us, we will get in gear to begin the undertaking. I have no idea when we will be able to move into the new house, nor when I can finish preparing my current house for sale. But it won’t be too awful long. I hope. I am anxious to move on with the next stage of my life. Even though COVID-19 is making travel extremely inadvisable for now, we may eventually be able to hit the road a bit, but not until the new house is sufficiently habitable. Oh, it is “habitable” now, but not sufficiently so to make me want to call the movers just yet. That will take some time. In the interim, perhaps dreaming of what I want the place to look like will work as sleep aid. Aside from two or three trips to the bathroom during the overnight hours, I slept reasonably well until a quarter after 5. I felt like I was sleeping in.

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If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.

~ C. S. Lewis ~

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Yesterday, I had a follow-up appointment with my oncologist. This morning, I have an appointment to have my teeth cleaned. Tomorrow I have to drive to Little Rock for an optional recall matter on the Subaru (something to do with the “on call” emergency button, etc.). Too damn many obligations getting in my way of working on the house!

Enough of this. I need to eat breakfast, take a shower, and otherwise prepare for whatever this day brings.

One can find wisdom about almost any topic just by seeking what others have said about it. Someone, somewhere, has expressed a profound pearl of wisdom on the subject simply by uttering a few words. The following quotations comprise three such profound expressions about the perils of being comfortable with one’s position or condition in life.

♦ Comfort can be dangerous. Comfort provides a floor but also a ceiling.  ~ Trevor Noah
♦ Sometimes the place you are used to is not the place you belong.  ~ William Wheeler, screenwriter
♦ When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.  ~ Lao Tzu ~

These three gems emphasize the hazards of complacency—the acceptance of known comfort over potentially life-altering distress. That is not to say one should automatically abandon safety and security wherever it is found. Yet choosing adequacy instead of taking risks can be a risk in itself. Avoidance of the possibility of failure or pain can carry with it unintended avoidance…of success or advantage.

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Act too quickly and you might find that you’ve made a mistake from which you cannot recover. I have learned that lesson more than once—which means the lesson did not register the first time. Or the second. Or the third. For example, early in my relatively short exploration of personal financial investment (in the absence of a competent financial advisor), I got some hot tips about stocks that were almost guaranteed to increase exponentially in value. A $1,000 investment quickly dissolved into a value-less waste. I could not sell shares of the stock, even at the collective putative value of less than $10.  That lesson was repeated, with equal impact, a few more times. Thanks to the insistence of my late wife, I finally paid heed to several earlier lessons.  Years ago, I did not act on my enthusiasm for buying a very expensive (in my financial context) piece of art I loved and believed would quickly escalate in value. She gently insisted that I acknowledge I had little to no expertise in art investments and that our money could be put to better use elsewhere. I have no idea now of the identity of the artist or the current disposition of the art; in hindsight, though, I recognize the $5,000 we did not spent on a piece of art was an important contributor to our nest egg. Today, even if I were to learn the art had escalated in value into the millions, I would still be comfortable with the decision we jointly made. It was a rationale one, unaffected by unchecked emotion.

Lately, I’ve been toying with the idea, off and on, of buying a self-propelled recreational vehicle. Those multiple lessons about acting too quickly have served me well as I contemplate that possibility. The purchase of such a vehicle would be an expense; not an investment. Unlike the purchase of real estate,  the reasonable expectation of which is the reliable appreciation in value, buying an RV comes with the expectation of both enjoyment and probable depreciation. Acknowledging that, whatever decision I ultimately make will be made rationally. And knowing that emotion can take hold of one’s better judgment, I know better than to decide, either way, too quickly.  For some people, the expenditure of  $100,000+ for an RV makes good sense for many reasons. It might represent a second home, for instance, that provides an opportunity for lease income form a primary home. For me, though, that kind of expenditure could conceivably represent a financial mistake from which I could not recover. So, before I make the call, I have to remove as much emotion as possible from the decision. That’s the key lesson. Forcing oneself to extract emotion from important decisions to the extent possible. Easier said than done, of course, but worth the effort in the pursuit of solid happiness.

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I read a piece yesterday, courtesy of wordgenius.com, about diacriticals in the English language. I wish diacriticals were used more in English. They are extremely helpful with understanding pronunciation. Plus, they look nice. 🙂 Here, for my own reference, are some important bits of information extracted from the article:

Acute Accent
café
Examples
fiancé
résumé

Grave Accent
Examples
à la carte
crème
vis-à-vis

Diaeresis
Examples
doppelgänger
naïve
Brontë

Circumflex
Examples
château
crêpe
maître d’hôtel

Cedilla
Examples
façade
garçon
açai

Tilde
Examples
jalapeño
piñata
quinceañera

The year 2014 was a period of intense self-reflection for me. I do not know with certainty what prompted such deep introspection, but I suspect it might have been the knowledge that my life was in the midst of dramatic change. I knew from the first day of the year that my my wife and I would move away from the Dallas metroplex, where we had lived since late 1989. That would have been enough, I suppose. But there was more that made me want to take a look inside; I wanted to know more about me than I had known before. Part of that thirst to know more about me prompted me to commit to writing, every day, my “thoughts for the day.” From the first day of that year through the last day of the year after, I wrote at least one and sometimes two very brief blog posts with my “thoughts for the day.” A significant trigger for my daily posts, I think, was my desire to lift myself out of a years-long low-level depression. Self-motivation; an attempt to cure an ailment about which I knew virtually nothing.

On that second day of the year eight years ago, among the few words of my short post were these:

Today, I will dance for no other reason than to celebrate movement.  Today, I will think for no other reason than to celebrate thought.

I remember, all these years later, how I hoped my words would motivate me to break free of the melancholia. And I recall that they did; they urged me to try, at least, to shed my low opinion of myself. For two years, never missing a day, I awoke to express in words something that would change me or, at least, help me understand myself. I posted pithy comments, short rants, and the stuff of motivational posters; an eclectic blend of words that, I hoped, would reveal me to myself and would enable me to become someone I could  like more than who I was. I compiled the entire year’s Thoughts for the Day for 2014 as a means of sharing what a year of my life meant to me, as I lived it. I did the same for 2015. I had planned to publish them in two separate softback books, one for each year. For various reasons, I abandoned that idea. I still skim through the two drafts on occasion, wondering why I ever thought anyone would find them of even passing interest.

Even though—after two years—I abandoned the self-imposed requirement that I write a short piece every day, I have continued writing almost every day since. My writing now usually is a significant departure from what I wrote during those two years; it has no single, focused purpose. Today, I write because I cannot NOT write. I have to express what’s on my mind; even when I find it hard to think about what to write, I MUST write. It’s therapy, I suppose. I imagine it’s still an effort to explore who is inside me and an attempt to find something truly loveable or likeable. There’s a  sense of “Catch-22” in all this, of course. Self esteem is the sine qua non of admiration and admiration is the sine qua non of self-esteem.

So much of what I wrote in 2014 and 2015 comprised the same substance I write about today. Sometimes, I feel like I’m just rehashing everything; like I have an incredibly small sphere of ideas and emotions that I recycle repeatedly, just using different words. It’s almost like I’m wrapping words tighter and tighter around a hard piece of an inaccessible something and the tighter I wrap it, the harder it gets. A nut impossible to crack because it has morphed from something soft into a diamond-hard rock. It’s pointless to keep recycling these things. I sometimes laugh at myself for thinking, in 2014 and 2015, that I could accomplish by writing what I couldn’t accomplish by living day to day. The accrual of wisdom sometimes coincides with the accumulation of sheer stupidity.

+++

According to my computer’s weather widget, the temperature as of 5:50 a.m. was 25°F. It’s now more than an hour later; I suspect it may have dropped a degree or two. The high today is now forecast to stay at or below freezing. That sort of weather is uncomfortable, of course, but because of extended periods of sub-freezing temperatures, it also has the potential for troubles such as broken water pipes. Ach!  Fortunately, our HVAC system is holding its own, so the temperature inside the house is comfortable. But the system is cycling on and off rather frequently, evidence that it is working much harder than normal to keep inside conditions close to ideal. I hope that situation continues, both here and in the “new” house. I put hose bibs on all the faucets at the new house day before  yesterday; yesterday, I went over late in the afternoon to set the faucets dripping slightly. I did the same here. With good fortune, all will be well. I’ve experienced burst water pipes and their aftermath before. I do not want to experience either again.

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Finally, these two quotations provoke me to contemplate what is so deeply hidden i

Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt ~

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~

As I am wont to do of late, this morning I peered back to review what I’d written on this day last year. The first paragraph of my post, First Words, included these comments:

…I bid good riddance to a year laced with pain, sadness, heartache, fear, anger, and lies. With that boot to the rear of an ugly year, I also welcome a year that holds promise and potential that can be met only if humanity collectively applies itself to correcting the errors of the past. I wish I felt more optimistic about the likelihood that the potential will be met.

My optimism was, in large part, unwarranted. In that same post, I noted that I had received, the day before, a phone call that can best be called “transactional”—informing me that my wife’s ashes were ready for pickup. Then, a confirming text: “…you have a scheduled pickup…”

I will remember 2021 as the second gut punch of a fierce attack that began in 2020. But the year also brought me into the good fortune of a relationship with my IC, an experience which I believe saved me from myself. The occasional ray of brilliant, healing light can illuminate even the bleakest times.

The occasional ray of brilliant, healing light can illuminate even the bleakest times. 

My expectations for 2022 do not overflow with enthusiastic optimism. It’s better to be pleasantly surprised than to be thoroughly and painfully disappointed by dashed expectations. Yet I vacillate between wanting to be more of a realist or more of an optimist. Pain tends to accompany both mindsets; one a long, enduring, crippling ache and the other a sudden and sharp stabbing wound. Yet that brilliant ray of light can yield  unexpected succor; something that can turn dull worry into joyous appreciation. Life is what it is. One’s expectations, in fact, clothe either hope or dread that can be stripped away in an instant. Perhaps it’s better simply not to allow expectations to muck with one’s life experiences.

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I will end this short and less-than-overwhelmingly-enthusiastic post in a completely different vein, courtesy of an adaptation of an Irish blessing I find smile-inspiring and mood-altering. To you, my friends and family, as well as the unexpected and unknown visitors to this blog:

May you be poor in misfortune,
rich in blessings,
slow to make enemies, and
quick to make friends.
But rich or poor,
quick or slow,
may you know nothing but happiness
from this day forward, in this New Year
and all that follow.

Sadness gives depth. Happiness gives height. Sadness gives roots. Happiness gives branches. Happiness is like a tree going into the sky, and sadness is like the roots going down into the womb of the earth. Both are needed, and the higher a tree goes, the deeper it goes, simultaneously. The bigger the tree, the bigger will be its roots. In fact, it is always in proportion. That’s its balance.

~ Osho ~

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This morning, I sense that I am feeling around blindly, reaching for the branches, trying to stretch past the edge of the sky into the heart of the galaxy beyond. Yet I cannot get loose from the roots wrapped around my ankles, preventing me from shuffling off the mortal coil that straps me to my consciousness. I suppose that’s what a celebration of a break in time does to one. We shed an aching, angry, painful, distasteful old year and attempt to capture a new one, full of promise and potential. That break in time is artificial, of course, but we make it real by our behaviors. We transform fantasy into reality simply by accepting an imaginary tear in the fabric of time as a real rupture; something that allows us to burst free of an atmosphere full of noxious gases into an environment that is pure and clean and unchained to misery.

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I think I need to retreat into a protective fictional cocoon; just enough fact to confuse me into believing it’s real.

Kolbjørn Landvik, my imaginary ancestor who is related to me through DNA transported over time (and through the consumption of a vegetable broth, if memory serves), is back. He’s somewhere in my head, dreaming about the beauty of the Norwegian coastline of more than one hundred years ago. It’s tragic, really, that he died at sea—a rope attached to an anchor got wrapped around his ankle and dragged him to a watery death. At least that’s how I remember it. Though he was alone in the boat, I was there with him when he was pulled overboard by that impossibly heavy piece of seafaring iron. But that was a long time ago, even before I became convinced that he and I were blood relations.

My own DNA test results suggest my relationship with Kolbjørn Landvik is and was all in my head. The test hints that my genetic relationship to Kolbjørn is an artifact of my overactive imagination, augmented by strong coffee and a desire to be free of this godforsaken wasteland of a planet on which I live. It’s not the planet, though. It’s the people who inhabit it. Many of them are decent, good, compassionate souls who represent the very best of the human race. The others, though…the human equivalent of demented vultures with rabies. But I digress.

Yet DNA tests have been wrong before. Haven’t they? Are the tests wrong, or might the DNA samples been mishandled? Or were they contaminated? Or, perhaps, were my DNA samples accidentally switched with someone else’s…too damn many possibilities. Ach! I could simply acknowledge the hideously strong likelihood that I am, at my core, of almost pure English descent, with nary a cell of Scandinavian blood in me. That reality advances the theory that I am thoroughly and utterly insane. That’s alright. I can live with madness. I always have, haven’t I?

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Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ~

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My fiftieth high school reunion, if there is to be one, will be held in 2022. I have not attended any of the reunions thus far. Not ten years, twenty years, thirty years, nor forty years. I had envisioned that I would attend the fiftieth, though. I’m not sure why I looked forward to it. I have absolutely no close connections to anyone from my high school days. Even the distant, tenuous connections I have are through Facebook pages. And while I cannot rely on Facebook to give me reliable information concerning people about whom I cared little during high school and even less now, it gives me clues. And the clues tell me most of my high school cohorts are deeply conservative people (plenty of Trumpers, I’ve discovered) who measure human value with financial accomplishments. Why in God’s name would I want to plunge into that cesspool? No, I think I’ll forego the fiftieth reunion, too, if they hold it. I suspect many—perhaps most—who attend have refused COVID vaccinations and refuse to wear masks.

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Leonard Cohen’s fourth studio album was entitled New Skin for the Old Ceremony.  Years later, he released an album called The Future. Until this morning, I had never quite made the connection between them. Coming across the Rumi quote, below, I began to see the connection. Or, perhaps, I’m just making up a connection where none exists. But I choose to think Cohen intentionally expressed that connection in albums almost twenty years apart. Am I alone in seeing the tune, Anthem, as a future “new skin for the old ceremony” in the form of a restatement of Rumi’s words?

The wound is the place where the light enters you.

~ Rumi ~

---

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

~Leonard Cohen ~

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Finally, the last day of 2021 has arrived. As I pondered what to write this morning, I looked back at what I wrote on this day in 2020. My post on that day was very, very long. It was a mixture of chit-chat about my experiences the day before and my plans for the day after, along with a smattering of unrelated ruminations. Last year on this day, my wife’s death twelve days earlier consumed my every thought. But I tried to write as if that fact was not on my mind. I remember writing that post, intentionally expressing happiness and joy in place of what I really felt.

This final day of another year is better in many ways than last year. My IC is here, which emphasizes the fact that I am the beneficiary of extremely good fortune. But COVID remains rampant worldwide and seems to be getting worse. And political and social divides seem to be reaching a point at which our society could violently explode. We humans have had many, many thousands of years to perfect societal harmony, yet we seem to have spent those years planning for and perfecting the means of implementing society’s ultimate collapse.

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In spite of the fact that I’ve used this post to expel some ugly thoughts and nasty ideas, deep inside me I am optimistic. We can overcome the challenges we face, both those manufactured by our own hand and those forced on us by Mother Nature. All we have to do it give it our best and help everyone around us do the same.

I wish every person who reads this post a year in which joy overwhelms sorrow. May 2022 be a year that brings happiness, good health, and prosperity to you and yours and everyone else on Earth, the only planet ready and able to sustain us.

Reading letters or emails or text messages a person sends can give clues about the sender. Spending hours reading her personal diary can provide a modicum of wisdom about her. Looking at the images he posts online can offer hints about his emotional or intellectual condition. But those mechanical expressions of an individual’s fundamental state of mind—the core of who he is, at his core—are just pointers. They give tips about who’s “there” behind the public mask. Only by face-to-face interaction does one stand a chance of really knowing someone. Even then, she may reveal who she is only after weeks or months or even years. And that revelation may be made to such a small number of others that only a sliver of his social sphere may have a reliable inkling of who he is. In fact, the revelation may be made only to a mirror. Or not at all. The “real” person may be forever buried beneath layer upon layer of intentional or inadvertent artifice.

I’ve probably written something like this before. That’s because I regularly encounter surprises. People I think I know by virtue of distant interactions suddenly seem to be someone else. Even people with whom I’ve had casual, amiable relationships can reveal a fiery, dangerous core unlike the calm, cool one I thought was resting comfortably inside. It’s best, then, to figuratively undress a person, face-to-face. Remove the protective cladding that conceals sharp edges or soft spots. Like peeling back the layers of an onion, remove the protective sheets that mask the person’s unvarnished self. Engage. Talk. Let one’s guard down, in the hope the person in front of your eyes does the same. Listen and watch and assess. The skeptic in me urges me always to be ready to second-guess one’s earlier opinion of someone else. But the optimist in me insists I should reject that mistrustful attitude.

Nothing in particular prompted these thoughts. Well, that’s not true. Something did, but that something was far more innocuous than these paragraphs suggest. I tend to over-think and over-analyze. Another couple of my innumerable flaws. Which are revealed not just in person, but in writing, as well.

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I woke again around 4 this morning, this time from a worrisome point in a hard-driving dream. It was hard-driving because I was either walking alongside or riding a poor-quality mountain bike most of the time. During the first part of the dream, possibly “day one” of an unwelcome adventure, I was with a group of younger people participating in an organized ride on a mountainous trail. Everyone else on the trek was stronger and more experienced than I, but I somehow managed to follow them to a pickup spot. There, while we waited for our ride back to the base camp, we twice saw a vehicle come to a stop at a stop sign, then take off down the road again. Both times, the same dog was behind the wheel and another dog—again, the same in both instances—sat upright in the passenger seat. I was only modestly surprised. In the second part of the dream, the biking group was of similar make-up, except my friends Lana and Mel were included. The trail, this time, seemed to be outside Austin, Texas; I’m not sure how I know this. Unlike the first day, this day’s trek began with the group splitting up. I followed Lana and one other bicyclist, but they quickly left me behind, as I had a very hard time just getting the bicycle wheels to turn. Another bicyclist was beside me at first. He told me Mel was in a group behind us that would start heading our way later in the morning. The other cyclist and I got separated soon after we started. I reached a point where the trail seemed to end at a road; I started heading right, but quickly decided it was the wrong direction. I turned around and headed up the road and into a old neighborhood filled with ramshackle old frame homes. Alleys behind the houses suggested they must be part of the trail. In both parts of the dream, the trail often followed rock outcroppings that looked like the rock had once been worn smooth by water. And, often, the trail required jumping over gaps in the rock; sometimes, the gaps were in fact narrow but deep canyons. Finally, I saw a group of riders ahead of me, stopped at the top of an overlook. Lana was among them. They seemed concerned that we had gone the wrong direction and there was no way back to our starting point. After that point, I have no recollection of the dream. I suppose it ended when I woke.

Though I don’t know why, I expected to sleep through the night last night. My expectation was dashed when, around 1:30, I woke with a need to pee. Getting back to sleep was a bit of a lengthy undertaking, but I finally returned to my slumbers. Sometime later, I woke again, uncomfortable with my position. I tossed and turned a bit, but finally succeeded in getting back to sleep. Then, I woke from the dream. If I can force myself to refrain from even a short cat-nap today, perhaps I can force myself to sleep through the night tonight.

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Today looks dreary in the extreme. I long for sunlight and a climate suited to short sleeved shirts and shorts. Year-round. With occasional bursts of rain, cold, and even snow. But only occasionally.

The constant “thrump, thrump, thrump” in my ears is just the internal sound of my heartbeat, sending blood coursing through my body. That racket is especially loud and irritating early in the morning when I sit down to write. The noise causes me to wonder whether my blood pressure is high, causing the hammer and anvil and stirrup inside my ear to vibrate more ferociously than normal. It’s my understanding that the  proper names of those tiny bones, incidentally, are malleus, incus, and stapes. Regardless of what they are called, they seem to vibrate with an annoying frequency when I wake up, as I did today, before 4:00 a.m. But the sounds they create are not the only things I hear inside my head; I “hear” the perpetual nighttime noises that crickets make, as well. I have come to think, though, that what I “hear” is a form of tinnitus, the affliction normally associated with “ringing” in one’s ears. Only, with me, it’s not ringing. It’s the constant chorus of crickets. Fiercely persistent crickets that refuse to be silent, regardless of how much I need that silence. I could really use that silence right now. One should have access to the comfort of pure, unadulterated silence at 4:45 a.m. If it weren’t for my fears of its irreversible nature and the associated pain, I might plunge an icepick in each ear just to attain that blissful absence of noise. For the moment, though, I’ll continue to live with it. Ach!

+++

People remain unknowable to us, even people that we’re very close to. And I think the same goes for our own selves.

~ Katie Kitamura ~

I’ve tried hard my entire life to know myself, though always understanding deep down the effort was pointless. That remains true today. I keep trying, even in the near certainty the attempts are futile. But the harder I try and the more certain I am the endeavor is a waste of time and energy, the more desperately I seek to know the unknowable. That unpleasant circularity is a trademark of either stupidity or madness; I’m not sure which. I suppose I hold onto the hope that one day I will find a crack in the vault behind which I might find the answer. And I hope I can chip away at that crack until it become a chasm through which I can climb into the “chamber of answers.” That illogical hunger, the equivalent of seeking nutrition from a rock, is what leads to religion in its many forms, I suspect. Idiocy, on one hand, spiritual tenderness, on the other. Somewhere in the middle, most of humankind practices an odd form of imbecilic spirituality; unquestioning belief in the divinity of a tale originally spun as a bedtime story.

+++

Last night, for dinner, I made an ad hoc variation of a Greek roasted vegetable dish. The recipe I had, one I made years ago before we moved away from Dallas, called for eggplant, tomatoes, onions, bell peppers, potatoes, zucchini, garlic, and various spices, lots of olive oil, etc. I did not have bell peppers or zucchini, but I opted to make a version of the dish anyway. I added small sliced portabella mushrooms. And, at the suggestion of my IC, I shaved some mozzarella and added it atop the nearly-cooked veggies toward the end of the roasting period. After roasting the veggies, we let them cool. With a little red wine, the meal was outstanding. Both of us commented that we could eat the dish several times a week and be happy about it. And we may just do that as we enter the new year. Both of us, feeling bloated and stuffed after a lengthy period of over-indulgence that has culminated these last two weeks of 2021, have decided we will make the transition to a healthier lifestyle when the food festivities of late 2021 are behind us. Better food and drink (and less of it), exercise, and intention; that’s what will make our lives more enjoyable as we plunge ahead into the unknowable future.

+++

My brother’s health continues to weigh heavily on my mind, though there’s essentially nothing I can do to change it. His health rests with medical professionals and with his own body’s ability to recover from the maladies afflicting him. In spite of the thousands of thoughts that fill my head about what he’s going through, I cannot seem to fashion those thoughts into coherent sentences that can even begin to explain my thinking or my emotions. Sometimes, my ability to express myself withers into dry dust. No matter what I feel, I cannot seem to put it into words. That’s an odd sensation for me; one I dislike with an intensity that’s rare even for me.

+++

The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

~ William Butler Yeats ~

I read an article from The Irish Times about intensity. The writer, Patsy McGarry, argues that “He was not saying it is a feature of human behaviour that the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity.” McGarry explain why he thinks Yeats was making an observation only about a particular time and place. I wonder whether McGarry knows more about Yeats than Yeats knew about himself. Probably not.

Intensity can be both an attractive quality in a person and a precursor to his utter devastation. In light of misplaced intensity, as is the case when a person fervently believes in his own position but discovers his position is completely wrong, the characteristic is not a strength. Instead, it is a weakness of almost heroic proportion. It is the Titanic of self-confidence. In such cases, intensity morphs into personal despair and the complete distrust of one’s own intellectual competence.

+++

I gave my IC’s dog a bath yesterday. I’m afraid the lovely little beast tends to stink. Only a few days after a bath, he smells a little like the End of Time wearing a cologne of rotted hope and spoiled children. So, he needs frequently cleansing. As I washed the monster, I pitied him while he stood shivering in the sink. After I lathered him up and rinsed the soap from him, I wrapped him in a towel to dry him as well as I could. I then used a hair dryer to blow warm air on his coat. Before long, he was dry and once again fluffy. His odor was again tolerable. And after his bath, he was extremely energetic. You’d have thought I gave him a dose of doggie speed.  After that experience, though, I think I understand why people take their dogs to groomers for baths. It’s not a particularly enjoyable experience for either the dog or the bath-master.

+++

I have a love-hat relationship with hats. I like them. I can love them, in fact. But I have always thought hats look bad on me. Or, rather, I look bad with hats on me. For that matter, it’s probably not the hat. But the hat accentuates the obvious. And there’s no reason to do that if it’s not absolutely necessary. But I like hats, nonetheless. I am particularly fond of fedoras. And newsboy caps. And I like Panama hats and bowlers. And pork pies. But not on me. None of them. But I do wear hats on occasion. In the winter, mostly. Even though I think they look good on other men, most hats make me look like I’m trying to be someone I’m not. In other words, hats on me say “FAKE.” But I wear them anyway. Which means either I’m fake or I don’t care whether people think I’m fake or not. Hard to say which.

+++

If I were to eat breakfast this morning, which I probably will, I might think about bacon. Thinking should be an enterprise. If it involves bacon, I would be willing to call it an enterprise. And so I will.

I have long been enamored of many of the quotes attributed to Kahlil Gibran. It’s a bit of an embarrassment that I personally have read little of his writings; only quotes attributed to him. That oversight or laziness or inadequacy or whatever it is should be corrected. I shall make that a point sometime in the coming months. In the interim, I will continue to ponder the words contained in his quotes. Those words seem to me so imbued with wisdom that I think the man must have devoted every waking moment to deep and productive thought. I’ve dabbled in The Prophet, but I don’t think I’ve ever read it all the way through. That should have been an easy read, though, because the book is so short. So maybe I have read it. But I tend to forget books (and movies) within hours after I finish them. That’s a bit odd. It corresponds to my experience of childhood, though. I remember only paragraphs and an occasional page from my youth; never a full chapter. What is it, I wonder, that causes me to quickly erase even the most valuable or most moving experiences from my memory? I suppose I’ll never answer that question, no matter how many times I ask it.

Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.

~ Kahlil Gibran ~

+++

Another night of sleeping in front of the television, going to bed early, and then struggling to get to sleep and stay asleep. But at least I slept more than the night before. A marked improvement, in my book. I woke just before 5 this morning. Almost like “sleeping in.” My arthritis is in full bloom, though. Wrists, elbows, shoulders, knees, ankles, hips, etc. But those pains and others notwithstanding, yesterday’s trek to my doctor for my annual “Medicare visit” was generally uneventful and lacking in unwelcome surprise. As expected, he advised me to exercise and lose weight. And he told me about his childhood, riding go-carts and bicycles to the post office and avoiding confrontations with law enforcement…because there was no law enforcement to speak of in the tiny town of 450. He told me he has sworn off visits to San Francisco and New York because of those cities’ high levels of crime. Nice enough guy—an inveterate talker—but I suspect our politics do not mesh well. He spent well over an hour with me, though, so either he’s thorough in his investigation of his patients’ medical and mental circumstances or he’s remarkably slow.

+++

Yesterday, during one of two trips to examine the new house, I repaired a nearby street sign. Ever since we first drove over to look at the house, we’ve noticed the sign at the intersection of Alvero Way and Viscara Way dangling from its post. Though the repair is temporary (the post is in need of replacement, which I will not do), the sign is properly hung for the moment. I took a cordless drill/driver and a lag bolt with me on one of my trips to the house and stopped to repair the sign. As I was leaving, I noticed a neighbor (at the corner of Viscara Way and Hidalgo) standing in front of his house with an HVAC repairman; both were looking in my direction. I waved. The repairman waved back. The neighbor stared. One day I will have to meet the unfriendly neighbor. I realize, of course, that he may not be unfriendly. He may have vision problems. He could be slow to respond to waves. There may be any number of reasons he did not wave. I should not categorize him as an unfriendly person. And I don’t. Anymore, anyway. I also arranged yesterday for both monthly assessments and utility bills to be paid automatically from our checking account. But I have yet to arrange for automatic withdrawal of mortgage payments from the account. Let that sentence be a reminder.

+++

Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair, but manifestations of strength and resolution.

~ Kahlil Gibran ~

+++

Part of my time yesterday was devoted to searching online for adhesive mesh, the stuff used to repair holes in sheetrock. I recently took down a hideously laughable “secret gun compartment” from the master bathroom wall in our new house, revealing four monstrous holes through which the previous owner had plunged large toggle bolts. It appeared to me the guy did not even try to find any studs behind the sheetrock; instead, he rammed toggle bolts through holes he drilled. At any rate, I need to patch the holes before we paint. And I need spackling compound and various other “stuff” from the hardware store. Today, if I’m feeling energetic, I’ll go buy the necessary materials to enable me to patch the holes. And I’ll fill nail holes left behind when the previous owners hung artwork of various stripes. I’ve thought about this before. I’ve just not done it. I have to start it, eventually. My IC says we should finish this week in slothful bliss before we launch into serious work on the new house. But I’m sort of in the mood, more or less, so I say strike while the iron is hot. Maybe.

+++

How many people in my small sphere know that Khalil Gibran was a Lebanese-American writer and poet and visual artist? Or that he died in 1931? I vaguely remember thinking, when I first was introduced to his work, that I thought he was a Muslim mystic from the twelfth century (or thereabouts). I’m sure that identity did not just pop into my mind; someone, though I have no idea who, must have planted it there. My mind is fertile; seeds left there tend to grow. But I rarely plant seeds of my own. Whenever I think I’ve had an original idea or an original thought, I learn that my pride at my own originality is misplaced. That’s when I remember Herman Melville’s words: It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation. I wish I failed in originality more often; instead, I succeed in flattering imitation at times. My originality is either not my own, after all, or it is not worthy of acknowledgement. Such is life.

+++

I sometimes daydream about you, the person reading these words, and wonder what you’re thinking. You may be someone I’ve never met, or met only briefly, or someone I know quite well. You may be an old man or a young woman or someone in between;  in age or gender or both. Why, I wonder, do you come here to this blog? I’ve heard from one or two people who surprise and honor me with their frequent presence here. But I don’t know what the people from Sacramento or Peoria or Lubbock or Oklahoma City or Fayetteville or Pittsburgh think. So I imagine them and what they think. I’m probably wrong about who they are and what they think about the words I write. I’m not so curious about the people who stumble on the blog, read part of post, and then move, never to return. It’s the returning visitors who, for whatever reason, find what I say of interest. They are the ones who interest me.

+++

I need time to think. Unencumbered time to sort through a million thoughts and discard the ones that no longer belong in my head. It could take weeks. Or months. Or years. I might need half a century to categorize and classify and judge the validity of all the ideas in my head. I think I try to do it during the night, when I’m sleeping. Or trying to sleep. When I dream about sitting in front of a wood fire in a tiny cabin. That’s when I gaze out the window at the snow-covered landscape and see miles upon miles of lovely desolation. Or when I relax in an aluminum folding lawn chair, its seat and back made of interwoven strips of plastic. From that chair, I can look out over the water and see the shore birds scurry along the empty beach. Ahh! That’s it. That’s the place!

I got back home around 7:00 a.m., having left a few vials of blood and a teaspoon or so of pee for the lab people to test and assess. The blood-letting specialist, a woman who has extracted my blood on a few occasions in the past, did the job again today. As usual, she insisted on trying my arm first. Failing to find a willing vein—but quickly finding and stabbing an especially sensitive nerve—she agreed to try stabbing me in my right hand. That hand has gotten used to being jabbed during the course of blood-letters’ explorations for blood geysers. The hand and its underlying vein obliged immediately, spraying the red fluid of life into three waiting tubes. The woman, apologizing for my excruciating pain, covered the puncture holes with white gauze and white tape, the latter of which was attached to my flesh with low-end adhesive materials that quickly released their hold on my skin, allowing the gauze to flutter in the breeze. Duct tape would have worked better. It might not have been quite as sanitary, though.

Homeward bound, I spied a donut shop. I stopped and picked up some apple fritters for breakfast. I had been prohibited from eating or drinking anything for several hours before the blood-letting, so the sweet seemed like a proper reward for my starvation. Coffee at home would be my reward for forcible thirst.

My physical is scheduled for 11:15. Between now and then, I will contemplate life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Yours and mine.

I will attempt to get more sleep sometime soon; no later than Friday of next week.

Another night of insomnia, though not as sleepless as the two previous nights. I was early to bed, but late to sleep. And I woke often. At 4:30, I rose for the day, which involves lab work and an annual physical exam. Thanks to my failure to go when and where I was to get lab work last week, I am sitting in the CHI St. Vincent outpatient area, awaiting my blood-letting. I arrived here at 5:20, thinking I would be the sole patient. Not so. A dozen or more sleepy-eyed people await their procedures.

One-fingered blogging does not suit me, so I will stop. Maybe I will think on the screen later, maybe not. For now, I will people-watch the sick, the afflicted, and the healthy who need blood-letting and such.

Perhaps night will become day before I return home and, later this morning, to the doctor for my physical.

Since before midnight, I’ve been more or less awake. The first time I looked at the clock, the digits read 11:58. Every 35 to 45 minutes or so since then, I peered at the clock again, not sure what I would see. Had I slept since the last look…was it nearing time to get up, or had the time actually dragged by the way it seemed? It was the latter. Finally, at a minute or two after 3, I got up. But it wasn’t like I didn’t get any sleep yesterday. No, I fell asleep in my recliner yesterday afternoon, after Christmas dinner and ample refreshments. My IC told me, when she woke me around 8:30 and suggested I go to bed, that I had slept about three hours. I think I deserved it. After yesterday’s tapas cook-a-thon, which began in the wee hours, I was bone-tired. I think I spent about seven hours on my feet in the kitchen yesterday. Enough time to convince me I really need a gel mat in the kitchen. That will be something for the new house.

Twenty-four hours after writing yesterday’s random thoughts, I sit in front of my computer again, wondering what thoughts will spill onto the monitor and into the internet. I’ll soon see.

+++

Yesterday, while my niece was visiting my brother in the hospital in  Houston, she arranged for a Zoom gathering. My niece, my hospitalized brother, my two other brothers (one in rural southeast Texas and the other in Jalisco, Mexico) my sister (in California), and my nephew and his wife (in Ohio) joined in, along with my IC. That gathering felt very good. It’s rare that my family is able to visit together; even though it was not in person (which is beyond rare), the event was a superb way to spend the midday hour on Christmas Day. An added benefit: I was able to get out of the kitchen and off my feet.

+++

The intimate gathering at home yesterday was a good way to spend the day. My sister-in-law and a friend joined my IC and me for tapas. Some of my efforts resulted in what I expected. Some were acceptable, even after beginning with a major faux pas;  the meat balls I made were NOT supposed to have included the chopped onion with the ground lamb…but they turned out okay, anyway. The fried olives were, in my opinion, excellent; I had worried they might not turn out as I had hoped. The aubergine balls looked a bit like black 8-balls from a pool hall, but they tasted good. All in all, I was satisfied and I think the others enjoyed the meal as well. The best part, of course, as is always the case was the gathering. I wish we could have gathered other friends and family around us. But if one if smart, one takes what one can get and enjoys it to the fullest. I like to think I’m reasonably smart.

+++

The top of the news this morning is that Archbishop Desmond Tutu has died. In a statement announcing Tutu’s death, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa called Tutu, “A man of extraordinary intellect, integrity and invincibility against the forces of apartheid, he was also tender and vulnerable in his compassion for those who had suffered oppression, injustice and violence under apartheid, and oppressed and downtrodden people around the world.”  I think those words describe quite well Tutu and his impact on South Africa and the world at large. I wonder whether his legacy will live on? Or will the forces of repression and global efforts to deconstruct democracy and human rights undo all the good he accomplished during his lifetime? I sincerely hope his legacy will thrive.

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The platforms of political parties attempt to express their adherents’ fundamental values, but usually fail in the effort. They fail because they veer into describing desired outcomes instead of core beliefs. They ignore the fact that core values may be in conflict with the means of achieving outcomes. And party platforms appear to be—and are—meaningless platitudes that conceal the parties’ real interests: to gain or restore and to maintain POWER. Desired outcomes should be outgrowths of party platforms, not the other way around.

The Democratic party platform is an example of the backward-thinking that conceals an  obvious power-grab; an expression of placating a potential audience of supporters by using outcomes as lures. Here are some of the bedrock “principles” from the Democratic Party platform:

• Building a Stronger, Fairer Economy
• Achieving Universal, Affordable, Quality Health Care
• Providing a World-Class Education in Every Zip Code
• Creating a 21st Century Immigration System
• Protecting Communities and Building Trust by Reforming our Criminal Justice System

In my view, the platform should represent unflinching, unchanging principles that do not change from election cycle to election cycle. The outcomes that emerge from those principles might vary over time, but the principles should not. The principles should guide the platform. Every one of the statements above is a statement of desired outcome. One might argue that the statements reflect principles, but I would disagree. The statements are meant to lure a target audience into a fight in which enemies are defined as those who would oppose the means by which the party hopes to achieve the outcomes.  From my perspective, the “platform” represents a naked lust for power, not a set of fundamental principles driven by a sense of morality. I could go on. I won’t.

+++

I am ambivalent about this Christmas Day. While I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas, I know cheer and joy are in short supply for many people. One of my brothers remains in the hospital, awaiting decisions as to whether he will be able to transfer into hospice care. Through Medicare, our society—in its grand and glorious generosity—provides coverage for hospice care…but not in-hospital hospice care. I understand the costs for in-facility hospice care are extraordinary; unattainable by most and certainly unattainable by someone of my brother’s means. My niece, who has been my brother’s primary advocate, continues to push forward, though, seeking options that will provide comfort and providing the kind of compassion all people need. I could go on about our society’s massive, systemic, institutional failings, but I won’t…for now.

Instead, I return briefly to my own gratitude. I am grateful both for the comfort and compassion I enjoy and for the kindness and decency of millions upon millions of people who recognize their obligations to their fellow human beings and who act on them. In spite of all the aberrant behaviors that cause senseless pain and make the headlines, the number that demonstrate goodness and compassion exponentially outnumber the negative. Sometimes, in the face of a constant barrage of bad news, it’s hard to acknowledge that simple fact. But it’s true. Yes, I’m ambivalent. But I’m not a fount of perpetual negativity.

+++

So, my complaint about waking at 1:30 again and staying in bed—attempting but failing to sleep—until 4 is not negative. It’s simply a minor grievance. Yet the cause of that grievance allowed me to get a lot of work done in the kitchen. I peeled and chopped and cooked and so on from 4 until 6. Thanks to my industriousness, the zanahorias aliñadas are marinating in the refrigerator. The sauce for the aubergine balls is finished, cooling on the stovetop. Most of the ingredients for the aubergine balls themselves are ready for the next step: “whomping them up” in the food processor. Because I expect the food processor’s “whomping up” setting will cause enough noise to wake the dead, I’m waiting until my IC awakens to continue that task. But, after I finish this post, I will return to the kitchen to work on a tomato and garbanzo dish. Thereafter, I will turn my attention to various tapas designed for an omnivore’s palate: lamb meatballs, bites of pork with a sherry glaze (I hope), and various other goodies. Lots more chopping and slicing and such. But not as much as I had originally planned. We scaled back our plans, considering that we might need to drop everything. At this point, we’re planning a low-key tapas Christmas.

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Last night, we went to our church’s Christmas Eve service and Soup Supper, an event we cancelled last year due to COVID. The service had elements of the UUVC tradition, with carols, stories, etc. The Soup Supper featured an impossibly large number of soups and other dishes, all of which if life were fair I could have sampled. Everything I tasted was exceptional. Our church is awash in chef-quality cooks. We brought home a considerable amount of our Pumpkin-Black Bean-Mexican Chicken soup, which suits me because I am so fond of it. My sister-in-law shared the recipe, which she found somewhere online, I think. It is one of the best soups I’ve ever had, I think; my sister-in-law has a way of honing in on exceptional recipes.

+++

My mind is a tangle of thoughts that compete with one another for time and attention. I wish I could simply hit a switch to turn off the mass of worries and dreams and consciously mundane thoughts that flood my head. Maybe they are responsible for my insomnia of late. I suspect I may go to bed early tonight. Or I may leave suddenly for a ten-day road trip to nowhere. I’ll place my bet on the former; odds look good for that.

I envy Jason Bateman. Not for having been named Harvard University’s Hasty Pudding Theatricals’ Man of the Year for 2022, but for possessing the handsomeness I’ve always wished for but lacked. And for his youth. He’s only 52 years old; a mere child, it seems to me, as I wade through life in what behaves like a retirement village for 80-somethings.  Age, though, is an artificial construct.

Age does not necessarily equate to infirmity or to mental decay. Indeed, I have friends whose 80+ years have done nothing to slow them down. One guy runs a program in which very senior retirees rehabilitate old computers and distribute them to deserving individuals and institutions. A woman I’ve considered young and beautiful since I met her a few years ago celebrates her 70th birthday tomorrow. She looks just as gorgeous and alluring as ever. And my own lovely IC is nearly that age—and only a year older than I; her youth shines through as clearly as if it were the bright light of a 30-year-old.

Still, though, I envy Jason Bateman. If I had his looks, his youth, and could maintain the added wisdom I have accrued since my 52nd birthday, I would be in an enviable position, indeed. “If” is a mournful word. One of my favorite, and most melancholy and wistful, songs of the early 1970s was “If” by the musical group, Bread.  I remember some of the lyrics to the song:

If a man could be two places at one time,
I’d be with you.
Tomorrow and today, beside you all the way.

The entire song is sad, plaintive, and pensive, yet simultaneously uplifting and joyful. I guess that’s essentially the definition of wistful. I like that word. Wistful. It fills me with a sense of unrequited longing.

+++

I dreamed I had just completed a formal orientation as a new employee of a very large, complex, sophisticated association management company. I was just one of hundreds of association executives completing some sort of training program before being sent out to select en masse to select the company car which was part of the compensation package for each of us. The cars were located someplace within walking distance. To get there, we had to walk through a very seedy, dangerous-looking area; both sides of the stretch of narrow road were bounded by brownstone walk-up buildings. At street level, clustered closely together behind dirty plate glass windows, small shops hawked their wares and services: tattoo parlors, tobacco shops, bars, pawn shops, massage parlors, liquor stores, and assorted other places. Strangely, I felt somewhat more at ease as I passed by the shops than I did in the company of my fellow new-hires and our bosses. Nonetheless, I felt out of place and I wished I could leave. When I awoke from the dream in the middle of the night—around 1:30, I think—the experience was clear in my mind. I considered getting up to write it all down, but I did not. As a consequence of my laziness, I’ve lost what I believe was a significant part of the dream. There was much more, I think. But it’s gone. Just hazy vapor, disappearing even as I try to retrieve my vision of those moments.

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Being grateful for one’s good fortune sometimes competes with one’s sense that the gratitude could have and should have come much, much earlier. Not that the objects of gratitude could and should have come earlier—but that one should have should have acknowledged earlier how much good fortune one has experienced. That disappointment in one’s late gratitude is hard to overcome. Regardless of the difficulty, though, one should overcome it. It is an integral part of maturation. It is a natural byproduct of the accrual of wisdom. One’s understanding of the passage of time tends to intensify, just as one’s experience of time tends to accelerate during the course of one’s lifetime. We should not beat ourselves up because we did not “get it” when we were younger. We should, instead, marvel at the young in our midst who somehow grasp the concepts much earlier than we did. We were not so much slow on the uptake in our youth as those young prodigies are incredibly fast. Granted, they are few and far between, but they are out there. I have seen them.

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I try to have a positive attitude about life in general. I really do. But sometimes—far too often—I lapse into a depression, when negativity overwhelms my attempts to look at the bright side. The advice I get during such episodes—see a counselor—seems so vacant and pointless, yet later I wonder whether it might be good advice, after all. Yet I remain firmly convinced that one’s “moods” are largely the results of extremely complex interactions between the chemicals in one’s brains and the effects of external stimuli on one’s emotions upon which “talking it through” probably has little impact. Perhaps I favor the “chemical” explanation because it removes much of the responsibility from me and places it on electrochemical processes over which I have little control…at least directly. But the anti-anxiety tablets my doctor prescribed for me during the last months of my wife’s hospitalization had no effects as far as I could tell. So chemicals to combat chemicals is not a sure thing. Just me thinking “out loud” through my fingers. There’s no resolution; just the musing of a confused geezer.

+++

My fascination with the idea of a small motor-home has returned. Seeing images and videos of tiny, motorized, self-propelled houses again has sparked my curiosity. I really need to experience a slice of life in one of these itsy-bitsy traveling living-dining-sleeping pods to determine whether I really want one of my own. But I don’t want to rent a behemoth. I want, instead, to test a much smaller version. In an ideal world, RV dealers would offer inexpensive two or three day rentals that come complete with an experienced traveling companion who could answer questions along the way and who could respond to minor emergencies involving grey water  or black water or blown tires, or inoperable retractable awnings, etc. Hmm. That might be a business opportunity for me. But, first, I have to find an available rental for that little RV and its human counterpart.

+++

I continue to wait for more definitive word about my brother’s condition. But doctors cannot necessarily give definitive information about matters over which they have neither control nor prescience. We—the collective we—expect medical professionals to have foreknowledge of the future. We want them to tell us, with certainty, things about which everyone, including doctors and their colleagues, are inherently uncertain. We can only wait to see how nature expresses itself and how the body responds to medications, treatment, and time. As frustrating as it is for those of us who remain un-institutionalized and relatively healthy, it is frustrating by a quadrupled factor of ten to the person living through the inherent uncertainty surrounding his own experience. Ach!

My brother—of my siblings, the one closest in age to me at five years my senior—is going into hospice care. Despite doctors’ expectations—that a surgical procedure within the last few days would prepare him for another procedure that would dramatically improve his condition—his condition has not improved. To the contrary, it has worsened. The doctors and surgeons have determined that my brother probably would not survive a second surgery. They recommend palliative care by way of in-hospital hospice care, instead. He has accepted the recommendation. He has told me clearly in the past that he does not want his life prolonged if it means a quality of life involving being bedridden in a hospital and unable to look out for himself.

This unexpected turn of events is extremely hard. My other brothers, my sister, our niece, and I recently had, collectively, finally convinced him to accept our help. Knowing we all had his financial back, he had agreed to move from the ramshackle place where he had lived for many years—where he was completely on his own—to a place where he would have a clean apartment, three meals a day, a solid social environment, and available help twenty-four-hours-a-day. Our niece, the only one who lives close to him, had taken on the task of helping him visit potential places to live. She has been the one, too, to visit him in the hospital and help him maneuver the labyrinthine medical establishment. Now, she is the one coping with his transfer to hospice. And, quite probably, she will be the one dealing with what is to come.  I feel helpless to do anything. And I feel guilt that I have done too little to give my brother a hand in dealing with challenges he should not have had to face by himself. Absent the presence and incredible help from our niece, he would have been dealing with an almost insurmountable mountain of difficulty. He is extremely bright and resourceful, but circumstances have dealt him raw deals for most of his life. If I had intervened at the right times in the right conditions, his financial footing might have been different long ago. He might have long since been in a better position years ago—and better able—to live in a less stressful, more hospitable atmosphere. It’s a bit late, now, to second guess what I could have or could not have done, though. Regardless, my brother is now facing the consequences; waiting in a hospital room to be transferred to hospice care. It was just over a year ago that my late wife moved into hospice care. That was an entirely different debilitating situation, but learning last night of my brother’s situation was also a a gut punch and emotional experience that utterly deflated the holiday balloon.

I hate that I cannot be with him. It’s my understanding that the flood of COVID-19 cases in Houston, especially in and around the medical center complex and Methodist Hospital in particular, severely limits visits. That was true last year when my wife’s life was coming to an end; though I was able to see her and be with her every day, as was her sister. Houston seems like a lifetime away. And I guess it is. The next few days will be, for all of us, an emotional time we do not want but over which we have no control. Christmas wreaths and trees and decorations suddenly seem out of place and awkward. Fragility is in the air. I feel cracks in my emotional armor and I see them in the mirror. Life and death are brutally hard.

Mortality defines the human condition.

~ Drew Gilpin Faust ~

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My IC and I decided last night to cut back radically on our Christmas Day celebration. We had planned a gathering of a few neighbors and friends; we planned a non-traditional tapas party. Instead, we’re having just two people over. If I suddenly need to deal with issues outside their control, they are flexible. And they won’t be disappointed that I abandoned the over-the-top food festival I had planned. We’re still planning on attending the services and soup supper at church on Christmas Eve, unless the situation dictates otherwise. We’ll try to keep things as “merry” as we can, given the circumstances.

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Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun. If you do not, the sun will soon set, and you with it.

~ Marcus Aurelius ~

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As usual, I quickly fell asleep in front of the television last night. The two prior nights, we watched episodes of Peaky Blinders. Or, rather, I started to watch them before I drifted off. Last night, I fell asleep while watching The Chair. I wasn’t asleep long. And last night I drifted in and out for just a while. But for whatever reason, I could not keep my eyes open. Until I got in bed. Then, I could not get to sleep for a long while. And when I finally did, it did not “take.” I was awake, off and on, all night. Finally, this morning, I got out of bed around 4. And I thought to myself, “Finally, I legitimately can relate to the opening lyrics of Leonard Cohen’s Famous Blue Raincoat!”

It’s four in the morning, the end of December
I’m writing you now just to see if you’re better…

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When the world grabs me by the collar and shakes me until I slip into compliance with its harsh demands, I realize that my normal daily complaints are just minor whimpers. They are undeserving even of brusque dismissal. They merit being ignored outright, as if the air had not been disturbed by my words of grievance; as if my protests had gone unnoticed. We bitch and moan about the simplest, most inane things. When matters of actual consequence arise, their importance is diluted; like an ice cube dilutes a shot of whiskey.

Guns are not intrinsically evil devices. It is what untrained or inept or fundamentally bad people do with them that unleashes guns’ awful potential that makes the need for regulating the use of guns so urgently important. The same is true of Facebook. The tool is not innately stupid, dangerous, or conceivably harmful in the extreme, in and of itself. Dimwits who misuse social media—untrained or inept or fundamentally bad people—are the culprits who misuse Facebook, leaving damage in their wake.

In recent weeks, I have experienced Facebook used as it should be. A tool permitting positive communications; the exchange of useful (or, at least, innocuous) ideas and information. This morning, just after I made my coffee, I saw that use in action again. Several weeks ago I joined a Facebook group called British Food Lovers. In spite of its undeserved reputation, British food can be outstanding; members of the group recognize that and willingly share information and experiences about the cuisine. This morning, I came across: a recipe for Crispy Chilli Beef; images of homemade Scotch eggs done in the oven; lovely images of, and conversations about, shepherd’s pie and its beefy twin, cottage pie; and a discussion of American versus British words describing various meals. The latter discussion arose in response to an image of a 1918 Christmas menu delivered by the Minister, Overseas Military Forces of Canada to Canadian troops in the British Isles; the menu’s reference to the midday meal as “dinner” spurred the conversation.

The Canadian menu, using British parlance, included Breakfast, Dinner, and Supper; in the south central U.S., those meals likely would be called, respectively, Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner. Comments from a few American members of the Facebook group suggested that, in the Northeastern U.S., the meals later in the day mirrored the British practices. Linguistic variations fascinate me almost as much as differences in tastes in food. I remember, years ago, discussions about dinner versus supper. Those discussions, though, suggested that some people either reversed the British approach (calling the midday meal supper and the evening meal dinner) or calling the evening meal either dinner or supper, but leaving “lunch” untouched as the midday meal.

Looking at menus from years ago, I have been struck by how much the eating habits of both British people and Americans have changed over the years. The midday meal seems to have morphed from a relatively small energy booster to a lavish and formal affair and back to something quick and easy. Almost the reverse appears to be true of the evening meal; “dinner” has gone from large and time-consuming to small and simple and then back again…repeatedly. The ingredients of meals between British and Americans sometimes vary just as much. Neither cuisine is dignified by calling it a legitimate “type” of food, though. British cuisine often is derided (unfairly, in my opinion) as bland and unpleasant, while American cuisine frequently is viewed as a crude assimilation of international flavors “dumbed down” for the weak and undiscerning American palate.

I love bubble and squeak, shepherd’s pie, steak and kidney pie, bangers and mash, fish and chips, and the British version of toad in the hole (using sausage). I share the British appreciation of peas and potatoes and just how vital those ingredients are to most “comfort food.” I used to go to England quite often and I loved the food there. In recent years, beginning just about the time I made my first trip there, British tastes have readily accepted the strong and growing influence of Indian cuisine. During my last trip to London, I was stunned by the number of Indian restaurants I encountered; I found one on practically every corner. If American food is a melting pot of international cuisine, British food seems to be changing, too, so that England is almost a “western” outpost of the Indian subcontinent.

Ah, yes, guns and Facebook. That’s where all this started. Unlike discussions of food on Facebook, the conversations I’ve seen about guns has been scary. In my view, Facebook should invest resources in monitoring discussions, intervening when they veer into territory in which gun-worship might spark unspeakable uses of the devices. But more fundamentally, access to guns (and their use) should be regulated to minimize the misuse of firearms as weapons of murder and mayhem. And, before being granted access to Facebook (and Twitter and Instagram and Tic Toc and on and on), users should be required to read usage guidelines and respond correctly to a long list of questions about proper usage. It’s easy to say “Facebook should do thus and so,” but it’s probably considerably harder to actually implement the intent of those prescriptive statements.

People (I include myself, of course) tend to simplify what it takes to achieve and maintain the extremely complex process of living in peace and harmony in a moderately free and open society. We have to curb our own behaviors and allow others more latitude than we might like. We must accept intrusive limitations on our “rights” and permit infringements on the rights of others that, from a safe distance, seem draconian and unnecessary. Those limitations and infringements should, in my opinion, include guns and Facebook. And I might even accept certain limitations on social media involving food; things like cooking living beings while they are alive, keeping animals raised as food in cruel conditions, etc.

Everything is simple, except when it’s not. There are no easy answers, not even to easy questions. Because easy questions, and ostensibly easy answers, hide enormous complexities beneath their smooth, simple surfaces.

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I respond to insomnia by sharing all my secrets at 4:00 a.m. Sleep eludes me when I should be deep in slumber. It finds me when I should be wide awake.

~ John Swinburn ~

What follows is a very rough first draft of a poem, rife with disconnects and broken parts–or is it hearts?–that cry out for repair. I haven’t written real poetry for a very long time. This effort, conceived and written this morning, illustrates how rusty the brain can get when it’s not used. I’m especially out of practice writing rhyming poetry; that’s something with which I’ve had very little experience…ever. I wrote the stuff I’ve recently read publicly a long time ago.

Good poetry either springs instantly into being—fully-formed—or its creation takes days or weeks or even months of the mental equivalent of blood, sweat, and tears to be born. This skeletal poem is of the latter ilk. If it’s ever completed, it will look very different from this deformed, premature embryo. It’s just as likely, though, that it will die—along with its father—during the birthing process. The birth of some poems, like the hatching of their prose brethren, can take years, only to yield a clump of stillborn syllables.

I’d rather write prose fiction and nonfiction, but I can’t seem to focus my energy on those things, either. I am scattered and broken lately, as if my mind was a fragile tea cup dropped on a granite floor. The pieces are too far-flung and too badly shattered to be glued together again. Still, I try to piece them back into some semblance of the shape I remember. Instead, I discover that I form the remnants of the tea cup into an abstract vase that’s neither artistically attractive nor utilitarian.

Fragments of Winter and traces of Spring
spark memories of Autumn all over again.
The sky, crusted over with clouds every night,
clears in the morning just ’round first light.
Wind barely whispers, soft like a dream
then, like a banshee, erupts with a scream.

The weather, my friend, is a little like me,
I can’t control what I barely can see.
Hidden beneath my rough outer layer,
my rage battles on with a plea in my prayer,
hoping for something I can’t quite explain,
a tonic to lessen perpetual pain.

Leaves’ litter in forests and on old country lanes;
when the branches are barren, only bark now remains.
Just a skeleton lingers, outlining the life
of a tree dissected with Nature’s sharp knife.
Yet it’s not what you see that’s gone withered and old,
it’s the spirit for living that now seems so cold.

Try as I might I can’t feel like I did
when I was much younger, still just a kid.
Energy ebbs and life takes a terrible toll
when bitterness floods, drowning my soul.
Tree limbs bend, barely able to take
the weight of the ice; finally they break.

Now is the Winter of our discontent,
no bandage can heal what’s broken and bent
from trudging through the snow and the ice.
No prayers can save us from our own device
that battered our psyches and tortures us still
despite intentionally swallowing life’s bitter pill.

Pain doesn’t die with the flesh when it goes,
nor recedes with the pyre nor when the coffin is closed.
Pain ever endures, leaving one for another.
Like a child leaving home, abandoning the mother.
Hurt spins in the wind, regardless of season,
regardless of rhyme, regardless of reason.

3:42. Once again this morning, my tendency toward rising early went into overdrive. Before the digits on my electronic devices’ clocks read 4:00, I had emptied the dishwasher, put the dishes away, made my first cup of coffee, and situated myself in front of my notebook computer. Here I sit, so many things on my mind that I can barely decide which ones to allow to spill from my fingers onto the keyboard. I have to start somewhere, though, so I’ll begin with by relating a treasured experience.

Yesterday morning, I wrote in my blog about my grief on the one year anniversary of my wife’s death. Later in the morning, after the church service—at which one of my very good friends was announced as the recipient of the Meg Koziar Distinguished Service Award—another of my beautiful friends sought me out and handed me an envelope. In it was a card with a handwritten note that illustrated, in just a few words, extraordinary care and compassion—the kind of love one often reads about but rarely actually feels first hand. She had placed a small slip of paper inside the card, on which she had printed the words from Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 I had included in my blog post yesterday morning. Also inside the envelope were two small stones, their rough shapes worn smooth.  I could barely contain my emotions. I tried to coax my eyes to refrain from filling with tears as I hugged her. I forced myself to let her go after just a brief hug, though I could have embraced her for a long, long time. I told her I love her and I meant it. I probably could have kissed her, too, but that might have been more than a little awkward, what with both her husband and my IC close at hand. 😉

Thank you, Penny. I hope you know how very much your love and kindness means to me.

During his sermons, our church’s minister frequently talks about love and admonishes the congregation to live by the expression we so readily share when we talk about the church. “Love is the doctrine of this church.” My experience yesterday was an extraordinarily tangible example of the validity of that assertion. It provided me with physical and emotional evidence that my church feeds my emotional hunger for connection and  If other churches, even those flush with dangerous dogma and deeply engrained bigotry, provide their congregations with the kind of compassion and love I experienced yesterday, I think I understand why people feel so strongly supportive of them. If only their congregations knew they could escape the dogma and bigotry and still find the same compassion and love somewhere else, our church always would be full to the rafters. I was grateful to our minister for mentioning yesterday that it was the anniversary of my wife’s death.

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Following yesterday’s church service, two other very good friends participated in a  conversation during which a panel of gay and lesbian and bisexual church members discussed with the congregation their life experiences. I had planned on going home immediately after the church service, but when I learned what was planned for the post-service conversation, I decided to stay. I’m glad I did. The conversations were frank, open, and enlightening. Listening to people talk about their life experiences related to their sexuality and what they have dealt with—and still deal with—was a riveting experience. I wish the whole community…the whole nation, the whole planet…could hear their words. The message was so clear: they are just regular people whose objects of romantic love happen to include people of the same sex; they are no different than the rest of us. I am glad that I long ago learned that to be the truth. I wish everyone else knew it, too. The world would be a happier place. The agony and heartache so many people still feel because of their sexuality would dissolve.

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I spent yesterday afternoon with my late wife’s sister. We talked at length about her sister and my wife and how she impacted our lives. The hours we spent together yesterday honored the wonderful woman we lost. Tears, laughter, and a flood of memories filled the rest of the day. Sometime in mid-afternoon, we drank a toast to Janine, her memory, and the deep impact she had on our lives. As painful as yesterday’s anniversary was, our conversation about her and her legacy helped sustain me and lifted me up emotionally. I am so grateful for my sister-in-law; yesterday would have been a much more difficult and gut-wrenching anniversary without her.

My IC graciously left my SIL and me alone to share our memories and our grief. I did not ask for her graciousness; she offered it as a given—she would spend her afternoon at the house we just bought, beginning the process of readying it for us to move it. That is one of the many reasons I find to love her. She sometimes reads my emotions even before I experience them.

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Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends
Mm, I get high with a little help from my friends
Mm, gonna try with a little help from my friends

Do you need anybody?
I need somebody to love
Could it be anybody?
I want somebody to love

~ John Lennon and Paul McCartney

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It’s past 5 now, edging toward 6, and I still have a million things on my mind—what we need to do before moving in to the new house, what to do with the current house before we put it on the market, when to sell it, upcoming medical appointments, my need to hurry up with the process of year-end financial and tax-related issues, my brother’s hospitalization, the results of the Chilean presidential election…the list goes on.

While all those items, and many more, merit my attention, for some reason I am especially intrigued by the Chilean presidential election. Gabriel Boric, a 35-year-old “leftist millennial,” was elected with yesterday’s voting. For reasons I’ve never fully understood, I have been fascinated by Chile for several years. I have followed the country’s tendency toward political ping-pong for several years, beginning with Michelle Bachelet’s first election as president in 2006. Bachelet, a strong left-leaning politician, was succeeded after four years in office by Sebastián Piñera, a right-wing politician. She then was elected to another four-year term in 2014, after Sebastián Piñera was elected again for the 2018-2021 term. Boric’s election, reflecting another shift back toward the left, shows how Chileans bounce back and forth in their political leanings. Though I do not have a dog in their fight, I hope Chileans stay with the left-leaning politicians for the foreseeable future. I think politicians of both conservative and progressive stripes are moving toward the middle in Chile, though Boric’s opponent in the election, José Antonio Kast, has a history of defending Chile’s past military dictatorship. Kast has been a strong admirer of Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, a fan of Trump. The fact that Kast got 44 percent of the vote suggests that fierce divisions exist among Chile’s voting population, a split we know far to well in the U.S.

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Okay. Enough. I have neither the energy nor the ability to control my adult ADHD necessary to keep writing. So I’ll stop. Maybe I’ll have an earlier-than-usual breakfast. If not for the freezing fog advisory that cautions drivers to beware of icy patches on the roadways, I might go out and get a fast-food breakfast. Instead, a flavored yoghurt and/or some cereal may have to do.

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I know. I make a lot of typos. I tend not to proof my own stuff. It’s one of my numerous flaws.