I have a feeling that all those calling for the end of guns have underestimated the ingenuity of angry, frustrated people. I used to read the Manchester Guardian and UK Sun and was puzzled by all the campaigns to end knife crime. It culminated after a minor member of the Harry Potter cast was stabbed to death in a nightclub fight. (just like Marlowe)There was talk of banning sales of cutlery to those under 21. But knives, guns, catapults, bazooka’s and field level tactical nuclear devices are not the culprits; It’s people.

Most people will never admit they’ve been angry enough to cause harm. And in crimes of passion, anger, rage, frustration the determined rageaholic will prevail with any weapon. An abused wife beaten severely about the face and head with a whole dried salami. And we all know Cain, who slew his brother Abel, out of jealousy, with a large stone.  My brother pissed me off and I didn’t go all geological on him, but instead i peed on his toothbrush, and deep sixed it in my ass. it’s cakey and mungy.

Before I go deeper into the current zeitgeist outrage I must disclose. I am a rageaholic, I am gay, I have a sick and twisted sense of humor. I survived several nights at Plato’s Retreat and was present for the birth of my son (regular) and daughter (Caesarean) so gore is no problem. I also worked in a convalescent home and have watched 5 people die. I did not just stand by. There was a most compassionate protocol. If family members not around we, the staff would sit “shiva” and vigil by holding their hands and playing music from their pasts. We often lit candles, I a Latin enthusiast would intone “In nominee Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti” Alice Rubin would say Kaddish and Leila, a Lebanese refugee from the 1970’s civil war would help wash the body, as according to the Koran. Even the tough as nails Madler brother, a cook from Farmington Valley’s own Hell’s Angels family would clip flowers and send them in on a dinner tray. The next day Linda, the head nurse would place a memorial poster in the dining room with the name of the departed in glitter and pictures if available.  The reverence was palpable, but I got far more out of it than the deceased, the service was for us, the departed were mostly unaware. When Louise, who was the favorite of the head aide Pam died, Pam drove in on her day off, from Wolcott, to oversee, Louise had been very non-verbal, but when Pam entered the room for the last time, she weakly said “thank you”. In tears, we all gave them a moment. Holly Hill was a compassionate place.

The junk mail spam I get is far more interesting than the email. The Twelve Best Penziones in Scudari, Learn Coding Overnight, Natural Erection Medicine and Is Rose the New Riesling? All pull me in with the eagerness of a kid at a carnival midway geek show.

The search engines have me pegged. Wine, New York City travel (hey, it’s nearby and sometimes cheap) and porno; but they just haven’t gotten that last one quite right. I get tons of girl on girl action solicitations and a pretty regular MILF’s in Your Neighborhood newsletter (They’re sopping wet and nearby!!!). But alas, I’m homosexual. Take that in the ass Palo Alto. Wrongy Wrong RONGO. Bad Algorithm, bad metadata, down boy, sit.

These junk mails, these sponsored contents, this commercial intrusion(s) are welcomed, but the ones deleted first are from pure hucksters. Kohl’s, Matador, Bob’s, Bob’s Big Boy, Bob’s Discount Furniture, and Jordan’s, another furniture store with climbing walls, raw bar and a pedicure and vasectomy section. Once people went out like once every four years and bought a couch, no climbing, disco slides or karaoke rooms. Now, like sopping MILFS right in your closet!!, they blind you with bread & circus so that thirty feet up the climbing wall you spot the sofa of your dreams. You came for cotton candy and selfies with the two headed alligator and were tricked into going home with a daybed. I have no idea what a daybed is, but it sounds divine. My next job, when they show me my new desk, I’m going scream; “What no daybed!! This is fucking barbaric.”

Jordan’s pissed me off when they advertised that BUFFET would perform at the grand opening, and I wore my parrothead shirt and filled a slurpee cup with strawberry margarita’s. I was quite let down when the crowd, which consisted of soon to graduate Yale School of Management students, cheered for a dude, who, while years older than me looked less haggard and was not Jimmy, but Warren. They hung on his every word about the failure of interest rates to keep pace with junk bonds and M1 money supply.

Top of the Kings and Queens of the Spam Age were two called Saveur and Greatest. Greatest had this article called the “The Seven Questions that Changed my Life” by Susie Moore.

They were simple: you want my phone number?, let’s talk about salary, can I buy you a coffee?, can I ask a favor?, can I write for you? How can I get a discount? and what do I really want from life? But they have the effect of boosting confidence, clarifying life and being open and conditioned to rejection. Saveur has some simple recipes and one that’s just Persian cucumbers and watermelon. I try not to pry into ethnic backgrounds so I used seedless English cucumbers marinated in cider vinegar and lots of sugar.

I wanna write for this drivel sheet called Fatherly, which bills itself as the Dr. Spock blog of the tattoo generation, but my article “Why I Hate my Kids Even More Now That Their Grown Up” was rejected.

I am bitter and sad when I get anything about wine. Wine is such a ripoff. If Vodka changed year from year, vintage to vintage, the FDA would close them down. Lazy vintners blame the weather and harvest conditions when it’s really that they couldn’t get off their fat asses and choose the right artificial additives to sex it up.

And finally the emails about birds. All my life I loved watching birds and raptors and kites and storks and herons and hawks and kestrels. My favorite bird moments: a flock of seven flamingoes flying over Tampa, eagles floating down the Connecticut River eating a fish on an ice flow,  two eagles stealing fish from ospreys, huge condo like monk parakeet nests filled with squawky, colorful resident birds, two adult Sand Hill Cranes and a baby walking on a rain soaked golf course, diving ducks, pelicans, bluebirds, scarlet tanagers, orioles and owls.

Before the interwebnet of all things (my smartphone dishwasher tells my toaster how dark I want it and my television places orders for food and booze while I sleep, and that’s why I paid $32 for a bottle of Tuaca, a butterscotch liqueur which the dishwasher drank with the stove before they banged each other and gave birth to a nosy, self-cleaning oven that keeps telling me my milk is sour.) birdwatchers had newsletters to report their ornithological triumphs. “Saw two phoebe’s, a pie billed grebe, a titmouse and a dickscissel.”

At Hammandeggit State Park they keep a bird log, which is a throwback to gentler times. Birders,

NOTE: birdwatchers have changed their name to birders, they no       longer go birdwatching, they bird. I am going birding Hurrah!!!     However, I call myself, a bird voyeur; stalking, snooping, peeping tomming on their reproduction rituals and actions. Creepy.

manually write with pens and pencils what they have peeped in the park. The log was informative and funny. From the log I learned that seals,sun  themselves on the rocks at Meig’s Point, that hundreds of larks and falcons and cranes and egrets and ducks pass through. Once in a while some jokey kids write things like; Honda Accord, dog, crow, pterodactyl and landshark. It’s funny.

The zenith of birding watching was the interwebnet posting board, now gone away with long distance charges, words in phone numbers, remember Maple 2-3259?, faxing, dial-up squeals and trills from AOL and long distance operators. Here were the precious Rare Bird Alert posts. The entire site chirped with excitement as someone, probably Dori or Mike, spotted a Red Necked Phalarope in Stratford. Thousands descended to watch and stalk and peep. Unfortunately, a major defence contractor was located near the sanctuary and the poor bird was sucked into the intake of an S-61 helicopter and mulched. Connecticut seems to have a thing about grinding living things up. An idiot put his wife’s body through a wood chipper, a small boy was pulled in when the stick he was grinding up snagged his jacket sleeve, a senior citizen was ground when the same thing happened, leaving just his right leg, severed but intact.

The Bird Peepers still post, but now, since nobody is ever away from the phone, they use twitter and the death knell of western civilization; the phone app.

Want pizza? There’s an app. Tunneling into a bank vault?, use the app. Wanna find hot MILF’s, app it. So all these bird gazers get a text or alert or ding and they drop everything: brain surgery, childbirth and grinding stuff up and fly to the sighting. It just seems too Metropolis, too City Lights. Fuck you Big Blue, suck my dick Watson, open the goddamn pod door Hal or I’ll grind you up too.  Gotta close me and the refridgerator are apping AILF’s (Appliances I’d like to Fuck)

Once i played tennis in Tinkhamtown on a private clay court owned by the Tinkhams. It was in top condition and had an impressive view of the manorial cranberry bog. The Tinkham’s made their fortune running crooked faro games on the Mayflower and had every dime they ever made, being too cheap to spend. Although it was farthings back then.

Besides the tennis court they had an old wooden chair from the Jacobean period that had the most ratty looking wool and damask upholstery. It would have looked decent is the shredded seat cushion was fixed, but Tink, swear to god it’s his real nickname Tink Tinkham, said it would only reduce the authenticity of the piece. God knows how many workers Tink’s ancestors oppressed seated on this demi throne. And how many Tinkham butts had graced the chair.  Such is old money in New England.

Hartford had and still has numerous old money families, left over from the insurance, manufacturing, shipping and finance days. That time is gone. No central industry, no mega company holds sway. It ranks with Des Moines in influence on the nation. The last time I was in Hartford at night was December 2000. The Festival of Lights had Constitution Plaza glowing like a Swedish modern  showcase, only there were no people. Two weeks before Christmas and just me and Norrie, a family of six from Vernon and a shady dude with two women lurking in the north end near the shuttered fountain. And this was way before the TV station moved out. Eventual the whole area became shady and acquired the much deserved, Prostitution Plaza moniker.

That night i laid down on Main Street, in front of the Gold Building for 5 minutes, and not one car came by.

Each time I’ve worked in Hartford, it’s become less and less crowded. I really miss the Marble Pillar where you could get a quick beer before the bus over Avon Mountain.

Once, before I told the manager he was ; “a grifter and liar who was unqualified for running anything but an NCO club on Guam.” I worked at a private club.

The atmosphere was that of a colony of seals slowly drifting out to sea on a shrinking ice floe. But it had it’s moments. One was Gil, who shared his wine knowledge and enthusiasm with me.

The other was a group of guys. Phil was the leader and he sought me out cause i was trying to get famous in Hartford. What a stupid idea. He had been to my comedy shows. He showed up at our murder mystery. He was a big fan and a legacy member of the club. Kevin was lawyer for Morgan & Ellsworth, Sal, by far the most handsome in my opinion, was an obstetrician, Eddie, the poorest, was a childhood friend who I reconnected with after 18 years and the tall one whose name I never remembered was a financial planner.

One summer I got invited by Phil to his big house on the Connecticut River, up the left bank, north of Gillette Castle. This was one of my last expeditions into my old social circle. Sadly, as we talked, Sal, Phil’s lover told me that Eddie had died of esophageal cancer. I was kinda hurt and bewildered because he had been a lover in the teenworld days of the 1970’s and now he was gone at 38, plus, the fact his passing had eluded me or been neglected by me and that I hadn’t bothered or cared enough to follow the tragedy left me with a feeling of surprise and shame.  

I think Phil knew about Eddie and me back then and I’m sure when we reunited at the Club, Eddie told him. Life’s conversation threads. 

Phil served Champagne; Chartogne-Taillent Brut 1993. He was quite the mixologist and he served me my first negroni. And he made a great martini.

Gil and his wife were there and had been before. Phil was a jeweler and enjoyed many different social groups. Chamber of Commerce, gays, straights, theater league, all separate little compartmentalized circles with just a hint of overlapping at at the edges and by destiny; like me.

He saw me in the late 80’s doing improv, took in our murder mystery show. Belonged to the club i worked at and loved Gil and his wife. I was kind of a hit that day because we’d stopped at Brown’s and I found an 1983 Lynch-Bages which was marked at $34.99 on a sticker with blue ballpoint writing , but the Saturday lunkhead worker rang up the nearly identical hand written blue ballpoint pen catalog number of 1432. I handed him a five and a ten and waited for change.

Gil produced high grade marijuana cigarettes which he said was White Widow, named for the white pistils that glowed like a Norwegian Blonde just before full potency. And I started in on a story.

“Some friends from Avon moved up to Amherst. I was cruising on the back roads near their new home on a sunny fall day. they had me stop at this gated driveway festooned with sign that said DO NOT BLOCK DRIVEWAY, NO VEHICULAR TRAFFIC and NO TRESPASSING. It was a water company road and it was open to hiking, but liberally fenced. The path led us to a gorgeous pot smoking area that overlooked a huge inland lake. You could see across, but the length was huge. Twenty miles. This was my first glimpse of the Quabbin, a huge reservoir created in the 1920’s to feed Boston’s water needs. “

No birds around, no seals for a year. Only heard a few parrots. Eagles everywhere. Enjoyed a robin today while three crows mobbed a red tailed hawk. Soon noxious ospreys will swarm. Less birds; climate change?, urbanization?, electromagnetic pulses from the constant bang bang of updates, contacts and massive entertainmental discharges?

Cardinals remain heard but not seen.

Stories of the Border.

James, King James the L was a biker. Tough, but still not in the one percent of the one percent of organized Sons of Anarchy style sophisticated motorized gang crime.

He did have a great story though.

It was Bike Week in Laconia 1971. Jimmie was riding with his pack. They were headed to some pot grower’s place in Putney, Vermont, where some hippie had brought back seeds during the the early 1960’s from Afghanistan. Putney Ghani grew real well in the altitude, but needed special soil and organics to get the whole Khyber Pass effect.

The grower who purchased some seeds had a farm where his biker friends would hang. They would also protect and disseminate the crop.

So these 8 bikers from Stratford/Bridgeport, CT are tooling along on a back road and this Mercedes is broken down.  They’re in Putney, but on the west side of town and isolated. They think they’re gonna scare these people but the preppydriver guy gets out. He’s friendly and  Jimmie offers them a ride, They accept, which surprises Jimmie. A dude gets out of the back. He’s big, tough and a beer drinker.

Since they were going to Manchester, and it was like midnight and no taxis or buses or even tow trucks are running; they  wanna put them each on separate bikes. The old guy says he”ll drive his daughter and the preppy can ride bitch. He takes Jimmie’s ride and forces him on to the sissybar. But the old guy is a natural.

They spend the night with the pot grower in his largely unfinished but comfortable home. Getting served strawberry rhubarb pie. Jimmie asked the biker daughter/girlfriend of the broken Mercedes guy ; “Did we freak you out when we rolled up on  you with our Harley pan heads?

“No. talk to my father.”

Turns out he rode with the NSKK, the Nazi motorcycle corp. Wounded in the Caucasus’ he went back to Germany and survived the bombing of Bremenhaven. Tough dude.

But in America a World War 2 vet feels guilty if they rode a desk at Fort Dix.  Former German soldiers felt guilty if they didn’t. Hate must have been widespread back then and veryindulged in.

Once  gangs took over a Vermont border town and and used it to bring bootleg whiskey in. Today it’s meth.

The first gathering of free spirited motorcycle enthusiasts in Laconia was at Weir’s Beach in 1916.

The best part of some holiday’s; Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Easter and Halloween is the half-priced candy on sale at Walgreens/Duane Reade. They call it Duane Reade in metropolitan New York, as it was named after a colonial apothecary at Duane and Reade streets. Colonial means after 1745, as the city, for the first hundred years grew slowly south of Wall Street. When it was fully British, villages sprung up on the roads north. Five Points, near the pond, Greenwich Village and Chelsea grew as collections of houses and taverns and blacksmiths on the way north. Harlem was a forest, Yonkers a sleepy Dutch town and the Bronx a pasture land. The very first non-American Indian permanent resident of Manhattan was Juan Rodriguez, a Dominican working for the Dutch. He spent the winter alone, with indigenous company, in a Dutch blockhouse used as a trading post. Later during the “Cowboy Period” amidst the British occupation of Manhattan, one of the city’s first Asian resident’s, Tan Foo (sic) , a Chinese Malay national, passed intelligence to the Americans when he journeyed to Inwood on the island’s northern tip to purchase cattle and sheeps and chickens cheaper than the high priced ones raised on the Island. He would hand off his intel to one of the many Allen cousins of Litchfield County. These were frontier folk whose fathers and grandparents had carved out the town of Litchfield. Now, 60 years later Litchfield was too quiet for “raggies” like the Allen’s. They headed deeper into the woods in search of wealth, adventure and fun. Some got involved in the colonial wars; The Pequot, King Phillip’s, Queen Anne’s and the Seven Year’s War. They were tough, like SEAL Team 6. The Colonel of the Green Mountain Boy’s Brigade was Ethan Allen, who left Litchfield for the wilds of Vermont to make sure the territory came under the New England Royal Charter and Congregationalism rather than the New York Royal Grant and Episcopalianism.

Anyways, some of the Allen’s were typical raggies, cheating, thieving, gambling, hard drinking fighters who called themselves Raggies cause they grew up in the shadow of the sacred Nipmunk mountain, Mount Riga. They would swoop from their bandit camps seize cattle, ducks, livestock, birds, free slaves and liberate rum and silver. They hit mostly Tories, those loyal to George III, and then drove the plunder south to Inwood. For them it was a 100% markup  on the stolen merchandise. For our Chinese patriot, whose profitable road house near present day Bleecker Street served a great noodle soup (dim sum) that worldly Brits and visitors loved; it served two purposes, cheaper provisions and a secret meet-up. Tan Foo supposedly wrote the intelligence in Malay, which a former British sea captain working for the Americans translated using his Singapore acquired Malay knowledge to English. A true Ferguson Patriot. After all, who went into the streets to protest the police state; The Ferguson Patriots. Just like Crispus Attucks, a dockworker of American Indian and Negro heritage who spied on  British Naval strength and troop and ship movements for the Sons of Liberty. How many 1%’s are willing to die like him and Nathan Hale for their country today?

I am hearing cardinals, but never seeing them. Maybe I’m not looking enough. Lillibet saw the news about a new eagle nest in West River New Haven. We went and saw five old monk parrot nests. The eag, called P2, after his banding number and nicknamed Walter, was nowhere. He was banded as a baby in Hartford, probably the South or North Meadows. The south meadow has an airport, ancient buttonwood trees, a sewage treatment plant and huge tracts of bottom land. The north meadow has a raucous concert venue, cricket fields and a dike that serves as a mano a mano  cruising area. Grindr has killed most cruising areas. But I remember the block around the old Chez Est on Columbus Boulevard, filled with 500 campy cruisers. Looking, waiting, judging, hoping, meeting, leaving. The people would park and walk around or sit in the car and people- watch for man dates. I kinda thought the Old Olvera Street in Los Angeles was similar to the Columbus and Grove St. locale. Here dudes gather for love, instead of shy Mexicalifornian maidens of marriageable age; around a central square. While the old Fruit Loop has a lusty power, I think a spring night, in a cantina, listening  to guitars and fiddles, watching the girls in crinoline promenade with their duenna’s is more romantic. The flirt and hunt is always far sweeter than the conquest and kill.

Took Squave on a play date to Pete, the cat DJ. He does cat weddings, Bark Mitzvahs and other assorted music soirees. Schools like him for his NO Grinding Dances policy.  They tinkered and played and composed and taped and looped and rhythmed.  I sat looking out the window up at the cenotaph on East Rock hoping for an occasional woodpecker. Nada. Finally I was just able to summon one bird, a vulture, which tip, tip winged beyond the pane and outsight.

Monday, coming up the Boulevard heading north I saw two people with cameras and field glasses. Looking up just in time as the traffic moved I saw the eag. Dubbed the Ghetto Eag because of it’s urban preferences, it was sitting on a branch with it’s tail toward me.  It was hefty so it could have been the female which is a third larger and 10 to 15 pounds heavier than the male. Just like Flavor Flav and Brigitte Nielsen.

The show I’d written off was on and it was hilarious. Nice to see somethings improve after the opportunity for formulaic routine has become viable

As that which once happened in real life too, a TV bird did a poopoo in a woman’s mouth. Mortifying, but Hilarious; and more so because of a story i heard.

NOW i did not hear this story on the internet, or any electric medium. I heard it in a conversation (remember those?) many years ago. The best part was Hamburg Cove was the location of the real life oral doodoo bombing. It was on a boat, the cove is an ancient seaport,  and has a long history of swells and rogues, often in the same person.

Lots of people have drowned there and a sadness perfumes the cove’s beauty. The best story, excepting the highlighted one  above where a woman’s mother-in-law threw her head back to laugh and a gull did a drive by, scoring the swish.

Earlier in the 20th century a major Hartford financier fell off a boat filled with what the newspapers said were “his nieces”  and drowned. Sad, people drown there every year. Are they lulled into distraction by the surrealism? Or does the relax and party factor contribute. Sometimes it’s just bad luck.  But the water lulls and quenches and fools.

The cove was always a place of wealth as it afforded a discreet  smuggling opportunities for everything from the earliest to a sailboat with a keel full of high grade Colombian marihuana seizes in the Seventies. The boat’s name was Free Bird.

But Connecticut’s own Ethan Allen, was the first cowboy. He organized a fifth column, based on trade, to spy on the British in New York, which was occupied. It consisted of raiding the cattle of dirty Tory loyalists and driving it to New York, Yonkers actually and selling it the the British Army and Navy and fancy restaurants.

But coming out of the city was intelligence and some was provided by an Malaysian merchant of Chinese extraction who rented a crappy grog shop on the east side near the shipyards. He’s speak Spanish to one of the cowboy boys who were basically mercenaries. and many a Brit Tommy would coming in for his curry and a taste of memories of their Indian postings.

This tiny thing is so hard to write on, but that’s the path assigned. The password, foolishly written in anger, is forgotten, but perhaps he will help. Wipe it clean. Scorched earth. Reboot of life. I have been mean, but I am not a hostage. I am allowed. The “Becareful what you wish for” is intense. I have never experienced it this bad. So clear like the aurora in a sunstorm. Brilliant and debillitating because it just grabs you and enslaves your attention. You know it by rumor, it logical fits in your mind, but the one two punch: the wonderment of the wish fulfillment and the reality of its inner Frankenstein make you the deer in the headlights.

Tomorrow he may fix my screentyper. But I’ll wait. Unfortunately the dire wolf aspects of non webbed living combined with the Zhivago acquisition has mused me into a word purge mode. It is more considered on this tabla rasta (sic). My editor of the immediate is less on guard. Weirder, more wordy gooey stuff comes out. There is less story telling and language song emerges. Reading Paternak the art of poetry seems lost in the dot dash dot ( l O ) world. No more time for sparrows and Hawthorne berry prose . The birds chirped in the  bush cause it was ripe. No mooniness, no spirit or nature magic. Just the facts, ma’am. O.k? It tastes good. That’s it. But that is my voice. Terse, like Hemingway. Although he told great stories. There is my goal. The story. The misfits. The mob. The dregs. The crust and sauce of 25 joints serving the same thing forever over and over.

But I am writing. Is this not writing? Or must i- the rose was unlike any other seen by a human iris. The deepest of scarlet like vein fed blood it transmogrified the casual gazer with an awe and inadequacy that imparted guilt and lust in equal parts. Those that knew not lust just burned red with shame.

Pizza is so every where and yet ancient like Coliseum food in Rome.

The logjam has cracks. Until the 1940’s most timber logs came out of Vermont and extreme rural New Hampshire via the Connecticut River.  Sunken trees as old as McKinley lie on the bottom. And in the winter the logs in the water froze into rafts and jams. Each holding and capturing until the ice eroded away and water poured through the slush pulp barrier. ..the pie will yield to the tacodilla and the sushi cheese steak.

And I will chronicle the Starbucks on Moonbase Alpha and the Jollibee down the Marianas trench. Cause the freedom to autowrite or freestyle will inspire stories. How dare you text in my car will it’s snowing.

A turkey, a singleton, came into the courtyard between the apartment buildings. It ate holly berries from the ripe bushes. I watched it profusely. It trotted towards the water company property and I suppose it had come that way as our property is fenced from the north and east to the southeast.  Coming from the west would mean it crossed a busy road and the south was just an overly full medial building parking lot. But the more I think,  it did most likely come from the west, crossing the road and going down a narrow alleyway created by the north fence.

Eagles are getting a little too common, a pair is hanging at the corner of Legion and the Boulevard. The eags are looking to appropriate several monk parrot nests in huge maples on the Sherman Triangle. I like the parrots more than eags. Eags are thieves, saw some osprey  bullying here and in Florida. Parrots make condo nests, and the eags build on top. I still am in awe of seals, and would like to see a panther of moose. Anyways the Conservation police posted it and put up a snow fence, but the neighborhood has enough inconvenience and someone had kicked it down to create a pass through.

Larry picked me up on New Year’s Eve. He saw me walking. I was angry because he’d cancelled several Sunday trips. He’d plan it. Call me and lay it out and then cancel. But not like that morning or the day of or even ten minutes before departure. Like 50, 90 minutes or two hours into his 4 hour agenda. We were on the road and a call from his daughter would prompt an immediate u-turn.  He’s a lone wolf he says, but then he say’s he’s socially miserable.

Is it better to see yourself as others do and not give a hoot what they think, or is it better to cage yourself in a rigid set of rules that leave no response to chance and render anything outside the pale logic and therefore faulty, wrong, evil? Fucking Kierkegaard.

You gotta get your happiness wherever you can. Heard a choir of cardinals singing at dawn. Couldn’t see them, but the songs were intense. Grateful that my pleasure threshold is so accommodating of the simple. Those waiting for the magnificent always miss it in the mundane.

The eagles were perched in the half leaved tree. Their nest was completely exposed to view. The leaves are retreating. Soon the branches and trunks will be visually definitive- making the dark, dark brown, almost black birds with ultra white heads plainly visible. Maybe a small flock will gather.

Probably I will not see it as I am engaged in a great friendship. It is both rewarding and infuriating.  And I am testing, to see if any such friendship, conceived in respect and admiration can survive the test of idiosyncrasies and the struggle for dominance. As Jim Carrey put it; “Let’s do ALL the THINGS You want to do.”

Both of us are weird. We accuse the other of “abnormality” and we blame when we don’t instinctually know what the other wants. Certain actions are verboten. Singing, any public performance and rolled down car windows are all frowned upon. And they can’t ride in any car they’re not driving. And there is a deep well of self loathing that regularly waters driving attitudes, cooking and even ordering fast food. To me it’s ridiculous. To them my disdain is an affront against them. And I do not know how to lessen it’s impact.

Both of us have things: quirks, habits, rituals that baffle the other. No, piss the living shit out of each other. There’s this immovable monolith of logic that fuels the self righteousness. Both side’s viewpoints seem logical to a third person, but the things I do  seem ill conceived and the stuff they do seems arbitrary and something akin to ritualistic obsessive compulsive behavior to me.

But is it worth the effort? I do not think that I can reasonably ask anyone to change, but I feel it is fine for them to ask me to change. Yes, I can use your complaints to guide me to becoming a better person, but is that healthy? Must I submerge my real self for the sake of getting along? What do I get? Or am I supposed to be in this not for myself but to support them? Is this the end of selfishness or a deeper level of codependency? I love you, you’re perfect, now change was a hit on off-Broadway, but I’m not sure it works in the real world. The key I think is to not react. Jefferson never acknowledged any questions about his family with Sally Hemmings. Just refused to answer. I think my key to our sanity in this insane little backwater eddy of life is to ignore and react without emotion. To revel in the company while it lasts because this is not an “And now as it shall be forever and ever Amen” situation.  Today I saw a vulture and it was gliding beautifully on a thermal. I took it to mean that this, this good and illogical thing was already passing and now as I sit and write I am beginning to forgive the imaginary trespasses, the real quirks and the condescension…leaving me only with a strong desire for their company. Give me patience, understanding, compassion, tolerance and amplify the feelings of love.

If not; let me stay classy and loving as the ice floes of our lives drift apart.