Books, books, books,

As a child, my mother would hide my book to get me to the dinner table without reading. My mother, 12 schools in 12 years and many, many books made me who I am.

Books That affected me deeply:

• Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
• As I lay Dying, The Sound and The Fury - Wm. Faulkner
• The Sun Also Rises and virtually every word by Ernest Hemmingway
• The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
• The Life and Times of Michael K. and Waiting for the Barbarians - J. M. Coetzee
• Ironweed, Legs and Billy Phelan's Finest Game by Wm. Kennedy
• The Once and Future King - T. H. White
• Stranger In a Strange Land - Robert Heinlein
• The Big Sky and The Way West by A. B. Guthrie
• All the Pretty Horses - and all the rest by Cormac McCarthy
• Legends of the Fall, Farmer, Wolf and more by Jim Harrison

Old and Young

I am old and young.  I am still.

Holidays

Holidays make me happy because:
1) Millions of people are trying to make other people feel loved or at lease sucked up to, which most of us do enjoy.
2) No matter the reason, life is a miracle and consciousness is an even greater miracle. I feel deeply grateful. I'm not sure to whom or what, but I still do.
4) I like the colored lights, ...the food, the candy and the presents I did not deserve.

 

Holidays make me cranky because I feel guilty:
1) I have never done enough good, and I know I could always have done more.
2) I probably didn't tell the people that I love that I do love them enough. (That is an odd sentence, but I like it.)
3) I am a cheap bastard, there is just not enough money to be as generous as I could be and also... as selfish as I am.

Science Fiction

I grew up on SciFi.  My first "real" books that were not comics were science fiction and it hooked me hard.  I was transported to so many amazing worlds, how could a scrawny new kid resist?  I stopped reading SciFi when I was about 30, ashamed of missing all the great literature I should have been reading, so I spend the next 30+ years catching up (oh and reading the great noir mystery writers, too, Cain, Hammett, Chandler, Leonard, and many others)  At the suggestion of my son, Jamie, I just read a bunch of SciFi books in a row by Iain M. Banks. They were delicious. I remember how I was so awed by the inventiveness of the great Asimov, Clark and Heinlein, well, Banks is at least as good and in some ways better, more MACRO, so expansive. Yum, yum.

In my mind today

Today I am so sad.  There have always been days when I get sad, reflective and feel isolated. Other times, not so much. But today as it rains on the remaining snow I am cold, alone, old and remembering, remembering, remembering.  Self awareness amazes me, really.  Why, as I feel whatever I feel, do I feel myself feeling it?  Likewise empathy amazes me. Why do I worry so about what my wife feels? Why do I want her to be happy? Why am I even aware of what others feel? Why do I care what they feel? Why do I cry in movies and books?  How does this all occur in the convoluted chemistry that resides just behind my eyes and between my ears? 

I want to be religious. I want to believe in purpose. I want to believe in my place in a plan. I want it very much. I want to surrender to God.  Why do I want this? Sometimes I pray. I pray for the ones I love when I am afraid for them.  I never pray for myself.  It seems too selfish, too prideful to do that.  Perhaps someone prays for me. I don't know, but I am grateful if they do. I am a little ashamed about this, being an agnostic, so I never tell anyone.

Molasses

I have always been both lazy and worked hard.  Contradictions are natural to me, maybe to all of us. Consistency is not such a virtue in my opinion, Should we not be changed by what we learn and experience? Does reflection have no value? I am both changed and unchanged.  I remain myself but there is more and more of me as time goes by and I learn, but still I remain myself and we all do, so we persist in habits, beliefs and characteristics learned or inherited.