IN SELF DEFENSE

Happy New Year! We are still in the blush of a new year. I’ve celebrated as much and as often as I dare and January has set in against my druthers. Cold weather isn’t so bad of itself but the trappings of winter wear thin even as I try to put my best foot forward. The new year means it’s time to collect and organize all of my tax records. I don’t mind paying taxes but the idea of some pencil-neck associate bureaucrat chomping at the bit; it’s actually a computer but I tend to personalize the culprit. My Michigan forms go to my Michigan address and Missouri stuff to the Missouri one. In that juggling act it’s not unusual for one or more necessary things to be lost or go AWOL. I’ve never been late or penalized but still, I hate the wait for each institution and bureau to locate me. I have a lady C.P.A. in Byron Center, Michigan who crunches numbers and it’s simple enough that she does the short form so I don’t worry about errors on the page. But I don’t think about it until January rolls around. 

By the time February sets in there will be winter buds on the trees and that’s reliable evidence, the promise of Solstice will be fulfilled. Spring will be stationed in the wings, waiting patiently for the ground to warm up and at this stage I have plenty of time. I can wait for April showers. With time in mind, I did some of my own number crunching. As an octogenarian, I have opened my eyes to a new day roughly 29,500 times. It may seem like a big number but it’s not. Life, human life is short, even if you live long. Twenty nine thousand dollars can purchase a new car but only a low end, plane Jane run-about. No self respecting car thief would take a Korean sedan when there are plenty of 50-60 thousand dollar SUV’s and pickup trucks parked at the curb. I bought a house once for twenty-some thousand dollars but you can’t get an empty lot for that now. Eighty years, 29,500 wake-ups; if you’re lucky you still have some of your own teeth, you can shuffle across the street and hop up on the curb. At 29,000 miles your car is still a teenager. Numbers, just numbers. But you realize each new wake up is special and none of them are guaranteed. 

I keep this journal in self defense, proof that I can still throw words at the page and flesh out an idea. Very soon, only a few wake ups and January will be half spent. I would have preferred an exciting, even an interesting story but this little ramble will have to do. It’s a new year and I can ride it like a rodeo bull rider or like an old dude in his recliner but that’s about karma, what you encounter coming back around. Camping on the beach is in the cards, tomorrow, for the next ten days or so. I’ve never been enamored with Texas "Bravado" but warm January weather on the Gulf Coast can defuse a lot of otherwise undesirable culture. My daughter recently encountered a local shop keeper who choked up with emotion when she confessed, she just didn't know how anybody, how anybody could vote for a Democrat. That said, it occurred to me there was a lot more that she didn't know. I default back to my Mother's wisdom (I do that a lot) when she asked me, "Would you rater die by a fast bullet or a slow rope?" It's no secret that one's political orientation is driven by an emotionally charged, reptilian brain with little or no real, rational thought process and that feeling good is preferable to weighing an argument that might turn against you.  The "Feeling" side of the brain has hard-wired veto power over the cerebrum and its critical process, regardless of how we like to think we think.