NEVER FELT BETTER

  The news has been bad all week and the hopes for good news is misplaced at best, worsening as we go. I don’t dwell on the news as I have no control and fretting on it is like the man hitting himself on the head with a hammer. Question; why? Answer; it feels good when I quit. But I am not in denial and I can’t help but chew on that bone from time to time. How else would anybody know (as if they care at all) what I chew on. But I want someone to know and maybe care. I try to be concise but sometimes backstory and spinoffs get in the way. 
I tend to question the thoughts and ideas that I want (am inclined) to believe. If my truck pulls to the left when I get on the brakes, that is something I should know and then drive accordingly. When my brain (mind) does that, I should recognize the risk and to think accordingly. That wonderful Human mind, besides its preoccupation with conscious experience it behaves without permission, unawares, it just does. Mostly, that subconscious part wants to feel good and will be less than honest in order to provide the (Mirror-mirror on the wall) experience. Then the BS is easy to digest and all seems well. But nobody wants to here that from me. Feeling good is hard to compete with, consider drugs, smoke, gambling and all the reasons addicts give for not wanting to quit. 
If Putin’s war in Ukraine wasn’t enough, Hamas (Palestinian militants) are considered terrorists by western countries bit embraced by Islamic sympathizers in middle east. They decided it was time to wage war on Israel with a Pearl Harbor like surprise attack. So the stage is set for another round of Jihad against Jews. There is blame enough to go around. Israelis are not good at peaceful compromise either but to keep feeding on that bitter pill, one would think they try something different. But ever since Moses and Pharaoh, several thousand years of Zero Sum game, eye-for-an-eye, it’s hard to find a winner. There are no good guys, only bed-fellows. Iran sides with Hamas while the U.S. and most European allies have Netanyahu’s back. A Proxy war is when you get someone who depends on you to fight your battle, in their country, against the friends of your enemy who are stuck in the same predicament (Iran & The U.S.A). This conflict might fall into that category but the experts all put their own complicated, opinionated spin on the story and in the end the world is left again with a lot of blood, death, muddy rhetoric and bravado. I’m sad for innocent victims on both sides. 
There is an argument for peace that I’ve been hearing all my life. It goes, Hate has to be learned and if we can break that cycle then maybe peace has a chance. But we can’t sell that package even to our neighbors here at home. Love has to be learned too and that lesson would facilitate peaceful outcomes. Rather than Zero-Sum games where having winners necessitates having losers we should try a Win-Win strategy. With love and peace, Win-Win games skip the hostility with no victims, no prisoners, everybody gains something they want. But Win-Win games fall way short of Winner-Take-All appetites when selfish, aggressive, motivated competitors want everything, they want it all. 
For them Win-Win is like kissing your sister. So the nation of Israel got its homeland back after World War 2. God himself had given the land to them several thousand years earlier with no statute of limitations. After WW2 the U.N. granted Jewish survivors most of their historic homeland back. With that act, millions of Palestinians were displaced whose legitimate claim to the same land stretched back for centuries. Evidently their claims did fall under a statute of limitations. Jews & Muslims worship the same god but through different channels. In that context, roughly 80 years later they are still trying to balance the equation with Winner-Take-All tactics except they negotiate with smart bombs and rockets now and the U.N. isn’t any help. Predictably, their leaders (anyone who might be perceived as a leader) are as much or more concerned about expanding their own power and framing their own personal legacies to suit their egos. 
But pointing fingers comes easy when you can perch on a self righteous stump and place blame on some (other) shameless reprobate. I’ve been reminded that when you point a finger at anyone, there are three other fingers on that hand pointing back at you. What I cannot deny is that I live in a nation that is both wonderful and terribly flawed in the same breath. The wonderful part is showcased every patriotic holiday but much if not most of that tale stems from several hundred years of Winner-Take-All practice where we won.
Those indigenous people who had sustained in North America for thousands of years before Plymouth Rock or ‘Rockets red glare’ they couldn’t compete with gun powder and technology. They tried to flee or to assimilate but Euro-Americans weren’t having any of that. Native Americans were nearly eradicated by ethnic cleansing and genocide. African slaves were trapped in an evil scheme that propped up an agricultural juggernaut. The horror of slavery has worn thin and is generally dismissed as conditions of the times (denial) and we’ve forgiven ourselves for our forebearers’ indiscretions. Yet, millions of African Americans still suffer under the weight of racism 150 years after emancipation. The good intentions of well meaning white folks are simply piss in the wind, lipstick on the pig. No need for me to expand on the horror of slavery, Jim Crow and popular white supremacy but the unmerited privilege of being white has (never felt better). I can’t change any of it, at best I vent some disappointment and anger, even my anger, toothless as it may be.
Years ago I took the train, ’City Of New Orleans’ from Chicago to N.O. In the gray shadows of early morning we slowed down for a little town in mid Mississippi. Not 50 feet from the tracks I noticed small, unpainted, broken houses with boarded over windows, some with lights on inside. Someone lived there. My first thought was, ‘This could be a time warp back to the slave days in the mid 1800’s.’ I was snatched out of my peaceful sleep by an uncomfortable feeling that would, years later, be rightfully coined ‘White Privilege’. For me and others like me, the unmerited mantle of social, economic and educational privilege weighs uncomfortable and dulls any sense of American Exceptionalism. Mind boggling would be too much to say but it was absolutely, totally sobering. Shame was the feeling, stirred awake to see the poverty of the poorest neighborhood of the poorest town, in the poorest state of my glorious country. I had grown up with the American Dream, that anything is possible if you work hard; and there I was passing through the bowels of that dream. I had been weaned on the idea that poverty was the reward for those who were either stupid or lazy. But I would get my own look at the harsh reality, where taking care of your family while living in poverty is the hardest, most difficult, most disrespected job there is. Some may be able to deny a real, first hand experience with poverty, paint it a soft, pastel shade of blue and imagine the scent of lavender but I can’t seem to get over that hump. 
I don’t remember much about that trip now. It included an incoming hurricane and the inconvenience of several families holed up in a high & dry place with downed power lines and not phone. The only crystal-clear memory from that trip is the three or four minutes of train sounds and poverty. It occurred to me in that little window of experience that the people in those pathetic shacks were waking up to the other American Dream. I presumed they were all black and their stupid, lazy fault had been that they were born the wrong color and into poverty. 
By definition an (Ism) is a practice, system or ideology where its proponents require their particular beliefs should not only be observed, formalized and taught but also be protected and defended at any cost. Racism, Sexism, Classism, Conservatism, Liberalism, Communism, Socialism, Capitalism; people fall into one trap or another and kill each other with clear conscience and I hate it, I really do. Many if not most people fall back on denial to ease their conscience and take comfort in a prosperity that has been purchased with an evil tradeoff. I just happen to be one of the ones who see through the smoke, who can’t escape the hypocrisy by making believe it isn’t there. With evolution there is neither good nor evil, so long as it keeps on keeping on, replicating and reproducing. So I get to live out the rest of my life in comfortable retirement and grow even older, profiting from policies and practice that I hate.

LEAVE SOME FOOTPRINTS

  I feel obligated to write, write something, anything. I’ve been doing it so many years it’s like brushing your teeth; if you skip for any reason and get by without a consequence, that oversight doesn’t go unpunished for long. Gazing at a blank page with no ideas is like dialing 911 and nobody answers. One alternative is skipping over to YouTube to watch music videos, the feeling is as good as scratching an itch but the fix is short lived. 
My blog’s website provides some indirect feedback on how many hits each article gets but it’s not reliable and I accept that. But I’ll never know for sure if anyone and certainly not who does drop in. I don’t get comments as the process is too complicated (register & sign in required). That’s alright, I’m not fishing for feedback I just need to follow through on my end. I think of each post (article) as a little time capsule that captures me (my thoughts) in that moment. By themselves they are no more than snapshots but in the collective you get a story that may wander and stumble but a story never the less. A single post may be more interesting or revealing than another but when you look back to see where you came from and how you got here, it helps that you left some footprints. For any other purpose my preoccupation with writing and the blog must be irrelevant but it gives me something to do if not a job. 

I went to church yesterday: that, coming from me almost requires a disclaimer. Unitarians work diligently to justify their (our) claim to be a legitimate religion but Christians in general presume we are just another denomination who share their fundamental beliefs. What we are in fact is a community of Humanists who fashion our own rituals and ceremony that fit a secular belief system. For the most part we believe that we were born with everything we need to meet our spiritual need and didn’t need to be saved in the first place. If you like the idea of an all powerful, all knowing, supernatural god then you would feel out of place at our place. Anyway: our sermon yesterday was about justice, what’s fair and why society only pays attention when an exclusive group has been treated unjustly. In that sermon, a quote that MLK Jr. borrowed in 1968 goes; “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” Too much content for me to dwell on here but one thought is that we may not live long enough to see justice done our time. But MLK Jr. and his cohorts recognized the far reaching scope of just practice and just how short the span of a human lifetime. Parallels were framed between civil rights leaders in the 1960’s and Mahatma Gandhi from non violent protest to relentless persistence. I thought it interesting (from my own reading) that one of today’s hot issues was anticipated by Dr. King. In the same speech, same language, he alluded to staying awake (be alert) in the struggle because every small (seeming irrelevant step forward) could be undone by the entrenched powers that be. George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis triggered the (Woke) movement but King had seen it coming and true to his caution, organized white supremacists in particular, they have been empowered by MAGA bigots who are showing their true colors now (White only served here.) 
As much as I like and respect Unitarian’s Humanist roots I am not well rooted there. To make that leap I would need to be better schooled in the arc of the moral universe, to see it starting to bend toward justice even a little bit. I am better schooled in evolution and human nature. I have trouble getting past the long arc of violence and exploitation by people of high birth and power, against those people who are vulnerable, who are in harm's way. I am waiting for the moral arc to budge off of its bubble. We (Humans) have the capacity to make real what has been touted as a divine sensibility in regard to each other and particularly with those who struggle. It would gravitate from the ground up but at some point that thin slice of divine nature would have to break the surface. In college I was reminded often, dozens of times every year; “Frank you have great potential.” That stroke of confidence was always followed by a pregnant pause and, “But don’t forget that potential is the list of all the things you haven’t accomplished yet.”  In that context I am waiting for the arc to bend, even just a little bit before I jump both feet on the Humanist band wagon. 

BLUE STREAK

  Leon Trotsky was a Russian revolutionary, a Marxist-Leninist from the old school. His dedication to freeing the masses from a system ruled by a cruel, privileged aristocracy was unparalleled. His efforts may have been noble in theory but he certainly overlooked the diabolical nature of men who rise to power only to replace the current tyranny with another tyranny. He left hundreds of quotes behind but I find one to be absolutely prophetic even if it makes no ideological argument; late in life he observed, “Old age is the most unexpected of all things that can happen to a man.”  He never saw it coming. 

I tend to identify with commoners and defend (as best I can) those who need help but that’s where I part ways with Trotsky. I saw it coming. When my kids really were kids, every summer, one way or another we made it down to Sandusky, Ohio and Cedar Point Theme Park. They had The Blue Streak, (then) the tallest, longest, fastest of the old fashioned, wooden structure, steel wheels & tracks roller coasters anywhere. If we got there early you could squeeze in two rides before the line got so long that it wasn’t worth the wait. But then we all grew up and Cedar Point became a wonderful memory and a great story. Then, for my (59th) birthday in 1998 my grown kids took me back to Cedar Point. When we rode the Blue Streak the vibration made my teeth hurt, my head hurt and the ascent up the next hill was insufficient to recover and the next plunge was like running a gauntlet, getting beat up again and again. 

The Blue Streak adventure of ’98 was neither the first warning nor the last but it compounded the ultimate message. It didn’t sneak up on me like it did Trotsky, the onset of old age shook me like a rag doll until my teeth hurt. Not in that moment but certainly in reflection it occurred to me that I was not the stallion I once was. The ride was designed to maximize acceleration and free-fall, twisting and turning while minimizing the bleeding off of speed before the next plunge. Near the end, in a long, easy, downhill curve we heard the brakes engage and felt the inertia. Up ahead the line of thrill junkies waiting for us to offload signaled that our ride was about to end and what awaited us was an easy walk down a gentle ramp where the most exciting prospect was a cup of ice cream under a shady umbrella. No, I saw it coming. 

Once upon a time I had a daughter in law whose fear of growing old bordered on stupidity and unabashed pride. She agonized over her 29th birthday because she hated the idea of turning 30, which was unavoidable and only a year away. She moved on without us and I have no regrets other than my son’s bad choice in the first place and its aftermath. I learned that the best revenge is to live well and we have moved on likewise, living well. 

I am an unbeliever so the hope of an afterlife is not part of my guide to the universe. Hope is a great motivator when you have some (at least a little) input with the process but without that, it’s just wishful thinking. With that in mind the Blue Streak is a good life lesson. The ride is going to be exciting, even the vibrating and shaking. As the end approaches, it seems like it should go on, and on, even just another few ups and downs. But it doesn’t work that way, never did, and we knew it before we got onboard. I was privy to a discussion, a polite disagreement and exchange between a devout believer and another old heretic (like me) about the ultimate, unresolvable mystery. The question asked was; “If you don’t believe in Heaven, what do you think it will be like for you after you die?” My counterpart thought for a moment and replied, “It will be about the same as it was before I was conceived.” I’ve always liked that uncomplicated sense of time and place. 

I don’t think anybody has difficulty understanding and accepting that our bodies are about 60% water, that all of our water moves in and out through us rapidly; and that all of the water on the planet has been here all along, cycling and recycling through the water cycle, weather, plants and animals. There is a very high probability that my body today, right now, has H2O molecules that once cycled through George Washington, and before him, Black Beard the pirate, and Genghis Kahn, even Cleopatra. If that is true, and it is more likely than not, then how about the natural decomposing and recycling of organic compounds into Oxygen, Carbon, Nitrogen, Potassium and so on? It makes a plausible argument for reincarnation at the pieces & parts level. Some of my parts showing up a few generations later in a sunflower or a humming bird; that would be awesome.

I’m not selling anything. What one believes is their business. I trust that we all have needs and whatever they are, we should be able to satisfy them. In a theoretical sense, we (any of us) we can’t absolutely know anything for sure. I do not question or challenge René Descartes profound revelation (1637) “I think therefore I am.” That gem has a very high probability for its truth. But again, theoretically I allow for remote possibilities. Some ideas we embrace, others we accept with reservations and some of it we think to be absurd. It depends largely on our experience and what we make of it as well as the opinions of people whose views we respect and trust. Good or bad, peer pressure is is hard to resist. Still, if we don’t treat it as suspect then we leave ourselves open to pitfalls and blunders of all sorts. 

I've made these observations based my experience and what I make of it. Some of that comes vicariously via my peers and qualified by old age. As I see it from my perch, foolish old men are more reliably informed that foolish young men who simply do not see it coming.

THINGS GO BUMP

  I used a word recently that translates a general feeling rather than a concrete meaning. It seems every popular dictionary has its own definition, similar but then not quite and I settled for Merriam-Webster. If you (search your soul) 3 words separately they all have their own purpose but together in that order it requires a presumption that we (all of us) do have a soul and something there in should be examined. ‘Soul-searching’ is hyphenated, technically one word with the same overreach and can be used creatively. This may seem like navel-gazing but I tend to look under every stone for what may be there and this ‘soul-searching’ will take me somewhere. 
Merriam-Webster: “. . . examination of one’s conscience especially with regard to motives and values.” I will cut back on the gazing but the word ‘conscience’ here links the soul with a brain function that is beyond our control. We don’t get to decide what is right (righteous) and wrong (immoral), that stuff was planted there at an early age by an influential, older someone with more experience and it unfolds without permission. One’s conscience is updated and reinforced by a continuous stream of fresh experience still, it can be stifled when competing values like greed and generosity have been nurtured simultaneously but under different circumstances. Then you lock horns over an unanticipated complication. When that happens, most of us simply default to the value that feels more ‘right’ (less wrong) in the moment. The other default is ‘denial’, to know better and behave as if one or the other does not exist. By definition again; conscience is an acquired guide to the rightness or wrongness of one’s behavior or belief. 
In my case, soul searching is a frequent, necessary, scheduled maintenance on my moral compass. If I don’t go there, it is easy to get bogged down in one of those unanticipated complications. My parents did not spend much time telling us what to believe or how to behave but they modeled those values with consistent, repetitious clarity. Take care of each other, we’re in this together. Treat others as you want to be treated. Don’t be stingy, share. Take only what you can eat and eat all you take. Discipline teaches ‘right’ behavior and punishment teaches how not to get caught. I revisit those competing values, weigh and measure for what their worth and then go face the day. If there is a fundamental ‘right’ way to live then my experience tells me that in the game of life everyone should play fair. If in fact we are nothing more than high functioning animals (and I could make that argument) then poverty serves as a necessary link in the food chain. But if that curious, intelligent, creative bump that evolution blessed us with makes us not only unique but also superior and borderline divine, then there is no excuse for Poverty. But civilization likes winners and without losers, what’s the difference? The human animal doesn’t think twice about fair play. The only rule is ‘Win’ by whatever means necessary. “What’s mine is mine and if you can’t stop me, what’s yours is mine too.”
I have known families and students whose only mistake was being born at a bad time in the wrong place to parents whose sins were, when and where they were born and to who; a wicked scheme of opportunity denied and culture deprived. The bell curve works, it always has. If you are born at either (rich or poor) extreme the likelihood of rising or falling toward the middle (normal) arc of the curve is almost nonexistent. The trick is; choose a good time and place to be born and pick nurturing, educated, affluent parents. Occasionally low-born people overcome obstacles and a privileged child will stumble and fall from grace but in both cases, the farther your data point from the mid point (bell curve) the more difficult it is to slide past (statistical) normal and sustain that momentum. 
I’ve been fortunate, managed eight decades of well intended, good places & right times, random good fortune and sweet people moving through my space. Sometimes things go BUMP and I try to fix what I break. So far my trespasses have been forgiven and I get to keep my good name. I have a thing about good communication and the written story. Words have power and I don’t want them to be squandered or misappropriated so I move them around on the page until they have legs of their own to stand on. When I am spent or the words lose their salt I go make sawdust or play with my guitar. When I notice people who never go soul searching or  their conscience suffers from a case of arrested development I fall back on my mother’s best life lesson: There but for the Grace of God go I.

SUNDAY MORNING

  I went to church this morning, not that unusual but I agreed to work a recruiting table in the lobby before and after the service. Some programs are totally dependent on volunteers and the HOT (Hunger Outreach Team) is where I plug in. We work together with another volunteer organization to feed several hundred homeless folks three time a week at a park in the city. We have the kitchen facilities and usually a dozen or so of our regulars show up to cook, make sandwiches and distribute food at the park. There were two of us at our table and we talked with some nice people. We didn't get any firm commitments but several who basically said, “Maybe”. You can volunteer as much or as little as you like; there is always something to do. 
There is a lot of change going on at All Souls. I think it’s due to changing times as well as natural attrition and new faces in the congregation. Fifteen years ago the old guard would have bristled at anything biblical coming from the pulpit. But most of them have either passed on or softened their tone. We have too much on our plate to be finding fault with well intended believers. We all have strong beliefs about one thing or another. What we believe comes after the fact, manifest in what we do, in this life, here and now. The difference between faith based and secular religion is that the one requires a supernatural power (being) and the promise of eternal life. We skip the supernatural mythology and control politic, cut straight to human relationships; love and take care of each other. We recognize the nature of nature, that it needs to be nurtured, not exploited. 
Next week a different group (program) will be working the recruiting/information table. It might be Green Sanctuary, Racial Justice or one of several others but you cannot make it through our lobby on Sunday morning without being informed and, or solicited. Gandhi told us “As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change toward him. That is the divine mystery.” Since then the idea has been reframed to, Be the change you want to see. I think that’s what we are trying to do. 

HOPE FOR THE BEST

  I went to a bon voyage party the other day for a lady in my coffee group. She splits her year between Kansas City and her native France. But this year is different; she isn’t coming back next year; or the next. Jackie is well into her 90’s. Simply said, people 92+ are old, they just are. Jackie has always been health conscious, exercise, diet, the whole scheme and she has been healthy all along. She is still astute; she does the math and checks the numbers. Long story short, sooner or later attrition catches up with everyone. You don’t have to get terribly sick, you can just wear out and Jackie is hedging against that day, either way. With dual citizenship, she does’t want to be in the United States when something necessary wears out. Any time is a good time but at 93 for sure, you hope for the best but plan for the worst. 

I didn’t know when I began, just where this was going. The socialized medicine versus health care for profit argument were not on my radar but it popped up there as I wrote. I realize that competition is a driving force for everything that can be monetized. Civilized progress depends on it. But it also leaves in its wake, a divided culture where privileged affluence is offset by unforgiving poverty. Affordability and access to health care are obvious issues that separate the Haves from the Have Nots. The leading cause of bankruptcy in America is health care and I am insulated from that fate by no more than an untimely mishap and a few weeks in ICU. 

There is an unholy alliance between health care and the medical insurance industries. Both are profit driven even though both claim their first concern is patient care. Stockholders, administrators and medical staff care far more about their own finances than about faceless, nameless, strangers in need somewhere else. Jackie knows this without me making my case. Whenever her time comes it will come without a $1,000 charge for bandaids or a $2,000 charge from a consultant who looked at her chart and nodded his head. No one in her family will be leveraged into paying her outstanding debt. I wish I could say the same for me. 

VACATION

  I have been on vacation, for lack of a better word. If you don’t have a job and you’re not looking either, what exactly is a vacation? I suppose it’s when one alters their normal routine in favor os something more enjoyable, more satisfying but likely unsustainable. In the end, falling back on a commonplace routine would seem the unavoidable result. Vacation took me back to some old, fondly remembered places for a couple of weeks and I kept company with long treasured friends. For nearly two weeks the road kept winding through hairpin turns while my truck strained up 7% mountain grades, over 12,000 ft passes and groaned in a lower gear on the way down to the next green valley. Surrounded by 14,000 ft. peaks we made our way past cattle grazing in high, alpine parks and meadows. I anticipated the optical illusion where the truck kept kicking down to a lower gear on what appeared to be a gentle, downgrade and the stream next to the road seemed to flow up hill. It was as if the mountains were mocking us. I love the mountains but that should be obvious here. I love the sea shore as well, where the irresistible force meets an immovable object. Something has to give but that tug of war has been waging for eons; no winners or losers, just give and take, rise and fall. I can stand on a high peak and see in a straight line for a hundred miles to a distant mountain top. Standing barefoot in wet sand I can see only a few miles before the horizon gives way to the curve of the earth but it doesn’t matter. Waves lapping at my feet share a bond with ripples lapping at a beach on another continent. I like to think I share maybe a little bit of that connection.
In the beginning, when the first, modern people searched for food and shelter in mountain valleys and along seashores, all they had to work with were bare hands, the naked eye and primitive tools. Still they wanted to know how and why things worked. Maybe (perhaps) the most important attribute of humankind is that without a factual, qualified backstory we will use imagination and a threadbare experience to create one: the origin of myth. Nowadays there is another option, a legacy of critical thinking, research and creative problem solving but those old, primitive feelings are still deeply rooted in there, inside our neural vault. I understand the ocean’s (epipelagic - sunlit zone) and how it compares to the (bathypeligac - deep, dark water). I understand how tectonic plates subduct and override each other, uplifting mountains where there had been flat lands. Still, as much as I know, the sheer magnitude and overreaching influence of mountains and seas are too much to compete with. There is so much we don’t know or understand, I think we come undone in that vacuum. We like to believe we are the captains of our own destiny but that is our modern myth. We find ourselves in over our heads, simple pieces in a vast, open ended, mind boggling puzzle. On my bravest, most confident day, on the mountain or at the shore; I am reduced to feelings of awe and wonder. Mountain ranges and sea shores do that to me just like they must have with my ancient ancestors. Just when we start feeling important, even proud; Mother Nature serves us a strong dose of humbling irrelevance. That’s when we either fall back into the comfortable myth or swallow our medicine.
Early Greek philosophers surmised that tangible matters fall into the temporal realm while matters that can only be accessed with the mind are spiritual in nature. Later, theologians monopolized the language and presumed divine authority. In that climate anything that alludes to the spirit must conform to their religious persuasion. I prefer the old Greek model. When I experience something both incomprehensible and profoundly relevant I have no trouble playing the ‘Spiritual’ card. It is fixed in my experience and it speaks to something important, greater than my ability of process it but never the less, it is real as real can be. My life has been marked again and again by spiritual experiences that I cannot explain but neither can I blow them off like a sneeze. We (people) overestimate our ability to control and override our feelings. Truth is, they rise to the challenge long before we seek a rational path and that tendency is hardwired.
I will keep going to the mountains and to the shore for as long as I can move my feet. My feelings, and I can’t ignore my feelings, they reduce me to the role of a fly on the wall; I get to watch it all unfold. I don’t need the thrill of climbing the mountain. If I get the view from the top it doesn’t matter how I get there: and if my feet get salty-wet on any shore, they have been by default all over the world. 
Midnight, I was warm and dry on my folding cot, in the shelter of my truck-camper somewhere in western Kansas; pouring rain beat out a healthy rhythm on my aluminum roof. Raindrops the size of peanuts had been on vacation from their mundane commonplace, vaporized, gone for a cloud ride and then jettisoned. We were on our way home, each in our own way. On the road next day I thought about those raindrops booming on my roof. Where had the storm dropped them; maybe breathing new life into a thirsty sunflower. There I go; making myth again. Sometimes I can’t help myself.