Today I’m finding myself really thinking a lot about the precious nature of time. A lot of my elders are in their 70s and 80s now, and I feel like I’m just a skip and a jump right behind them in the grand scheme of things.

​The lyrics to Pink Floyd’s song “Time,” keeps ringing in my mind’s ear:
 
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way
 
Tired of lying in the sunshine, staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long, and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun
 
And you run, and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death
 
Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say
 
Home, home again
I like to be here when I can
And when I come home cold and tired
It's good to warm my bones beside the fire
 
Far away across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells
 
 
I distinctly recall wishing hours, days, weeks, and months away as a younger man whether because I was anxiously anticipating a future event, fantasizing how things would be different when I was older, simply bored or incarcerated. Now I find myself attempting to father three children and feeling a lot like Adam Sandler in Billy Madison everytime they do something similar:

At least so far and for the most part! We've made it through a first "official" Mother's Day, an 11th anniversary, and an 11th and 12th birthday. Our original party plans were dashed by forces beyond our control, so we regrouped and hit a water park for Olivia's 12th and an amusement park for Mischa's 11th.

Finally made time to hike up to the Natural Bridge, and I've even managed to catch some live music in between teaching a couple summer classes.

​Here's to more sunshine and good times in the next couple months before we all get back to school, work, and whatnot! I think I speak for Danielle and I both when I say that we've been blessed to be able to work from home, but getting back into a regular routine where work takes place in the office and home is something separate will be a welcome change come August!

In an earlier blog, I lamented the way some of my friends and family have been memorialized due to their inability to die on a properly planned schedule or at least after having made particular preparations. Maybe a morbid manifestation of those memorials, but a real one nonetheless, has been my own attempt to organize and express some of my own wishes for when I should leave this old world whether prematurely or after overstaying my welcome.

If I've done this correctly, this should trigger a playlist that I've begun for just such an occasion:

During this pandemic, I've tried hard to carve out time and space for myself to rest, reflect, and otherwise work on myself. This has been particularly challenging due to the way our house has necessarily transformed into some amalgamation of office space, classroom at pre-K, elementary, and university levels, and a home for a family of five. It ebbs and flows, and I'm anything but consistent but consistently trying to achieve something resembling consistency counts for something, no?

I've taken MasterClasses on cooking, writing, fitness, and meditation with some really renowned instructors. It feels somewhat productive and useful but at the same time has been put into practice in ways not exactly addressed in the workbooks. One lesson I've taken particularly to heart is one taught me years ago by Ray Wylie Hubbard: "the days that I keep my gratitude higher than my expectations, I have really good days."

As such, I've started many of my days lately listening to this:

Practice may never make perfect but it suits me fine as a "morning meditation." Gets a day off on the good foot and my particular YouTube algorithm follows it with this double feature that likewise supplements a feeling of gratitude and mindfulness:

Several years it seems. Recently, I've been trying to write daily and failing miserably. It began as a kind of self-imposed homework assignment after completing an online MasterClass on Writing for Social Change with the inimitable Roxane Gay.

This morning, though, I was given a bit of a reality check and needed to exorcise some emotions in the form of words on the virtual page. Was reminded of this small collection of writings and then forced to reset my password since it had been so long since I visited it. Let's see if I can keep it going a little longer this time around...

Walter has been with us well over a dozen years now. He’s probably 14 or 15 years old (depending on his age when he first graced us with his presence.) In a way, he was initially a kind of “rebound dog” for Danielle after her canine companion, Grizzly, died. Lately, this handsome gentleman who immediately won my heart and became my best good boy has started showing the signs of his age.

Getting up and down takes a bit longer than ever, possibly due to the tumors near his hind legs and hips or maybe just due to the heavier weight of time in dog years. His face has gotten lighter and brighter as the grey and white hairs begin to outnumber the red and golden ones. He takes far more naps and sleeps more throughout the day.
 
Perhaps most inconveniently, at least for us, he’s having a hard time holding in his poop.

We’ve been fortunate so far in that he tends to have accidents at night while everyone is sleeping and until today the evidence is quite solid and easy to pick up. I try not to make a big deal of it so as to not embarrass the old fellow. Seems the least I can do to not bruise his pride and dignity at this late stage in the game.

This morning, though, the evidence was a little less consistent and required more scrubbing in the clean-up effort. He seemed anxious about watching me do it, or maybe he just picked that up from me?

Either way, after our walk and after cleaning his bed and the hallway rug, I found myself Googling to see what other signs I need to be looking for in the near future. After surveying several checklists, I recognize that his mobility issues are indeed a serious indicator of decline.
 
But all the other important signs are still notably absent.

After my feet hit the floor in the morning, his still follow soon thereafter ready for a quick breakfast and then a walk. He seems to still enjoy our walks, even though they take considerably longer.

Occasionally he’ll still speed up after recognizing a rabbit or squirrel in our path. He’s still very obviously motivated to action by the scent of human food.

His tail still wags when Danielle scratches his ears and talks to him like a baby.

He is occasionally roused to rowdiness by three kids horse-playing in his general vicinity and during the daylight hours he’s quick to let you know if/when he needs to go outside.
 
For breakfast every morning Walter has a Cesar’s meal—sometimes chicken noodle, sometimes sirloin tips, beef stew, the old boy has options. Regardless of the main course, though, there’s always half of a pain pill buried in there, and this really seems to help.

Unfortunately, the pharmacologists have yet to formulate a substance that can mitigate the pain of losing such a close friend. And that’s why the late, great Leonard Cohen penned the poetic line: “everybody’s got that broken feeling, like their father or their dog just died.”

These are apocalyptic times.  End of the world as we know it type shit, and I'm not quite sure I feel fine....

All that is solid is melting into air.  

White women turning black!  Men becoming women!  

Social constructions everywhere!  Pandemonium. 


Last week I watched some of the best minds of my generation argue back and forth about the meaning of heretofore pretty fundamental concepts: man and woman and black and white.  It was a sociologist’s dream…or maybe nightmare?  


Strange. Twisted.  


But exciting and amusing, nonetheless. All of a sudden, for a whole lot of folks, these traditionally taken-for-granted and simple categories got considerably more complicated.  Confusing.  Frustrating. Or maybe just inherently more interesting. Fascinating. Dynamic. Contextual.

Then, in the midst of this social media freakout a 21 year old white supremacist named Dylann Roof committed what seems to be the latest act of domestic terrorism on American soil.  But wait…it turns out we don’t really know what that word means, either!

Holy newspeak, Batman!

Sure there are definitions of terrorism, but whether or not we are willing to IDENTIFY an act or actor as “terrorist” turns out to be quite complicated. Confusing. Frustrating.  Or maybe just inherently more interesting. Fascinating. Dynamic.  Contextual?  According to Glenn Greenwald it is quite simple.  Terrorism is a meaningless propaganda term that we like applied to those we disagree with, but not those we do. 

For instance, conservative candidates campaigning for President and Vice President of the United States will refuse to apply the term to those who burn and bomb medical facilities and murder doctors. 

They will do this because they understand that while few people are willing to go to such extremes due to their belief that abortion is murder, that an important percentage of the GOP base certainly shares the belief.

Similarly many liberals and others on the left don’t like to see the label applied to revolutionary violence such as that employed by the Weatherman Underground during the Vietnam War, or the ELF or ALF in furtherance of the causes of environmental and animal liberation respectively.  Hence the old saying, “One person’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter.”

Shit, another social construction. 

Still, if the conversation last week taught me anything its that not EVERYTHING solid has melted into air.  

Words still have meaning.  

Its just that we’ve given some concrete concepts a little more wiggle room around the edges.  Some fluidity, perhaps, but the concepts aren’t completely vaporized yet.  

For instance, I saw no one arguing that Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson was not a man.  Or that Shaft wasn’t Black.

Exceptions to the rules, perhaps. But this is still a league game, Smokey.

If the violent extremists who have been the most violently politically active on US soil for the past 13 years and who undoubtedly have the most supporters and ideological adherents within our borders (potential "sleeper cells," if you will) were waged war upon...

In other words, if the War on Terror were, in fact and in practice, more than just a War on Middle Eastern/Muslim terrorism and not simply a global and glowing example of American hypocrisy, then Seal Team Six would have already captured that Confederate flag at the courthouse in Charleston and commenced to water boarding a substantial percentage of the white supremacist underground in South Carolina and surrounding areas.

But alas.

I teach online classes.  Recently, I decided to add an introductory video to my courses to personalize them.  Fortunately, one of my best friends produces these videos for my college.  Apparently, he is not only a good video producer but quite the prankster as well. Recently, I discovered this "blooper reel" uploaded to the "Course Documents" section of one of my online classes:

These. Are. The. Good. Times.  :)

I’m sick and tired of hearing “moderation in all things” when clearly desperate times call for desperate measures. 

Hell is just as likely other people as it is a state of mind.  That said, “ooh baby do you know what its worth?  We’ll make Heaven a place on Earth” since life will just as surely kill us as Death, as no one here gets out alive. 

If to live is truly to suffer and to survive is to find meaning in that suffering, I sure would appreciate an epiphany or two, old man.  You’ve made it rain and I am surely soaked to the skin, but maybe I can’t quite feel the rain just yet for the getting wet? 

Regardless, the blessings of my curses are nearly overwhelmed by the curses of my blessings and I’ll be damned if I can figure out the right rain dance or even remember an umbrella. 

Be careful what you wish for, eh?

First, I was all like:

Then, I was like:

Primarily due to:

Much obliged to the universe, the Fabulous Unknown or whatever else may be.