the year that was still is

another birthday comes and goes....whizzzzzzzzzzzz.......

on the day itself, i worked...it rained....some calls from those who still remember and care----a rarefied bunch whose preciousness increases in inverse proportion to their number...

the best gift, i think, for my 39th year, has been the realization that i don't have to [and cannot, at any rate] change my parents in order for me to be an independent, autonomous being...this message courtesy of my friend james...my grandmother gave me underwear...

i feel love burgeoning and flowing through me in an inner, subterranean way...wanted to record it here, since throughout my life i've experienced love, mostly not as an attachment to an object [though that's certainly happened] but rather as a state of mind/being that pre-exists the 'beloved' and is catalyzed by them and projected outwards towards them. let's see what time and space have in store...though sooner or later, odds are that love will happen, no?

my 'reverse walden' experiment [venturing back home rather than away and alone] is bearing fruit----i'm very glad to be living with my family and am trying to recapture the groundedness, honor, respect and love [filial piety] that gets lost in our culture which places 'individuality' and striking-out-on-one's-own above all else----i have done that, however and deem it overrated. i'm interested in reclaiming what gets trampled in that mad rush to ones self. right now i feel that it is deep, ancient and quite quiet about itself...it whispers hidden in plain sight...

currently on page 510 of the exceptional 'john adams' book by david mccollough. interesting to note that our country was born of nasty partisan politics and press in lockstep with each other...and much of what adams wrote at the time could be equally applied to today without modification. i suppose that this is the crux of the entire enterprise of writing history----a cyclical saga of common life with our ancestors...an aspect of the-more-things-change-the-more-they-stay-the-same of time...

note to someone: write a book with exactly this premise---finding historical parallels for now, almost proving its not-newness...an 'anatomy of melancholy' for history....anatomy of history...could one person ever do this?