I am an old man. I sit in this chair unable to speak. I utter sounds. Force words out of my mouth, but they just come out as unintelligible sounds. Tears run down my cheeks. Sometimes the aide wipes them with a look on his face like he knows that I am trapped between two worlds and yearn to be alive in one or the other. Feelings without words, without someone to share them with explode in urine, feces, and tears.

Regarding the remains
Of two American soldiers
A 23 year old from Texas
And a 25 year old from Oregon
Fighting that insane war in Iraq.
Maj. Gen. Abdul Azziz Mohammed Jassim
Said, "It was a brutal torture.
The torture was something unnatural."

Are there aspects of war that is not brutal?
Degrees of torture less brutal than others?

Computer Dreams

It's the end of the day. Chairs stacked up in my computer lab. Suddenly, several women with about 8 pre-school aged children come into my lab. My initial thoughts are they are going to ruin my lab, but I immediately begin to accept that I don't own the place and it would be best to start organizing things before their instructor arrives. After all, I'm a teacher and these are kids who are here to learn. Then I woke up.

It's a sunny Saturday morning. Looks like it's going to be a glorious day!

Hanging Out with C

Sometimes you have to move 

                                         forward 

or backward 

                 or even sideways 

to get un- 

              stuck 

                      and move                     

                                               on.

---

The best way to find something is to look for it.

---

I sent this letter to my cousin in Copenhagen. She and I went to the early grades of elementary school together and were constant companions early in our lives.

"I seem to remember that long before I considered whether life had any meaning, I found that most everything was humorous. I remember mocking all that was serious and taking great pleasure in being able to make you laugh, knowing that you shared in this sense of sillyness. Adults in my life (except for your dad, which is why I loved him more than any of my uncles) always made life seem so serious.

These thoughts have surfaced, because just before going to bed I began yet another book (I must be reading 7 or 8, not including the stuff I must read for my Masters....multi-tasking or attention deficit disorder?), Woody Allen and Philosophy, essays about Woody Allen's movies and the philosophies that underlie his writing, edited by Mark T. Conrad and Aeon J. Skoble.

Deep shit, but with humorous underpinnings.

I appreciate your recent email about what you are involved in. Sometime, I'd like you to share with me some of the social graces you have learned and some of the funny thoughts that I know must have played inside your head as you mixed with royalty, CEOs, and government leaders. Knowing that they all are pretenders to the throne, which is really located in our souls, somewhere just around the corner in a little all-night cafe in the Twilight Zone."

Isolation

Isolation, lonliness, being alone. If you truly believe in an HP (Higher Power) or God, and that this HP is always with you, then you are never alone. Internal dialogues are necessary to help maintain focus, and levity as well. In fact, it's a good idea to make yourself laugh; you can't always rely on someone else being as clever or funny as you are.

Advice to Myself for 2006

Advice to Myself for 2006:

Don’t try to understand, just enjoy it.
Don’t try to figure it out, because it will be gone before you do.