Night & Day

In tragedy and despair, when an endless night seems to have fallen, hope can be found in the realization that the companion of night is not another night, that the companion of night is day, that darkness always gives way to light, and that death rules for only half of creation, life the other half.

Idealism Vs Avarice

The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system.  And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success.  And while men admire the quality of the first, they love the produce of the second.


Check it out:
John Steinbeck
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck
Cannery Row
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannery_Row_%28novel%29

High Flight

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the sky on laughter-silvered wings, 
Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence.  Hovering there,
I've chased the shouting wind along and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace,
Where never lark , or even eagle, flew,
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.


John Gillespie Magee, Junior (June 9, 1922 – December 11, 1941)

Check this out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gillespie_Magee,_Jr. 

Hilarity Ensues

From a textbook on family dynamics:

UNMARRIED COHABITATION: This is becoming more approved and practiced as a lifestyle, especially among younger people and Quebeckers. (My italics)

I love it.  Doesn't it just reek of Anglo-Saxon rectitude and austerity? 

Dream # 1

     I am asleep yet awake, my eyes open.  I look up at the ceiling fan which seems higher than usual.  The sheets and my body are as nothing.  All around is silence, I might as well be on a desert island.
     Compelled to rise, I fumble by the bed for my slippers.  Through the open door I go and into the hallway.  There is certainly  no other person in this empty dark house.  As I slowly walk on, I listen for my footsteps and hear the slow thud of my heart.  I am frightened and yet detached.
     The feeling grows excessively when I see just a blank wall where there should be a front door.  I don't investigate this unusual happenstance but move on weightlessly into the drawing room.  The darkness is as usual but not the absence of the hum of the air pump that supplies the fish-tank.  By now I'm feeling the chill that seems to be coming from behind those drawn curtains.  I concede to the inevitable and draw them open.  The succeeding surprise is so great that my overwhelming fear is no more and I am held spellbound, unable to stir for what seems like ages.
     Behind the curtains is a huge window.  There was one there before but the panes swung out.  This is hermetically sealed  (and I instantly comprehend that it is so with all the windows of the house).  The glass is flawless as priceless crystal, very shiny, unusually thick and glowing with the absorbed light from the scene beyond.
     Gone is the daily driveway and wall of flaking, faded-cream distemper.  Before my eyes is a panorama of heroic proportions.  Where the glass ends, begins gently rolling country-side, lush green, rich dark loam, noble trees in the far distance - set under a gray sky - stretching as far as my eyes and imagination can see.
     It is slightly overcast, maybe a faint drizzle gives it that misty look.  It is the chill of the wind that has made my teeth chatter and even the smell is at my nostrils - sharp and clean with the scent of cool, damp earth, grass, rain and open spaces.
     I feel sure that if I walk into it, the window, so real before, will let me through.  I move and bounce off the glass, hands first.  There is no reaction, no sound and no pain.  I am mildly disturbed to note that I leave no palm prints.
     So I go back to watching it all.  The breeze stiffly ruffles the waves of grass, sways the trees and whips the wheeling, keening birds up and away.  I ache to step through and go walking away, over the hills to some unseen destination.  But I'm held here, forced to look upon what I desire most.  Hard as I try to look away, my eyes dwell on each play of light and shadow, the captivity unbearable, the pain indescribable.
     Subjective hours pass as I am chilled to the bone, uncaring, untiring.  Finally, I reluctantly turn from my dream, leaving the curtains open - I know it is out there and I hope to be part of it someday.  My captivity is all the more bitter because of what I have just seen.  I stumble back to bed and lie in the icy sheets, trembling with rage and loss.
     Suddenly, it is morning and I am awake.  Now the windows can be opened and the front door is where it should be and yet, the barriers of the dream are unchanged, real as ever, insurmountable.

Six Commonplaces

One part of love is innocence,

One part of love is guilt,

One part the milk, that in a sense 

Is soured as soon as spilt.

One part of love is sentiment,

One part of love is lust,

One part is the preesentiment

Of our return to dust.

Mr. Wonderful, Part 1

     I've just spent an excellent evening out with my fiance (more on this anon). Volunteer Appreciation Night at the 519 Community Center, Church Street.  I've volunteered with the Senior LGBTQ Monday Drop-In for almost three years now.  However, this actually was the first time I've been out (socially) with Ian since he proposed.
     Hanging out with Ian's always been great but the evening was infinitely better with him at my side.  90% of the time we see things in a contextual way.  I don't have to learn a stranger's ways, I already know a great deal of this man and it's easy for me.
     I've avoided intimacy.  I feared that, if I didn't please the person I was with, in some fashion, they would leave me.  Obviously, I believed their departure would be doubly distressing because, not only had I lost a lover, I had also lost a friend.  And that's all it would take - my fear would consume me.
     I feel embarrassed.  I've spent three years learning to love Ian as a friend, warts and all, so to speak.  We'd go backwards and forwards.  Yet, we always got together again, sooner or later.  Till Ian proposed.  And now I find Ian's teaching me to let go my fears and learn to care for him in a completely different way..
     I was facetiously lamenting the lack of new men in the Village.  An acquaintance asked me what would happen if somebody of the village shows me facets of himself he's never shown others.  Well, now I have the answer.  If people say I'm a South Asian social butterfly, Ian's one of Scottish extraction, and then some! And, he's doing exactly what we were talking about.
    When Ian proposed, I thought it was a joke.  He was pulling my leg. Sooner or later, the other shoe was going to drop. It's taken just a short while to realize he's completely serious and he isn't going away.  Since I narrate in metaphor, he's chipping away at the citadel.   He's showing me things about himself that I've never seen.  I think my jig's up.
     Remember my line "I'm off on a new adventure"?  So easy to say, so scary to do.  Well, it's the only way I know to live life.  I learned from Phyllis.  She lived in the moment because she always believed that was all the time she had........ I am ever her son.  I jump off the deep end and see where the tide's  going.to take me.
     Nowadays, it seems to Mother Earth & homo sapiens are saying, "Where are we going? And, what's with this hand-basket?" Yet, we go on living our lives..... Ian's and I, it seems, will be traveling together.
     So, ladies and germs, I give you Ian Grant, my fiance, Mr. Wonderful! And I am NOT being facetious.
    

Patience

"......... the story of a demonstration by a biologist: he and his class watched a butterfly slowly emerge from its chrysalis and with agonizing deliberation expand its tightly folded wings.  The scientist, impatient, helpful, stretched the wing and damaged it forever, teaching his students the while.  Inevitably, one must learn to wait." (my italics)

A Trap For Fools - Carolyn Heilbrun, (January 13, 1926 – October 9, 2003), writing under the pen name of Amanda Cross.

Where Angels Fear To Tread

     I've started 2010 with something I hoped I'd eventually do, but just didn't expect quite so soon, y'know what I mean? Stop that snickering!  I am not speaking of the high colonic people keep encouraging me to have before it's too late.
     I've agreed (in principle) to a relationship with Ian!  What a circumspect way of saying I accepted Ian's proposal. Ian is 19 years my junior!!! That's my ageist prejudice showing, so non-PC.. It's also probably significant that I mention Ian's age.
     Certainly, there's enough punctuation to remind people of my dramatic ways. It's a double whammy - Not the proposal, the drama.  I'm gay & I'm South Asian. Or, do I mean double jeopardy? Prosecution of a defendant for a criminal offense for which he has already been tried.. I can be pedantic and no man shall say me nay.
     Seriously though, a real double whammy exists in the form of my Pakistani passport listing place of birth as Iraq.  The  citizenship will change eventually, it's just a matter of applying for it..  Too late about the place of birth though.  Phyllis (my biological parent) suggested I describe my birth as: in the back seat of old Chevy, stuck in mud somewhere on the delta created by the Tigris & the Euphrates.  Sounds exotic to me.  Here I go, digressing as usual. Tangential thinking rules!
     We've had an on-again, off-again thing going for over three years. Having said that, I'll flatter myself and believe I should brace for incoming from Tina.  When Tina met Ian, she asked if he was my BF.  I swore he was a friend. When I shared the news, Tina sounded stunned. Tina's known me long enough to intuit things. Could her question have been based on her intuition connecting the dots?
     I wondered at Ian being so punctilious about accompanying me to midnight mass, my quasi-usual (and only) religious Yuletide activity. Last year, after a feast with Ian's parents, I beached on their couch and was quite amenable to being talked into giving church a miss.  Witness my deep reverence of my Anglican faith.
     Ian proposed on Boxing Day. I've felt honored, flattered, cautious, scared, elated and everything in between and under the sun. Today we brunched with Ian's parents, Lynne & Keith.  Their company was a pleasure, as always.  However, I had something to say and welcomed witnesses.  I told them my previous run-ins, aka relationships, have left me very, VERY, wary. And that I would rather see the romance end before I lost Ian's affection, friendship & respect.
     Ian has my sympathy... I'm feeling & behaving skittishly. Some of the fear is about Ian's feelings and commitment, but the larger portion is about myself & how apprehensive I am of making a mistake again.  Rehab and therapy, to gain calm & stability, has been a slow (and often painful) process and I'm more afraid of myself than I am of anything Ian might say or do.
     Ian has been totally honest about his HIV+ status and mood disorder, he's bi-polar. I've known that since the first time I met him.  I respect him for being completely up-front with me. He's helped me a great deal and I can only thank him, so far, for that.
     I am not HIV+ and Ian's status is of little concern to me. I have my own mood disorders - depression, OCD and PTSD.  I am an alcoholic. I have to remember I will always be an addict & at risk.  I am supported by medication.  I will be in allopathic treatment for the rest of my days.  I have rebelled at defining myself by my disorders and have tried to do without my meds. I have a checkered past, with abandonment issues, profligate spending & a track-record of leaving things incomplete, I've done the bankruptcy thing and have no credit to prove it.
     And yet, I'm optimistic about this.  Ian, Lynne & Keith know now that I'm a worry-wart and more likely to make a break for it than Ian. I'm trying to live up to the standards, the new & healthy ways, I've been learning  for ten years.  I have acknowledged my mistakes and my role in my first marriage. I'm fully aware it is possible Ian may leave me for a younger man, the stated concern of my biological & extended families..
     I realize this is real life.  I believe it is possible to make things come true, if I just work on it. The last ten years are proof of that. And I won't be alone, feeling like I'm doing all the work of carrying my marriage, like the world on Charles Atlas' shoulders. I will keep in mind the line I've used all my life: I'm off on a new adventure.
     I'm not alone. Ian's beside me and, if we are any good together, we'll make it through with flying colors!  I will not ask you to wish me luck.  Phyllis used to say wishing somebody good luck is to bring bad luck down on them.  She would say, "Have a good time!"  So, I'm wishing myself and all who know me or care - Have a good time!