The only thing we have to fear.....is that thing we are becoming.

It starts small, of course.....so as to hardly be noticeable......


Certain traditions go by the wayside......we don't dress for dinner.  Multiple courses followed by the proper libation and lively topical conversation becomes one course and staring at electronic devices. 


We go from writing letters by hand to writing emails by device to boiling down an entire message into 120-odd characters; sacrificing the personal connection for the speed of light.


News becomes less reporting and more opinionating.


With the advent of the electronics age, and global access to all our thoughts, our opinions are so important, we shout them from rooftops, hoping to drown out the other opinions, and therefore....become fact.


Even the things that would be considered the dark side of human nature....say, settling a high school score by meeting after school behind the dumpsters becomes darker....sneaking through a quiet neighborhood to fire random shots into a house.


And yes, some of these changes come quickly and suddenly and shock us to the core, if we have souls with which to feel; twenty five hundred people wiped out in a morning.  A twelve year old boy with a BB gun and a misbegotten and untimely urge.  Explosions at sporting events.


And we are shocked. 


Until we are no longer shocked.


And we grow up again (for we never really stop) in a world where the police are always wearing armor and those that raise their voices in protest wear masks; where blatant corruption is met with a shrug and a sigh as if that's what is supposed to happen in the halls of our legislative and judicial branches; with the belief that all of our actions are legitimate and justifiable because we live in the Land of the Free, and at the same time condemn those that do the same thing because they stand on the other side of some random and unimportant line than you do.


And we, together, either in blatant action or the tacit approval that inaction provides, take the blades to civility as to Caesar in the Roman Senate.


And then we wonder how somebody so uncouth, so obviously corrupt in word and deed, so completely lacking in manners, in taste, and in knowledge of the world around him that the entire world shudders at the thought of him in any position of power can be nominated to be the "Leader of the Free World."


He is, in fact, the personification of what the world believes us to be.


We have met the enemy.  And they is us.

Musings without benefit of an actual Muse.

I love the old songs bestest......


I was ruminating in front of this giant computer screen (I'm not kidding, it's HUGE), mourning the loss of my ability to put words together to form sentences that even I find interesting, listening to my ITunes application paw through the various music on my computer, when it came across an memory....


Kenny Loggins - Celebrate Me Home.


Several flashes of memory, mostly focusing on those celebratory returns to home; most of them focused upon the winter months.....largely because there's snow on the ground, some in the air, and the air temperatures would make Jesus slap the weatherman.


Christmas came and went; lots of family, lots of food, lots of gifts, lots of warmth....


First Christmas without that one phone call; that one call, imagining the old man wearing a Santa cap, simultaneously complaining about it, and grinning about it.


That house on the small hill now empty and silent.  Waiting for the next occupants to create their memories.


And I had a brief 'conversation' with an old friend about the desire to return to home; and how was I going to survive without my annual pilgrimage to Lipuma's Coney Island on Main Street for an infusion of the best worst food in the known world?


It is a known fact that this road really only goes in one direction; and while you may look back through that strange, somewhat distorted reflection in the rear-view mirror, the tolls must be paid and the movement must be forward.


But my mind rebels at that kind of ultimatum.


I've always had a ridiculous relationship with time.


I've traveled most of my adult life; one place to another, one job to another.  Even when I was centralized, I still ran down the river at the first available opportunity, to see what was around that next bend; a new experience; a new role, a new audience. 


And there are some lovely benefits to such behavior; oh, the places you'll go!  Oh, the things you will see!  My education was never complete......


And some drawbacks:  I did not see the time passing; I did not heed the setting of the sun.


I did not see people age, or place disappear until it was too late to pay tribute to those events.


And for a while I was convinced that those images and those stories and those moments, TRAPPED IN AMBER in my mind would suffice.


I did not consider that they would conspire to attempt to drive me to madness.


And there's Kenny Loggins again, telling me to Keep the Fire Burning....


"Who are you?
Where are you?
You're not alone, it's so wonderful!"


Okay.