Daily thoughts

You promised your mother you would speak with me.

Announcing something and then blocking me is not speaking. It is telling. This does not a relationship make. I had a sentence here guessing at what might be a response, but I'll let you tell me directly.

There are some relationships you can't unmake. I don't know why I thought about it just now, but Luke's anguish at finding Vader to be his father comes to mind. I think it's a relatable moment because none of us wants to be related to a monster. And many of us go through some stage when we think our parents are that, or our country, or religion, or culture.

Most counterculture movements end up being moments of the culture rather than alternatives to it: beatniks, hippies, punk, metal, hobos. All of them have left behind their trails of tears. I am thinking of my friend Mike Spike, who basically drank himself to death. Actually, I believe he died of heart failure while in police custody, but I expect the alcohol was a factor. He was one of a group of Ithaca townies.

Every generation has its cohort that rages against the machine. Those who rage too hard, or lose their context, they crack, if they don't die, and the putting back together is not always possible. You don't find too many aging punk rockers around (that was one of my generation's outlets). You can hide a tattoo, take off the black leather and wash the gel out of your hair, but no one would have tolerated a movement that said you need to give an eye, or a hand, to join.

We severely limit the use of all sorts of hormones and steroids. They can enhance certain performance, but we realize the cost is just too high. How much more so when attempts are made to reverse the very course of nature.

It is experimental, at best. They are shutting it down in parts of Europe. It's dangerous.

If gender is fluid anyway, what does it matter what the anatomy is.

I think I get part of it. It seems people are trading one family for another. But they don't know the heart of the other. They don't know the black heart of those who would destroy a million more children is their pursuit of power to upend the world.

What is the utopia? And what makes you believe every generation before didn't believe they too could achieve it.

We can never give up on the notion of family. We are social creatures and need our tribes. The problem is that when we try to remake or re-engineer the world, or the notion of family, when the counter-culture truly ascends, it usually ends in disaster: a hundred million dead last century should cause us to pause.

You don't see most of my generation still running around in black leather, combat boots, spiked hair and chains, filling mosh pits. Nor do you see the beatniks, the hippies, the hobos, each wearing out his own societal and/or personal anguish.

It is immature to think that the world has abandoned us. And maybe we've lost something, but maybe we've gained even more.

I recall a while back your saying, or maybe you said it to your mom, that you don't have what is yours. We all go through that. Some of us never get out of it. I am in a conversation about success at the moment. Our problem is it is never what we have right now. When we achieve a goal, there's a part of us that still feels empty, a “what's next?” or “what now?”

I think I am appealing to logic, which doesn't necessarily address feeling. Feeling is neither good nor bad; it might be a starting point.

And sometimes I loathe the prospect of my tomorrow, and it takes some energy to make it a little better than today, but I will because I have to, and I will come home to you, and my mother, and my sister, and you will all make me smile, because why should it be otherwise.

It is good. It is so good, even in the confusion, and the stuck, there is good. There is the color of the house to make you smile, the pile of laundry, the crickets. You only need to listen. It is G-d's music, and it was made for you. Enjoy it. Share it with someone. What else is there to do?

I am tired. I sleep now.

I am sorry if the thoughts aren't complete. I might be more sorry if they were.

Anyway, you said you would get healthy first.

The world is exceedingly good. Until you are clear that this is a part of you, your nature, you should not try to fix it with this generation's drug.

There is a picture of what appears to be a happier version of you on the fridge. I am wondering what it was that I am pretty sure he knew that you seem to have forgotten. I think it is that tomorrow will be a lot like today, and that will be just fine. There is no place to go, no place to get, just another morning. Your people will be there. Your food will taste like it always does. And you will be happy.

And I too don't necessarily love the prospect of my tomorrow, and it takes some energy to make it a little better than today, but I will because I have to, and I will come home to you, and my mother, and my sister, and you will all make me smile, because why should it be otherwise.

It is good. It is so good, even in the confusion, and the stuck, there is good. There is the color of the house to make you smile, the pile of laundry, the crickets. You only need to listen. It is G-d's music, and it was made for you. Enjoy it. Share it with someone. What else is there to do?

The black of the driveway sealer is almost completely off my feet. The toe flap is pretty much healed.

I started writing in my journal, but came up to something that I thought it would be nicer to share. There's a part of me that says maybe you might want to look later. Maybe you might want to see the person who was. The only problem is this will all be gone. I should make a backup. That is done and another block of time is gone.

I haven't been treating my time with much respect. I stopped by for a game with mom this morning. I took a ride up North Stamford a little bit.

There was a house in a bright yellow with a blue door. It made me think of the happiness a house can be, the quirky, the familiar, the smell. It's kind of up there with the pleasure of finally finishing a tooth paste tube, knowing you've done all you can to squeeze out almost every last bit.

Then I swung by Alan's. He had some lox for me. Apparently he had quite a bit left over after the kiddush he sponsored, even though he thought the folks at synagogue ate most of it. I did about half of the Wall Street Journal crossword while I was at his house. Then he and Pam and some grandkids headed off to do stuff. I left too.

I musicated a bit today.

Now it is time for me to row.

I left with one Band-Aid^® on my middle left toe, the one I tried to run over with the stove, and arrived with two: I sneezed, I guess it affected my gait, and I pulled a flap of skin on the same foot's big toe. I was glad I had pocketed the other Band-Aid^®s. I used the bigger one, I think it had Buzz Lightyear on it. I swapped it out at synagogue for something less pretty and less messy. I was there after seven, but made the minyan.

I like David less and less. Monarchy seems such a strange way to arrange things, except for all the other ways.

I was kind of vocal in Dimitri Ostrovsky's class as well. There's this dumb-ass parable about the moon and the sun. It didn't do it for me, to be brief.

So here's the thought for this week. It could have been any one of us. You might have followed a girl to a festival, or been invited to a nearby kibbutz or Sderot for Shabbat, or just been stationed along the border.

It could have been you. I am certain we aren't more than a degree away from victims of that disaster. We certainly are only a step away from many others.

But we survived. We won the lottery. That should be enough for you to greet each day as a miracle, even if it never gets “better,” even if there is no stability. Stability is only an illusion anyway.

And if you don't know what to do, go pick something off the passive-aggressive list. If you can't make you happy, maybe you can contribute to someone else's life, and maybe in the end that will make you happy. It one of the few things that really has the power to satisfy anyway.

Shabbat Shalom/Shavua Tov.