I have decided that that is the name of the road I live on and that is what I will be calling it from now on.
There are several reasons for this, few of which are worth talking about, so we won't.
In the meantime, life goes on and is seldom surprising. Maybe I have just gotten to the point where about everything that can happen in my lifetime has happened and nothing surprises me anymore. It is not that everything has happened to me, but, somewhere on this planet, or off even, the events of the past 67 years have been so earthshaking that it takes a hell of a lot to get me shaken anymore.
And you know, the one thing that can is man's own inhumanity. The depths of depravity that I have witnessed is far more than anyone should ever have to bear. Not that it has happened to me, but has happened either in view or I have been told or saw pictures or read about it and have no reason to doubt that it has happened.
Cigarette burns on a baby. Disfigurement caused by parents' maltreatment of their own children. Letting the car drive itself into a lake with your own precious children inside. Dropping an atomic bomb on a city after a war has already been won I can perhaps excuse the first on Hiroshima, but I can never excuse the attack on Nagasaki.) Killing and maiming just to be doing something. And the list goes on and on.
But these are only the physical signs. This is what anyone can view in the tabloids and on the television and in the papers daily. Much more insidious and oh, so much more painful to bear, is the hurt each of us may inflict upon our loved ones or even on total strangers. Not by a rap across the knuckles but by a slap on the emotions.
I have a friend, a very precious friend, that has problems. Some she has had for most of her life, feelings of inadequacy, little feeling of self worth, and yet she is such a vital and expressive young woman, one who can simply express her innermost feelings of love and hope and misery and despair. Growing up without a father in the home, she did not have the mentoring that most children do. But she did have a mother and a pretty large support system in her immediate and extended family.
Well educated, I guess. She can talk on any subject with authority that shows much education, although she insists she has not had the extensive education her verbosity belies. Perhaps it is self education. I do not know, I only know that she has a great command of the language and seems well versed in practically any subject which may arise.
She recently lost her mother, after getting to know her again for a short while before her death. No, her mother was always around but was not in any way communicative for a large number of years. Then she and her husband divorced, no big deal they had been separated for a number of years. But still, there was the finality. She then remarried--a fellow she knew very well for a number of years.
She has packed a lot of living into her under forty years.
About once a month, she has a swing into a period of deep depression. It is then that she writes at her very best. And I feel very privileged to be able to read those writings, for only a very limited number know where to look--and I refuse to tell anyone.
Those of you who know me, know me to be a bit of a rascal. I play tricks on people and like to be snotty to some and play angles off against each other, and generally just like to have fun. I never mean to harm anyone, but I like to rattle cages too.
You also know that I have a most unconventional belief when it comes to anything approaching a belief in a higher power. OK, God. See, I have worked out what I believe to be an all encompassing ethic that allows me--no, forces me, to believe in God, to believe in evolution, to believe in natural and the rigorous sciences, to even believe in some of the social sciences, although I will ardently tell you they are not sciences.
You also know I have a flair for writing, and sometimes it can become the most outrageous piece of claptrap that ever hit the pike, but at other times, can be the most soothing, most sentimental goo that even a bee couldn't land on and keep his feet dry. So where is the happy medium when I need to not be condescending or boorish or mawkish even, but yet must instill a sense of love and hope, faith in God, while at the same time let my friend know that she is loved not only by God but by her fellow men, just for what she is and no more and no less. Just for her own sweet self.
I don't know.
But when the need to do so is apparent, I delay. And delay. And then sit down with no forethought and write what I feel at the time. And I do it without editing as I go, and my final editing is sometimes forgotten, because, quite honestly, I have to get away from the keyboard for a while. Maybe take a coffee break, watch the boob tube, walk outside, whatever.
And, what do you know, when I come back to it I find I have done some of my best writing ever. Cogent, coherent and fully expressing my belief in my God and His wonders and His love for everyone of us.
And only one or two people, other than myself will ever read it.
And that makes it even more perfect.
For that is the way He meant it to be.
And that is all me and Hootie have to say from here down in Bootleg Hollow.
