For Madame C.

Every now and again my good fortune dawns on me in the midst of the confusing and seemingly endless shyte that life can roll down on all of us.  I am always thankful for my family; my wife and children.  They are a constant source of whatever it is that makes life worth living and dreams possible.  Although anyone who's been there knows how a family can also be a source of both the sublime and the ridiculous, I'd be nowhere without them, drifting along to who knows what or why, needing badly to be saved from myself.   

What I mean here is that every now and again I get to spend time with someone from outside the family who lights me up, who reminds me from a different perspective that wonderful things happen in this world, who by spending time with me makes me feel as though I've been handed the kind of prize that a lot of people never will get.  I just recently felt all of this while too briefly visiting with that someone who does all those things.

Having this experience caused me to pause and reset my views on local (at least) humanity.  Lately, life has been difficult and I have found myself increasingly interested in the overall absence of other humans, i.e. "I'm tired and everyone should just leave me the hell alone!"  That feeling really goes against my nature, but lately, in the words of Raymond Chandler, my brain feels like a bucket of wet sand.

I'm so freakin' tired all the time.  I never get enough sleep.  It's so easy for people to say, "Well, just go to bed earlier."  Uh huh.  That I would, if I could.  Though I try every night, cosmically strong forces are powerfully arrayed against that effort.  As a direct result, I've found it increasingly difficult since returning from Hawaii to deal with other people's concerns, especially when they expect me to solve their issues.  That's a bad thing because that's what the Great Public University pays me to do.  My job is to fix things for grad students, and faculty, and my fellow staff (who undoubtedly have their times of feeling exactly as I do) who find themselves in a jam.  It's not a good sign when your overriding ethic starts turning from "How can I help you?" to, at least mentally, "What the fuck do you want now?"

It's getting to be that way at home.  Not good!  Kids need the opposite of that, always, but man....

Yes, so, something needs to be done.  Well, this person recently came to town and we visited for a while, talking about everything and nothing as very old and very close friends will do.  This visit, completely unintended on her part perhaps, resulted in some greater force grabbing me by the shoulders and shaking me up as if to say, "See, you silly little man?  See who comes your way?  Wonderful things happen to you!  It's a great world, and a grand life.  Snap out of your useless misanthropic funk and be happy.  No more croaking!"

I can't say that everything that's happened since last week has been all that wonderful.  In fact problems remain that will take a long, long time to iron out.  Still, at the very least I've been reminded that those existential brutalities are not all there are to life, and in understanding that anew I can deal with them instead of the other way around.  Life ain't so bad, after all.  There's music there somewhere, and now I think I can hear it again.

Thank you, Madame C.