Left to my own devices

It was the mid-1990s. I walked into the record store (aptly-named Record Service), and took stock of where I was. It was situated in an old building on Green St., in campustown. The immediate thought I have when remembering it is 'brown.' I remember the walls as being brown, the shelves were brown, it was just... brown. It felt cozy. There was a sign on one of the walls for a place upstairs called Figaro's. It specialized in classical music. My heart fluttered slightly, as I was partial to classical music, and so seeing that there was some place devoted to it seemed pretty awesome. But, I didn't go there, as I wanted to primarily focus attention on what was on offer at the main record store. It was my first time in that shop. I was familiar with classical music. I was not, it turned out, familiar with what a lot of what Record Service had to offer. There was so much to take in. A few items I remember that stood out were: the greatest hits collection (the best of...

I turned 49 twelve days ago. A few weeks before that, I experienced something new: Talking about my genetics, with professionals. As friends and regular readers of the blog know, my dad has been dead for a long time. He died in 1997 at the age of 52 from pancreatic cancer. Not a good way to go. Ever since then, I've been doing a sort of mortal arithmetic in my head. Even at his funeral, as I was sitting there watching the American flag being folded and then handed to my father's widow and their 2-year-old son, the thought was being tossed around in my mind of how, 'Okay, I'm 21. Dad was 52 when he died. That means I could have another 31 years left? Maybe?' At the time, 31 years sounded like a good, long while. I'm here to tell you that it went by quickly. And so, as I continued to near the age where my dad received his diagnosis (he was 51), I began talking with my primary care physician (PCP) about whether or not I should have some kind of genetic testing don...

There may come a time when some of us realize we may not live as long as we'd wanted, or expected to. It may not come as a "Eureka!" moment, perhaps more as a slow, steady registering of potential reality. I use the word "potential" deliberately, as none of us knows precisely what the future holds. Still, we can have a fairly good idea after a certain point.

We are born into a world and a universe that have existed for billions of years. While we don't yet know -- and may never know -- all the secrets of our aged celestial home, what we have uncovered so far is staggering. In the age of the Internet, especially, knowledge is at our fingertips. And, if trusting potentially sketchy online sources isn't your thing, then places like libraries have been around for some time. As we grow, and learn how to talk and read and communicate and learn, the history of the world is there for the taking. It is with a mild amount of perplexity that I admit to having taken all of this for granted for many years. I just... knew things, you know? Anyone with access to books, television and the Internet can know things. The entirety of our known existence is available, should we care to research it. And that's why, starting just a few years ago, I began to realize there will come a time when I won't know everything. That time will, of course, ar...

On a blog post from earlier this month, Kevin Drum gets at something I've been thinking about off-and-on for awhile. It's the contemplation of whether there are truly more "extremist nutballs" today than there used to be, or if it only seems that way because now they have the megaphone of the internet -- specifically, social media -- with which to share their ideas. Without conducting a special sort of census, there's no true way to get numbers for the aforementioned notion, however, after careful thought on the matter, I tend to think the number of political and societal cranks has remained fairly steady over the years. Granted, there's probably more extremists now than there were in, say, 1985, but that's because there's 3 billion additional people on the planet. As a percentage of the population, we're probably looking at approximately the same number now as compared to the past few decades. Such a conclusion will probably cause some people ...

  "There's a headstone right in front of you And everyone I know" - Vampire Weekend, 'Don't Lie' The passage of time is something that has long-fascinated me. It is deceptive in its simplicity. Some argue that "time" is a human construct. Perhaps how the concept of how we measure it is, but not time, itself. "Feet" and "inches" are simply contrivances of measurement, but there's no getting around that Person A, at what we term 6' 1" is taller than Person B at 5' 10". So it goes with time. "2021" is an identifier we created, but its placement in the continuum of time is certain. I've mentioned before how time is like a book -- all of it is there, the difference is what page we happen to be on. If the entirety of time is equivalent to a 1,000 page book, the fact that we, in 2021, are on page 300 doesn't mean that page 990 doesn't exist, just like someone in 1944 being on page 275 doesn...

I'm not going to sugar coat it for you. The recent weeks have been pretty mentally and emotionally dire. There's a low-level hum of stress that seems to permeate every fiber of my being. And, yes, much of it is pandemic-related. I've been more fortunate than many, and I realize and appreciate that, but it doesn't mean my life hasn't been impacted, or that I'm devoid of stress points. I've started seeing a therapist, though so far those sessions have only mildly helped. The other night, in one of the darkest moods of late, I thought  "I don't think I'm going to make it through this pandemic. There's just nothing to look forward to anymore." Looking forward to things is something I took for granted in the pre-COVID days. It's doubtful I'm the only who can acknowledge that. Some of the things that filled my calendar were work or council-related, while others were more recreational. To be honest, I miss them all. While life during t...

There have been a few events during my life, some personal, some en masse, that have impacted my life profoundly. Their influence was profound, altering my perception of the world, and my life in it. I feel as though the current pandemic ought to be another one of those occasions but, honestly, I don't know what to think of it at the moment. There have been some short-term affects, but it is difficult to comprehend the long-term ramifications at this point.

A few days ago, Adam Schlesinger died from complications of the coronavirus. I'm not exactly sure why his death, amongst all the others , startled me so much. I'd forgotten all about his band, Fountains of Wayne, until learning of his passing, and couldn't even whistle one of their tunes. Perhaps it was because Schlesinger was 52, which is close (enough) to my own age? Perhaps it was just a culmination of the mounting death toll? I'm not sure, but it seemed to drive home the reality that this virus can not only infect, but kill. It cares not of class, race, religion, nationality, or age.

"Oh, dream maker, you heart breaker  Wherever you're going, I'm going your way"                                ---- Moon River, Mancini/Mercer The scariest part of life is not knowing the future. I am convinced of this, and it's one of the reasons we tend to look back on things more fondly than is sometimes deserved. I'll remember the good aspects of a job, for instance, and then have to shake-off the rose-colored glasses for a moment and remind myself how miserable I was during that time. Of course, experiences aren't always straight-up good or bad -- there's things to appreciate amidst the parts we wish hadn't existed. But, not knowing what comes next can often preclude a sense of calm from certain situations. I've been thinking about the aforementioned line-of-thought during these precarious times of sheltering-in-place during the global COVID-19 pandemic. Life has altered to such a...

An ad for a game popped-up recently on my feed, and the mood struck me as, 'sure, why not?' So I put the game on my phone and started playing. The game is BitLife, and its concept is that you basically live out someone's life, from birth to death. You can receive a random life, or choose from several. It tells you who your parents are, their age, whether or not you were a planned pregnancy, and if you have any siblings or family pets. Your location in the world is also known to you. It should be said that I am not trying to sell you on this game. I have no affiliation with it. Mostly, I was taken aback at how it impacted me. BitLife is a fun, and somewhat bittersweet experience. It allows you to live out a life you never had, and make different choices than perhaps you made during your own existence. The game also provided me with a glimpse into how I might respond to things during old age, and that was perhaps the most emotional aspect of all.

Our paths cross, briefly, likely never to rejoin. So it goes for, what, 98... 99% of the world's population? Perhaps more? The one-and-done encounters occur so often, are so much a part of the fabric of our lives, that we scarcely give it a thought. I know I don't, not often, anyway. But this past month saw a change in that, and I'm not sure why.

It was one of those situations many of us have found ourselves in. We're in a group setting, and the dreaded, 'Why don't we introduce ourselves?' suggestion is proffered. So, everyone sitting at the table introduces themselves. The tone is set with the first few introductions: name, followed by what they do for a living. Pretty standard stuff. Unfortunately, this caught me in the midst of one of those 'Who am I really? What is life all about?' moods, so I wasn't really feeling the meet and greet session. Eventually, we come around to me, and it's just my name. That's all I cared to give. The leader of the group seemed perturbed, so I caved and offered-up where I work. They then followed that by mentioning another organization I'm a part of, and my role there. It was all very awkward, and no doubt I came-off a bit odd to the new person in the group. Regardless, presenting ourselves -- first and foremost -- by our jobs has always bothere...

I was struck by a passage from a recent online post by Jerry Coyne, wherein he discusses religion, evolution, God, and finding meaning in life (among other things). The passage in question is as follows: "As for the 'ultimate' meaning, well, that's a notion that's intimately connected God, and so the questions answers itself - and wrong. With no evidence of a God, there's no use asking for an ultimate meaning and purpose. All we can do is answer that for ourselves but not for others." It is the last sentence that resonated with me so deeply. Indeed, one of the aspects of religiosity that has concerned me is when people will talk about "meaning" or "purpose." When broached in the context of God, what one really refers to is destiny . We are, I believe, capable of having purpose and meaning without the existence of a god-life entity, and it is up to us as individuals to discover and work on what that is.

I think about death, from time to time, and everything that flows from it; sadness, grief, contemplation, major and minor life changes, and life. I've known a fair amount of people who have died and, with all of them, there is a commonality: I don't like seeing them dead. As in, physically, I do not like looking at someone in a coffin, or simply looking at their coffin knowing they are in it, or standing over their grave, or next to their marker in a mausoleum. Indeed, I never go through life seriously contemplating what it would be like if someone close to me died. The only exception to this was my dad, who survived for ten months after his cancer diagnosis. With every visit, I studied him closely, silently, snatching a glance when he wasn't looking, thinking to myself: 'Right now, he's alive, with breath in his lungs and blood pulsing in his veins. His brain is functioning and alert. His voice works. I can talk with him. At some point, sooner rather than l...

"It is when he thinks he's past love It is then he meets his last love" I once knew a man who went through relationships like they were going out of style When yet another connection with someone had broken down, he'd say something along the lines of how he was really too busy to be with someone, anyway, so it was probably for the best they were splitting-up. And, yes, he was a very busy man, of that there was no doubt. What I always asked myself -- but never the friend directly -- was, "Why do you keep entering new relationships, then? If you know you're too busy for them, then why do you engage in these Sisyphean undertakings? You're not only hurting yourself." Alas, that friend was not unique. There are plenty of people who sometimes seem to be on emotional auto-pilot, never thinking much about what it is they want or need when it comes to romantic involvement. Of course, there are the opposite folk, the people who will sometimes...

My dad died twenty years ago today. I didn't think the 20th anniversary of Lewis' death would be anything more than a notation on the calendar, perhaps looming slightly more significant in the mind, given our propensity to fixate on the multiples of five and ten-year milestones. Cue my surprise this morning, when, on the way to work, I was listening a song that -- for whatever reason -- reminds me of dad, and I broke down crying. Had to spend close to ten minutes drying-up in the car before heading to the office. Wore sunglasses, even though it wasn't that sunny outside, to cover the puffy eyes. This morning, I thought about the concept of stolen time. The idea that someone dies at what we deem to be too young of an age, and how they really should have lived longer. In truth, we all die when our time comes, and it's different for everyone. When someone passes away aged seventy-five or eighty, we rarely think to ourselves how they should have had more years....

"Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting" - Virginia Woolf, A Haunted House Thursday, August 3rd, at 9:51pm, I was sleeping. It had been a long day that constituted a segment of an even longer week, thus, an hour or so earlier, I comfortably put head to pillow and entered a period of restfulness. Across town, a 53-year-old man named Gus Edwards was breathing his last breath, the victim of a gunshot wound inflicted earlier in the evening. The dichotomy of these two situations is something that occurs all too often in our world, and will, I fear, continue to do so for as long as humanity resides upon this earth. There is always a twinge of guilt that occurs whenever I learn of someone's premature death, especially somebody local. Awakening contentedly in my bed that Friday morning and reading the news of Mr. Edwards' death on my phone induced a momentary pang of remorse, coupled with gratitude. Remorse because it felt almost like an affront ...

"It was nice of them, he thought sleepily, looking up into the ring of smiling eyes, to look so pleased that he wasn't going to die after all."  -- P.D. James, The Black Tower So, I saw the doctor this morning. After weeks of ultrasounds, CT scans, blood work, biopsies, and radiologists, pathologists, specialists and primary care physician visits, it looks like I don't have a recurrence of thyroid cancer. One would think I'd be elated at such news, but it's more like a weary appreciation at this point. It's been a roller coaster month of uncertainty, and that can take a lot out of someone. Still, I'm relieved.

It was October 1998, and some friends and I were on our way to Peoria to 'the boat' (aka gambling). The alpha friend was driving, I was riding shotgun, and we'd picked-up a couple of acquaintances in Bloomington-Normal, and were on our way. It was the early evening, and we were all looking forward to a night of fun and excitement. Unfortunately, we had a bit more excitement -- however brief -- than we'd bargained for. There is an interchange to navigate, northwest of Bloomington, to head toward Peoria. While by no means a difficult interchange, if you're not paying attention it is possible to almost miss it. This occurred on our '98 adventure and, to compensate, our driver swerved over to the exit lane, crossing in front of two vehicles (including a semi), and I remember shutting my eyes because, if I was going to die like that, I didn't want to see it.