(A Jotting from my workbook of precisely one month ago. Although I now have my computer hooked up to the internet, everything else is still the same. Some things change; some things stay the same.)
I get so tired sometimes…
Deprived of getting on my new Apple computer because I don't know enough about these things to realize I need to find and register with a local Service Provider (and how do you find out about one if you don't have a computer to do a search for one…),1 after dinner (the same old) I go out, mostly to get out - there's a party of sorts going on next door outside my window and it's too noisy to concentrate on reading something - and walk some blocks to the store where I regularly buy my ice cream, having just run out. I could wait 'til tomorrow, but any excuse…
And there are parties going on all over the place. It's pre-Gay Pride Parade tomorrow downtown. Ocean Blvd. has had signs up for a couple of days, warning car drivers that there will be No Parking along there all day Sunday. The local paper headlines the event. I'm personally not really interested in seeing G and L's parade around. (Never made it to the - major - one in Sydney either, all the years that I lived there, or watched it on TV.) I'm more interested in why there's so much homosexuality, and skewed 'gender identity' in general; and why 'people' aren't, seemingly - let alone more - interested in that. Can't they see that there's something wrong going on in our environment, to cause all this irregularity? Has been, for some time; for heaven's sakes??…
And on the way to the store, my mind goes back to a book I read on the subject, years ago. BrainSex, by a (female) geneticist and a (male) journalist, How the fetal brain is set 'normally' or skewed at a particular, early stage of development by its hormonal bath, and what causes the hormones possibly to be out of kilter Resulting in abnormality. And try telling that to any of these people I pass by. Having fun in their skewed condition; and daring anybody, now, to say anything about it.
And the federal government is getting into the act now….no. Won't go there. I was just going to the store…
Where I can't believe my ears, upon entering (through the swishing doors…), but the 'Muzak' (what do they call it these days??) is playing - could it be? Yes: the Unchained Melody. And a memory comes immediately flooding back, like the tide returning.
The summer of 1955. June. I have just left university - smack on my 21st birthday - to start on my lifelong search for Truth. Having dropped out of school to do so, I was staying in a motel near the beach at Santa Monica, spending some days just 'cooling off', sitting and walking on the beach, inwardly preparing for my next move, whatever that was going to be.2 One evening in my little room there (I have lived in many of those kinds of spaces over these years), the radio played Unchained Melody.
Different recording artist. Same theme.
Time goes by so slowly. And time can do so much…3
And has anything really changed over all these years?
I still sit in a small room; wondering what my next steps are…
Well, there's always ice cream, to brighten things up a little.
And my luck: They're having another sale on it. Two 1.75 quart cartons for $6. Regular price $4.49, often on a sale price of $3.49. A dollar total off that: a bargain.
And then I go and put the dollar saved in the collection carton of the church man outside the entrance (who is often there; or a regular woman as well, with the same kind of white outfit. This seems to be 'their' charity beat). A worthy cause. This one is particularly for people trying to beat drug addiction.
And why are there so many of those in the culture?
Is it because time goes by so slowly; and there is just no damn thing you - anybody - can do about it??
That things will happen in their own good time???
If so: it's good time. Dammit.
...but yes yes. Time can do so much. And no more.
...but yes yes. Time can do so much. And no more.
---
footnotes:
1 In all honesty I do have to report some success in this area today. Faced with thinking that I needed a long extension cord, to plug my 3-pronged computer plug into the only 3-pronged outlet in my flat, which is in the kitchen a considerable distance away, I wondered how to find such a thing. I had seen no computer shops or electrical shops on my walks down various streets in the downtown area. There used to be the Yellow Pages for that sort of thing; did they even have that resource any more, with everybody walking around with mobile 'smart' phones these days??
After finishing my hour on the City Library's computer service, I checked by the Information Desk to ask them for help in my matter. Lo and behold, they had the item in question - but the lady was even starting to look up the subject on her computer for me, when a young fellow, passing by and overhearing my need, knew just where to send me. It turns out that there is a Radio Shack not far away; and they proved to be very helpful. (I didn't need an extension cord after all; they have an adaptor for just that sort of situation.)
So sometimes - even now, in this high-tech era - just putting out your needs works. The human element is still there. after all. Seek, and so forth.
2 First of all, to go home and face my mom, for giving up a potentially promising - and pride-inducing for a mother - career as a doctor. But that path in life simply no longer held any interest for me. I had other fish to fry; whatever 'they' - it - turned out to be; as follow-up to my finding out the truth about life. (You know: why are we here; what's it all about.) But even what it would possibly lead to didn't even matter. It was its own search, for its own sake. Whatever grew out of that search would be whatever grew out of it. First things first.
Looking back, I marvel at how singleminded I was. And, actually - after all these years - still am. But nothing happening because of it - out of it - is mighty boring, sometimes…
Seemingly not happening, that is. God moves in mysterious ways, and so forth...
3 I also heard, on one of those evenings, President Eisenhower, on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the founding of the UN. For all that initiative was worth...
Ike. Totem symbol of the 'sleepy years' of the '50s; in some people's minds. For the majority of Americans, they were just getting on with their lives; nothing wrong with that. But for 'change agents'; like Jews - always pushing, pushing, pushing; in particular, it seemed, in order for them to get more accepted into the status quo of the country - it was dullsville.
Don't get me wrong; some of my best friends, etc. - but no; actually. Our high school fraternity pledged some Jewish guys; we even pledged a Japanese guy. And there was even beginning to be talk of pledging a black guy. (Called Negroes in those days. Nothing wrong with that; until some people started making something of it. Sort of like the LGBT crowd getting up on their hind legs and making themselves heard in this day and civil-rights age. Understandable. There's got to be a better way - than what degenerates into attacks on free speech, where now people are attacked for objecting to, e.g., gay marriage, and are called homophobic for it; like it is the new 'racist'. So, understandable; if unfortunate.) So things were afoot in those days. Just under the radar, is all.
He said; who is chafing at the 'bit' of things not changing in even deeper terms, culture-wise - world culture-wise - fast enough for him…
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