Battles with Integrity

I'm thinking I might go shopping for a new shirt. Maybe a polo shirt, in Blue and Gold, because I have been ACCEPTED to UC Berkeley!!

There is rejoicing.

[Posted on Brick's50-ver2, out in the world.]

Sometimes, what with all of the frustration, anger, hatred, sin, pain, famine, war, and just plain hurt in the world, it can be easy to forget that there are occasional bright spots.

It is sometimes neccesary to seek after those bright spots just to have enough perspective to understand that the whole thing is worthwhile. To that purpose I humbly offer for your consideration... baby animals, bright sunrise on a frosty morn, the refraction of light by a prism, backrubs, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, tomatoes fresh from the vine, a genuine smile on a friend, monkey bread, happy children, La Dolce Vita, snuggling, and Jon Carroll.

Anthropologists sometimes get it wrong, in part because it's so much fun to lie to anthropologists.

How about you? Riddle me this dear reader, what things bring you uncomplicated joy?

Some many years ago, when I first started going to these BYOF BBQs, there weren't so many of those really short proto-people I saw running about (or laying about) last night at the play, the potluck, and on the rock. What's happening that all my friends (extended and otherwise) are threatening to wed, are becoming troth, and are associating with these heartbreakingly adorable little creatures?

Could it be, that when no one was paying attention, when we were distracted by the mundane, that maybe we... <looks left, looks right> ...we grew up?

T, you were our Peter. Cy, you were our Smee. Where have gone Wendy Darling, Slightly, Tootles, Curly, Nibs, and Tiger Lily? How have they been replaced with people who talk of Joint-Filings and Legislative Councils, of Mileage and Foreign Policy?

Still, I can only be grateful, as I look through this window out onto the morning of a gray, dull, adult world, that you my friends, are ones with imagination. I am gladdend that, despite your necessary adaptations to the dreary world of Men and Women, Politics and Work, that you are people who can still retain the liberty and capacity from time-to-time, to remember how to have good kid's fun. My friends play let's pretend. They climb upon rocks like mountain goats in the dark. They sing songs and tell stories. They remember when it is necessary, that when we choose it, we can still be Lost Boys and Girls whenever we want.

This is why Indian Rock will always be a small part of Never-Never Land to me.

Thank you all. I love each of you so very much.