Un-Bearable Lightness of Being

Remember the words? More than the words, remember what's behind them? They're not just soundbites that sold records. They are straight from the heart.

This is a sequel to the ''Tupelo Honey'' blog, which shows how my mind works –- hop, skip and jump from one part of the map to another.What I started to do was simply listen to some of those old Elvis songs.

Problem is, some of them are like songwads stuck in my brain from a not-so-distant experience, and I cannot, no matter what else I do, get them to go away. Simple. Remember Elvis doing ''My Baby Left Me:''

Yes my baby left me,Never said a word.Was it something I done,Something that she heard?
My baby left me,My baby left me.My baby even left me,Never said a word.
Now I stand at my window,Wring my hands and cry.I hate to lose that woman,Hate to say goodbye.
You know she left me,Yes, she left me.My baby even left me,Never said a word.

A little video interlude here, just to remind you what it was like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1qCebD0OkE&mode=related&search=

And then there is, inevitably, for all the Elvis songs, ''Heartbreak Hotel:'’
Well, since my baby left me, I found a new place to dwell.Its down at the end of lonely street at Heartbreak Hotel.
Although its always crowded,You still can find some room. Where broken hearted loversCry away their gloom.

See the original 1956 TV performance hre:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1Qo1eaWF8c

Yes, for those of you who asked after the last few entries, I am keeping busy, and my health is preternaturally good:
Lots of good cholesterol, very little bad cholesterol, not enough exercise, but way better than many 64-year-old sedentary bastards.
But, and this is a big-ass but...

.. I do still come back to the empty, dark apartment that I got for the two of us.
And yes, I am lonely, more than I would have expected. This morning, I was...what's the word? startled? Jolted awake by a vivid and too-realistic dream that she was beside me, and then I had another jolt in which I felt her hit me, then run away again. This keeps replaying in my brain.

Even with the company of other nice people, I fall back on the basic fact that she’s gone and I have too much time on my hands.
So I got a new CD player, so I can sing along with some of those generational songs that recall the things you and I and everyone we know has shared when we felt so desperately, pathetically alone, even in the company of our dear friends. I didn't just lose a person I shared the apartment with. I lost my dearest friend (Yes, I lost other friends in the process, but if so, they were not true friend anyway, so sayonara. But SHE matters!!
And even when we realize that our dearest of all dear friends is the one who left, we are stuck. The musicians, like Elvis, and the composers who saw and experienced and felt the stuff that went into the lyrics Elvis and others have sung about what it is like to be on the wrong end of a breakup, it is tough to get a grip on. (There was Arthur Crudup, a prolific Country & Western dude waaay before even my time on ‘’That’s All Right Mama’’ and ‘’My Baby Left Me,’’ for example, and Tommy Durden and Mae Boren Axton for ‘’Heartbreak Hotel,’’ the first song Elvis made for RCA after Sun Records sold the rights to his work for $35,000—the best deal RCA Victor ever made!

So I was listening to my birthday gift to myself and then shifted fast-forward 20 or 30 years to the Chicago era—so How about them Bears, eh? I once made my former partner a CD that included Chicago and the Beach Boys doing ‘’Wishing You Were Here’’ Before she left, she broke it and some others into shards and threw them at me. It hurt—cut, in fact—but it did not diminish my feeling for her one bit. There are so many Chicago lyrics that cut right to the car crash when it comes to burrowing through emotional stuff. Love, about to happen, happening, in danger, gone, hoping to get it back……all that stuff. So it is nice to have the performers and the creators behind them, through the generations. They remind us we are not alone. However lonely we may be, either hoping for love, hoping it is real, fearing we’re gonna lose it, losing it, hoping to get it back, on the brink of despair at not getting it back and all the shades in between. God love you all.

Steve Kipner and Jay Parker’s ‘’Hard Habit To Break’’ makes people think more carefully about the importance of someone more special than anyone else in our lives—even our own selfish friggin selves!!. To that someone:
I guess I thought you’d be here forever/
Another illusion I chose to create
You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone
And I found out just a little too late/
Now being without you takes a lot of getting used to
Should learn to live with it, but I don’t want to.
Now living without you is all a big mistake/
Instead of getting easier, it’s the hardest thing to take.
I’m addicted to you baby, you’re a hard habit to break.

The performance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsDAEWBuiWo&mode=related&search=
From Tupelo to Memphis and Chicago and Fukuoka and Tokyo and beyond—way beyond.
I know you’re out there somewhere
(Omygod, Moody Blues? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAhGERg5iPg)

For Chicago and the Beach Boys doing a live version of ‘’Wishing You Were Here,’’ check this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BCdELHOUpw&mode=related&search=

If you have read this far, by now, you must know I love you!
And Peter Parker brings it home: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KcV0HGL4Kg&mode=related&search=

History in a Tortoise Shell

On the surface, history is just a record of social contact and/or conquest. Take condoms, for example. Condoms are as old as civilization, having turned up in Egyptian artifacts from around 3,000 B.C. in ways that aren’t clear whether they were used in religious ceremonies or for personal hygiene. The early condoms were made of linen or other fabric and were intended to protect men from catching a venereal disease. They were never intended to prevent pregnancy.
In Japan, condoms were made of leather (kawagata) and other materials, even including tortoise shell (ouch) and animal horn (Maybe that’s where the expression ‘’I’m horny’’ originated?). History suggests the sayogoromo, or ‘’small pajamas,’’ the early condoms used in Japan, were brought from China.
In 1848, the first ‘’rubbers:: were made of latex, and they were first advertised in The New York Times in 1863. By the early 1920s, artificial latex was discovered and as the roaring ‘20s gave way to the swinging ‘30s, more than 1.5 million condoms a day were being made in the United States.
As I noted in the earlier Blog entry, condoms now come in colors and flavors, as well as having different shapes, textures and clever little appendages, with the aim of making condom use more appealing to protect against a groundswell of STDs.
In Japan, the world’s biggest per-capita consumer of condoms, more than 600 million are sold in Japan annually, and more than 5 billion are sold annually worldwide. One little bit of trivia is that Fuji Latex, the biggest of Japan’s ‘’Big Three’’ condom makers, has its headquarters building in Tokyo’s Chiyoda Ward shaped like a giant condom (or like something that could be covered by a giant condom, at least.)
Japan’s modern condom industry had a slow start. Around the turn of the 20th century, most condoms were imported from the United States, and did not catch on until the Showa Era was well underway. A specialist in forensic medicine, Dr. Giichiro Takeda, wrote that condoms then, as now, were rejected because they limited sexual satisfaction (which I have to say is not true.)
Japan:s first manufactured condom was the Heart Bijiin (heart beauty,) made by Hosaburo Inoue in northern Tokyo by dipping sections of bamboo into latex, drying them, inflating them and dusting them with mica. The early ones often broke, we are told.
For all the condoms purchased in Japan and the rest of the world, though, there is still a scary amount of sexually transmitted disease around. I did not feel particularly relieved to read last week, for example, that there seems to be a global epidemic of risky sex planned over the internet. I already know more about that than I wanted to know. The newest report is from Melbourne, where doctors say they are fighting a reemergence of syphilis, according to Kit Fairley, director of the Melbourne Sexual Health Center. And syphilis is an STD we thought was among the diseases of the past. It turns out that it is, however, alive and spreading, among non-condom-wearing people who have vaginal or anal sex, or even during oral sex and mutual masturbation. I hope it is a coincidence that about 90 percent of the Koalas in Australia have a disease very similar to human forms of syphilis.

Good Grief

Another footnote on depression is that it’s not always easy to tell when a person is actually afflicted by bipolarism or is just going through mood swings and denial. Often, people who need help the most are those who are the most reluctant to admit it. This is not just me ranting again. If you wonder whether your mood swings are going to make you go crazy, just remember that many people have nowhere else to go.
The more I read on bipolarism, the more depressed I feel. No, that is not a joke. My depression in this comes from the fact that I couldn't really help someone dear to me overcome some serious problems that are usually associated with bipolar disorder. Of course I am not a specialist, and the fact that I am not a specialist is another reason i feel so frustrated about this.
I've written about bipolarism, which used to be called manic depression, because some of the mood swings associated with it are just what we all go through now and then. But for some people, these swings are excruciating, and can lead to or be associated with even worse problems. But don’t listen to me. Learn more about grief, guilt association, bipolarism and the causes and effects in this straight-up information presentations: http://willigocrazy.org/Ch06a5.htm. It’s also worth noting that when more common medications don't seem to help, there are more scary ways to treat depression:http://www.anxiety-and-depression-solutions.com/articles/conventional/pharmaceutical/maoi.ph

Arty-facts

The big stone head in the photo (no, the other one) is a Moai, a ceremonial stone figure from Easter Island that is currently on exhibit at the Marunouchi Building in central Tokyo, where I work. This Moai is one of 887 of the Rapu Nui statues and is on loan to mark the fifth anniversary of the building, ( http://www.marunouchi.com/festival/) which is a pretty neat place to eat, shop and work, by the way, and the 10th anniversary of whatever it is the Chilean-Japan friendship organization has been doing for the past decade. Now that I don't have such a high cost of living to deal with, I might spring for a related event, a Chile food and wine fair, at the Imperial Hotel. Cheers.
There's more about the history of Easter Island civilization and the big stone monuments on the PBS Web site:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/easter/civilization/giants.html

Aural Sex

Viewer Advisory:

This Blog entry refers to sexual behavior that may be considered objectional or offensive to some people. If you are one of those people, don't read it. But the context of the potentially objectionable references is a health warning against promiscuous and unprotected sex, so you might consider the objectionable parts worth bearing for the more important stuff about health.

Ok, moving on:

I’m not a Scotch drinker, so I was not terribly upset some years ago when researchers told us there was a higher risk of certain kinds of cancer among Scotch drinkers because of the way good Scotch is cured (in charred casks). Not long after that, however, I did get upset at learning there is a higher risk of certain kinds of cancer among people who eat crispy (really brown) bacon, for the crispy part (charred, I suppose) and for the way bacon is usually cured (brine-soaked and smoked a long time).
Medical science is wonderful, because it applies other sciences to the daunting task of healing and discovery of things that make us need healing. Therefore, on one hand, as a person who has gone through cancer surgery twice, I think it is good to know what other potential cancer causes are out there.
But I never thought there would be such grave cancer risks in my favorite indoor sport untilI read a recent report that links oral sex and cancer. I am not making this up. The research on this and similar findings is widely documented, as in the particular report I read in New Scientist (Read it here: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn11819)
The really scary factor is the strong linkage between oral sex and HPV (human papilloma-virus, which is a cause of cervical cancer.
In other words, before going any further, consider this a warning to both sexes: Ladies who have performed felatio on more than five partners are 250 percent more likely to contract throat cancer than those who don’t do oral sex. And men who have any of the more than 80 forms of HPV are more likely to pass the virus to their sex partners through oral sex than vaginal sex.
And men who have an HPV and who perform vaginal sex are considered extremely high risk for their partners in making them vulnerable to cervical cancer. Two HPV strains in particular, HPV 16 and HPV 18, are the most likely suspects so far, according to the most recent research.
(Learn more about HPV and the research here; http://www.oralcancerfoundation.org/facts/humanpapillomavirus.htm)
But it’s all another way of saying that fellatio, however much we enjoy it, and its equally pleasurable counterpart cunnilingus, are risky forms of behavior without protection. In this case, there are two kinds of protection. Condoms and vaginal sheaths are one kind. Another kind is common sense, which I wrote about here in an earlier Blog entry.
The common-sense notion I have in mind here is that we all need to be careful about our health, including our sexual health, and we need to make sure that our sex partners are doing the same thing. This is just another application of the Golden Rule: Do unto others, or, in this case, do into others, as you would want them to do unto you. Monogamy, in the sense of being faithful to one partner, rather than promiscuous sex, is one way to apply the Rule. And with that, there is the obligation to have regular health checks, because viruses travel in many ways, and even people who are clean in their daily ablutions can pick up viruses that easily make a new home in our bodies and seek new homes in the bodies of our partners.
The risk of viral infection is especially high in the genitals (penis and vagina) and in the mouth. The mouth has often been referred to as the body’s second set of genitals. The linkage is not just poetic. The physical similarity between mouth and vagina is obvious, and some of us are as sensitive in our mouths as in the genital area, when it comes to pleasureable (or painful) experiences. Unfortunately, it also happens that the mucus membranes that keep both moist are perfect homes for viruses like the HPV group.
So, the main point is that oral sex acts are cancer risks. Guys who consider fellatio a sign that their woman loves them should understand if their woman prefers not to.
Guys should also consider the possibility that tthey may contract an HPV or other STD if heir partner might have been doing blowjobs for previous partners. Yes ladies, I'm sorry to say it, but the guy is not always the guilty partner when it comes to passing on STDs.

But for women in particular, oral sex can be bad news. The Johns Hopkins University studies found that those women who had done oral sex on one to five guys had double the risk of getting oral cancer. The women who had done six or more men increased the oral cancer risk by fivefold. And HPV contracted through oral sex, or even kissing, should be considered high-risk behavior for promiscuous partners, according to Dr. Maura Gillison, one of the researchers.
I thought about this quite a bit before writing about it. First, I though we are being warned that the only safe form of oral sex is the kind where we just sit around and talk about it. But sex is too important in our daily lives to abstain. I’ll blather on about the protection factor in a future Blog. For now, though, I’d point out there are other ways to show your love for your partner. One of those ways is to demonstrate enough respect to use condoms. They come in a variety of flavors, so to speak.

Depression

The weather update from Japan is that it is a lovely late-summer day in Tokyo, with big post-typhoon clouds again, same as yesterday in the wake of Typhoon Fitow. Depending on who's counting, Japan has now either matched or is one storm short of the 2004 record of 10 to have made landfall in a season.

The storm has now weakened to what is called a tropical depression, which means it still has wind and rain you wouldn't want to be out in, but it's fading fast up in the north Pacific, very unlikely to bother people much anymore.

Before leaving Japan, though, Fitow was responsible for the deaths of at least two people and one man whose body hasn't been found, so I'd count that as three. This storm wasn't as bad as the 2004 killer of 11 people. But death and destruction from the forces of nature are part of the program here. When it's not typhooning, the earth is quaking. It's always something.

That's fairly depressing as well.

Check the Japan weather here: http://www.jma.go.jp/en/typh/

Small Change

The butterfly effect is simplification of the notion that small variations in the initial condition of a nonlinear dynamical system may produce large variations in the long term behavior of the system. So the wind created by a butterfly fluttering its wings could change the atmosphere enough to cause a tornado (or prevent one, I suppose). That's chaos. A similar and much older notion is that an infinite number of monkeys hitting the keys of an infinite number of typewriters (see how old this one is?) could eventually peck out the complete works of William Shakespeare.
That, as a long-dead aunt used to say, is a load of horse-puckeys. Proceeds from the legendary Concert for Bangla Desh, despite the best intentions, didn't do anything to help people other than the concert promoters. A recent scam involving people sending money to buy plastic bracelets that would demonstrate their concern for world hunger did not generate any money that was actually used to combat world hunger or buy food for anybody but the people who thought up the scam.
I believe in charity, and I believe in trying to help others, especially those less fortunate. At the same time, though, I am also coming off an experience that says even one person trying to have a positive effect upon another probably won't.
So if, just for example, I couldn't even help one person get on the right track without failing horribly and hurting both of us in the process, how could a stadium full of ticket-buying rock fans change the course of famine in a country so corrupt it can't even provide basic garbage-collection services, let alone have a functioning economy?
I got my head straight after being hit on it hard with a thrown dinosaur. (Yes, some other things were involved.. It's a bit complicated.)
But the point is that I now believe the best help is self-help, I now see. Apart from medical necessity, I understand that, at the end of the day, the only way we can solve a problem, overcome an addiction, break a bad habit, or get out of debt, out of a bad relationship, a bad job, a bad life in general, is to just do it. We are, as Maurice Maeterlinck put it, alone, ``absolutely alone on this chance planet; and, amid all the forms of life that surround us, not one, excepting the dog, has made an alliance with us.''
Be nice to your dog.

Eric Clapton and Sheryl Crow do one of her best songs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Whw08RmUFNg&mode=related&search=

And Cheryl notes, A Change Would Do You Good

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6N9-tPwZTkc&NR=1

And Eric (and his Crossroads rehab effort) Eric Clapton, keeps trying to Change the World http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Whw08RmUFNg&mode=related&search=

Hot Stuff

Things got better after a couple of mojitos. I found real peppermint and compiled a healthy one tonight so I could write this. Mojitos are made with rum, a lime twist, sprigs of the mint and club soda over ice. I used Cocoribe, which may not be strictly kosher in Cuba, but it tastes as good as Sonny says in Miami Vice.
Of course another reason to like that movie is for its sense of authenticity. Michael Mann does that in his films. When Colin Farrell and Gong Li (Crockett and Isabella) head for Havana in the cigarette boat for mojitos, we already know something sexy is bound to happen.

http://movies.clevver.com/video/19134/miami-vice-film-clip-crockett-and-isabella-head-to-cuba.php

And sure enough, it does, basically from the time they hit the club.. First, on the dance floor. They dance to ``Arranca, '' by Manzanita (Jose Ortega Heredia) http://www.last.fm/music/Manzanita/_/Arranca.
The dance probably qualifies as salsa. And as most anyone who has been to a Taco Bell knows, salsa is hot and spicy, just as the dance that takes the same name. So, two weeks hence, since I am not able to get to Cuba, I will at least be taking salsa lessons. And I think, with a couple of mojitos, I will do alright.
To learn more about salsa the dance, check this site: http://www.salsa-in-cuba.com/eng/
Cross-cultural footnote
Food, you may know, looms large in my life, because I love to cook, love to eat, and love to be with people who are willing to eat what I cook. So, I should tell you of a great restaurant in Healdsburg, California, up in wine country, called Manzanita. I know the Manzanita is kind of a hill-hugging scrub pine. In this case, it's also the name of a really good place to eat. You'll want some of the Sonma or Nappa region's white wine, I think, rather than mojitos, for this one. I could tell more about that later too.
Feet Notes
Another very personal footnote is about Cuba, which I am to young to remember visiting with my family on a Florida vacation before there was a falling-out between Cuba and the U.S. I'll personally be glad when that's sorted out, for many reasons. I want to have real Cuban Ropa Veja (literally Old Clothes). It's a stew of shredded beef, marinated in red wine, with peppers and onions and beans (frijole negro), as I had it. If you don't or can't or won't dance Salsa with me or have a mojito with me, please try my recipe for Ropa Veja:
Ingredients
Two pounds or more of chuck roast
2 teaspoons sea salt
Fresh-ground pepper. (I use the multi-color kind)
3 tablespoons Olive oil or Canola oil
Half-cup Sofrito, if you can find it, or a combination of ready-made salsa and fresh-chopped cilantro
one-quarter teaspoon ground cumin
two 8-ounce cans of Spanish-style tomato sauce
At least a half-dozen chopped pimento-stuffed olives
4 stalks of celery, chopped, leaves and all
3 medium carrots, trimmed and diced
1 cup black beans. (In an emergency, frozen peas will do.)
1 cup of water, plus a half-cup of red table wine
2 bay leaves
Preparation
Preheat your oven to 350 (160C), pound the beef to about a half-inch thickness, season with salt, pepper and maybe onion or garlic powder. Use a cast-iron skillet to sear the beef in the oil until brown on both sides. This takes about 5 minutes on each side. Spoon out the fat, add the Sofrito or equivalent and the salt and cumin and bring to a boil. Add oil as necessary, then stir in the tomato sauce, olives and ay leaves. Bring to a boil, cover, then bake in the oven until the meat pulls apart easily with forks. this takes about 2 hours or more. Let stand in the sauce. shred the meat and return it to the sauce, simmer a few minutes and add the celery, carrots and cook about 10 minutes, until they are tender. Add the peas, cook a few minutes more, adding wine as needed to the broth. Buen provecho!
Yet Another Personal Footnote
I bought the Miami Vice CD after watching it with my (now former) partner, who really thinks Gong Li is hot. Of course she's hot. (Of course Gong Li is hot. My former partner is too!) See True Lies, or The Emperor and the Assassin, the most expensive movie ever made in China, for examples. So I have to be careful about having too many mojitos while watching that movie, because I get all misty over her not being with me. I also wish she could be in on the Salsa lessons, because the first time she ever danced in her life was with me.
Sigh.

Anyway, if you'd like a mojito, come on over. You could stay for the stew and the movie.

Health Check

I recently had a physical and learned that I still have most of my original parts and they still work. Some rust here and there, of course, and I could stand to lose several hundred pounds, but basically, I am, according to the doctor, in much better shape than most of his patients who are considerably younger.

Now, that sounds good at first blush, but then I returned to the waiting room and saw some of his patients. Omygod! Am I really 64? Are they really in their 50s?

Overall, the message I get from these annual events is that even though I have been through a lot and a lot has been through me in the past several decades, I am doing ok.

Many years ago, when I was on the cusp of deciding whether to choose music or media as a career path, I had several people point to the classic cliche ''Live hard, die young and leave a good-looking corpse.'' The fact that I chose the journalism path over the rock 'n' roll path does not dilute the fact that I lost a lot of the high end of my hearing by either playing at or being at some serious guitar sessions over the years. But at least I am still hearing something, and I revel in the fact that every day above ground puts me ahead of Jimi and Keith and Buddy and Richie and many -- way too many -- others.

The fact that I am soft in the middle (Thanks Paul Simon) when the rest of my life has been pretty hard not withstanding, I am still above ground. And that, thank you, is a nice feeling from where I sit.

I am grateful to be alive when so many of the people I came up in this with are already gone. I don't want to go all maudlin here, but I like to think I made the right choice in being a scribe, rather than a musician.
My gratitude comes at least in part from a recent study that shows American and British rock stars are at least two to three times more likely to die young, mainly because of drug and alcohol abuse. The Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health published a study by researchers in Liverpool and Manchester, England, of the mortality rates among 1,064 musicians, which lends support to the long-held impression that rock stars have below-average life expectancies, especially within the first five years of becoming famous.

Drug and alcohol problems accounted for more than one in four of the early deaths, according to the study. Even when I was growing up with the shift in musical tastes, I was lucky. Because one in 10 kids in the U.K. aspire to be rock stars, and I can only imagine how much influence Paula Abdul and friends have on the aspirations of American kids.

``Fame and money protects stars from the social consequences,but it doesn't protect people from the long-term health consequences,'' Mark Bellis, a professor at Liverpool John MooresUniversity's Centre for Public health and co-author, was quoted as saying in an interview about the study findings.

I know, I know. Some of you will say you know you are too damn old when your favorite song is elevator music. I also like what's out there now, in case you think I gave it up decades ago when I had more hair and brain cells.

So, Keith and Uncle Bob and Steve Tyler and gun-abuse and transplant survivor David Crosby have managed to defy the odds, although there is reason to wonder how or why. I'm sure grateful they have, not only for their music still being out there, but for what their survival says about defying the odds and living large.
Nobody gives a shit about my music, but so have I.

But then again, I rock to a different set of standards these days, don't I?

Now, where's the kiff and the wine?

P.S. There's another metaphor about the ''Anything worth doing is worth doing to excess'' metaphor. But let's save that for a later Blog. Read more about the study and wave as you go buy: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20581183/

Floral Tribute

This time of summer is a bit awkward in terms of growing or trying to grow flowers. I love flowers, and being on the sixth floor, my little balcony garden only faces east in the morning, so flowers have to try hard to get their vitamins in the early half of the day. The rest of the time, I make do with florist flowers and actually quite nice ones from the supermarket.

Fowers are a way to bring a bit of sunshine inside, and flowers help us smile when we've lost a reason to smile, as I have. Maybe that's why flowers are such a part of daily life for many people, from cradle to grave and beyond. Artists and photographers from Vincent Van Gogh to Robert Maplethorp have made flowers metaphorical images as well as subjects. So I think it is ok to have a little flower arrangement on my table, one in the bedroom and one even in the bathroom.

Not so many years ago, I gave a rose to the woman I love. She has a favorite Italian phrase that uses roses as a metaphor. I hope she still has flowers in her life now.

Bugs' Lives

I hope you have seen the Disney/Pixar film A Bug's Life by now. The Web site for the film says the inspiration came from the kid's tale of the Ant and the Grasshopper, showing that industriousness is better than idleness. In the movie, Flik is one ant who stands up to grasshoppers who not only fiddle away their lives but DEMAND food from the industrious ants. Life isn't fair is another message from the movie.

Still, we can learn a lot from bugs. As I write this, we're coming off a week in which the noisy cicadas and locusts in the daytime are gradually being replaced by grasshoppers and crickets at night. I live by a river, and it is fun to watch the bats swoop around the bridge scooping up bugs at twilight. I found a spider trying to make a link between the front door and the mail slot. Seasons change, and the shift in bug life is one sign of that. People change too, and that is sort of what is bugging me now. We hope that we will grow and improve and get smarter and wiser and less prone to screwups. At the same time, we hope that the good things will stay the same.

Alas, the former hope doesn't always happen, and certainly the latter doesn't seem to happen either. Autumnilia is not just a blog, but a condition, it seems. As I get older, I hoped I would get wiser. And I hoped that things that are now wistful memories to me would have been part of the normal condition. A year ago, I thought I was a lot smarter than I feel now. And a year ago, I was longing for, working toward and embracing the whole concept of change.

So in that sense, looking at then from the perspective of now, I can say things do change. They definitely do change. Ants that can get over the idea of letting the grasshoppers run the show are better off, anyway.

The image at the top is from the Pixar Web site for the movie A Bug's Life. I hope use of the image in the context of this Blog entry is within the realm of fair use. And if it isn't, I hope the powers that be understand I had good intentions. Here's the site link, by the way: http://www.pixar.com/featurefilms/abl/