Memories of Tokyo

(Note: I've been writing online essays for the past 15 years on my private blogs but only recently have I begun posting them on Facebook. There are thousands of such essays. Here is one from 2006.)

Shinjuku Station is so crowded! And immediately, on this blustery Friday night, I notice a transformation in the daytime crowd.

Then, they were all bustling about, eyes downcast, expressions serious, with few words spoken.

Now, after dark, they are traveling in clusters, smiling and laughing. Most are dressed expensively, stylishly.



One of the current controversies in Japan is over whether/how the national pastime, Sumo wrestling, could/should be extended to allow women to participate. As with everything involving gender politics here, it is complicated. The main issue, as I can make it out, is what kind of uniform the female wrestlers could wear. Obviously the sort of thong bikini thingies the men wear is not appropriate.

The women would need an entirely different costume. But Sumo is an ancient tradition, like Geisha, and there simply is no precedent for how to incorporate women into the sport, at least not yet.

My impression is that the Japanese will eventually figure this out, but not until the entire nation has contemplated it for enough time to have puzzled their way to a collective decision.



Of course, in Japan, nobody really makes personal decisions, as we do in the West. Here, the interlocking sets of responsibilities toward one another need to be taken into account before any substantive decision can be taken.

Only this cultural factor can explain how such a peaceful, gentle, even docile people could be whipped up into an imperialist frenzy, yielding the earliest terrorists (kamikazes) willing to crash their planes into U.S. targets -- a tactic never seen before in war.



My ten-year-old will be happy to know that the newest U.S. brand to penetrate the giant Tokyo market is his favorite donut company. It was fascinating to see hundreds of young, slender people standing in line in the cold night air over Shinjuku near Kabukicho to taste these delicacies. I bet the majority of Krispy Kreme's sales here will be one donut at a time.

In fact, I bet the girls will split a donut! I don't think they like to eat anything, let alone something so sweet, in as large a portion as a typical Krispy Kreme donut.



Into a huge bookstore, I had one of those experiences that people claim only happen to me. Everyone was bent over, treading ever so delicately, near the entrance to the store. A contact lens must have been lost. I joined the hunt, the only foreigner to do so. While the Japanese were performing a sort of delicate ballet in slow motion, first raising one leg, then the other, as they awkwardly navigated the area, I squatted down to see it all from a different angle.

Immediately, the lost lens materialized to my sight. Everyone broke into a loud state of excitement, bowing and thanking me over and over. Arrigato! Arrigato! Arrigato! I imagine they were passing the story down the line: "Did you see that? The foreigner found the missing contact lens. How extraordinary!"

I hope so at least; it would be nice to give them a happy story.



Finally, I have reached my true destination: the main red-light district of Tokyo. Giant posters reach into the sky flashing faces of the consorts within each establishment. Lovely female faces, hundreds of them.

But what's this? Here is a section identical to the last one but all of the faces are of gorgeous young men. Is this the gay section? No, I am assured, wealthy Japanese women visit these places to spend time with lovely young men.

(There also is a gay red-light district nearby, but I don't get to see it this night.)

In Japan, sex is something that it is said often happens outside of marriage. Once a couple has produced a child or two, many of them may stop having sex. If a married man after a certain age discovers his wife is once again pregnant, he will act as if he is terribly embarrassed, even if privately he is happy, and loves his wife and loves sleeping with her still.

Maybe this is because he does not wish to present himself as sexually unavailable when there are so many attractive women around. He may wish to be seen as not sleeping with his wife, but instead as consorting with a mistress, even if it is not true.

I cannot help but wonder, though, whether modern Japanese, like modern Chinese, and Vietnamese, and all Asians, may not be hungering for relationships more like the idealized (and virtually unattainable) Western marriage model. When I see Japanese men with children, for example, they are invariably gentle and loving, extremely attentive.

Yet, according to statistics I have seen, Japanese men spend less than half as much time with their kids as American men. (The top Dads in terms of time spent, according to the study, were Canadians.)

One last observation about the red-light district. I'm not entirely sure the local people come down here to actually have sex all that often. The foreigners do, of course. Many men come to Japan explicitly for this purpose and the Japanese brothels accommodate them. But maybe the Japanese themselves are more interested in engaging in elaborate pre-mating rituals.

They like to purchase time with a beautiful, refined young person. Many of these girls are college-educated and capable of conducting a sophisticated conversation on world affairs. After a long work week, some salary man spends their wages here, drinking and talking late into the night with beautiful young women.

Sometimes, if he pays even more, they may have sex. Other times, he may simply fall in love with one of these girls, and come back to drink and talk with her again and again, only rarely or never actually crossing over into actual sexual relations. It is an extended opportunity to flirt for a people who cannot ever do that openly outside of this district.

It is simply considered too rude even to look at another person suggestively. Men do not turn their heads to watch a woman walk by, they don't look them up and down, they do not whistle or make rude gestures or comments.

Instead, all is sublimated into a modern-day version of the ancient art of the Geisha.

Of course, all of the above is only speculation, and I certainly do not wish to imply that all Japanese men like the hostess bars. In the end, it is a game only the rich can play. You can easily drop thousands of dollars down here if you are not careful.

***

Very nearby this district is a magical discovery: Golden-gai. This nexus of five impossibly narrow alleys features 250 tiny bars, each of which can accommodate perhaps 8 people, max. The bars have hand painted signs, and just like the brothels, photos of the kinds of people who can be found inside.

So, there are pubs for musicians, for writers, for artists, for every kind of citizen or visitor. Some of the famous come down here to their favorite pubs, where the bartender and the locals all receive them warmly. There are drawings made by artists pinned over the bar -- gifts to the host.

He doesn't consider it as an object of potential value -- as something to sell on eBay for instance, but as a private token of the artist's respect. In these establishments, the bartender takes your order, and then cooks you a small meal. He tells you the history of the area, how in the 50s when an official crackdown on the brothels led by a feminist politician missed the private clubs that continued to flourish in Golden-gai, much like Speakeasies during American Prohibition. I'm unclear when exactly the little pubs took their place, but apparently there are no longer brothels in Golden-gai, just bars.

For 50 years, this magical little district where there are no motor vehicles, only foot traffic or bicycles, has offered safe harbor to Japanese of all ages and stations of life.

These are, truly, for many men, their "living rooms."

p.s. One word of warning for foreigners who may wish to visit Golden-gai. If you get easily offended by a system where are no set prices, stay away. The host, when sizing you up, may choose to do as mine did, and overcharge you by ten percent or so. This is fine with me, but may not work for you.



This country celebrates the Western New Year, not the Chinese Spring Festival. This weekend, here in Tokyo, everyone is out and about, having a good time. Tonight I had the most delicious Beijing Duck in a Chinese restaurant that remains open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

People still smoke inside restaurants in Tokyo. And this has to be the city with the most bars per capita of any in the world. I always thought San Francisco could claim that prize, but only, as it turns out, inside the continental U.S.

Here, people drink like there is no tomorrow. Even when drunk, however, they bow and offer others the chance to go into or out of an elevator, for instance, with respect and kindness. I have not yet seen a fight in Japan. The people do not seem to get angry when they drink; rather they get happy.

Tonight I saw the Clint Eastwood/Steven Spielberg film about Iwo Jima (the Japanese version, with English subtitles.) It was deeply moving to watch this among the Japanese. Many people cried.

I wish these two wonderful cultures -- Japanese and American -- could find a middle ground. We are not respectful enough. They are not independent enough. Together, we should make a perfect fit.

Life Happens to You

Today is when my boxes of papers and files are to be moved from the assisted living facility in Millbrae to a storage locker closer by. My son is driving down there from the city to claim the stuff.

Work on my memoir has been effectively stalled since March 20 when I left that facility, my journals strewn on the floor next to the chair where I wrote, watched the news, ate meals, and admired the view, which stretched northward.

My whole life hinged then on that one chair. Now I sit in a different chair.

It's confusing to think back to what I imagined being retired and writing that book would be like, because all assumptions basically ended with the arrival of the pandemic.  But I know the prospect held a dream-like appeal for me in the years I was wrapping up my career.

One of life's illusions that some of us hold onto longer than others is that we control our own destiny; that we make life happen, when in reality, the opposite is true. Life happens on us.

We are in control of so little it would be comical if the cost weren't so high. One of life's impossible lessons for those of us with a certain kind of nature is that while we can control many little things in this world, we really don't control anything big.

It is one thing for me to write about that lesson but quite another to have learned it for myself. When it comes to my report card on that subject it's at best a D- at this point.

My daughter was telling her kids recently 'You don't learn things the first time you hear them. You have to hear them over and over."

That goes for all of us. I'm still learning the lesson about control.

With all the raw material in a storage locker, I may not resume my memoir-writing for a long time so I will continue with my Facebook essays instead. Doing this feels like we are all locked down in the rooms of our cruise ship. You can't leave your room and I can't leave mine.

But we can exchange thoughts and feelings thanks to the Internet and this interface created by people including Mark Zuckerberg.

The problem with our cruise ship is that it is an illusion that we are going anywhere or will ever arrive there alive. This ship is turning slowly in circles with no destination in mind. And the owner/captain of our ship is Zuck.

So tihis is what the clear waters of paradise look like.

***

My grandchildren were describing the nature of the new world should they have any say in the matter. One component they agreed on was "We wouldn't have to social distance with our friends." Notice how what was once a noun has become a verb; linguists call that verification.

The children have other thoughts. About school, for instance. The education system is most definitely going to be transformed by this pandemic. Some new combination of learning in person and learning remotely is going to have to be found.

That in turn is going to affect work, at least for those who are trying to raise children while they do their jobs. Workplaces has been hierarchical for so long that we take that for granted, but that may have to change. Cracks in that paradigm have been appearing for decades.

As the Baby Boomers launched new organizations in the 70s and beyond, we experimented with a more collectivist approach to managing our workplaces. Unions had long existed but they were predicated on Marx's theory about the opposition of capital and labor, whereas our work concepts explored a merging of these forces.

The information technology revolution accelerated that experimentation. We started hearing more about "flat" decision-making structures, rather than hierarchies.

The need for a chain of command always seems to reassert itself. But it's not the disparity in power that is undermining American democracy; it is the disparity in wealth. Of course one leads to the other.

***

Another hard lesson to learn in life concerns money. How to save it and how to invest it. Being good at one does not necessarily equate with being good at the other.

These days, those of us who are retired and living on fixed incomes can only watch helplessly as the markets swerve wildly as if trying to avoid an onrushing truck.

Well, maybe we are not helpless. This is definitely not a good time to be spending money gratuitously, or to withdraw funds from the stock market, unless no other options are apparent.

Money markets are like water pails sloshing on the deck of a boat. When they settle, the levels are back to where they used to be, and since more rains will be coming, they will gradually increase in volume over time.

Already, I am told, the U.S. stock markets have recovered half of the losses YTD they had sustained by a month ago. Give them a few months more and you should be whole again.

Then again, why listen to me? I'm not a stockbroker, just the spinner of bad metaphors. Then again, I do know a thing or two about rainy weather, old pails, boats, waves and how to swerve when a truck is headed your way.

-30-

Illusions in Common

Many people seem to think we will be going back to something more like normal pretty soon, or at least eventually. Few believe this present state of being will become our permanent fate; or worse, the beginning of a downward trajectory that will reduce our lives to shadows of what they used to be.

Time has become heavy; it slogs by thickly. There is nothing fast or simple about these days. Think about it: It wasn't that long ago Corona-V was an obscure headline buried under many other news stories.

But now there is no semblance of a news cycle any longer. It's Corona-V all the time, 24 hours a day.

Media outlets are struggling to adapt to a situation they couldn't train for. Natural disasters like hurricanes and earthquakes yield predictable patterns of stories, from the breaking news, to the "day after," to publishing a list of resources, to how to prepare for the next one. Any veteran newsperson could write it all out *before* the event even begins.

But this pandemic is unscripted; journalists have no gameplan or precedent. We're as lost as everyone else.

***

It's perplexing to assess our collective mental health. Are we increasingly gravitating toward illusions and away from a reality we are not built to handle?

There are the kind of dreams reflecting the anxiety of our situation, and there are others where our dream-selves proceed as they always did before this crisis struck. In these fantasies, no one wears masks or gloves or maintains social distance, even symbolically.

Strangers are not automatically viewed as possible vectors of a fatal disease.

Hugs are not distant memories.

Dead friends live.

We move fluidly through the world, not trapped in place.

Of course, in the case of any dreams during these nights, our brains are trying to process information we were largely unprepared to receive. It's true there had been warnings -- Laurie Garrett's book "The Coming Plague" over a quarter century ago is one that I remember reading and absorbing at the time.

But the longer a warning like that doesn't come true, the more a book like hers gathers dust on your bookshelf. It just might be time to re-read it now.

An alternative is to embrace the illusion that all will be fine in time. And maybe it will be fine.

This must be a most difficult time for President Trump, a self-described germaphobe. Of all the kinds of crises that might have occurred on his watch -- wars, bombs, spy scandals -- wouldn't you know it would be the invasion of a new germ that got him.

Now the White House confirms that one of his valets has tested positive for Covid-19, the enemy has gotten inside his inner circle.

***

Personally, I have never been a germaphobe. In fact, I barely gave such threats a second thought. Of course now I am taking care to wash hands, wear masks, and keep distance from others, but I don't compulsively use hand sanitizer or freak out when somebody sneezes.

When asked about it, I have told friends you can't raise six kids without being exposed to the great mass of germs circulating in your community. In addition, when my kids were little, I always wanted to be with them when they were sick.

I would take them candy and games, skipping out of work to spend an hour or two with them, hoping to cheer them up.

This became second nature to me. A few months before the lockdown, a friend saw me at a party. She said she would keep apart because was coughing and sneezing plus she was sad about something. I told her to come and give me a hug. "I'm not afraid of your germs. I've already had everything there is to get."

That was before Corona-V, or at least our consciousness of its presence. I might not be so arrogant now!

***

Optical illusions are the type most familiar to us, but the concept of an illusion is broad enough that it can be applied to all of our senses. We might experience hearing a sound or touching an object, when that sound or object is indeed present but not in the manner that our senses suggest.

When this happens, we are mistaken.

There's a separate kind of visual experience -- hallucination. One of the most disorienting parts of my illnesses last year was when I was hallucinating. It was terrifying to see the face of a little man in my window mocking me. This went on for hours. I called in attendants and they checked the window but told me no one was there.

Finally, peace arrived. I could suddenly see it was the way sunlight played on the window that had frightened me, not a little man.

Illusions are bound to visit many of us in this state of isolation. We may even convince ourselves of a collective illusion to get through this period.

We may imagine that the worst is passed, that it is safe now to go where we are urged not to go and do what we are asked not to do. We may become careless.

Maybe that is true. Or maybe just perceiving it to be true is enough. But watch out if you start seeing that little man in the window.

-30-

What We Didn't Know Then

On a daily basis now, the evidence is merging that Corona-V was spreading among human populations weeks or months before we in the public were told anything.

Indeed, scientists and public health officials were in the dark too.

If I were to investigate that early incubation period, I'd want to know what the U.S. intelligence agencies have in their files.

We've been down this path before; the intel community gets early warnings signs of challenges to our national security, largely from electronic surveillance and human sources on the ground in places like China. But they don't share this knowledge with us.

Typically, we have to wait many years, if ever, to review declassified material that would help us understand the who, what, why, where, when and how of anything like this.

***

It is extremely weird to have retired into a situation like this. In my naiveté, I had anticipated a period of quiet reflection, relaxing entertainment, and an escape from the frantic work style that characterized my 50+ years on the job.

None of that has actually come to pass.

So for me and everyone else in a similar situation, adaptation is called for. Since many are observing that the days are tending to blur into each other, there is the app several people have recommended to me that calculates the number of days we've each been alive.

My day count is apparently 26, 686 at this point, which equates to a lot of sunsets, hamburgers, carrots, business meetings, random thoughts and fantasies by this point.

I certainly wish there was more to show, in the form of social good, for all of those days gone by. No known calculator could account for all the time I have frittered away!

***

Not to worry. I may have another 4,500 or so days left. So it is time to get back to work. I've offered to help various reporters I know on investigative stories they are working on. One will be appearing later this month and I will blog about it then.

I'll also participate in helping to organize the 25th anniversary of Salon.com alter this year.

Salon was one of the dozen or so formative institutions/jobs/experiences for me in those 26,686 days and nights. A large group of people helped establish a San Francisco tradition; I was one of them.

To the best of my ability, I'll continue to post these Facebook essays in an attempt to capture what life is like during a pandemic.

To that extent, l offer this novel deal to Corona-V:

I'll stop if you will.

-30-

Emerging Signals

Everybody eventually has to grapple, gently, with that most existential question of all questions: "What is truth?" 

Artists take it on, directly or obliquely. Politicians and propagandists manipulate it to conform with their own purposes. Scientists test it by investigating hypotheses. 

Journalists uncover the discoverable facts and strive to present them in a form that allows people to reach their own conclusions. One of the mantras for journalists and story-tellers is "show, don't tell." It is not up to us to tell you what to think -- we leave that to others.

Our work is mainly about fairness, balance, attribution and methodological transparency. There is also room for informed opinion and analysis.

The best we can do, when we adhere to our highest standards, is to show you the patterns we have been able to identify, and to amplify the signals that emerge from the noise.

***

Sorting out the truth these days is harder than usual. Everyone is having coronavirus dreams, clouding our vision, as we sort through our anxieties in the new circumstances.

We locate various strategies. I find myself watching war movies, not because I like war movies but because these stories capture the romantic intrigue of how people behave under extreme conditions. These movies also act as an outlet for the anger I feel at an enemy I can't see or feel.

At least in the movies, when bombs go off in the distance, a conventional enemy is announcing his approach.

But this invader is already here among us and probably has been for a long time. It may be a decade until the origin of Corona-V emerges; all we know now is that we know very little. indeed

There is a marvelous book, "The River : A Journey to the Source of HIV and AIDS" by Edward Hooper, that suggests what a retrospective investigation into the origin of Corona-V may reveal. It will require a journey not unlike those undertaken by the great explorers who sought the origins of our great rivers or the secrets of the Amazon.

But the Corona-V investigation will have to be conducted largely through the lens of a microscope, the medium of plasma, the interactive behavior of human beings and the tiny creatures that inhabit our environment and find their way inside our bodies. It will be a story of mutation, adaptation, and immunological reactions.

Then there will be the social, political and economic chapters of that future story: How Corona-V disrupted the existing order and reshaped the systems by which we organize our societies.

Above all, and here I speculate, will be the uber-narrative of climate change. Nothing I've read has shaken my conviction that Corona-V is a symptom of global climate change, and that it will demand environmental adaptations that the human species has rarely if ever faced before.

***

Sometimes, alone in the darkness, my body tenses. I stretch my legs out as far as they will go as part of some sort of reflexive motion that precedes the moment sleep will arrive. It's happened so often over the years that when I feel it now it relieves me of all tension; my body is telling me that peace is at hand.

In this state, I often imagine things beyond the realm of possibility.

And then go on to know them in my dreams.

-30-

Smoke and Water

Here in the West, the snowpacks of the mountain ranges, the Rockies, the Sierra and others, are melting to swell the great rivers that provide water to millions of people. In Southern California, there is the Colorado; in Northern California, dozens of major rivers rush down to us on the coast -- from the Klamath to the San Joaquin, Sacramento, American Yuba, Stanislaus, Merced, Tuolumne, Feather, Trinity, just to mention a few.

Despite all of that water working its way through our valleys to the sea, this is largely desert country, not at all like the lake and forest lands of the Midwest where I grew up. The air smells different here, of Manzanita not farm smells. We have periodic droughts and cataclysmic wildfires in our dry years that fill our air with pollutants and challenge our energy systems to keep up with the strain.

There's industrial pollution as well, and that has been a scourge on the poorest communities located closest to the manufacturing and power plants that emit waste products and seed asthma among our young.

This year we have the Covid-19 pandemic, which is compromising the breathing ability of many otherwise healthy people -- it is a disease of the lungs. So it is natural that a sense of dread is beginning to visit us as we contemplate this year's fire season, which seems to arrive earlier every year.

Let's face it, we've all been living day to day this spring, in a state of disbelief about what is happening all around us. We're told to stay home, keep away from strangers, wear facemarks, avoid public gatherings, and abandon pleasures like brunch at coffee houses and dinners in restaurants. Life seems to have come to a grinding halt.

The problem is our personalities don't come equipped with working brakes, where a squirt of oil can quiet the squeal. We want the things we can't have and that longing will not go away with time.

Plus everything is happening amidst a swirl of ignorance about our new enemy. Where did it come from and why does it wreak havoc in one place while leaving another virtually unscathed? Nobody has answers to these questions.

Luckily the fires haven't started out here yet, but the air is heavy anyway with anticipation of when they will. California's most dangerous Covid-19 moments may arrive with the smoke that blankets areas far from the burning forests this summer and fall.

Already, most of our vegetation is turning from winter green to summer brown. There is no filter powerful enough to protect us from what may be coming our way.

***

The filters we do have are political in nature and don't work very well. Politicians squabble over causes and solutions as they position themselves against the backdrop of the pandemic. This is the strangest election year I have ever witnessed, and my memory reaches back to 1956 and the "I Like Ike" buttons of that election cycle.

Politicians fighting for advantage aren't going to help any of us breathe, when it comes to that. Barring something unforeseen, we have two old white guys once again battling for President, no women, no Latinos, no Asian-Americans, no openly gay candidates, none of the diversity that is the real America.

In California, the national election feels as if it has virtually nothing to do with us. We are a margin player; our  electoral votes could be reliably awarded today. The real struggle will be waged back in the battleground states of the Midwest, Southeast, and Southwest -- in roughly a Baker's dozen of jurisdictions.

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of this year's cycle is Biden's promise to pick a woman as his vice-presidential running mate. Whether he wins or loses, that may lead to the Democratic Party having a woman again as its leading contender for the 2024 election. Why? Because Biden is hinting that if he wins, he may choose to serve only one term.

Whether he will win is anyone's guess. He may lead Trump in the polls in many of the battlegrounds, but it's still early and anything can happen. Trump hasn't exactly been dealt a very strong hand with a ruined economy and a nation that is struggling to mourn its mounting toll of dead, with no funerals, ceremonies, burials or memorials.

People are leaving us without any fairwells, and we are left to grieve in private.

Like you, I've lost several friends recently. The only comfort I feel is they didn't have to go through *this*. They did not have to shelter in place indefinitely, they didn't have to lose their livelihood, they didn't have to isolate themselves from friends and family.

They just had to depart, mostly alone and unheralded for the lives they led, which were exemplary in every case, each quite different from the other.

***

Morning, afternoon and night. The stages of any day are microcosms of a life. Children romp and play, shriek and dream of their futures. Young adults meet and mate, raise families, and generate the wealth that sustains those younger and older than they are. The elders reflect on the past and await the inevitable.

We can't avoid the cycles of life, but we can perdure. It's not all bad growing old. The joys may be mellow and muted but they are joys nonetheless. Inside every older person is the childish dreams and the youthful ambitions, the disappointments and regrets. There also is the sense that there is still time to contribute to causes bigger than we are.

To make a difference if we can. Here's to the elderly!

-30-

The Wisdom of Herds

*Dedicated to James Surowiecki.*

In a moment of morbid curiosity I looked up my life expectancy and discovered it was 64.4 years, meaning I should have checked out back in 2011. However, given that I missed that deadline, I've now supposedly got another 12.43 years or so to mess with.

That means a lot more of these Facebook posts.

But statistics can only tell one piece of any story. It's like a box score after a baseball game, which is filled with numbers and information, but can't capture any of the big moments, let alone the turning points of the game.

For those, you had to be there.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic is culling our population largely by age, I'm sure there's an actuary somewhere who could project how these age expectancy numbers will need to be adjusted downward in light of our present dilemma

As for baseball, there is no season with no games and no boxscores. Theus it's easy to project this year's statistic: zero.

Most everyone who knows me knows I have a weird fascination with numbers, that they talk to me, constantly telling me stories. Several therapists have suggested this may be sign of a mental condition; let's call it *numeropathy*.

For example, back in 1975 my boss gave me a bonus check for $5,000.

According to my trusty friend, Google, had I deposited that check into an account that kept up with inflation, it would be worth roughly $24,000 in purchasing power today. Or maybe $18,000 after taxes.

Too bad I spent it.

***

One of today's news articles speculates about what will happen if there never is a vaccine for Covid-19. In that event, we'll keep getting sick and dying at the present rates until we achieve herd immunity.

We are used to the notion that we live our lives as individuals or couples, or as groups, communities, political parties, sports fans, beer drinkers, sushi lovers and the people who love bacon.

I believe that covers just about everyone.

But the idea that we are part of a herd? That conjures wildebeests, swatting away insects with our tails or running in panic from predators. Herd is an unpleasant, smelly kind word and we work pretty hard at not being overly smelly.

All right, I get it. So we can be classified as herd animals, but only in the most charming of ways. There are many herds of our species and we'd prefer to think we run with the better ones.

As this year dawned, I found myself housed in a skilled nursing facility, rehabilitating my body after many months of various illnesses. There was a lot of PT (physical therapy) involved and it would have been easy tp fall in love with one of my PTs, as they were quite fetching.

Blessedly, they worked hard with my broken down wreck of a frame and I gradually improved my basic skill levels, which had atrophied during months in hospital beds.

"You know why they like you?" one of my nurses observed one day, referring to the PTs. "Because you try."

It was pretty easy to see her point. At the gym where we did our PT routines, there were many kinds of patients, including some in far worse shape than I was, and who seemed to be just going through the motions.

By contrast, despite my growing affection, I wanted to get the hell out of that place. So I practiced the exercises they taught me all through the day and often at night too, since I could scarcely sleep amidst the nightly screams of the dementia patients.

One day the head nurse came to explain to me that I had accomplished my goals and I would have to leave that place as soon as I could find somewhere to go. What I remember best about leaving the following day is that the sun blinded my eyes when I tried to look up at it.

***

If indeed there is to be no cure for this dastardly disease, what next? Who among us will fight it and who will give in? How, exactly, do you battle a microscopic enemy that never gives you the slightest hint it is there? You can't hear it, smell it, or feel it until it is too late.

Maybe developing a survivalist attitude is in order here. Eating, exercising, and sleeping right, and communicating regularly with our other herd members, might be a key. Defense and offense are the same thing in this case.

When it comes to that communication piece, it might be healthy for all of us to take stock of the true nature of our relationships, whether of the physical or virtual variety.

For example, I just checked and I have 4,232 friends here at Facebook alone! That's enough for over 11.5 friendly interactions per day, even in a leap year.

At 4 AM today, I awoke with that old schmaltzy Johnny Rodriguez song playing in my head, which led me to a Bob Dylan line and on and on:

Who can tell just how it starts
Angry words and broken hearts
Till silently we sit apart
You and I

But in a while, the anger's gone
We forget who's right or wrong
And one of us will end it all
With just a smile

We believe in happy endings
Never breaking, only bending
Taking time enough for mending
The hurt inside

We believe in new beginnings
Giving in and forgiving
We believe in happy endings
You and I

***

P.S. *I'll let you be in my herd if I can be in yours.*

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