Carefree

I heard from Red.  She went to Italy and is back in Paris now having a grand time.  Two Buck Chuck can't hold a candle to the good, inexpensive wines that are everywhere, she says.  She lives on the Rive Droit in viewing distance of Eiffel Tower.  She loves strolling and getting lost walking there and back.  Christmas in Paris.  So romantic.

The truth to life is there is never any backward.  There is only onward.  True imagination is directed that way.  Re-imagining the past must be called just that.  Imagination is about the future.  And in the worst of times, it is something awful.  Then, when we dream of coming holocausts and doom, it is the thing that drives us mad.  I spend a lot of time in the future, imagining scenarios, trying out potential strategies for avoiding potential ruination.  As awful as that is, I believe it prepares me well.

If I would lead a less dangerous life, of course, I could imagine things like what will happen if I don't pay my bills on time or what happens if I don't take care of the yard or house exterior or the Jeep that occasionally runs.  That is what most people do, I believe, at least the ones who live in my neighborhood.  They are a little more disaster-proofed than I.  I'm not certain that geneticist have located a "hillbilly gene"yet,  but I know there is one.  It is firmly rooted in one or more of my forty-six chromosomes.  The lethargy it causes in my case, though, is aggravated by a worry gene.  I get the hillbilly gene from my mother and the worry gene from my father, so I know they are not integrally connected.  It is a  onetime, special occasion.

I need to be more like Red, wandering the planet without care or worry, strolling along the Champs Elysees imagining where I will run into my next adventure.

But everything looks better from afar, I think.  The day is gray and I stayed up far past my bedtime.   Desire and Demands.  They never seem to balance out.