At last, I return to this blog. The recent political situation in America has been profoundly depressing for me. That, coupled with the slowly increasing minor pains of getting older, and the on-going efforts to get to the gym and use it to delay the further deterioration of my heart, keeps me in a melancholic mood rather often...so be forewarned. I may use this forum to let off a lot of steam. I will also speak of books that I am reading. Feel free to feed back.
Posts
I have been very negligent in attending to my blog. I hope to rectify this over the next few months. I'm motivated by the fact that I've been diagnosed with a serious heart condition that does not admit of any significant treatment, and there seem to be some other issues creeping up on me healthwise. I suspect I do not have a great deal more time on the planet, and, ego being what it is, I'd like to leave something behind that might connect me with some who follow. Be forewarned, I am a bit of a pessimist these days (for reasons I will elaborate upon here), so some of what I say may be less than cheerful. So be it. I welcome responses, and hope that, when all is done, that I've had a positive impact on some lives, particularly those I've had the privilege of teaching.
This will be a delay in my effort to understand my reaction to the YouTube video of Gregory Lemarchal and Andrea Bocelli. I posted on FB a question about who I would invite to dinner. Though my guest list varies from day to day, these folks are clearly at the top of that list: Richard Feynman. Brilliant, eccentric, absolutely fascinating. I just finished the book "Tuva or Bust" by his friend Ralph Leighton about the adventures he and Feynman had as they tried to visit Tannu Tuva, an autonomous region of Russia. Though Feynman would die before he had the opportunity to make the trip, their efforts eventually brought a major exhibition of Tuvan and Mongolian artifacts to the U.S. and may well have introduced a large number of folks to "throat singing," an musical form important to the Tuvan culture. If anyone is not familiar with this amazing technique, there are examples on YouTube, and I have a CD entitled "Back Tuva Future" by Ondar, which has s...
As promised, my coming out story. (updated) My story may seem like ancient history to some—it almost does to me as I look back now some 39 years. I was a bit older than most who come out today—certainly of those in college—I was 26. But the story really begins more than a decade earlier. Like so many youngsters, as I approached puberty, I began to do some “experimenting” with my peers. The “show me yours, I’ll show you mine” kind of thing. Only, I don’t recollect ever being interested in the mysteries of girls’ anatomy—I only “played” with my male friends. Somewhere around the age of 12 or 13, I began an intimate relationship with my cousin—I’ll call him Sam. We ultimately experimented with almost every variety of male-male intimacy our young minds could come up with. In the last year we were together—I must have been 15, going on 16, and he was 9 months younger than I, he became less and less interested in our intimate games, a...
Why the tears? Recently, I was skimming some of the music videos on YouTube, looking for performances of "Con te partiro," a glorious bit Italian song, translated as "Time to Say Goodbye." I came across a performance by a young man I'd never heard before singing with Andrea Bocelli. His name is Gregory Lemarchal. I immediately became enthralled with the young man and looked up other performances on YouTube. There are several, and in one he manages an amazing falsetto. And then I came across a lengthy "documentaire" about him. Not knowing French, I watched and was puzzled by the frequent appearance of what was clearly a physician. I did not finish the documentary and went to Wickipedia only to discover that they young man had died while awaiting a lung transplant for cystic fibrosis. Tears came rushing to my eyes and I could not get his face and voice out of my thoughts all that evening..and even now, as I write, the emotions are near the...
Time to get back to some serious musing. I've come to realize that I've wasted a whole lot of time commenting on posts on Facebook that I disagreed with, often with extended posts. Just at the end of last week (Sept 13) I became deeply frustrated with one post and that seemed to be the culmination of a whole series of confrontations with what I perceive to be non-rational posts. Instead of posting more on Facebook, I think I will try to write short essays here to explore my own thinking about some of these topics. Some of these posts, perhaps most of them, will be personal, perhaps painfully so. I hope they are all genuinely reflective and introspective and, in the end, help me understand myself a bit more. But by sharing, perhaps others may be able to add thoughtful insights to which I am blind by proximity. I will strive for honesty, but recollections are not to be trusted any more...I've never had the capacity to remember my past in any detai...
Updates coming
More than 2 years since I posted on this blog. It is my intention to resume my blogging, for I have a task that is best addressed in this format and not on FaceBook where the discussion was first generated. Stay tuned for some commentary and ramblings from an old romantic fossil.