Journal entry at 60

So foul and fair a day, I have not seen.

The world enters our third year of pandemic. Authorities now refer to COVID-19 as endemic. "Pandemic" is passé. In the new reality, COVID is just another danger in a perilous world. Like heart attacks and car wrecks.

The plague has swept the world, as it were castigating humanity for our profligacy and promiscuity. It is the greatest catastrophe visited upon mankind in my lifetime and may I never live to see such another. Everything has changed, is changing. 

War looms. Environmental degradation accelerates its world-ending career. Societies are falling apart. 

This is not without precedent. This is part of the human condition. Yeats expressed the mood perfectly, one hundred years ago.

The Second Coming by WB Yeats

No answers.

I'm 60 years old, now. Being a man of an analytical and introspective nature, I always make note of these mundane facts. I have a distinct memory of walking home from Shasta Elementary School on a warm spring afternoon in 1969, in Klamath Falls, Oregon, and saying to myself "I'm 7 years old, now." 

Back then, my own little ecosphere was falling apart and the world beyond was fearful and unknown. Fifty-three years later, equipped with the experiences of a lifetime, I still find it so. 

A long overdue apology

Blinded by Wrath

Dear President Bush,

I write to you today to apologize for wronging you in my thoughts for many years. For excoriating you with the most bitter and hateful thoughts I could muster. I apologize for hating you because, as I saw it, you invoked war and destruction on innocent people.

Eventually, I came to understand that whatever sins I may have attributed to you live within me as well. That, by succumbing to Wrath, I was your brother in folly.

And thus, we being brothers, I can no longer hate you.

God is great.

Please forgive me, my brother.

Sincerely,
Dade Ross Cariaga

Humbled by life

Fearful days

Oh, these fearful days!

I'm a lathered, wide-eyed steed ridden cruelly by Anxiety, the demon jockey.  His strength waxes and wanes, but at the moment he is firmly in the saddle, and does not spare the lash.

Examples?

At my place of employment, my boss has told me I'm doing good work, as have my coworkers. So, why am I fearful for my job?

Although my health is good, and she is a strong and capable woman, I am visited by dreadful thoughts of the day when my wife, beloved Maty, will be without me. After all, I am seventeen years her senior. Rationally, I know she will never be alone. Her family extends across two continents and she is much loved by all who know her. And yet I ache at the thought of her: bereft, grieving, after I am gone. (That she might pass before me is unthinkable.)

The ascendancy of the new "normal," where racists and Nazis demonstrate openly in the streets and their views are given credence by a confused and angry people weighs heavily on me. I fear for my family. I fear for my people.

Anxiety is indeed a thief. I resent that it is robbing me of my life.

My shrink gave me breathing exercises and a mantra to recite, in these situations: "All is well." At times, it works.

But not now. Not today, nor for the past several weeks. I don't know why. There is no "why" to it. We are, all of us, dragging our crosses up Calvary Hill.

Stand calm in the wind

Beautiful, blustery day on Mt. Tabor

Anxiety's been at me for the last several days. Chewing on me like a nasty, evil-tempered old dog gnawing on a bone.

That's the way I've come to think about it --about anxiety. It is something apart from me. Something that prowls around the periphery of my consciousness, lurking, waiting, ready to strike.

I don't know these berries... do you?

What if I fall? What if I fail? What if I am not all that I should be? The rational mind knows that there are no answers for these questions. But anxiety will not let them be dismissed.

So I took pilgrimage to Mount Tabor. 

The air was both muggy and blustery, a rare combination in these parts. Heavy clouds blew south to north across the sky like chastened sheep, fat for the slaughter. As we ascended the mountain, we passed through invisible pockets of calm, folds in Tabor's skirts where the wind did not reach. There, the air was calm as death and not a blade of grass stirred. It was strange to stand quiet in these areas and listen to the sighing boughs of Douglas-firs higher up or lower down. Maples flapped shredded leaves at the wind as it passed.

The giant sequoia that stands watch over Reservoir #6 was in one such pocket. A solemn, tall figure of peace in the middle of a raging battlefield. We guessed that it might be 150 years old. Giant sequoias may stand 1200 years or more, so it is still the morning of life for this tree.

Giant Sequoia overlooking Reservoir #6

It was calming to think that this tree, some 5 or 6 hundred years from now, might recall this time. This time when the reservoir lay at its feet. (It seems certain that the tree will outlast the reservoir, no?) This time when the wind would howl. And it might even remember the other trees that grew here, all those centuries before. And maybe the great tree might even remember the man that would now and then pass by, worrying and muttering, and flailing his hands. Flapping them like the maples do with their leaves when the wind blows hard.

Arbor-grown watermelons

On the way home, we saw a watermelon garden. The gardener had trained the vines to scale an arbor. The melons hung like huge, green grapes, unmoved by the wind.

When I got home, I stood for a moment and listened to the wind howling outside. Rage as it might, it couldn't reach me where I stood, in the living room of the home I share with my wife.

Peace.

Procedure: Determining Your Place in the Universe

Note: On this April Fool's Day, I send this out to all my fellow technical writers. A content-modeled procedure for determining your place in the Universe. 

Determining Your Place in the Universe

Abstract

You can approach enlightenment by accepting what must be.

Prerequisites

Live for enough years to understand that you are not the prime element in an infinite and (perhaps indifferent) Universe. 

Procedure

1. Contemplate instances of triumph and defeat in your life.
   
   Note: This may lead to unsettling revelations about one’s existence.
2. Realize that these events came about because of the infinite circumstances that defined each moment.
   
   Free will was not involved.
3. Read Tolstoy's War and Peace.
• Examine Tolstoy's portrayal of Napoleon Bonaparte.
• Contrast the world views of Pierre Bezukhov and Prince Bolkonsky.
  
  
4. Wrestle with the implications of your demoted position in the Universe relative to your previous beliefs.
5. Don't despair.
6. Proceed as described in the following table:
   
   

If you want to ...	Read...
Laugh	Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
Cry	The Mysterious Stranger (Mark Twain)
Rage at the injustice of it	Moby Dick (Herman Melville)



7. Recognize the freedom in submission.

Results

Your consciousness should approach that depicted in Figure 1.

Figure 1. New Awareness

For More Information

Consult the following writings:

• Torah
• Bible
• Koran
• Upanishads

Anxiety is a thief

I got robbed the other day.

Maty and I were sitting on the couch together in the front room of our brand new condo in the early evening. We had the fireplace going. I was playing with my iPad and Maty was watching YouTube videos on the television. A rare moment. Most evenings, one or the other or both of us are off doing something. But this evening we were there together, relaxing. 

Maty was delighted when a Senegalese music video came on the screen. The percussive, happy music reminded her of her home. She popped up off the couch and danced an Mbalax dance while the music played. The joy on her face lit up the room.

I recognized the moment for what it was: a thing to remember, a Good Time to hold in my memory and savor.

And yet, in that moment I was robbed. Although I did experience joy and happiness watching my wife dancing and smiling, I was also sad and afraid and angry at myself. Sad, because I knew the moment would be fleeting. Afraid, because I live in dread of some unforeseen cataclysm that will dispel all the joy I felt in that moment. And angry at myself, because I knew my worry was irrational and stupid, and it was robbing me of a precious moment of happiness.

That's the way anxiety disorders work, I'm afraid. I take meds to keep it under control, but nonetheless, at odd times and for no particular reason, anxiety breaks through all my safeguards and grabs at my soul.

And I f*cking hate it.

Still, life is good. And I will always remember that moment when Maty was dancing in front of the fire, with her face turned to the ceiling, beaming joy out to the cosmos.

Maelstrom

Bungalow in Hawthorne!

Oh, life.

She and I are caught in a maelstrom of uncertainty.

My home of nearly 15 years (the longest-serving residence I've known in my life) went on the market last Monday. A week ago today. A steady stream of potential buyers have come through since then. But no offers yet.

Selling a house is a stressful bit of business. Add to that the oppressive anxiety bearing down on us by uncertainty at our jobs. Maty does better than I do. I wish I could find some of that serenity that I've known from time to time. But it never comes when I look for it. It seems to show up unbidden and unexpectedly, of its own volition.

Hawthorne is a hot neighborhood, so interest in the house has been high. We're living in the "museum," as it were. We've spruced the place up, hauled away detritus, donated entire shelves of books to the library and stocked the donation centers of Good Will stores. Now, we wait. And when a realtor calls and asks to show the house, we scramble to put things away and dash out the back door.

Oh, life.

The other day, during one such incident, we drove to Laurelhurst Park and sat by Firwood Lake. The sun shone proudly, and sunbathers laid out in the open lawn next to the water. Ducks prowled the picnic tables, heedless of the park-goers. People don't actively feed them anymore, so they search for crumbs near where they see people sitting.

Foragers

We sat in the sun and watched them.

Part of the anxiety is that our contingency offer on a brand new condominium hangs in the balance. The new place is less than 2 miles from here, still in the neighborhood. It's smaller than our house, but more than enough for the two of us. And there's room for at least one more person should that become necessary.

The condo is everything we could want. Low maintenance, comfortable, and in inner southeast Portland, where we love living.

This weekend, we let the realtors have the run of the house and went to the beach.  We needed to get away.

Rocky Bay

Saturday, we walked on the beach for a while, and I stood ankle-deep in the water. I traced the curve of the earth on the horizon and listened to the calming crash of the surf. Like Pacifica's endless waves on the beach, peace washed over my angst, and then pulled back. I found myself fighting back tears and I felt foolish about it. I tried to hide them from Maty, but she sees everything.

"I'm sorry, honey," I said.

She smiled. "You're a good husband," she said. "But you're crazy."

Stopping by to see Bob and Gertrude

Yesterday, we took the long way home. The realtors were holding an open house in the afternoon and we didn't want to intrude. So we went through Salem and stopped to see Grandpa and Grandma Metzger where they're resting in south Salem.

We'll get through this.

Oh, life.

All of this worry and angst is the result of loving people. If I didn't have anything to defend, I could laugh at it all. But I do love my people. And therefore I have to defend them. And therefore, I must suffer the knowledge that everything I love is not mine and could go away at any moment.

Maelstrom. Maelstrom.

Assessment and orientation

Laurelhurst Park sets the mind to right on days like this one. Brooding, mundane days when one hears all too well the rattle in the mind's closet.

In the afternoon, a dishwater sky weighed down on Portland. Morose, yes, but Rose City instincts are keen against the rain. We knew it would not. People dressed in hoodies and sweatshirts to walk their dogs. No umbrellas. No hats.

At the foot of the red brick stairway on the park's north side, a wide-eyed toddler held his mother's hand, mouth agape. His tottering steps indicated that the little fellow had not been walking long. To him, the world was new and wondrous. He gaped at me as I walked past, so I smiled and gave him a little wave.

His young mother smiled back, knowingly, and I wondered if she thought I had children of my own. Or maybe she thought I had grandchildren.

Shane and Kirsty sang in my earbuds:

I could have been someone
Well so could anyone
You took my dreams from me
When I first found you
I kept them with me babe
I put them with my own
Can't make it all alone
I've built my dreams around you

These moments come at odd intervals --these moments of assessment and orientation.

How did I get here? I never planned it. It just happened.

And I have no regrets. How could I? With everything I've been given?

Steering

Stuff to do on a fair weather Sunday that urged relaxation and mellowness. Things needed getting done. Hurry, hurry, hurry.

I took the wheel. We set out into the thick, slow Sunday traffic.

The drive to Winco was a slalom. I darted from lane to lane, trying to find those extra few seconds. Between over-the-shoulder lane change glances, I kept an eagle-eye on the road, anticipating and trying to avoid snarl-ups.

It availed us little. An elderly woman in the car just ahead could not make up her mind whether to turn or continue on. Her car hung suspended at the corner, impeding our progress while she considered. The signal blinked like a dim child.

Winco was packed with families doing their weekly shopping. My heart sank when I beheld the full parking lot and the long check-out lines. Maty led the way and I pushed the cart. Anxiety rose as I sought to negotiate around shoppers standing mid-aisle gawking at the dazzling displays of laundry detergents, frozen pizzas, hamburger patties, homogenized milk. They did not think to move their carts to one side or the other.

Our list was short, but it was not a quick stop. My foot tapped as we stood in the line.

Back to the car and another frantic sprint through traffic. Our house guests would arrive anon and there were still things to do. We unloaded quickly and I dashed back out for a birthday cake for Sister Chae.

There was a line at the Baskin Robbins, where I was to purchase the icecream cake. The woman in front of me was chatty. She chatted with the girl behind the counter. She inquired about the ice cream. She inquired about the girl's heritage. She was delighted that the girl was American Indian. Did the girl know that she, the chatty woman, was American Indian, too?

My jaw ached from gritting my teeth.

Grabbed the cake and headed back. Maty was already cooking. I got the grill going and threw on the burgers.

Somehow everything came together at the appointed time. Everything, that is, except for our guests. They called to say they'd be about an hour late.

After the call, I was rueful.

I'd spent all that energy steering the car, steering the shopping cart, steering myself --steering to avoid, steering to save time --and I still ended up in the same place, with events unfolding in their own time.

 There is a larger lesson there somewhere.

The opposite of schadenfreude

Humiliation: the degradation of one's position in the eyes of others or one's self. It's a terrible thing to experience, certainly. But it is also terrible to witness it happening to someone else.

Don't get me wrong. There is a delectable schadenfreude in watching the demise of a high-profile villain like Karl Rove. But Rove is a public figure about whom most of us know nothing beyond his unethical public persona. I don't know Karl Rove from Adam, and that makes it easy to hate him.

It's a different story when the humiliated is a person in your own life --even if the humiliated person is not particularly likeable; even if you feel the humiliation is deserved.

Well, humiliation came crashing down on a person in my life recently; a person with whom I have very little in common; a person whom, were we not compelled by our jobs to interact, I would gladly exclude from my life. My relationship with this person has been grudging and vaguely antagonistic. I don't much like him, and I'm sure he doesn't care for me, either.

Nonetheless, it pained me to see him humbled. As events have unfolded, I've seen him transform from brash and callous to modest. He's considerate. He's diffident. He speaks in an abashed tone. It's as if he has called into question his own value as a person.

Over the years, this person and I have each made efforts to improve our relationship. (We have to work together, after all.) But try as we might, we never have much success. Put it down to widely divergent world-views.

But now that he's had his comeuppance, I'm experiencing more sympathy toward him than ever before. It has evoked a compassion in me that is the opposite of schadenfreude. I've been where he is right now and I know it to be a very lonely place.

The whole thing has taught me a valuable lesson: it hurts to see a person you know be humiliated. And that's because humiliation is something we all know through painful experience. No one gets through life without being humiliated.  

And knowing that makes it impossible to feel any triumph or smugness in my coworkers abasement.

As they say in France, "Mais par la grâce de Dieu j'y vais."

Errand

Eased the Civic out of Fred Meyer's parking lot, orange-tinged opaque plastic prescription bottle in pocket. On the passenger's seat, her absence and a 4 ounce bottle of Hibiclens.

The rain was my excuse for not walking. It has only just returned to the Rose City after a spell of cold, clear weather that left frosty bristles on the furze near the river. A deeper excuse is that I'm feeling surly and resentful and f*ck it all anyway. Here's hoping that the recent frosts claimed many slug eggs. That they precluded the existence of many springtime mosquitoes.

But I did get smiles from two people. The first came from the cashier at Walgreen's. She was a jokey gal with a gleam in her eye and an overt willingness to be friendly. Surprisingly, the second smile came from the young man behind the counter at Freddie's pharmacy. He was another matter. He didn't bother to look up from the computer monitor while I gave him my information, but tersely directed me to "Have a seat" before turning away. So I was surprised to receive a broad, amiable grin from him when he called me back up, prescription in hand.  Who knows? Maybe he got a call from his girlfriend, the cashier at Walgreen's.

On the way out, a woman, her shoulders sagging against the weight of two fully-loaded brown paper bags, set off the security alarm just in front of me. She stopped short and I nearly stumbled into her. "Oh, excuse me," she said. Her expression revealed mild apprehension, as if she were expecting a dirty look. But I wasn't that kind of angry. "Not at all, ma'am," I said. I tried to shoot her a reassuring smile.

As I eased the car out into the intersection of SE 38th and Main, I wondered about the implications of attaching significance to every human encounter, no matter how trivial.

And it occurred to me that lonely people are seldom in a hurry.

Solace for doubters

In winter, Portland huddles under a blanket of heavy slate. The leaden strata smothers the city, mocking the hopeful visions afforded by fleeting, bright summer.

Winter is a dark time. Dark times foster introspection and doubts, as with the sailor in Father Flynn's sermon:

A cargo ship sank one night. It caught fire and went down, and only one sailor survived. He found a lifeboat, rigged a sail, and being of a nautical discipline turned his eyes to the heavens and read the stars.

He set a course for his home, and, exhausted, fell asleep.

Clouds rolled in, and for the next 20 nights, he could no longer see the stars.

He thought he was on course, but there was no way to be certain. And as the days rolled on, and the sailor wasted away, he began to have doubts.

Had he set his course right? Was he still going on towards his home? Or was he horribly lost and doomed to a terrible death?

No way to know. The message of the constellations, had he imagined it because of his desperate circumstance? Or had he seen truth once and now had to hold on to it without further reassurance?

There are those of you in church today who know exactly the crisis of faith I describe, and I wanna say to you, doubt can be a bond as powerful and sustaining as certainty.

When you are lost, you are not alone.

It's winter in Portland.

And if it is bright and clear today, we can be sure it won't stay that way for long. So, fellow doubters, take your bearings and set your courses while the light lasts.

And please believe me. You are not alone.

As Jackson Browne put it:

Keep a fire for the human race
Let your prayers go drifting into space
You never know what will be coming down
Perhaps a better world is drawing near
And just as easily it could all disappear
Along with whatever meaning you might have found
Don't let the uncertainty turn you around
(the world keeps turning around and around)
Go on and make a joyful sound
Into a dancer you have grown
From a seed somebody else has thrown
Go on ahead and throw some seeds of your own
And somewhere between the time you arrive
And the time you go
May lie a reason you were alive
But you'll never know

Walk of the Penitent, 2012

Dread prowls like the raptor's shadow on a mousey meadow.  December 30th, here in Portland.  Stark sunlight lays bare our sorry condition.  Reservoir 1, empty, tawdry and dilapidated --crumbling concrete, moss. Muddy runnels gouge the pathways on Tabor's flanks. Maples stand bare and devastated, their naked arms raised to the empty sky.

It is the closing of another arbitrary chapter in humanity's chronicle, the Year of Our Lord 2012.  I would stand at Julija Laenen's park bench and pay homage to the Old Man.  (He serves as well as any other manifestation, methinks.) 

Portlanders, in their stocking caps and mittens.  Portlanders leading their dogs on long leashes.  They infest the park.  A sunny day, after all.  By their bright eyes, by their smiles and laughter, I sense I am alone with my fear.

Cleansing sunlight gives sharp definition to the shadows --shadows of needled evergreen boughs, waving with the breezes, shadows of changeful humans, in their myriad posturings.  

At the top, I look upon his glory.

I think of all those things that may come to pass in this next chapter, 2013.  That I might offer a prayer, you understand.

I'm afraid of things I can't name.  But to ask for anything is hubris. 

I try for a while, but can't get beyond a single word.  "Father..."

Adieu, 2012.

Truth? Fiction?

“Memories are their own descendents masquerading as the ancestors of the present.”

― David Mitchell, Ghostwritten

This is where reading David Mitchell novels will get you.

I've been haunted by a --realization?  suspicion? --that everything is fiction.   

Truth is ethereal; a thing that cannot be grasped, like rainbows or darkness or the square root of negative one.  And since it cannot be quantified, Truth becomes malleable.  It becomes an interpretation.  Truth is the fiction we create to make sense of existence.  It is the template we impose on the world.  (Read Keith Ridgway's brilliant New Yorker piece on the matter here.) 

We all have memories.  Emotional traumas, joyous occasions, poignant or significant conversations and events in our past  --together, these things compose the sum-total of our identities.

But try discussing a shared memory with someone else, with some other witness or participant to the event.  Perceptions diverge.  Sometimes the differences are subtle, sometimes radical.  But each perception is True to its creator.

As William Blake put it:  "What seems to be, is, to those to whom it seems to be." 

Divergent truths are the editorial revisions each of us create to order our individual Universes.  We alter our Truths to arrive at a Universe that comports with what we believe.  (Or, at least, what we want to believe.) 

Remember Pilate's rhetorical question to Christ, Quid est veritas? (What is Truth?) 

Don't you find it significant that Christ did not answer?

Pondering numbers from the Edgar Francis Conant bench

Effluvia from the Hood River wildfire painted a heart-rending sunset yesterday evening.  I watched it from the Edgar Francis Conant bench situated between Tabor-crowning Douglas-firs.  Perplexed.

The yin of the day was delivered in a string of health-screening acronyms and numbers.  TC/HDL, HDL CHOL, BMI, Glu, TRIG.   All of them adding up to a single glaring fact:  Dade, you're too damn fat.  I'm abashed and ashamed.

The yang, on the other hand, comes from a different string of acronyms and numbers.  Ipsos/Reuters, Rasmussen, FOX, Gallup, UPI/CVOTER, DailyKos/SEIU/PPP, JZ Analytics.  Prognostication:  Tea Party defeat and a national rejection of so-called conservative ideology. 

Facing up to reality hurts.  But I'm not afraid to do it.  I won't lie to myself about the numbers.

Right-wing pundits, on the other hand, are whining and whinging and insisting that the polls that spell disaster for them are somehow not valid.  Michael Tomasky has a great piece on it here.

I've got a lot of work to do to make things right for myself and for my wife.

What about you, Republicans?  Can you face the truth?  You've got a lot of work to do to make things right for all of us. 

Quarterly assessment: Fall 2012

The Summer of 2012 lived like a modest, gentle beauty that never believed in herself enough to ripen.  A mild tragedy.  A sweet unbirthed hope.  She wisped away when I turned my mind elsewhere.  Not a week out from the solstice and already I miss her.   Hell yes, I'd take her back.

We were visited by trials this summer.  Maty, in particular.  They've drawn us closer together.  They've composted the garden where we grow our story.

Our story.  The story of Dade and Maty.  The story of la familia Cariaga.  The story of Portland and Oregon and America and humanity.  Stories, stories.  All of them stories.  Fiction.

The enigmatic sentence fragment on the ancient papyrus upends 20 centuries of dogma.  Potentially.

If it becomes True. 

It doesn't matter to me, anyway. 

Quid est veritas?  

Someone said that.  Who was it that said that?

Oh.  Oh, yeah.  That's right.  Huh.

Nothing very good or very bad lasts for very long

This morning I got a phone call from an old friend with whom I had not spoken in nearly 30 years.  She was a friend from the days when I worked in the lumber mill outside Klamath Falls. A brief and carefree time.  A time when consequence had yet to catch up with bad behavior.  

Oh, but the day was dawning.

We were young people set to set out into the world.  I tried to recall and then recalled a day when she and I and my dog Pippin had gone fishing along the Klamath River outside Keno.  Pippin had run off through the sage and the stubborn grasses that grow among the broken-tooth lava.  She'd run after him and paused out in the rough, and looked back, laughing and squinting, and I was troubled.  She was the woman of my roommate and my friend, even though at that time, everything was ambiguous.  And that was a moment when I made a decision about friendship and nobility.  And so I have that memory, which is the memory I have of my friend.

Her news was not good.  The very friend and roommate I knew, who later became her husband and the father of her children, and later yet became her ex-husband, is mortally ill.  A malignant tumor has developed on the left fore-lobe of his brain.  There is but a short time left to him.  She gave me his phone number and the name of the hospital.  "I wanted you to have the opportunity to speak with him," she said.  "If you wanted to."  Life comes at you in this way.

So I went out for a walk.  The park was full of people.  I eaves-dropped on the young people singing in the tree, and on the brace of boys, cousins, led by a jolly uncle who sang Sinatra on the trail, and on the strong young people jogging up the mountain who met the strong young people jogging down the mountain and paused to breathlessly laugh and converse.  They spoke in gasps, with their hands on their hips.

And everything they said, all of them --every single word --was about life and about joy and happiness.

Bleeding heart

Galling revelation took shape before me;
No roaring Fury announcing approach,
But a hope I'd warmed to like a windfall friend
Revealed to be a smiling murderer;

Barbéd dagger which I'd given up fearing
Forged within defenses I deemed causeless
Arced swiftly stabbing, ventricle-puncturing;
No thrust could ever find a truer home;

Bleed, now.  Just let the flow wash it all away.
There are no allies can take your part. Bleed.

Pecados mortales

El espíritu de la temporada
Perseguimos a través de las noches
Largos, fríos, interminables,

Pero como un fantasma viejo
Llenado con los recriminaciones
Amargas, implacables, negros;

O como un amante desdeñado
O un padre olvidado y sin amor,
Lágrimas desapercibidos,

Rechazó nuestras disculpas sinceras;
Debido no se puede volver nunca
De los pecados mortales

Push on through

Sunset occurs at 4:28pm today.

God willing, at that hour, Maty and I will be scooting about town in our little city car, making our little plans for our little future.  Together.

That's how I defy the darkness:  by pushing on through.  Because even if the world ends, I've still got this wife and this family and these friends that I must see to, in my own puny way. 

Sinking down toward the solstice, still five days off.