"I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations - one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it - you will regret both."
I feel coming on a reflective few minutes here waiting for it to start snowing again, an hour or so before I start a Zoom mediation with a bunch of lawyer friends I haven't seen in a while. This has the potential to be an okay day (unless I just jinxed it by saying as much).
But first, here is the extremely cool work of art Dio commissioned for us as a Christmas present.
A friend of his, who lives over in Ithaca I believe, painted Dean and Slane from a photo onto a bottle of one of my favorite bourbons (which, I reckon, I now can't drink. One must take the good with the bad). The likeness is uncanny, and the thoughtfulness of the gift sort of knocked us back on our heels.
Then again, giving us a cat portrait for Christmas stands as a marker of our growing old, given that we treat those two turds like they're our children.
In fact, I've started to develop a narrative around the house regarding why Slane is so aloof, sullen, and cranky all the time. You see, in his past life he was Fabio Fabuloso, famous male model and cleaning products mogul, traveling the world and living the life until his reincarnation as a ball-less tomcat trapped with two geezers and a bantamweight, mentally handicapped "brother". No wonder he pads around with a constant expression of disdain.
When he started serenading us this morning at 3 a.m., I channeled another chapter in his past life story: when his looks started to fade, Fabio Fabuloso moved to Asia, where he became a lounge singer on a cruise ship sailing out of Formosa. His signature ditty for his enamored Chinese audience was a cover of Lionel Ritchie's "Hello", the 1983 hit I'm sure you all remember. Of course, his audience couldn't pronounce the eponymous line in the song, and so Fabio modified his delivery to "Haarooo", which they all sang along with him as the boat bobbed off the Chinese coast.
I can hear the political correctness police rappelling onto the roof of Tara. If I don't post here for a few days, it's because I'm in a reeducation camp run by the recently canned president of Harvard.
On the contrarian front, this morning's NYT included an opinion piece by Brett Stephens, another favorite of mine at the Gray Lady. Stephens is another Republican man without a country in the age of DJT, and spends a lot of time shaking his head at MAGA. This morning's piece was a bit more provocative than usual, in that he scolds the elite left for not bothering even to attempt to understand the mindset of the average Trump voter, which would be nearly half of your neighbors, setting aside how repellent their candidate might seem:
In EfM we referred to these sorts of exercises as "calling one up short", and this essay certainly does that. It's worth the read, if it's not behind a firewall.
This morning as I was feeding cats and myself (out of different dishes, of course), the thought arose of what might have been had I done things differently at various times in my life, and more than a touch of regret settled over the kitchen.
No, this is not regret over my life with P, which has been happy beyond even my most optimistic hopes. If this ride has one redeeming feature, it's that the path led to her.
But, what if someone had suggested that not all universities are created equal, and that maybe a smart kid who had the credentials to get into two service academies might've had a shot at admission to an Ivy, and the different path that would provide? My support network, particularly on Mom's side, was loving, caring, and pretty well-educated. None of them ever swam in those waters along the River Charles or in New Haven, however, so it never occurred to them to suggest Yale might've been better than USC, or to help me figure out how a poor kid could attend there.
Years later, if sixty-year-old me could go back to 29-year-old me in 1993 as I was riding to Spring Hill College in Mobile to take the LSAT, and describe what legal career would follow, would I have turned around on I-10 and driven back to the squadron for a little foosball and draft beer? Maybe. I set my sights too low, listening to that imposter syndrome voice that said I wasn't smart enough for the big leagues, and as a result attained some pretty modest professional goals. If I had it to do over again, I would've told young me to study for the LSAT like it mattered, and not take it with a hangover after a three hour drive, and if my scores didn't get me into Harvard or Yale (or maybe Stanford or Chicago), don't bother because I would've been better off toughing it out in the Air Force, even though I had to get out of fighter operations before my brain turned to an alcohol soaked slurry.
In short, I came back from the war promising myself that I'd lead an extraordinary life as an act of gratitude for surviving my encounter with the elephant, then summarily broke that promise.
Or maybe I broke it then, but am seeking redemption now. I have a whole chorus of folks saying one can't practice this way, can't live this complicated life bouncing between the farm and the upstate countryside and a professional metropole in PC, and yet P and I are doing just that, and have been for over three years now. In another three years I'm expecting another transition, if we live that long. For now, though, I reckon the key is not to give up, and to make the very best of what we have in this moment, which is quite a lot.
A little too self-revelatory for a blog post, but I guess that's what I get from all this clear-headedness during Damp January.
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