First a few old things I never posted:

Toward the end of Sartre's novel "The age of reason" there's an exchange between Mathieu, the protagonist, and Daniel, the unlikeable gay. Mathieu has gotten his mistress or part-time lover, Marcelle, pregnant, but after failing to secure the money for her abortion, he refuses to marry her. Daniel steps in and promises to marry Marcelle himself. “Homosexuals have always made excellent husbands—that’s well know,” says the homosexual.

Then later, Mathieu says, “Look here, what you are is none of my business. Even now that you’ve told me about it. But there is one thing I should like to ask you: why are you ashamed?”

Daniel, the homosexual, responds, “ I am ashamed of being a homosexual because I am a homosexual. I know what you’re going to say: ‘If I were in your place, I wouldn’t stand any nonsense. I would claim my place in the sun, it’s a taste like any other,’ and so forth and so on. But that is all entirely off the mark. You say that kind of thing precisely because you are not a homosexual. All inverts are ashamed of being so, it’s part of their make-up.”

“But wouldn’t it be better--to accept the fact?”

Daniel replies, “You can say that to me, when you have accepted the fact that you’ve a swine. No. Homosexuals who boast of it or proclaim it or merely acquiesce—are dead men. Their very sense of shame has killed them. I don’t want to die that sort of death.”

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Much of the time my mind feels like it’s deteriorating. Maybe it’s just my imagination. But I can’t seem to focus or follow complex material. I constantly forget what I’m doing or where I was. And it’s not just at work. As I work on my house, I’m always having to retrace my steps. Why did I drop what I was just doing and set out for the stairs? What did I need and what was I going to do? This doesn’t happen after I’m half way down the stairs. It’ll happen just as I’m dropping my hammer to rise to my feet before approaching the stairs. It’s as if I’m slowly leaving my life of interweaved memory for a new life of countless unconnected moments. Will Ann be driving me to the park ten years from now, to walk the dog in silence, dementia having finally overtaken me. The prospect makes me sad for Ann, but I’m oddly ok with losing my wits. It seems like a painless way to fade from the world. I don’t feel a driving need to keep up with others--those sharp, young whipper snappers who can complete entire tasks and then later recount it to friends. Cohesive mental function is overrated. Of course the real sign that I’ve lost my mental facilities is that Ann and I are walking a dog in the park. So far I’m still able to recall from day to day that I do not want a dog to care for.

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Our neighbors have hung a single string of white lights around the top of their otherwise unattractive enclosed porch. These sorts of all-season lights give me a warm and fuzzy feeling, sending me back to childhood days vacationing at campgrounds, or at my family’s musty cottage along the Allegheny River. These lights, or strings of similar lights covered by cheap plastic globes, would often decorate the dingy pop-up campers parked at summer camp sites, lending the sites a sense of enviable permanence to those of us vacationing just for the week. How were they so lucky to be on vacation all summer at this get-away spot? Often when I looked at these seasonal sites, with their strings of lights, wooden decks, and lawn ornaments, and the deflated camper tires, I wondered if perhaps they weren’t going anywhere at the end of the summer season. That prospect, even for a kid of 10 or 11, was not so enviable. At our river site getaway, the cottage was actually owned by my great grandmother. We kids would only be allowed to enter on Sunday mornings at her invitation, to sample the greasy bacon she had just fried. It’s funny to think now how that spot had any appeal for the adults. There were little cottages all along the river, and probably still are. It seems so depressing now. I remember going there a lot as a child. My aunt and uncle had a place further away from the river, almost a second home, with an in-ground pool, which seemed to me soooo very special, something one could only dream of. Sometimes my siblings and I would be asked if we wanted to swim. Or course we did. I can remember going in the pool in my underwear on at least one occasion, having arrived unprepared. What was my mother thinking, arriving without swimming suits? Once the field between the river bank and my uncle’s second home was plowed shallowly in preparation for some construction. Much of that day I spent combing through the dirt looking for arrow heads and other relics. We found many things, those of us kids who were excited by the buried past. I remember finding a couple of fine arrow heads and keeping them among my other treasures through much of my youth.

I see the plain strings of white lights now at the gay campgrounds I sometimes go to. The bears will string lights around their big-ass RVs and elaborately decorate their semi-permanent camp sites with lights, lawn ornaments and figurines. I've seen yellow brick roads, pink pelicans, disney characters, and leprechan forests. The gays are a fun bunch. By day they decorate their lawns with unpretentious whimsy, and by night you're find them pounding ass in the open fields, heads bobbing and voices groaning, as if just another pair of animated figurines in the larger spectacle of a fanciful dream world. I half expect strawberry shortcake herself to emerge from the misty fog, or perhaps some pastel unicorns with curly manes.

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Sometimes during lunch I walk down to the atrium of the B&L building and sit there for a few minutes, just to get away from the tedium of my desk. Often I feel like I want to lie down at the bottom of the indoor water pool and fountain , face up, looking through the still water, my arms folded on my chest as if lying in my own tomb, the silence of the water’s depth protecting me from life’s dull daily concerns. Wake me when something interesting happens.

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Once in a while at the gym, when I’m feeling uncharitable or am simply in a bad mood, I’ll survey the crowd of assembled people, in my head sorting through those that I recognize and those I don’t. I imagine approaching those unfamiliar souls and telling them simply, “I’ve never seen you here before. Get the hell out of here.” Hahah There is a sort of comradery among the faithful. Yesterday, as I was walking through the parking lot to the gym entrance, one of the most faithful blurted out to me, “New Years resolutions.” I didn’t know what he meant, so I said, “What about them?” He turned his head and waved his arm in the direction of the parking lot and said, “The parking lot’s full of people who’ve made New Year’s resolutions,” meaning he couldn’t find a parking spot nearby. I responded, “I know. Well, in a few weeks it’ll begin to die down.” He agreed. “True. It happens every year.” And so it does. To all of you slackers who show up for a few weeks after the holiday season and in the late spring … the rest of us at the gym secretly have the utmost contempt for you.

A few days ago I wanted to do my leg workout, but a new couple had taken over both squat racks with a marathon session consisting of every conceivable permutation of exercises involving legs and back. Special pulleys were used, as well as ropes attached to bars and other apparatus. I’ve never seen them before, nor since (and I hope I never do). But clearly they were determined to do in a single day what others can only do in months. On this singular day they were walking in as red-faced marshmallows but would walk out as tightly bound and shellacked fitness gods. The fools.