BP, the deep horizon, Some personal observations as the 6/8/15 BEL claims deadline approaches

I wanted to share some personal thoughts on the eve of the statute of limitations in the settlement of the oil spill.  Lest I be accused of trying to drum up some business at the last minute, it is the last minute and I'd be afraid to look at any cases this close to the deadline, although any assistance I could give in finding counsel to help with getting claims filed I would provide.

I dedicated my practice almost exclusively to this area of the law (working with class action cases) over the last 5 years and while I have referred out all of the calculating and claim finalization work in the BP litigation, in the CDW litigation my work with my attorneys resulted in my coming out much better than others who relied solely on the steering committee.  This insight, however, has not translated as well in the BP litigation and I think it’s a good idea to share why.

I suspect that much of the next 5 years will be spent dealing with various aspects of that ungainly case, the bp case.  I have helped people with both medical and economic loss cases and have seen a bar and even a steering committee overwhelmed by the complexity of the case and the number of litigants (over 200,000).  BP’s counsel clearly was overwhelmed when they agreed to a settlement that they eventually challenged as not even qualifying under the enabling act.  Moreover, if you accept the brief filed by BP on causation, they agreed to pay billions of dollars they did not need to pay under the settlement.  It is worth noting that for now the bp brief on causation is the only document filed directly on that issue.  The state of Alabama has touched briefly on the subject.

I have seen a court system largely overwhelmed.  The judge who is a very good judge in my opinion overseeing the district court litigation said this case would not get ‘bogged down’ but now 5 years after the spill there is not a single ruling on causation!  The Supreme Court which probably would have had to overturn the settlement had they heard the case, refused to do so because it was the best alternative to the chaos in its absence.

My judgement in referring out the difficult work of prosecuting the claims turned out even wiser than I thought.  As the settlement took on a life of its own, changing in ways that no one could have envisioned, many of the accountants who I had been working with personally threw up their hands in dismay.  It was better to have teams that included both attorneys and accountants dedicated to this undertaking handle the work in preparing the claims and then defending them as the circumstances and requirements changed, often based on the random whims of an administrator of claims who acted without direct court oversight and which appears to base many of their decisions on rejecting claims based on non-existent inadequacies so that the same documents have to be repeatedly filed rather than taking the time to look at the records they already received.  You can call it manipulative, lazy or over-cautious, but the process is broken with a “success rate” for claimants currently at around 10% if you include the uncertainty resulting from the 495 rules not being applied retroactively and the appeal of that issue.

 I have looked at everything filed and tried to read everything important.  That represents thousands of pages of briefs and pleadings.  I have gone to meetings and been associated with both the steering committee and with attorneys who question the motives of the steering committee. Both have much to teach the other, in my opinion.  I’m going to talk about the allegations against the psc, but afterwards, I’m going to explain why the psc is to be lauded by their efforts.  I am, ‘reporting’ what I heard, not adopting it.

The allegations of one person relative to the psc the week of the 19^th of April included the allegation that the corexit (dispersant) defendants were dismissed because not a single deposition was taken by the psc on that issue.  Whether true or false, the United States in a brief points out that if the corexit had been spilled instead of systematically applied by bp it would have been one of the largest pollution events in US history.  Corexit did not destroy anything, by the way.  All it did was turn the gulf of mexico into a chemical soup which it remains to this day.

As anyone who reads deeply knows, the scars and poisoning from the great 2010 oil spill continue despite the silence of main plaintiff's counsel and the noise of bp.  Part of the complaint against the PSC was the allegation that the PSC went out publicly to sell (and sign up clients) before the settlement with its ‘unprecedented’ 600 million dollar potential fee but failed to follow up with any informative information later.  It almost sounded like the psc was too worried that their fee might be questioned to make public waves leaving the propaganda machine of bp to have free reign over the hearts and souls of the public.

 The extent and ultimate affects on both marine and human life remain to be seen and may only be determinable based on the events that continue to follow the spill.

For my part, I look at everything that occurs in court and read the most important documents even those many are hundreds of pages long, like the briefs and the regulations which change the way that the settlement is interpreted, resulting in billion dollar swings.

Despite the potential shortcomings of the prosecution, the person complaining about the psc admitted to a great admiration of the pre-psc Feinberg GCCF system from which he personally benefited.  While he condemned the settlement, as I have pointed out, it included compensation to groups that bp alleges now should not be able to prove causation under the OPA.  Also, the settlement while an enigmatic chimera at this point does not appear to me to be more random in its application than Feinberg who seemed to pay and exclude entities at random, based on political expediency and the like.

I believe that when the appeal of the settlement went with unusual speed to the supreme court of the United States that the enabling act argument of bp was valid, but the court refused to hear the objection because the case was sui generis (unique) and was too big a can of works to reopen.  The settlement was eviscerated again when the court, responding to the 'unexpected' consequences of following the plain language of the settlement, ruled that 'matching' of income and expenses had to follow a different formula paving the way for the 250 page amendment to the settlement which was the 495 amendment.  495 for certain cases largely rewrote the settlement in favor of bp.  That issue remains on appeal including an attempt by bp to get money paid before 495 refunded.

In short, the settlement became and remains a living thing, subject to changes by the several courts handling it and the administrators interpreting it.  As a result, many of the original accountants that undertook to help interpret it finally threw up their hands in despair of understanding what would happen next, bp seeking refunds of all the pre-495 payments because the settlement they agreed to is no longer their settlement.

As I mentioned, at least one attorney looks at the settlement as the psc hijacking what was a better 'system' under the gccf, although it is hard for anyone to look at that system and see anything systematic about its random selection of groups to compensate and amounts to pay them. Still, in some ways it might have been superior to the writhing snake that the settlement has become.

In short, the settlement itself has become so complex, its implementation of asking irrelevant questions over and over again, asking for documents that have already been provided and the appeal of any award of consequence by bp.  It only made sense to turn over as much of the work as possible to those at the psc who had the resources to prosecute the amorphous blob that the settlement remains today with appeals likely to change it at any moment.

A week ago one group went so far as to suggest the very logical step of re-noticing the class, to allow those whose claims were changed or denied to pursue a different remedy.  Apparently that would reopen the presentment and suit process to many who feel they were hurt.  While this is intriguing, it is asking the court to reopen the can of worms they previously determined must be contained, so it is unlikely.  The only interpretation of the OPA causation test even now, 5 years after the spill remains the one presented by BP.  While self-serving in the extreme, it raises serious issues as to whether the plaintiffs can extend past the immediate oiled coast which would eviscerate the claims of those who opted out if they were not on the coast.  However, bp’s position would be a poor interpretation.  While it might make sense in other spills, the extent of the impact of the coastline affected those far inland and might affect the interpretation that is applied to a spill which was a national tragedy over months rather than an isolated event, but the issue of causation remains to be determined.

And so when the time came to make my decision as to what I was to do next, I decided that it made a lot of sense for me and my clients to refer the bulk of the work out after securing the information for my clients.  I did and do remain available to those clients who I referred to answer questions to the extent it is expedient to ask me, just as I’d provide answers to any of you that ask.

As to the future, none of us know that, but my clients likely will be able to say that their attorney referred their cases out to pursue quantum mechanics.  I am looking at work that will allow me to pursue more actively two books which could be important.  One was largely the antithesis of the other and both bear a short comment. 

One, China’s Weaponize Economy, dealt with issue of flanking maneuvers and the blindness that comes from vision focused ahead.  While I have had things made in China and have dealt with others who continue to do so successfully and while I admire much about Chinese culture and industry, I recognize that the USA has built fortunes in the middle east through the purchase of energy and in china has raised equally mighty towers in the interest of cheap trade goods, neither of which returned in kind anything to the USA.  I felt that what the middle east did by accident, the Chinese did by design, draining the USA of money as well as their ability to manufacture self-sufficiently until the USA was a manufacturing vassal of the Chinese and therefore largely at their mercy militarily as well as economically. 

In World War II we were the arsenal of democracy because of our manufacturing expertise.  Having exported much of that technology with enormous amounts being exported every day, with Chinese laden vessels waiting off shore filled with the technology we need to function, I wonder who will be the arsenal in the next war.

While many would say that the USA was able to generate additional fortunes, and while on paper many of the empty successes, those with large book value but no intrinsic value like social networks, did generate fortunes, the real continuity of the economy rested on offsetting the huge expenses of outsourcing with additional debt.  Having experienced firsthand the dangers of over extending credit to generate wealth, I saw no good end in sight.  I don’t have the writing ability or the focus of Thomas Pain(e), nor am I willing to work for free like he was to spread his message of freedom (which led to a lot of heads being chopped in France) but I do think that some people have to fight what some might see as a corrupted system, perhaps even a corrupted government or a corrupted economy.  This doesn’t make this ‘the right battle’, it is merely me adding my voice to better reasoned voices to inform the public and someone said an informed public is necessary to democracy.

And then there was my other book, the antithesis of the practical book.  It was my book on physics and the futility of action in a pre-ordained universe.  Of course on the other side of that coin lay the fact that each moment exists forever, and as such the need to act virtuously is all the more important, the need to make life worthwhile in each moment all the more important.

my road-so notes of relevance

I want to thank those of you who suffered through this lengthy first draft.  It would have been nice to have some additional comments, but the near complete absence of feedback has not stopped me from write yet.
If a sufficient number of plus ones appear, I might one day put up the second ending.  It is certainly worth it in my opinion, but if not, then at least there is an ending for you.
I don't believe in endings, although they may exist.  I have a physics which says that things continue and that it is possible that all things come from a single point, a single quantum event which interconnects in a special way the past, the present and the future and the people who we are with the people we will be, the people we are with the people we want to be and the people we are meant to be with.
Even in a non-random universe, the most powerful force imaginable becomes the illusion of self determination which allows us to lock forever, in amber, a present of our own choosing.  I will have the opportunity to edit into this the correct, exact quote, but it was Cortez who said, "better to die worthy, than to live dishonored." and (whenever I get that quote right) he was right.
I asked to be given till the 22nd to finish and so it is.

my road-the first ending

Ending part 1

You will ask me, he says as he holds the third of the last four glasses, why I could not move on, especially with someone so ephemeral who danced so lightly from one relationship to the next.

Perhaps there is no answer.  She once asked me when we were separated for a time and were only talking fleetingly on the phone what I would do when I was too tired to walk if we were together.  I thought on this for a while and responded that I would read for a while, perhaps go for a walk if it were not too hot and dear, and then I would make love to her and go to sleep at which time she could go about her business if she was so inclined.  In this what I meant was that I would make love to her as normal people do, over a short period of time, for during our long sessions, there was not much room for anything more to us but to sleep otherwise, although often she would get up, her various affairs too numerous to rest.

There was a time in my life when I was ready to bear arms against the corrupted.  The natural tendency of power is to corrupt, the natural tendency of the weak minded to submit.  It is up to those like Thomas Pain who are willing to live in a state of virtue at such times to light the night, if not ignite the fuse of revolution.

And so when the time came to make my decision as to what I was to do next, I decided that it made a lot of sense for me pursue a nobler cause.  I had, at this point in time written two books which could be important.  One was largely the antithesis of the other and both bear a short comment.  One dealt with issue of flanking maneuvers and the blindness that comes from vision focused ahead.  While I have had things made in China and have dealt with others who continued to do so successfully and while I admire much about Chinese culture and industry, I recognize that the USA has built fortunes in the middle east through the purchase of energy and in china has raised equally mighty towers in the interest of cheap trade goods, neither of which returned in kind anything to the USA.  I felt that what the middle east did by accident, the Chinese did by design, draining the USA of money as well as their ability to manufacture self sufficiently until the USA was a manufacturing vassal of the Chinese and therefore largely at their mercy militarily as well as economically.  While many would say that the USA was able to generate additional fortunes, and while on paper many of the empty successes, those with large book value but no intrinsic value like social networks, did generate fortunes, the real continuity of the economy rested on offsetting the huge expenses of outsourcing with additional debt.  Having experience first hand the dangers of over extending my credit, I saw no good end in sight.  Therefore, it was largely up to me to fight what was a corrupted government, a corrupted economy and a corrupted people.

No country is more regulated than ours, what we do, carry, and who we marry, what we ingest, make, buy, grow, even our words are controlled by laws and monitored, the names being changed to protect the writer, there is no innocent to protect in a country where there are too many laws not to break them.  And yet, there is still a bit of the virtue left in the system, there is still opportunity to live a virtuous life, to rail against tyranny and to martyr oneself against the weakness and sloth of the masses.

And then there was my other great work, the antithesis.  It was my book on physics and the futility of action in a pre-ordained universe.  Of course on the other side of that coin lay the fact that each moment exists forever, and as such the need to act virtuously is all the more important, the need to make life worthwhile in each moment all the more important.

He sips the glass, as if hesitant to drink the rest, to speed too quickly to the end.

How did I fare running from virtue, living life for the future instead of for the moment and as if I could live forever instead of the last day of my life?

First, I couldn't love anyone else.  Everything else, besides her was a farce.  I could do it physically, but could get no enjoyment.

Finally, I went back to her but she wouldn't have me.  It doesn't matter why she rejected me as she had rejected me so finally, if unconsciously before.  It would have made no difference if she was terminally ill, if she died, if she fell in love with someone else, if she decided she hated me, if she saw who I really was through the shield I had built to protect myself and realized she could do better.

You say, it would have been better she died than leave me for another?  Who would that have helped.  I could not suffer any more than I suffered away from her.  The damage from not having sex to my system had already done its damage to me, the stress of being cut out of her life had already mangled my insides.

What had I done but thrown away the only thing that really mattered to me?  More important that the causes, the good deeds, the insights into physics, more important than anything, the reason I was here, if there was any reason.  

Why are you here, the pamphlet asked.  I was here to be with her, in whatever way I could for however a short time I could be there.

The strange got up then, leaving everyone staring after him and went towards the back.  After a long while it began to brighten outside.  The bartender came over and looked at everyone sitting there, the litter of empty bottles.

As he had walked off in the light of the dawn, I could see the shoes that had appeared newer when they glistened with rain water were losing their soles, the ends of the pants were tattered as he went towards the back.  I could see that the stranger was bent and walked with a limp.

Somehow the regular had known the stranger was leaving.

The regular went to confirm what he suspected. He came back, "He's gone, he went out the back.  I think he must have disabled the alarm.”

The bartender looked at the litter of bottles and in a nonchalant voice asked, "Who's going to pay for all of this?"

***

Much later the only two were left.  The bartender preparing to close and the regular having a cup of coffee after the two had shared breakfast.

A policeman came in with a rich looking trench coat.  On one sleeve, what had looked like a wet spot the night before now looked reddish brown.  "Do you know the man who was wearing this, He asked?

We related a condensed version of the story,  A man came in wearing it and drank all night.  It was too dark to be able to tell clearly what he looked like, but he was old and careworn.  We asked where the coat was found.

It was in the snow.  Another man was beaten and this was stolen from him.  A strange thing, it was the only thing that was stolen, no money, just the coat.  The man who was robbed was taken to the hospital, it appears he will recover.  If the stranger comes back, you will call us? 

Of course, we had both said, but we both knew he would not return.

“Why didn’t you tell the policeman more, something that might have helped him to catch the stranger?” the bartender asked.

“I’m not sure I wanted him to be caught.  I hope that perhaps having told his story, he will find a way to find his way back, to find the girl again.”

“So, where do you think the stranger went?” the bartender asked.

I don't know I hope he went back to her.  I don't know if there is a way he could do it, but it is what I hope.”

End of the first ending.

My Road-the strange end of the relationship

There was a strange sound from outside, like what you’d hear walking barefoot over broken glass; the sound to the rain dripping onto the deep snow outside.  “You said there were twelve nights you spent together.  I was listening and I counted 11.  What happened on the twelfth night?” Sally asked.

The regular looked at her.  He had never really noticed her before.  Like him, she was young, a regular in the neighborhood, but not so much at the bar.  He racked his brain, but realized he had made no effort to count the love scenes.  He wondered at her ability to grasp that item and keep track of it. He’d never looked closely at her before.  She had black hair that had been dyed blond, he judged from the roots.  She had classical good looks her clothes were tight but stylish.  Before he could pay more attention, the stranger drank the second of the last 4 glasses and began to speak.

“The twelfth night was the last night I would spend with her.  In many ways it was the most important to me, because at that point in time I had committed to myself to make this bizarre relationship with her work.  I had not told her, but did not think I needed to, because she welcomed me into her house and into her bed.

Before we had sex, we had an extended domestic scene.  We made cookies together for a friend of hers or perhaps a party.  I forget which.  While I worked on this, she made dinner, which was good, but which fades in light of subsequent events.

Don’t condemn me for this, but it is important to the story.  It was not the first time we had oral sex, for that was something she was particularly good at, but it was the first time I had oral sex with her.  It was not for any aversion, for everything about her attracted me and nothing about her offended me.

Instead, it seemed to be related to a spontaneous act.  We were taking a bath and I went down on her, nearly drowning in the process.  She seemed surprised and I asked her why.  She said I’d never done it before.  Somewhat spontaneously I added that it was something that I associated with a couple in an exclusive relationship.

She had pulled back and at the first I mistakenly thought it was just the pleasure of it was too great.  Her words were not descriptive, “I thought you didn’t like it was what she said. I told her that whatever aversions I had to anything else, with her it was particularly pleasurable to me. 

In the narrowness of the bath it was a difficult feat that I didn’t fight over, but I experienced something similar in bed, although otherwise the lovemaking was as intense and for me, at least, as pleasurable.  It did not last as long for us, a couple of hours perhaps, but we were both exhausted.  The streets of the city were in shambles and the pressure on her must have been tremendous.  For my part, everything continued towards the inevitable showdowns in court, my position getting stronger with my sense of true value, but the ultimate outcome remaining as uncertain as ever. 

I cannot tell her how much I want to make her happy, but I am thinking as I lay beside her that when I told her, joking I believed, that to me this is something that should be  between a couple in an exclusive relationship, her expression seemed to change.  Even then it might have been too late, even if I’d realized that her change in expression was pulling back.  I did think to myself that for someone so good at giving oral sex, she seemed quite surprised.  I mistook the look of surprise for perhaps a excess of pleasure, perhaps even discomfort, but I now know it was a reaction to the words that accompanied it.

The action barely changes, but change is coming.  Change is inevitable. There is so much content for each moment it is difficult to go to a new idea without spending time completing the last.

A candle burns.  A glass of red wine, the sweet bitterness.  It tastes faintly of my lover who is far away; separated by distance and by time.  I can no longer taste those lips on mine, but I can taste them in the wine.  Paine allegedly did his best work tipsy, if not intoxicated.  Hemingway was either a drunkard in fact or at least he believed himself to drink heavily through his characters who were rarely far from a bottle.  Is it necessary for all great writers to suffer an addition, of alcohol, drugs, perhaps madness or love is enough.

Rum as well as brandy were the drinks of the American Revolution.  The sugar tax was one of many causes of the revolution.  Perhaps the major cause was less about freedom and more about fortune.  The desire to buy cheaply for the common man, the desire to avoid financial obligations to the empire by the more prosperous, the desire to avoid unnecessary regulation and taxation for the merchant.  Well, in the end they all lost their war against tyranny.  Taxation without representation is a given in the long freed colonies, at least responsible, answerable representation.  We are all effectively enslaved by our government as all rulers eventually corrupt and enslave those unwilling or unable to bear the high price of freedom, sacrificing self and child to the insatiable appetite of true freedom.

I am too big a coward for such, even though I realize that cowardice is a false emotion.  I am less than nothing.  Nothing would be boring and irrelevant, but I am dangerous.  A menace to those who love me and those who are ambivalent to me but are in proximity to me.  I am knowledgeable of what is around me and am, unconsciously, unconscious to anything but my own comfort and safety.  The worst people in the world are unable to see their own evil and thereby attain a certain grace of innocence.  Not I.  I know of the evil that lurks within me.  The inability to sacrifice myself for others.  I was, once, in a state of grace and having lost everything as a result of avarice in a position to live for others and to become something greater than myself and for a short time, a very brief time lived in that state.   A state of virtue.  But this is my road to virtue and back.  I started black heart that I am and there I have arrived.

The black heart of selfishness is a coward.

I know that existence is about change.  I know that decisions can be made with impunity because they've all been made before.  "Unfortunately sometimes one can't do what one thinks is right without making someone else unhappy."   I know this, and yet I am too much a coward, despite my knowledge that I can act however I chose, to act if it makes someone unhappy.  I cannot even make myself happy.  I know how to make things right at least for myself, and I cannot even do that, much less make things right for anyone else even if I desire it.  It is little enough that I can write about it.

And I have been called this very night an arrogant ass.  It was suggested that this was a genetic defect which I passed on to my son who I would say is more guileless than arrogant, but then I was also both arrogant and ignorant.

It is important to know that part of my personality is shrewd and clever, but the other part is unable to hold a grudge, no matter how willing I might be otherwise.

As a result of that arrogance, I barely lived being so unaware of death that it statistically amounts to a miracle which brought me to the point where I had sufficient wealth, by the cleverness and credit and frugality to take part in the real estate speculation that would lead, as a result of my lack of suspicion inevitably but most indirectly to despair, then virtue.

But we were talking about wine.  It deadens the pain enough for me to talk about the vacations we failed to take together, the things that we would never see together in the world, the beds to sleep in together, the hot springs to share as the snow falls and melts in our hair, the idea of getting far enough away from everyone else that we can be naked together until we are too tired to go on and have no choice but to go back to the world of other people.  Even there when we are together we would have been alone, protected by our love which acts like a shield keeping everyone out.  My lover and the pain of loss are never far now.  Despair was no longer in the future, it was becoming my constant companion.

When we separated this time, her finality unmistakable, I stopped carrying my cell phone. Before it was my constant companion, hoping to get word from her, but now it only represented the emptiness inside of me.  Its messages were empty things that had no meaning for me as if it were written thousands of years before in a dead language.

my road MISUSED GENIUS

I am near the end of my story, the false dawn lights the rain outside that has replaced the snow turning the roads outside to slush.  There are but 4 glasses left in yon bottle and I will toast only three times, then be done with the forth.

  I'm not sure what you think of the recent format, it must be obnoxious to have to plow through the same thing over and over again never knowing whether something worthwhile will follow or something you thought was meaningless will be corrected or elucidated, but such is the fate of the reader and not the author and perhaps we should both pause for a moment of bitterness.

It isn't the fact that I felt the waste of thinking that I knew more than all your research dollars have given you about time and space, black holes and predictability and life that make me so bitter.  Nor the fact that you obtained all of that without sharing a farthing or two with me.  Or even that I don't really know what a farthing is other than something small.  It is the fact that instead of an epiphany, all the insight gave me was the futility of what happens next, to know that I will suffer in eternity learning every lesson over and over again and for nothing.

I am in company.  The guy who lost his ear was never celebrated until he died.  Einstein was chased all over the world, although he, at least, eventually found a sponsor.  I've been reading about Thomas Pain(e) and he wrote pennyless and even his great success as a writer did little till he was sponsored after all of his great work was done and he was branded an alcoholic, probably with all the regrets of the great writer suicides like Hemmingway.  Worse still, even after he died, not even his bones were allowed to rest, being dragged all over the world and scattered to the winds.  Even Mozart died of something, between the fantasy and history does not clearly relate if it was the result of poverty or being f*ked to death.

It is sad to think that I will probably pass from this world from pneumonia or starvation for lack of coal of a stale bread.

We celebrate all those of true genius once we are able to separate the brilliant from those who are merely mad or convincing.  But the parties that have been held to celebrate all of the accomplishments of the past, that have made us masters of the universe, drinking and eating long into the night will not accompany me even if I manage to cross the line between insanity and celebrity.  Because the parties to me will start with the toasts to all the genius and then will turn Morose.  Oh, him, he's the one who proved this to be so pointless.  They will turn listless, all the physicists knowing that what they celebrate is the knowledge that whatever was previously genius and whatever they are doing they have already done without purpose, at least in this world, merely the leading men, women and aliens is some non-linear third grader's science project.

What is the purpose of a universe that treats its genius in such a way?  Starving and punishing them and everyone around them for no purpose other than the necessity of the record which continuously plays from each note.  Even someone who is born, enjoys every day of life and dies ready to meet his maker, not that he will meet anyone, is as pointless as those who were geniuses recognized or not.  Would it really kill the universe to give me a farthing or two, an invitation to present my papers to the royal society or Stanford, a coal lump on the plate, a crust of bread in the fireplace? Perhaps to hope for the happier death of Mozart?

So don't bend down for that penny.  I have somewhere to be and have to hunt for farthings in the gutter like those who have traveled before me.

And with that he drains the first of the last 4 glasses and sticks it forward with his one good arm for a refill.

my road-a world locked in amber

No, I thought.  There is the answer to the question of if I am doing something.  There were too many problems, too many contingencies.  “I haven’t made any progress yet.”

The best ever a combination of beauty and brains, good genes and good advice responded, “I see.  Well you should know that I’m not in limbo, I’m moving on with my life, going out with whoever I want to and getting laid if I want.”

She was no longer my lover or my confidant, maybe she wasn’t even my friend.  I smiled, however, because she got to be the love of my life.  After sleeping in her bed, all other beds seem like foreign places, like cheap hotel beds because she was not there.  I am now only comfortable in sleeping bags in the dust, sharing my time with bugs under the stars.  This is a place I will be at the end of this story.

I was so in trouble and so in love I almost could not look into the future.  It is little surprise I came up with my theory of a world locked in amber.

The things I thought I needed to do were less important than the things I thought were optional.

The conflicts I had were between love and friendship, a complacent survival and a high risk life.  I was, I thought, a little old for a high risk life.  On the other hand, if I didn’t make something of my life, I would be nothing but an indention on a couch.  Then there was my responsibility to others versus the one to myself and then the one to society and finally, the one to her.

These were things we said, and I believed, we both deeply longed for. Family and a place to call home.  I put my hands on her butt, looking for a way and places to give pleasure and support at the same time.  She got rigid and then relaxed lowering herself into my hands.

Perhaps I realized the futility of my position subconsciously.  One more hopeless soul for her crusade and so I wrote my physics of futility.  In my world, bp should have seen what was coming.  I should have seen it coming.  Had we both done a little research on what we were getting into, if I had done a little research into why i was so out of place in the world, why i felt so deeply, why bp drilled so deeply, we could have realized the cause of our problems and the low standards of our conduct.

And why did she do what she did?  She was, of necessity, working herself to death for a very animated inantimate object, the city of hot summer dreams.  She had shared in its deep psychological trauma which had, perhaps brought her temporarily down to my lonely level, just as my sense of virtue had brought me up towards hers.

I was losing weight while developing an irritating stomach, not the washboard I needed.  My only deserts now were grapefruit flavored yogurts.  

“You want to say I chose friendship with someone I do not get along with particularly well over love with someone well understood, but there were circumstances of health and stability.”

“In leadership, they say you must first make everyone feel safe.”  She was a natural leader, but was she making me feel safe, could anyone?  “What's more important, you have been manipulated and you allowed that.  What kind of partner would you be for me?”

“I never made a choice.”

“You should have.  It’s not too late to start.”

“Forgive me my indiscretions in the name of acting without thinking rather than through intention.”

“You do well sometimes.  When you feel powerful, I can see it.  When you’re decisive you’re worth being around.”

“When we are apart I constantly looked to my e-mail and texts, to the calls I missed to see if there was something from you.” 

“Pathetic.”

Then we were talking about dogs and evolution.  The dog is a wonderful tool, that freed up the hand, finds necessary things, food and water, warns of danger and in a pinch an excellent source of protein and warmth.  The perfect companion for primitive man.  An evolved relationship.

Now we come to the part where simplification of complication and the meeting of all minds occurs.

For the principles that give rise to evolution, the math and chemistry, are the same ones that give rise to predestination.  And what is predestination but design.  It may or may not be intelligent, but if you believe in evolution fundamentally, you believe in predestination because the same features that dictate evolution dictate a given outcome of all things.

And this means the atheist and the fundamentalist religious both have no more choice in their beliefs than the rocks under your feet.  It is equally likely there is a god as not, the unbelievability of existence makes an absolute complication like god possible and in fact, predestination requires a set of fixed rules which are much a god as anything else predicted by NLT.

And I am no more an outlier than the man in the moon which himself is a fiction.  IT doesn't justify my evilness that you are so sure of, it merely means that I am as innocent as anyone else, St Paul, Hitler or you.  We are all equally capable of doing the right thing and the wrong thing, but we're destined to do it, I don't need to go back 25 years to start to sin, I sin all along

“So what are you doing to help me or destroy me?  You should do one or the other.”

“Nothing.  You are just not going to be there.  To me you will have to be nothing.”

The end of the world may be some whimpering thing, but if we master time so we can see the past and the future which are, in my mind and by my math fixed in stone, all of our arguments and lovemaking will appear to us we will see our birth and our death and that will kill us.

My road-the next exit

“When two people love each other and neither of them is in love with someone else, they should be able to figure out a way to be together.”

“I’m not saying we cannot be together, I’m only saying that I don’t want to be together until we can, if not marry, then at least date more or less exclusively.  And you’re your track record, I’d probably want some written rules you’d have to follow for disengaging.”

“I want to know what you’re talking about.”

“It doesn’t absolutely have to involve sex, but it would certainly involve holding hands late at night staring at each other and an open bottle of wine once a week.”

“That isn’t what I mean, and you know it.”

“It means that we have to stay in this broken up limbo until I am living somewhere else.”

“And are you doing anything to accomplish that.”

There it was.  The question I was avoiding answering.  Because I think that I was, it made sense from a practical sense as well as from an emotional standpoint.  If it worked out, then economically I would get the breathing room I needed with a few minor adjustments until things went one way or the other in court.  But if it didn’t go well, then what?   I had arranged for a near perfect scenario for everyone involved in my opinion, even if the job only turned out to be temporary.  I had enough money set aside with the income from the job to go on for a lengthy period of time.  Unfortunately, part of the job would be the requirement that I be allowed to continue with my business interests and that along with any number of other potential problems could scuttle the job even if it were available.  It was a lot to consider.  And if I didn’t go into what message would that send.  If everything went the way I had planned how would I deal with the transition?  How would we deal with it?

Occasionally i find scraps of poems barely legible in my scrawl.  She forbade me to write poetry to her, but I could not stop from writing it to myself, although without the intended audience, the need for making them legible or to keep them became less important and slowly they began to degrade, like rusting war ship, mothballed and leaking toxin into the environment.  To this day I wonder if the feelings that make me write poetry, that made me write it will ever come back again.

I wondered if without the muse if I would ever again write about things new or historically relevant.  

When I thought about the future, I repeatedly came up empty or with a false home for the future.   I would sit down to write and sometimes there would be nothing, other times only a few lines.  My mind went back to the problems and I kept telling myself “I will write out a list of love vs duty” and figure out what is wrong, but nothing comes.  I wonder if anyone would really care whether I chose to make myself look good,  or would I be just as likable if I was selfish.  The strange sense of duty, sacrifice is out of place for me.  A person who has my view of reality should have no sense of responsibility.  I should be a hedonist.  But I am not and I attribute this to fear alhough I'm not sure what I'm afraid of since the worst things happen to me not because i protect myself but because i fail to act and when i do act the results are extraordinary, dealing with my metaphysical dragons harshly, coming up with, if not unique, then polished math and sociology, solving my economic problems, simplifying my life and perhaps, perhaps even finding true love.  

With it being so obvious, why don't i realize this and carry it out in practice?

My road physics

Sickness?  It is nothing.  We are all bags of water, so they say. If you stick us the water leaks out, if we are ill, the waters are ill.  It is only between the filling of the bag and the emptying that that we live.  How we live defines us.

And so I called her and told her I would be nearby, in Mississippi.  “Would you like to talk.”

“You mean would I be interested in sleeping with you?  The answer is no.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You don’t need to.”

“Ok.  It’s fair to assume that I want to have sex with you all of the time.  I’ve wanted to have sex with you all the time since I first met you but we didn’t.  Wanting to have sex with you and thinking it’s a good idea are two different things.  You realize when we talk and when we’re not arguing that what we’re doing is as intimate as sex.”

“So we shouldn’t talk.”

“I went too far.”

“No, what you said is the truth.  Our conversations are far too intimate.  We’ve known each other too long.”

“How can you know someone too long?  I just want to talk.  I may be interested in sleeping with you, but I have no agenda.  We can meet by the lake.  We can go have diner afterwards.”  I think two people who liked each other as much as we did, who had shared as much as we did, should not let that go.  They should work things out.  We had a problem, however.  What was the problem?  We were incredibly compatible in bed.  We both knew exactly how we wanted to be touched and we touched each other that way.  We knew how we wanted to be kissed, and that was how we kissed each other.  We knew the different ways that we could couple together and we instinctively seemed to find those ways, and it seemed like we always found something different to add.

For my part, and my part was different than hers for many reasons, I no longer wanted to have sex with anyone else after having her.  That is not to say that when I was with a stranger wearing very little clothing who was making come hither comments and attempting to surreptitiously look me over that I wasn’t interested in some mindless physical activity, but it did mean that I didn’t care about it.  And I can’t explain this, but I had no interest in the sure things, the ex lovers who asked me to make out with them.  Who gave me peculiar looks when I said its complicated.   

“I can’t make it anyway Friday, I have a date.”

“That’s ok, I just thought I would ask.”

“I’ll tell you what, thought.  What time are your meeting over?”
“I should be done by four,” should I tell her that I scheduled it late so I would be there when she was finished, in the unlikely event she had time?

“I’m free till 6:30.  I have a meeting out there.  I was coming back to the office, but I can work at the lakefront office.  If I wear what I’m wearing on the date, then we can meet at 5 for a few minutes. It will give me an excuse to avoid the traffic.”

When I lay dying I will think about what I have done and I will think about god.  For the rest of the week, I would spend most of my time thinking about her.

I was not going to tell her I was there for an interview.  I would have felt stupid and it would have come off as self-serving even though it was only meant to be informative.  Perhaps when we talked, I thought, but knew I would not.  The interview was a waste of time. I was not at all worried.  I was vastly more mature and knew more about the business than they younger person who would be interviewing me and I had no need of taking the job.  It isn’t that I didn’t need the money, but only that for me in the same amount of time, it was easy to envision making more money doing any number of things.  Why would I want to take those skills and use them to make someone else rich? 

But the purpose of the job had nothing to do with the large paycheck and benefits.  It had to do with finding a reason that everyone could understand to move.  And at this point in time, it had nothing to do with moving in with the girl.  She had moved on, I had not; but I had now lived most of my life without moving on from her and was well used to the idea of mindless, emotionless sex with strangers that would not last because I was in love with someone else and I was far past the idea of starting another family.  Been there, made that mistake already.  If I had to chew my leg off to get out of that trap, I hoped I’d have the good sense not to trap one of the other ones.

And, of course, it was unlikely I would get the job despite my qualifications, because I would be honest in my outside interests.  However compatible they would be with the job, they were a distraction of time and a conflict.

As a physicist, you might think that I would  have no faith, that I would look only to mathematics for my religion.  That I would assume that since god was more complicated than space, that god could not ‘evolve’ before space.  That, of course, would not occur to you if you studied quantum mechanics or if you think about it logically. 

The universe is far too evolved to serve as a platform for evolution.  The old fashioned idea of a big bang, nonsense as an origin event, though it likely occurred.  How can you have a bang without something to explode?  I provide a framework for this, of course, a big bang that always happens and has always happened, but think about how that adds to the complexity of the universe.

To rule out life forms that exist outside of time, that exist all at once might sound like science fiction, but the math as I see it says that we exist like that.  We don’t realize it because of the illusion of linearity, but there it is nonetheless.

Moreover, because we all exist at once and without separation by real time or space, the concentration of intelligence is more godlike than manlike.

, physics which doesn't ask for god, but does show     Perhaps in such a scenario a type of god is mathematically possible, perhaps even mandated, but not your god.  This god may be all knowing, he may be able to understand every emotion you have ever had at one time.  But he cannot change a thing, not a single god damned thing, because he already knows what will happen and in fact has made it happen.

But, of course, if I am the spawn of satan as you apparently want to believe, I must be an outlier, imbued with true self determination, the random element in a non-random universe.  

We had this discussion.  “You’re using your theory as an excuse for your conduct.”

“That isn’t true.  I think from our perspective, the illusion of self determination is as relevant as it would be for true self-determination. I only say that in a universe governed by specific rules, you can predict what happens next and that is the same thing as saying it has already happened.”

“That doesn’t matter, even if it is a clever exercise in logic.  You used me.”

“We needed each other, maybe.  You want to accuse me of manipulating you, but if you believe that you have to think that I can plan 20 or 30 years in advance and that I’d be willing to do that just toy with you for a whim.  You’d have to believe that I don't really like you.”

“I have to go.”

“We’ll see each other Friday?”  I meant it as a question, did it come out that way?

“Good bye.”

My road love

Around this time I started throwing up blood.  I can’t say I didn’t deserve this slow cancerous death, just the opposite.  I had always had a sensitive digestive system, even when I was physically powerful.  I had to abandon my vices one after the other due to the ill health that lay under what was for the longest time a glowing skin.  Even when it became certain that I was suffering from something unusually long lasting, I attempted to maintain my athleticism, spitting what blood I could not keep down into the drain at the side of the pool, hoping it would not be so thick as to stay in place and I did kick up enough of wake to be sure to wash it down, such was my outside health even though internally I was rotten, as you have already accused me, I’m sure.

But let us not talk about death which is always so close that we must always make room for it at the table.  Instead let me define love.

We all bandied the word around so lightly, after all.

 I know you want to say that narcissists only love themselves, but in making that judgment you forget that narcissism is an overlay of insecurity with a false sense of self which is so strong that it actually assumes the specifics of the person’s personality.  Narcissists are obsessed with finding perfect love, so who better to define it?

Love is faith.  As such you can love a child or an adult.  The type of faith and the depth of it, the target and the goals of the faith all act to define it.

I had faith that if we ever got together, that our love could save me.  Not from the certain death we all have, but the certain mediocrity of life that I had.  I had faith in her as a person, just as I had faith in my children that they could carry forward my genetic material after I was gone, not that there is any reason for that.  I had faith in friends that they would be there to help me and it gave me the same joy it gives to you when I helped them.  And if narcissists love themselves, it is because they have a false faith in themselves.

That doesn’t mean that sex doesn’t play a role.  As to the girl, I also had faith that any sex that we had would continue to be extraordinary, although for me it was much less important than it was for her.  She could not accept me as a friend, because her faith was tied up in the sex.  Or so I will say for the moment. In due time, I will explain how having the ultimate faith, and the ultimate sex would bring it all to ruin.  But again I am getting ahead of myself.

I always had women coming on to me.  In this way we were the same.  She not only had men, but also women attracted to her, such was her beauty and power of personality.  She was a natural leader and drew men not just as sexual partners, but as followers.  Indeed, I was drawn to her in that way as well as sexually and when at first sex was out of the question, I looked upon her as a natural leader among men and women.  But this is not about leadership, it is about attraction.  You see no matter where I was women would come up to me and come on to me.  It was not the narcissism except to the extent that I exuded a false confidence in myself, easily pierced.  In addition, being a swimmer I often came in contact with women with very little clothing and my body was completely at ease naked or clothed as a result of long use both ways.  A sample would be, “You swim so smoothly.  I’m just a beginner.  How do you do it?” 

After having her, and after feeling we were a couple, I found myself immune to this, an immunity I did not necessarily want.  But such was my faith that she was the only one for me that it had become unconscious and my failure to understand it prevented me from circumventing it…had I wanted to.  Who among us would voluntarily abandon their faith?

my road –if you don’t want it, give it to someone else

“What this,” she asked holding up the box I’d given her.

“It’s a geegaw”

“A what?”

“It’s a silver bracelet,” [a token of my love for you, you idiot].  I think telling a story where you give all the [extraneous information] that is held back would make for a good novel.  It’s comic irony. You see?  Perhaps, one day I might try writing it, but no I will not write again. “Our 25^th anniversary.”

“If you want to show me you love me, give me what I want.”

“In time, maybe” [You have no idea of the conflict inside of me, the dragons I am battling with].

“In time!  How fucking long do you expect me to wait.”

“You made me wait 20 years, the best years of my life.”

“I’ve given you all the time I’m going to give you.  Take this back.”

“If you don’t want it give it to someone else.  It doesn’t matter, I just wanted you to have something.” [you have no idea how much I love you].

“Why should I have to do it.  Here, you take it and give it to someone else. I’m tired of your excuses and I’m tired of waiting for you.”

“I haven’t ever asked you to wait for me.” [And as near as I can tell you haven’t.  If nothing better came along, you might have looked at what  we had together and given it some value.  I wanted to sleep with you, but you didn’t have to. We could have just been friends.  Now I’m lying to myself in the hold back, damn it.]

“Why would you even want me when I’m not going to be faithful to you.”

“I’m not asking you to be faithful.  I’m just asking you to understand that I am your friend and that I want to be more and that I’m willing to suffer whatever fate that holds for me unless I straighten out my life.” [I want you to wait, I want to tell you to wait, however fruitless ‘that’ would be.  But I cannot.  How can I ask you to wait when I don’t fully understand what I’m asking you to wait for.  If you can, accept me for what I can give you now.  If you cannot, there is probably no comfort in knowing I suffer as much as you.  That I suffered alone for much longer than you have.]

“Straighten out your life?  What the fuck does that mean.  Does that mean while you ‘try to sort you problems out’ which just means going home to your wife and going on family vacations and basically treating me like I’m some sort of whore?”

“Yes, something like that, but without the whore part.  We don’t have to have sex, I can love you, you can love me.  This isn’t entirely my fault if you think about it.”

“But it’s your fault it isn’t fixed. Don’t think you can throw the past at me.  I’m not as stupid as you think I am.”

“I don’t think you’re supid.” [I know you’re not stupid.  So why did you keep sleeping with me for so long.  Was I fooling you?  Fooling myself?  Maybe we are in love, maybe that’s the reason.  That, perhaps, makes us both stupid under the circumstances.]

“I’ll burn it along with all the poems you gave me.“

“That’s fine, they were yours to burn.“ [They’re irreplaceable.  They represented the entire emotional content of my life for the last 20 years.]

“You’re exasperating.”

“You look good in silver.” [I wish I was going to be the one who could see you wearing that and nothing else.  I am envious of the one who will see it, who won’t appreciate it as I would.]

What was she thinking, I wondered?

I was now at a time when I was more in touch with virtue and I thought to myself that if she could love me then I could give myself to her.  But if she couldn’t then I would have to do something else.  I thought of a pilgrimage.  A trip to Mexico or the desert, to get away from the trials I was constantly facing, even if it meant defaulting on some of my obligations.  The obligations would still be there when I got back and I had a little more breathing room than I had before, although the same deadlines loomed before me.  60 days, 90 at the most before everything came to a head.

It seemed as if the girl and I had not survived the doubts, but we were talking and our conversations were as rich and rewarding as ever, but they were peppered with warnings, some subtle, some not, that we no longer had a relationship.  That we could not even be friends.

I thought to myself, I let you love whoever you wanted after I had professed my love for you.  What kind of person are you that you cannot extend me the same courtesy?

For all of my self-justification,  I had been given ample time to get my shit together and from her point of view I had made no progress.  I’m not sure what I thought from my point of view, but economically things were coming to a head.  One way or another there would be progress in the coming months.  I desperately wanted the moral support, I needed her as a sexual partner, but I had asked of her all I could.  Now it was up to her.

She had repeatedly warned me that we had to solve the problems I had which meant abandoning whoever I had to abandon in whatever state they were abandoned.  When I say this, it sounds like I may disagree, but I do not.  I agreed with her that I could meet such obligations as I had one way or another, but she did not know how tenuous things were for me.  I was ‘burning the seed corn’ to pay just the bills that I had.  How does a rich person explain that they are making a fortune every months but spending two?

  I had to take the steps that were approaching my grasp and coincidently, the family ties that had bound me so tightly, had begun to unwind themselves; or so I thought.

It was Machiavelli who laid out the conflict of virtue and fortune.  It was Paine who gave away his world wide best selling royalties to spread his thoughts as one of the first abolitionists, meritocracy or mediocracy, and the forswearing of wealth even to the point of poverty in support of public service laying the groundwork for a moral imperative account from which subsequent generations would draw for 200 years before finally bankrupting it.  Of course, the French had proven how empty the promises of Paine were when they took to beheading each other in the name of his philosophies.   Alas, poor Thomas, I feel your pain.

Even while I was experiencing the freedom of virtue in some respects, I was controlled by the words of fortune.  Financial security, college tuition, family vacations, societal expectations, anniversary gifts, Christmas presents, savings accounts, investment capital, business acquaintance, cars, planes, ski-trips, gambling money, toys of every description, faster computers, bigger houses, swimming pools. The list of words tying me to fortune and denying me virtue unending, seeming impossible to corral.  There were those who said that virtue allowed a certain comfort to support ones immediate family, that provided only the gentleman would be sufficiently well off to pay attention to virtue, logic enslaving virtue in favor of fortune.  I think that is not true, for once you start down that road, it never ends.

The words of virtue are eels in a pitch-dark pool.  Love, companionship, writing, morality, mankind, climate change, the joys of the self verse the good of mankind, compassion verse avarice.  I realized the need in my desperation to abandon greed and pursue virtue, but my heart was full of avarice, shackled by the words of fortune without any more knowledge of the chains than of the future that was waiting for me.

My Road-FORTUNA

I have to be careful, lest this story becomes about the women and not me.  For they were strong women.  I was always drawn to strong women.  Perhaps it was because my mother was strong and when she died I saw how much my father had leaned on that strength.

It is late winter, the summer is not far ahead, but neither is it close.  I am comfortable, for the moment, while a recovery of my wealth is not to be seen, the events that will either take me over the brink or bring me back on it are at hand.  For the first time in a long time, I have enough money to last for a few months after a harrowing near default where I could least afford it, but I am itching because I want more, I want to be on firm financial footing instead of this quicksand of lawsuits and settlements, loan extensions but not renewals, foreclosures put off but not eliminated.  

My mind is reaching out looking for life in all the wrong places.  It is looking for more money and it looks in a usual place for those with a little money.  I worked, you see.  I remembered the summer day that started all of this, when my mind turned towards someone who owed me money.  My mind, seeking life in fortune, wondered if it could find some additional money.  And the journey began inexorably as the little kernal of greed, which I mistook for life, reached out for additional kindling which it would find in abundance.  The resulting flame would consume the money, consume the greed.  But there was no anger towards the confidence man.  For all of these tribulations had led me to her, had thrown us together violently enough for it to stick, had burned so fiercely around us that our very clothes burst into flames so we were nake together.  And the flames released the little part of me that was still alive for real from the hot coals and give me a chance for redemption, a chance for virtue.

I did not understand my road to redemption.  That is I did not realize it was a road to redemption.  I did not understand it to be the road to virtue until I read about virtue and the war between virtus tu and fortuna.  O' fortuna, like the luna; but that is another, funnier story already reduced to classical musical reverie and perhaps that is the fortune of fate and not the fortune which vies for our souls with virtue.

Before I discuss my redemption, my road to virtue and my fall from grace thereafter, more of a stumble perhaps than a fall so far, at least; perhaps I should digress and talk about what virtue is and how I had to find it.

Like so many others, virtue, and success were hidden from me till I had traveled in the valley of despair.  It seems likely that without losing everything those of us who are weak cannot find the strength of virtue and perhaps that is why those of us who are weak have such a difficult time holding onto virtue.

I believe it was Socrates who correctly predicted that society could not survive where the people sought fortune over virtue.  This, of course, not only condemns our society, but explains why we have begun to trail the world.  In my own writings from this time period I discussed this directly, but without sophistication; not having the full benefit of the Greek philosopher at my fingertips as I would  like.  

But what is virtue?  It is not as Thomas Paine might lead one to believe, a collection of aphorisms (Moderation in temper is 'a virtue').  It could be, of course; but not for my purposes.  No, my virtue is the virtue of Socrates.

Virtue is the act of putting the needs and interests of society, of mankind if you would, ahead of the pursuit of fortune.  One does not rule out the other, but the priority defines the level of one vs the other.

It was something that I was immersed in, because I had given up on fortune.  The trials that had led to a near total despair had ultimately pointed me to redemption. And love.  I am not immune to love, virtue does not make you immune to love, it opens your heart to accept it.  The ring was within my grasp, I had only to keep my eye on it and reach out… I will not kick my dog though sometimes I want to.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

We continued with little breakups but we started to talk and as with all things between us, the talks became longer, but the pain never diminished.

When apart I would read the same books I thought she was reading and I would share mine with her when we spoke. If she had a favorite program I would refuse to watch till we could watch it together or I would watch if so that I would be seeing the same thing as her so we could share the insights we had together.  I shared the songs I listened to.  I wanted to have the same experiences as her for we had already shared so many years together, but never with this level of closeness.  I wanted to be prepared for a future together.

Then there was a meeting in New Orleans I had to attend.  There had been many such, but I had hidden them from her.  But with us talking so often, it was impossible to hide it.  She asked if I wanted to stop by after the meeting.  She would be working, of course, but she would get off early.

So I stayed in town, agitated, uncertain.  I tried to go to the library and work, but I felt like an outsider.  I thought about going to a coffee shop or to get a drink, but was already too tense for the former and uncertain if I was ready for the later.

In the end I went down to the park by the river and watched the ships going up and down the river.  The time for us to meet came, but she was still at work.  So I waited.  Other delays.  The sun began to sink on the far side of the river and it burned my eyes and still I waited.  I feared it would get so dark I would be forced to leave the park and I wondered where I would go.

Then, at last she called.  She was on her way.  She was sorry.  I thought to myself that this was what life held for me now.  I wondered if I could handle it.

She was making dinner from leftovers when I arrived.  She put her arms around me and gave me a kiss, but I pushed her back.  “I need to talk to you.”

She looked at me.  I had never done this before.  I had never been able to do it before.  “I guess I understand,” she said.  “Tell me what’s bothering you.”

And so I told her of my concerns with her.  I told her I didn’t like the city, that with her in it, I was drawn there, but the love that I had held for it, its music, its historic buildings, its libraries and people was somehow too foreign to me, it had changed too much or I had changed too much in the crucible.  I needed something new.  I could come back here I was sure, but I wasn’t sure that I could be here.

“Then we’ll get another place, some place between here and your home.”

I thought about the town with the car show and the cemetary, the views of the water and the smallness of the place and wondered if it would grow on me or repulse me over time.  I thought of the farmland to the north, but knew how lonely and quiet it would be on the nights when she was here.  I thought about apartments on the lake and the women there who would come to my apartment and here my loneliness and try to console me with their bodies and their desperation, asking me to do the same.

In the end she told me that “we’ll work something out,” and because I was exhausted from the waiting and the worrying I accepted it although I did not believe it.  I was a man on fire with virtue and could not be drawn into a place that didn’t hold that fire, or that I did not believe held the fire.

We ate, the food being good but I couldn’t’ taste it.  However, the wine calmed me down at last.  And when the food was put away, we took a shower together and seeing her body naked and having her wash me with the corral washcloth made me agreeable to setting aside our differences.  In bed, her leg over both of mine, I entered her and felt that if I could just be like this every night I could live anywhere.  Still I could not believe it.

In her passion she pulled me on top of her and brought my hands to her throat so I could feel the heat of her passion.  I kissed her hair, and put my tongue in her ear and heard a small screetch of pleasure, I kissed her deeply on the mouth and abandoned myself, to her.

But the morning came and she was gone quicker than I was ready to let her go.