A Day in the Life of Chaos

Road trips, especially in the Mountain and Southwest states always serve to remind me how big America is.  In the past days I have been on a journey that has taken me from Oregon to Texas.  Along the way we passed through some of the most beautiful landscape America has to offer stopping over in Canyonlands, Arches and Mesa Verde National Parks.  America’s National Parks are the jewels of the nation.  They are precious monuments to a wild and beautiful unsettled land.   Two guys at Mesa Verde, National Park As the miles slip away and we wind our way through miles of land with scarcely a single human present it reminds one of how empty and unsettled America is.  The tiny farm towns we cross through are monuments to the past and decaying representations of the present.  What little remains of a Main Street is often fronted by a few beautiful old brick buildings long since abandoned.  It makes me wonder how they ever served as a commercial center but I suppose in the era of Amazon they ar

This year, 2023, is my thirty second year of federal employment.  I am standing on the precipice.  It is the year I become eligible to retire.  Life is essentially filled with a number of dramatic checkpoints.  First and foremost there is birth, how can you argue that it is not important?  With its occurrence we literally win the lottery of life.  Facing the competition of between 200 and 500 million sperm one got through and made us.  Holy shit, what are the odds?  It has got to be up there with winning the Power Ball.  Of course like winning the Power Ball there is no guarantee it will end well and often it does not . Senator Roscoe Conkling, NY The next big moment comes when you enter life and assume responsibility for your self and existence.  This often follows being kicked out of your parents house.  Sometimes removal is more gradual and evolutionary as you work your way through college and then find a career.  This is usually a period marked by severe economic dependency.    Pos

I write a lot about life and death.  I love life and contemplate death.  I don't believe in easy solutions.  I don't believe in heaven or hell, beyond that I have no idea. I do believe in death, I do believe in pain.  I suppose there are few who would disagree.  I do believe in the anguished voice of my son when I tell him his father could have died.  I believe in the concern of my wife or in the tormented tears of my father facing a reality that wasn't, but could have been.  I believe in the power of a bullet to fly through the air imperceptibly fast, striking my flesh and sending my life into the chasm of universal question's without living answers. It seems the philosophical side of myself predicates the story I must tell.  There are few times in life when one sees a possible moment of their exit from humanity.  Of course there is the natural moment when the years and our bodies consume us.  Still, there are other moments, disturbing moments that once they hap