Man, there are entire galaxies and universes out there beyond what even this new JAMES WEBB TELESCOPE can reach! It’s more that I can sort out. I power up in the morning and signals come in randomly from the ether and I can tune something solid in, or not. This one is coming through loud and clear. It’s got my atoms bouncing. It’s what’s happening right now, though its 2003 release date seems lightyears away. Some past time. So much changes from day to day that it’s impossible to say what was happening back then. Just divorced? New home? New job? So long ago that it’s had to say what actually happened and what didn’t. The present doesn’t really resemble anything I ever thought it might. Not even going to venture what the future will look like. Nah, not going to go there. Nope.

Why bother? The Crocodiles tell me that expectations are nothing more than future resentments. That wouldn’t have made sense to me in 2003. It sort of does now. I’ve seen in play out often enough to know that it’s true, at least often enough to see. The Crocodiles, speaking from a vast, drawn out wealth of collective experience, are seldom if ever wrong when they speak. If they speak, when they’re not letting me find out the hard way. Their words for this morning:

On Pride: For thousands of years we have been demanding more than our share of security, prestige, and romance. When we seemed to be succeeding, we drank to dream still greater dreams. When we were frustrated, even in part, we drank for oblivion. Never was there enough of what we thought we wanted.

In all these strivings, so many of them well-intentioned, our crippling handicap had been our lack of humility. We had lacked the perspective to see that character-building and spiritual values had to come first, and that material satisfactions were not the purpose of living.

Material satisfactions were not the purpose of living…

Speaking from my own experience, this is true. No material success made me happy. Not then. Not now. No reason to expect it will for the future.

But now I’m rambling again. I need to exercise my body, or something.

Or something.