ON LOVE AND OLD AGE

When we were young, we opened our hearts and minds to love. We felt the link of nature pull us toward the necessity for love and our need for being in-love. We let our hearts sing and our souls soar as we encountered love at every turn in our youthful turnings. We were fully open to falling from reason into the irrational ways of this magical thing called "love."

Then and as we aged, something happened--we closed our hearts to our need for love and we grew wise and hard. No longer would our souls sing and our need for the refreshing springs of love visit us in our aging distances from love. Other things became more imortant--money and security replaced our youthful follies and we lost sight of our need for love.

One day, however, we regained our lost sight and realized that, no matter how old and careful we became, we still needed love in our lives and a special someone to give and receive our love. Our hearts reopened and although our capacities for physical love had waned, our emotional needs for love had not. We felt love on a different level, a plane that we had not felt before. We needed and wanted love for ourselves and our loved-ones. As we aged, we could not neglect our need for love and we could not live without love in our lives--more so than when we were young. We now saw love for what it was--a primal energy that had the power to renew us daily.

So, we opened, petal by petal, the flower of our love and turned our heads upward toward the falling rain of love, never to close ourselves again.

50

This week you are 50 years old. And I have watched you become 50--from a strong-lunged infant to a strong-willed man. Along the way, I have seen and felt you as a desperate youngster of 8 jump into my arms and cling to me while sobbing, “I will never see you again” and my trying to calm and reassure you that, “No, Marco, you will see me as much as you want to” and then, your parting from me two years later to journey across the ocean to your new home in Germany with your mother and your younger brother. And my visiting you unexpectedly some months later when “Charlie” died tragically. And then, you grew up and I saw only pictures of you as a teenager and, then, as a young man whom I visited in Heidelberg and was so proud of you there. Then, your trips here--and the rest is history.

I have always been proud of you and thought that you were very smart, smarter than I was and am. And I have always admired you, in spite of anything I might have said or written to you. You are a wonderful son and one who has given me the best present that I have ever received, besides yourself--a website of my writings that has grown over the years. Thank you, son.

And on this, your 50th birthday to heaven, I wish you good fortune, good health and good happiness with your mate Zahli and your husky dog.

And although I may leave you sooner than later, I want you to know now that I have always and do love you more than I can say.

“Happy Birthday,” Marco. Remember me--
your Father and your “Lou.”

THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE

Everyone has two styles of expression--conscious and unconscious. On the one hand are the polite and correct
words that do not offend or alienate, say the terms for sexual parts of the anatomy--penis and vagina. On the other hand are the vernacular and colloquial terms--”cock” and “cunt.” When choosing to use either pair of words, one’s sared and profane styles come into play.
Also, one’s audience plays a part in one’s choice. If one is addressing an older and more proper person, then the sacred version is more applicable. If one wants to shock, then the profane choice rules.

But in either case, the rules of decorum apply, that is, to not shock or alienate shoul prevail. Therefore, to say the profane choices to a person of advanced years is not proper and one’s profane urges should be supressed.

Unless, they cannot be supressed and the profane terms just “slip” out. Then, all rules go out the window and what comes out goes out.

So and if anyone has been truly offended, then apologies are in order and repetition should be avoided.