The wildness will win out

Do you know how barbed wire feels
After time and weather have taken their toll
And the surface of the barbs become
Grainy and rough?
I have seen barbed wire
Embedded in the bark of trees
Cut, stretched, pulled from the fencing,
But the tree, as it grows older
Pulling, wrapping itself around the wire
Until the rusty wire becomes one
With the rough bark of the tree,
One emulating the other, or complementing it
Until, the fencing which was
But is no longer, becomes a mere sign
Of the past desire of someone who tried to take control,
To channel the wildness around him
Into manageable portions, easily digested,
Controlled.

But sadly, the desires of the past
Lie silent in their amber,
Until the past act of control
Becomes its opposite
And the wire becomes as wild
As the tree in which it finds itself imbedded.

Wildness will always win out.

This was a long day, Cindy

Today was the day to step out.

Today was the day to leave Kate and Cindy behind as I jumped into the effort to free myself, to find a new place.

Today was cold, the wind whipping around the corner of the building as I packed boxes in the car and drove them to their new home.

Twenty four years at the end of February and now a new place to toss the fly.

It has been a long day. An even longer time in one place. Perhaps too long.

Hindsight is 20/20.

Tonight, we drove over to Slices, a new pizza parlor and ate, Cindy, Kate, Patti and me. Kate and I each drank a glass of Terrapin, a beer brewed in Athens, Georgia. A distinctive flavor, based on grains of rye. The pizza was good, as well. We were surrounded by Griffinites. All there, enjoying ourselves. Enjoying each other.

It was nice.

I'd like to share.

Valentine

I know it by heart
Tenth grade world history class
Mr Mattasitts and Coach Jones
And you are sitting in the desk in front of me
Turning in your seat
All dark mahogany hair
And deep, dark eyes

And me, all scared to death,
Captain of the football team
Vice President of student council,
But scared to death nonetheless

Until I saw your coat in the storewindow
And ran back home to write down my thoughts
Posting it to California, watching the pot boil
One letter, then two, then weeks, months

Until I stood at the front of the church
In Irvine and tried to catch your eyes
You took my hand and we said our vows

And now twenty five years later
It is easier to catch your eye
To prompt a smile
And catch the girl in the seat before me.

A New Year

Today is Chinese New Year. Kate wanted Chinese food. So, Cindy funded a little foray to Hunan Village. For a change, I tried the Hunan dumplings. They were different, hot and good to eat. We need to work our way through the week and get the office set up in its new location. I took Kate over, introduced her to the receptionist downstairs and the other lawyer upstairs, then let her see the new digs. She is now excited.

It is exciting. I hope to start over and find a new, more effective place to do business.

Tomorrow we have the audit and we have to finish one closing and complete another. Maybe some of the checks we expect by the end of the week will come. I think it will be a good week if we can get everything out of the old office and the new office set up.

This is a new beginning. I didn't get a fortune cookie tonight. Perhaps I didn't need one.

Taking the time to get better

Yesterday and today, I spent quite a bit of time with Kate at the office, organizing files and removing extraneous items which I don't really need to keep. At the end of the day today, I had ten large bags of trash to be shredded. My office is a wreck, but everything within it is organized and most everything is in a box or an orderly stack, with the exception of what is near my computer/work space. That part will be removed last.

Tonight I read an article in GQ about getting organized. I am going to keep the issue of the magazine for later, and not just because it has a really amazing picture of Jennifer Anniston on the cover, wearing nothing but a tie. That helps. But the article will be helpful in the future.

By the end of the week, I will be in my new office and will be organized there. I have decided to change my way of doing things in my office. I think it will keep me better organized and more professional in the future.

I am trying. This is the time to do these things, while the times are slow and the business is in a lull.

I guess when you are fifty two, you should be a little better organized. On the other hand, there probably is no age limit on being disorganized.

An amazing movie

Last night Cindy, Kate and I drove over to Fayetteville to do a little shopping and watch a movie. We were going to return several items, eat supper and go to a movie. We got to the store to return the items and accomplished that, even picking up a cd that I had ordered earlier.

As we walked through the parking lot, the exhaust fan from a local restaurant was blowing the aroma of cooking beef to our nostrils. We all threought it would be nice to sit down and eat there. However, we just didn't feel like we had the time to do so.

So we quickly drove to another place where we felt we could get a fast meal and, I would have to say, we all wolfed down our meals. To give you an example, I was the last to finish. Which says a lot.

Anyway, we hustled to get to the movie theater, dropping Kate off to buy the tickets, Cindy and I looking for a parking space. As we parked the car, Kate unexpectedly called us. Cindy answered the phone, to find that they were showing "Slumdog Millionaire" at 10:00.

All three of us were excited to be able to see that movie, so we had two hours to kill before the new movie. At this point, we walked down to Cost Plus World Market, which we found to be closing.

A little statement for the southside of Atlanta. Apparently this store was doing fine. One of the employees told us that this particular store was doing well. But for some unspoken reason, the head office decided to close this store. So now, if I want to go to one of my favorite stores, I have to drive to the north side of Atlanta, where I can shop among the more prosperous of our population

I hate to say this, but there is a continual bias against the south side of Atlanta. Even in the portions which are basically prosperous and doing well. It is sad.

Acceptable bias still exists in this country, against the heavy of weight, against the less prosperous.

Which leads me back to the movie. The movie is basically about a young man in India, who wins the Indian version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" But there is so much more. Because the movie is about rising above cultural prejudice and finding love in a culture which is designed to keep the poor and the downtrodden in their place.

It is an amazing movie. An important movie. I can't say much more. The movie is hard to sit through sometimes, particularly at the beginning, but it is worth the struggle.

And while we don't come close to suffering like the characters in the movie from the biases of class and difference, it speaks a lesson which is applicable to all of us in so many ways, in every part of the world.

Inauguration Day

It is Tuesday, January 20th and we have a new president. Today, Kate and I drove home and sat in the living room of our house and watched the inauguration of the first African-American president. It was a cold day, here and in Washington, and thousands of people stood on the mall between the Western side of the Capitol and the Washington Monument. They didn't seem that cold.

I think that President Obama is a good, intelligent man. I appreciate the grace with which he and Senator McCain handled the election. I also appreciate the graciousness with which President Bush handled the transition of power.

Overall, the beauty of the American system was shown today when one party turned power over to the other major party, without bloodshed and struggle.

Thomas Jefferson, I have heard, said that we need a revolution every seven years or so. Today, I believe, we saw one in many ways.

When I was born in 1956, few adults could probably foresee the day in which the son of a Kenyan and a caucasion from Kansas, the child of a broken home, raised by a single mother, one who lived overseas for a time, one who had been partially educated in a Moslem school in Indonesia, one who was born in Hawaii, which had only been a state for a short time, could become president of the United States.

Any one of the those attributes would have disqualified him in the eyes of most Americans in 1956. Whether he does a good job or otherwise, he should be honored for showing the opportunity we Americans have in this country, despite our beginnings.

Today, perhaps, the only character flaw we might see is his cigarette smoking.

It is a brave, new world.