Beware!

Beware ... they're cunning and they are relentless

in their search for victims like barracudas in the 

great sea of the Internet where a vast selection of 

unsuspecting targets trustingly accept followers 

who swiftly and discreetly message them with 

disarming yet intimate innocence like long-lost 

friends re-connecting. They are social predators

like trap-door spiders disguising the portals to 

their inner sanctorums until an oblivious casualty 

stumbles and falls into their patient, deadly grasp. 

For this is an alter world of victim-grasping beasts

of prey and the naive are all ripe for the vulture's strike. 

The approach of these slimy hunters is to disarm and 

to charm, to befriend the vulnerable by wiles of persuasive 

emotional gravitational attraction as they candidly profess 

their need for compassionate empathy and hesitantly 

declare their profound admiration for the unwitting

victim, gaining trust to gain the ground needed to 

implore vital funding or emotional fulfillment or 

to gain the the thrill of gulling the impressionable. 

 

 

Character Sketch

 

Dark, shifty eyes set deeply in a

swarthy aquiline face, age indeterminate

but young, slight of build

and at first glance aversive to

contact, given to wide berth --

now when he sees us from a distance

out come the ear plugs

up goes the right arm in a wild

waving greet and on approach

the secretive pursed lips relax their

clam-grip in surrender to a smile

so wide those feral teeth gleam. He is

our friend, we are his friends and all

it ever took was a smile and a word

escaping my elderly lips in recognition

of a soul like ourselves calling upon

nature to heal the wounds life leaves as

his staccato delivery cheerily imparts his

take on the fearsome news of the day.

Just Imagine ...

Imagine what it might be like to live in Medieval 

times when brutality was simply a fact of life and 

anyone could plunge headlong into misfortune 

that would see their neighbours celebrating a public 

flogging. Think of churchly proscriptions against 

such ungodly sins as neglecting one's prayers

gambling, grumbling of rule by tyrants, engaging 

in non-marital sex, in adultery and imbibing alcohol

oh yes, same-sex relations, or witchcraft and it's

the stocks if you're fortunate, flogging and quite

possibly the spectacle of a public hanging. Imagine

villagers crowding one another in the excitement

of witnessing the degradation of one well known

among themselves, humiliated, humbled and

embittered. Imagine such events take place

in this era of civilized enlightenment where

such advances in human rights were bypassed

for the greater glory of god and you're in Southeast

Asia, an exotic venue of the scrupulously faithful.

Imagine the very authority who delineated these

assaults against public morality and the sacred trust

himself wincing in pain under the flogger's whip

whose lapse into adultery brought him to account. 

 

 

Graciously Smiling The While

 

Oh, look! There's a brand new-old president

in that noble Casa Blanca governing the

Land of the Brave and the Free where a tall fence 

and barbed wire make certain the unruly mob 

remains without enabling  courageous lawmakers

to get on with casting ignoble aspersions

from one disgruntled party stalwart to another

as the vital machinery of government grinds on 

and pen in hand the man who aspired throughout 

his lengthy marking of the years before the office 

would be his strikes off through executive privilege 

one stinking piece of legislation after another

his predecessor left, in the time-honoured

principle of making his mark and carefully

constructing his legacy, shopworn as it is

while in the process mending fences with allies

and continental neighbours belittling their

resources the better to loot them freely in a

manner redolent of entitlements the larger

infinitely more aggressive mercantile instinct

steers the cutthroat world of friendly relations

surfacing covert underhandedness, smiling.

 

 

A World Transformed

 

In the constellation of rare commodities

chemicals with forbidden mind-altering

and/or protective properties vastly outrank

such traditional possessions that focus the mind

of the wealthy on acquisition such that

the object is to own sumptuous estates

luxury vehicles, gold and diamonds all

worthless when threatened by a pandemic

whose morbid ferocity strikes fear in the

minds of its human targets. Collegial nations

suddenly become competitors allocating to

themselves the biomedical formulae to rescue

their populations from the ruinous grip of the

pathogen from which some find solace in

other drugs creating the double dilemma of

death-by-chemical-choice and the financially

well-endowed use their influence to create the

never-failing aura of exceptionalism able and

willing to prioritize their lives over the meekly

unavailing awaiting rescue from the dire suspense

of fear and uncertainty in a world suddenly still

with the expectation of miraculous rescue.

The Anguish of Shoah

 

Really! What a tediously tiresome imposition

they're wedded to, those people who

always seem to feel that everything everywhere

all the time is about them, only them. This

convention of doggedly refusing to

let sleeping dogs lie continues to burden

the world community and really, it is tiresome.

If they want to commemorate their loss

no one stops them but why on God's good

Earth must they insist that everyone else has

an obligation to mourn with them? We did nothing

after all -- in the sense of being part of the

annihilation of their people -- admittedly we

did nothing to stop it either, but that's how things

are in this world. This constant clatter of moral

imperatives foisted on us as though we are void

of compassion has got to stop sometime

don't you think? Now's as good a time as any.

Mutually Exclusive

 

There's the chill of frost hovering in the air 

so palpable yet expected. Silently putting you

in your place which is not within a coven

of group think. You've always shrunk from

from cliques and above all this very particular

platform of self-regarding sanctimony among

which you never felt yourself sharing anything

with those who possessed all the formulaic 

incantations, proof-positive of their secure

positions within the group. They were your

community but not your crowd; exclusionary

exceptional, loyal to a convention you were

never steeped in. Yet by happenstance you

found  yourself suddenly within the embrace

of the klatch and though unfamiliar there was

a pleasant warmth. 'Belonging' has that function.

Was it rebellion at the artifice and egotism

the impulse to reveal yourself with the thought

take me as I am? How could that be when 

your subconscious volition spurned what

it is they most certainly are, conditioned by

faith to an instinctual aversion to what you are.

Gilding the Lily

 

Or perhaps it would be more appropriate

to designate this dominant new social order

as making a silk purse out of a sow's ear

when a store clerk is called a sales associate

and the municipal garbage collector has

become a sanitary engineer. That these are

important workplace positions to society is

beyond dispute, but one imagines that in the

spirit of everybody being a somebody job

descriptions have become elaborate works of

artifice. More puzzling, however is the new/ish

social importance given to such nebulous positions

in the social order as 'fashionistas', 'influencers'

public relations marketers, social stylists etc.

the list seems endless just as those part of

celebrity culture does in a narrow, egotistical

world addicted to flash and glamour, masses

yearning to become special, recognized as

taste-guiders and -makers, intellectually adrift

values-inconsequential, facade is all that matters.

Golden Oldies

 

It's Saturday night, have you forgotten?

Mind distracted elsewhere, the music finally

penetrates and nostalgia settles in, the fog 

lifts and he swoops me into a glide across 

the kitchen floor smoothly guiding me around 

the baking island, his comforting arms wrapped 

snugly warming me, courting me, loving me.

Two little dogs patiently waiting to be fed perk

their faces ears raised quizzically yet recalling

an oft-repeated ritual humans persist in --

their humans in any event. Amazing how

persistent memory is in storing and recalling

words crooned by Peggy Lee, Frank Sinatra

The Every Brothers, Ray Charles, words

dredged up perfectly synchronized on his

lips with the station playing those golden

oldies for the Golden Oldies resident here.

 

 

Dethroned

Arrogance doth go before a fall from grace

for a vice-regal appointment representing

the Queen's presence in her far-flung remnants

of imperial Empire. A governor-general's

position must be appointed to one without

moral blemish, one who has distinguished

herself in the past and whose accomplishments

are meant to buttress and enhance royal representation

from a former colony now a proud sovereign

state in its allegiance to the Crown. A position

of prestige whose elevation in the panoply of

positions has few peers, one occupied by a paragon

of accomplishment who must perforce act not

only with the authority of the office but with

unassuming modesty. Unleashed in that office

instead was a colossal pride of self, deriding the

lesser beings serving the office and the vice-regal

presence to humiliate and sneer at their competent

ordinariness verbally lashed for their damning

absence of obsequious obedience. Until that time

when the oppressed broke the bonds of confidence

unleashing the consequences of unroyal conduct

escorting the hubristic candidate to her exit.

 

 

Justice Gone Astray

 

Justice is a tool societies make use of

to placate misery and punish social deviants

and in theory it is the medium by which any

society feels itself protected and secure

yet meting out justice is far more complex

than a simple declaration of state utility. 

Victims of criminal acts look to the state 

to enforce laws critical to ensure security

of the person, the state and its metrics of

prosperity, where trials are held and those

malefactors within society are held to account

to be punished for the grief they bring to

others. And when justice imprisons a

convicted murderer it it just; when through

misadventure an errant citizen causes the

death of another, remorseful and psychically

injured by his very own inadvertence yet

found guilty by a reluctant jury, then what

results is a fateful finding profiting neither

society, the injured or the hapless accused.

guilt

Heads Up

 

If you felt the confidence to bet that the

Canada-U.S. relationship would henceforth

prosper with a new president at the wheel of 

State in the Great US of A, don't be in a hurry 

to cash in your bet. You're a loser, just like Canada.

The Commander-in-Chief in America has just

rotated from a man who gave orders that those

around him tried not to follow to a man who

follows orders others impose on his office.

The frontman who sat out the campaign in

his basement during COVID fears is now

front and centre, electrically feeble, orating

the dire need for his countrymen to shed their

partisan views and indulge in one huge

embrace of the status quo whereby elites

have retaken what is rightfully theirs and 

none others need apply, their uncouth incivility

stale from recent display. And your point is?

Just a first impression from a biased source

reflecting the sting yet again of a mouse

living next door to an imperious elephant.

 

Just Curious -- Very Curious

If any living being could be considered

hermetically sealed, a seal so tight it sets

him apart, aloof, untouchable by emotions

a sense of community, nothing piques his

interest, a blank slate of social immunity

retired into himself, disinterested in others

unwilling to engage, the ultimate retreat from

the world at large. A sadly unique tabula rasa.

That the man is a sociopath is evident enough

that the woman who wed him, bore their children

still obeys his orders from her perspective as

a rational, cheerful human being who carries on 

with a remote engagement where minds never 

meet is the mystery. As a curious onlooker 

my mind delves into the peculiarities of human 

nature and his is one that teeters on the razor's edge 

of sanity. This can be deduced by the extraordinarily 

furtively desperate measures he takes to avoid 

human contact. His father was a likeable man

his mother cold and politely remote. His sister 

dysfunctional and himself what he is. There is 

a daughter whose  personality is a genial clone 

of her mother, a son, his father's image. My 

neighbours the past thirty years, obliquely 

observed from my close spectator's perch.

 

 

A Wonderland

 

The fury of yesterday's storm tore itself

into a frenzy of wind and cold and snow

drifts humping the landscape in a sinuous

geology of white desertification, raging wildly

through the night, refusing to give quarter to 

the morning light, a hanging fog of snow

obscuring trees their needled branches hanging

limp and forlorn under a burden of snow that

even the wind was unable to disperse and the

forest was buried before the storm relaxed its

onslaught and moved haughtily onward. The

exquisite beauty of a forest immersed in frozen

sleep, a sumptuous cathedral of towering trees

the serenity that ensued appeared far from the

battlefield of the night before, revealing a white-

muffed landscape, ethereal and evanescent with

light preparing to welcome the emergent sun

sending its sublimely brilliant rays to caress the

vision of winter-iced perfection, a wonderland.

A Tale of Two Nations

 

Consider the source ... and the magnitude

the magnanimous inspiration and creativity

of minds concentrated to a defined purpose

in the achievement of civilizational advances

beyond the wildest dreams and nightmares

of inventive minds. One nation devises a

scheme to open the world through a web of

vast communication potential through the ether

to advise and to entertain to educate and to 

communicate and the world's population will 

never again be quite the same. Another nation 

releases to the world a deadly pathogen by 

accident or design to relentlessly stalk humanity 

leaving death and destruction as it advances

recedes and yet again advances challenging 

the minds of scientists to halt its implacable 

laying waste of humanity. The first nation 

discovers its invention while forever changing 

the landscape of contact, commerce and diplomacy 

also draws from the subconscious the evil within

posing a direct threat to its very existence.

The second nation, quivering with rage that

the world casts a bony finger of cause and effect

at its inadvertence (or intent) rejoices while gaining

the upper hand in controlling the devastation it 

has created in the process increasing its global 

power structure influentially and financially.

Hushed

 

The storm has spent itself

the energy of its relentless spill of

downy white lapsed into silence

as it regards the landscape below

from its perch in a silver sky

reflecting the snow below

or perhaps the snow is a mirror

image of the sky hovering above

with a slight variance of interpretation.

Boughs hang heavy with snow

green needles cradling snownests

which no birds will invest themselves

within for already they are sliding

off their perches on limbs as the

atmosphere warms and releases a

steadily increasing rain of snow.

The storm that blew from the east

has slapped a thick hide of crusted snow

on the east-facing trunks of venerable

trees that have seen many such storms

over their aged presence. The hills of this

ravined forest undulate, humped in white

extravagance extolling the virtues of

the season in a dazzling wonderland.

Hush, birds murmur as they settle

into sleep comforted and secure.

Nature's Favoured Offspring

 

What do we really know? All that is worth

knowing, we have convinced ourselves. The

species whose conceit of exceptionalism assures

that we are nature's favourite offspring. We are

subservient to nature and all else that exists bows

to our superiority. Nothing, however, stops us

from challenging nature, stretching the boundaries

of her expectations when she designed habitat for

each of her creatures, watching with patience and

curiosity as impudent humanity began devising

an increasingly diverse environment of shelters

spurning the habitation lesser creatures settle for

while endlessly speculating and experimenting with

the vast plethora of nature's building blocks, an 

explosion of science confusing itself with nature

daring to explore new horizons, remote, isolated

utterly alien to replace the home nature specifically

designed to contain humanity's destructive ambition.

From the dawn of human existence to the present

one bold scheme following another, using nature's

elements and her generosity to go farther and further

yet from humble and rude habitat to rule the Galaxy

leaving nature bemused and amused at her feeble

offspring laying waste to their haven spinning on 

its axis and trembling in anxious trepidation.

The Odious Valkyrie

Yes, Madam, it is a dreadful travesty an obviously 

unearned slur of immense proportions, unsupported by 

history as you know it to accuse this great nation of Schiller

Nietzsche and Wagner of the most abhorrent crime ever 

committed against a tribal group so evil it constructed

a damning narrative on its way to triumphant control 

of world news. banking and politics deliberately drawing

the sympathy of a compassionate world to the misery of 

enslavement culminating in annihilation to attain their

sinister end. A conspiracy of Jews to blacken subline

Germany's reputation. You would know after all for 

you are German and to validate the defence of your 

beloved nation its government set wheels of justice 

in motion to condemn, bring to trial and imprison

one who champions Truth and Justice for Germany

on the charge of incitement to hatred, the ingrates.

 

 

The Breaking Point

 

So then, relax. Take a deep breath. All will

be well. You can stop mumbling under your

breath, there, let it all out. If it's any consolation 

you've got plenty of COVID-weary company.

Take my word for it. Or don't; after all I've

got a whole lot more years tucked away in

my memory than you, if that's any comfort.

Likely not. But this too shall pass, remember

that when it's all over. And it will be. You've

gone a little stir-crazy, no mystery there, so have

a lot of others. And like you they've been having

conversations with themselves. Actually they've

been speaking to, certainly not with, both

animate and inanimate presences. It's not so

all right if you're screaming at your computer

since it really doesn't care. Just don't do it to your

dog; speak gently and she'll understand. The days

of COVID are numbered, isolation set to vanish.

 

 

The Power of the Forsworn Word

Never before has the great wide public

enjoyed the rare prerogative given to royalty

celebrity and literary giants to express an

opinion, offer a bon mot, offend a community

post gratuitous photographs of bare flesh

boast their supreme confidence in self

and boost a theory while promulgating 

the dark side of epiphanies celebrating

the violation of humanity's search for amity

as during this age of amplified equality of

expressive opportunity. The lowliest among

us can express sentiments with aplomb equal

to that of a crowned monarch, a sordid celebrity

hoping to gather a dedicated following whose

numbers are proof positive of their wit and

wisdom. Yet even there in that wilderness of

communication there are rules and regulations

not government-issued but deliberations of 

permittedness by the arbiters whose shining

platforms of expression are open to all and

closed to those chosen to represent the motley

unrepresentative of society by those with the

ultimate power to designate heads of terrorist

groups and governments perfectly legitimate

purveyors of hatred and violence, inexcusable

in those whose ideologies confront their own.

Foret Nuit

 

In the forest all is still as snow

descends in lazy spirals

muffling sounds of birds

nestling for the night while

owls stir from sleep to begin

their nocturnal hunt. The swift

transition from twilight

alerting small animals to return

to their dens brings a deeper

dusk briefly preparing the forest

for the deep darkness of night

yet the tumbling, twirling snow

is defiant of the dark entry

casting its white presence over

green boughs of cedar and hemlock

settling over humped tree stumps

stippling the forest floor like ghosts

mature trees rising stark and dark

in the faint light sketched in white.

Disgraced, Unlamented

 

How soon do we forget. Time's essence fades even

recent episodes of great moment into the dim past

when their authors have lost the authority that

enabled triumphs of performative change that no

others pursued with a similar recognition of the

requisite methodology to succeed in an ancient

culture of clan, custom and distrust. An admittedly

loathsome arbiter whose personal failings 

engendered an aura of unease with traits lacking

finesse, yet endowed with persuasive skills of

such measure as to move asunder resolute and

enduring tribal hatreds in favour of opening minds 

to the potential of gain in forswearing the distance 

of suspicion, the worn qualities of hatred, drawing 

hand to hand, resolving hostility for communion.

Where is that master craftsman of detente now? 

Sanctum Sanctorum

 

Welcome. This is my laboratory and I am

its chief chemist. The chamber that holds a

sacred place in a home housing people who

love one another where one among them may

choose to award the other for conduct becoming

the heart and centre of the other's soul. And

to that end recognizing the forbearance and

helpfulness that has been the fulcrum of life

the scaffold of all that matters in two lives

for 65 all-too-short years. From the refrigerator

is extracted a sweet yeast dough to roll on a 

floured countertop to a rectangle upon which 

is smoothed butter then brown sugar, cinnamon 

and raisins scattered. Thereupon rolled to enclose 

the filling, sliced into rounds and fitted into a 

baking dish to be re-refrigerated and in the morning 

brought out to bake to produce a sweet and 

fragrant breakfast treat, reflective of the many 

years of sweet and fragrant mutual love.

 

 

 

The Rejected Candidate

 

Obsessed with his unique exceptionality

convinced that through extraordinary

powers of perception he feels himself

destined to lead, that his intellectual

resources, his experience, his birth

and his wealth have all equipped him

to attain the pinnacle of celebrity readily

transformed into an opportunity to take

on the reign of government, his talents

recognized through the acclaim his myriad

of unpolished followers have anointed

him with, convinced it is he who will lead

them to the promised land. God may have

chastised Moses but no one is entitled to

question decisions he reaches and orders

his minions to carry to fruition. The great

megalomaniac brooks no opposition to his

timely and astute interventions that confuse

and frighten onlookers yet delight those who

place their future in his grasping hands. But

they have been overruled and the empire built

on hubris and ignorance has crumbled. The

great man falters in disbelief, illusions shattered

but not his own, overwhelming the chaos in

his viscera, frenetic with rage, feeble in his

absolute inability to overturn capricious fate.

 

 

Shining City On The Hill

 

Crass yes, pompous no. Rude and crude, Beloved of

the masses who saw fit to champion the degraded man who

held himself as The Greatest President Ever! Offering 

himself a second helping, offended that a restraining 

consensus had been reached to breach his determined 

assault on convention, tradition and social/political 

covenants whereby though elected to the highest position 

achievable through wile and nimble pandering to the 

vilest nature of humanity the time arrives when a nation 

takes stock of what it is their irrevocable decision has 

brought to bear at a time when they will no longer bear it 

inviting their erstwhile choice to depart and a successor 

to deliver them from an errant impulse. Little anticipating 

the strength of conviction in a hugely polarized nation 

its partisan trenches overwhelmed when a loser calls his 

base to reject his ouster and pandemonium ensues the 

disorder and violence blemishing with dissonance the very 

symbol of nationhood, order and governance now settling

over the newly, duly tarnished Shining City on the Hill.

 

 

The World As We Think We Know It

 

Something's happening here -- what it is ain't exactly 

clear for the world as we know it is canted, slipping its 

moorings and it is not simply the Planet spinning on its 

axis faster than it should, compressing time. Stop children

-- that sound you hear is your ancestors keening in sorrow 

at the world they knew fast declining. From Antarctica 

to the Arctic all the hemispheres of this Earth comes 

the tottering of empires and satrapies alike threatened 

by massive disorder from a capricious dysfunction. 

Legions of ideology, authority and power in disarray 

and confusion in a desperation of incomprehension

--  the world become a house of calamity, a common 

threat indifferent to intent or intervention unleashed 

beyond the historical record, a morbid pestilence of 

minuscule dimension yet enormous destructive power. 

The response of global incoherence another tragedy.

The Philistines of Language Identity

 

Communication is what binds us one to another

the means by which we express our thoughts

emotions and values finding common cause 

as humans for we all have thoughts, values and 

emotions though they may differ in degree yet

rarely in dimension so great that the verities of being 

are questioned, denied and renamed becoming 

part of a new language of description upturning 

normalcy and denying the most basic concepts of 

nature. I am female, a woman and a mother, a wife 

and a sister, a daughter and an aunt. Oh yes, and a 

grandmother. This is what I am though a newly 

disordered world of language seeks to deny these 

identity classifications. The engaged compassionate 

progressives of today cannot possibly commit to 

any greater crime against language and my identity 

which I hold as dear as the cranky entitlements

of those rejecting binary coded language; simpering 

in their unctuous eagerness to gift to the sulking few 

claiming themselves to be other than conventionally 

biologically identifiable the privilege of  tossing 

language into the dustbin of faulted history in this 

new, aggravated sense of entitlement in which we

are casually sacrificed to a non-gendered world.

The Ghouls of Death

The ghouls of Death are on the march again

those who pledge themselves to the urgency

of plying their trade as messengers and martyrs 

for whom intimate relations with Death bespeaks 

their eagerness to sacrifice themselves as a gift to 

the Supreme Being prepared to welcome them to 

Paradise while counting their victims establishing 

ranking in the  hallowed halls of death-dealing 

for those who forswear the cause are doomed to die 

and theirs are the hands of delivery. Fury at the 

death of their commander spurs them to march in 

solidarity of their drive to conquer. Puzzling that 

they rage over such a death -- involuntary, the same 

methodology as their own to remove a threat to 

civilization, the leader piously inciting his followers 

to mass slaughter of infidels, when his death advances 

his own awarded journey to Paradise, the master 

martyr whose noble cause his dedicated followers

swear to mount in vengeance of his timely demise.

Is That You?

 

Those ubiquitous brief identity sketches, think brisk

notional biographies of values, likes and dislikes which

people draw attention to themselves with variously;

animal lovers, the natural world, gastronomy, music

literature, sports enthusiasts, oenophiles, BBQ addicts

political culture, ethnic groupings, religious devotees -- 

all to paint a composite drawing of an individual, some

occasionally venturing into the specific territory of

socially-impolite but widely shared antipathies toward 

other groups and identities yet rarely do they add

character defects generally rejected by civil society 

with identifiers like venality, egotism, fascism and 

galloping misanthropy -- though given time and exposure 

inevitably those frailties and constructs revealing shame

slip through the protective layers shielding identity

and it can be quite interesting to analyze character flaws 

not through conjecture but inadvertent revelations casually

expressed by the transparent postings of those believing

their cover secure, well designed to have them appear 

quite other than what they truly are; veering from the

exceptionally well-adjusted person they would prefer

to be thought, to the flat-out sociopath whose persona

tends to flare to prominence, protective veneer asunder. 

The Waiting Years

 

Her home is old, a rural farmhouse now all of

a century and a half old at a time when the

concept of energy efficiency was unknown

so she is given to inhabiting two main rooms of 

the story-and-a-half building, the two well enough

heated to warm her old bones nearing the century 

mark herself and alone since her husband died 

a decade earlier. Declining senses have left her 

the consummate lover of literature and music

abandoning the bursting book shelves that surround

her, though still listening to music her mind as 

robust as it ever was. She must now live the life 

of a recluse, vulnerable to the prowling of a menace

unseen and viral, so her memories vibrant and 

dear visit to strike up conversations with her. On 

special occasions she rings up old friends across the

seas never again to visit yet memories sharp enough 

to recall childhood and student years together and 

the dreadful unforgettable war years of deprivation

and fear. Now they live in peace and contemplative 

content examining the years behind, waiting.

 

 

Fond Hope

 

There now, doesn't that feel one whole lot

better? We've shown the past 365 days the exit

and all it took was one colossal cooperative

determination to shove it out the door with the

message that humanity was done with it. It

left not with a blessing but a curse pinned to its

arse. So now we have a brand-new 365 days

of the future and we plan, every one of us to

make the most of this new beginning. Not to waste

one day of it. And how was your day numero uno?

Reversals are in order, and we pledge in earnest

to extend ourselves in an effort to reach our due

potential as decent human beings; did the goddess 

of all that is visit a plague upon us to emphasize 

the depth of our depravities?; and to be kinder to

one another. What a jolly thought, and good luck!

Well why not since we have the opportunity to

start anew and have everything come up roses...