I’m a mall walker. Yep, I’m one of those gracefully-aging folks that put on their track shoes and rack up some low-impact mileage inside. Last weekend, on a very-dreary Sunday morning, I got to the mall about 9:00 a.m. — a comfortable two hours before opening time. As I was on my second lap, and coming up on the newly-installed Christmas tree at center court, much to my surprise and disgust, I almost stepped into a rather large pile of, well, shit. It was ugly and god-awful smelly. I was aware that there were at least a couple dogs accompanying their owners on this particular morning, so I was contemplating how to talk about this with the next canine handler I saw. 

A few minutes later, near the tables by the coffee shop, I spotted one. At first I walked on by, but then I circled back to have a conversation. To the guy holding the leash, I made the observation about my recent fecal encounter and asked what, if anything, he might know about it. I wasn’t surprised when he said he knew nothing — but then he did, sympathetically, express great dismay. He asked directions so he could check out the situation himself.

I continued on with my walk and by the time I had made my way around to the trouble-spot again, the offending heap was being cleaned up by the housekeeping folks. Bless their hearts. 

Then, a couple minutes later I came upon the same guy. He was talking to yet another dog owner, so I was curious about the conversation. As I walked up, he recognized me immediately, and let me know what he had found out: security folks, he reported, had determined that it was not dog shit. 

Yes, you got that right; it was assessed, by whatever means I am unsure, to be human in origin. (Or was it Bigfoot? — I was unclear.) 

What. The. Fuck.

Well now, what motivates me to report this experience? I guess it got me thinking about how other humans in our culture are behaving disgustingly — and shitting on institutions much more sacred than mall floors. It would seem shit-piles are becoming the norm.

So, what am I thinking of?

Well, for one: former-President Trump’s attempt at overthrowing American democracy as we know it on January 6, 2021. A result of “the big lie,” his coup attempt was beyond-words distressing. He totally shit on the norms of the rule-of-law in general, and the peaceful-transfer-of-power in particular.

Then, of course, how can we forget the U. S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe. Six of the nine, black-robed, all-powerful, lifetime-appointees blatantly shit on fifty years of precedent regarding women’s reproductive rights.

Additionally, I’m thinking of how this also reaches down to street level; whenever a local school board acts to ban books, it directly shits on the first amendment. How crazy is that?

Well, I am sure you get the idea. The heaping pile of crap encountered during my walk took my mind to other places. This is quite the extrapolation, I know. Still: shit is shit. And it’s everywhere.

Soundtrack Suggestion

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
How many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, and how many times must the cannonballs fly
Before they’re forever banned?

The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind

 (“Blowin' In The Wind” – Bob Dylan)

“Loneliness is far more than just a bad feeling… It is associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety, and premature death. The mortality impact of being socially disconnected is similar to that caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, and even greater than that associated with obesity and physical inactivity.” – Dr. Vivek Murthy (U.S. Surgeon General) 

I retired from full-time employment in 2014, at age 67. It wasn’t that I thought it was really my time to move on – rather my employer believed it was. I was working as an academic dean, at a community college in the Bay Area, and the administration that had hired me, well, those folks were long gone. The new president didn’t take any time to get to know me and was more interested in putting in his own administrative team. Therefore, I was toast.

So, after receiving official notice that my contract was not being renewed, hastily evaluating my financial situation, and determining that retirement was at least theoretically possible, I packed up and moved back here to Oregon. After all, I had spent a considerable portion of my life in Corvallis and Eugene and my thinking was that there were folks here that would constitute some kind of community for me: that I wouldn’t be totally devoid of a support system.

Flash forward to present day: I’m now 76, and while it’s true that I’m not entirely without a support network, it’s turned out to be a pretty meager one. I have lunch once a month with an old friend from my photography days and about once a year with former Oregon University System colleagues. I made new friends when I spent three years as a part-time faculty member here recently (2019-2022), but now that that position has ended, I now rarely see those folks. I have kept in contact with Katrina (mentioned previously in my writings here; she is the person named in my Advance Directive), but she has her own very busy life and we communicate primarily, and fairly infrequently, by text. I have a Zoom session with an old high-school friend from Wisconsin once every couple months or so. And finally, I admit I had high hopes for real and sustained human connection when I was in a relationship for about three years, but that ended last year and left me alone and grieving. 

Given that the pandemic is largely in our rearview mirror, I have once again started spending time here at my neighborhood Starbucks. It’s not really community, per se, but as I sit here writing this, there are the sounds of work, conversation and occasional laughter. There are college students at the next table studying for, what I assume, their final exams. It’s true that I don’t actually meet people here, but it provides some sense of comfort: probably for the same reason that, when at home, I keep the TV or radio on most of the time; the NPR hosts and the news anchors at MSNBC keep me company. Fortunately, right now I have part-time work, in a tech-support role, at the college, that physically puts me in the classroom and in contact with instructors and students, for a few hours a week. That tends to keep me going.

I fear that I am one of the individuals that the Surgeon General speaks of in terms of the “loneliness epidemic.” I am more socially isolated than is really healthy. I know for sure that I am touch-starved. I’m pretty sure that, at this rate, I’m destined to be alone at the end.

For now, I guess I'll just keep breathing, walking, writing – and remain open to whatever comes next.

(Apologies for my prolonged absence here.)

Soundtrack Suggestion

When I was young
I never needed anyone
And making love was just for fun
Those days are gone

Livin' alone
I think of all the friends I've known
But when I dial the telephone
Nobody's home

All by myself
Don't wanna be
All by myself
Anymore

("All By Myself" - Eric Carmen)

I was recently introduced to a children’s book I had not previously encountered: Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree. It is a short, moving, simply-illustrated story about the relationship, and various encounters, between a boy and a tree, over the boy’s lifetime (into old age). A friend shared with me that the book was deliciously, perhaps painfully, illustrative of the role of parenthood. (Indeed, with a little research, I found that numerous interpretations of the book abound, including those with religious, friendship, environmental, satirical, and parent-child themes.) The same book popped into my consciousness again this week in a list of “the best books to read at every age, from 1 to 100,” published by the Washington Post.

So, I already had Shel Silverstein and his work on my brain when I watched “The Upside” on the plane from MSP to SEA a few days ago. This movie, starring Bryan Cranston and Kevin Hart, is a story about a billionaire quadriplegic, Phillip (Cranston), and his ex-con caregiver, Dell (Hart). At one point, fairly late in the film, Phillip reluctantly agrees to a “date” with a woman, Lily (in a cameo role by Julianna Margulies), with whom he has been sharing an old-fashioned, snail-mail, love-letter relationship. Interestingly, Phillip and Lily had never met in person. This is where Shel Silverstein enters. Lily, during the course of this in-person lunch date with Phillip, describes the Silverstein book, The Missing Piece. In the story, a circle, with a pie-shaped piece missing, wanders (rolls) around looking for the perfectly-shaped piece which will complete it. When the circle finally finds the right object, it, at first, happily rolls along; ultimately, however, it discards the piece because it now moves too fast to be able to enjoy the companionship of others it had previously enjoyed, such as worms and butterflies. The storytelling leads Lily to reject Phillip, which devastates him.

I was intrigued by the fact that this children’s book was used to move the plot forward. So, I found and read The Missing Piece, and have been meditating on it a lot. For me, the story brings up a number of fundamental philosophical questions: What am I doing here, wandering around, in this life? What am I looking for? What is the nature of wholeness? What does it mean to be complete? Do I have to give up self to be with another? Does that other have to give up self to be with me? Can I be with another and be myself? Are soul-mates a myth? Does a union, perfect or not, create less happiness, not more? How could that be? What is happiness? What is relationship? What is perfection? Why pursue it?

As usual, I am a little confused. Life is such a mystery. So many questions. So few answers. So many books. So little time.

[Additional resources: The Upside. The Missing Piece.]

So, here I am, age 70. My birthday was two days ago. As some of you may recall, in my 20s I was skeptical that I would ever live past 30. Ah, well, I have never been so wrong!

This essay is simply a little record about the 24-hour-run-up to my birthday. I really do love it when being alive is so darn fun. (And, yes, we live in very interesting times, but this report has nothing to do with a rich, orange-colored bigot who is bent on destroying our democracy.)

On the morning of August 16, I awoke to a rather unusual junk email. It was addressed to one of my legitimate, widely-known email addresses (in fact, the one associated with this blog). The author purported to be writing from Germany and was issuing a blackmail threat. He (I suppose it’s a “he”) said I had 24 hours to come up with $290 in bitcoin and deposit it in his account (a bitcoin wallet address was given). He claimed that a keystroke-logging program had been deposited on my machine, and that he knew a lot about me. So, if I did not forward the funds, the consequences would be an email message to everyone in my contacts (and everyone I was connected to via social media) containing embarrassing video of me recorded with my MacBook Pro camera. So, two things you should know: (1) my computer’s camera has been completely covered up for at least the last couple years; and (2) if you see a suspicious email from/about me, you might think twice about clicking on whatever link is provided. On the other hand, who knows how interesting it may be! (Yes, you guessed it: I have not paid him.)

Then, later in the day, while on my daily walk, on a beautiful sunny afternoon along the bikepath between the Willamette River and the Owen Rose Garden, I was approached by a woman approximately half my age, working in the world’s oldest profession. She hesitated, stopped, smiled, and asked if I “wanted a date.” All I could think of to say was “no thanks.”

Anyway, that’s a day in my life. Happy birthday to me.