With proper appreciation to Paul Simon

"Cult of Personality" by Living Colour is now stuck in my head...great song, but I hate it when a song gets stuck.

Contemplating possible frills to add to my talk next month, worrying about if I did enough of the right things right for the new book. Only time will tell. Sheesh, now -that- song by Asia is stuck in my head. aigh.

The photo that my brother sent me yesterday of Nancy and I has me all nostalgic. I would not change the path I have tread, for without my steps (wrong minded or ignorant as they may have been) there are many who would not be alive or where they are today. I don't claim to be a hero, but I have been fortunate enough to be where I needed to be when people fell and needed a hand back up. This I count as a blessing, even if it has, on occasion, left me as the frog in the fable of the frog and the scorpion.

And I would not change the fact of the existence of my children, all of whom I love very much. Perhaps the divorce and other errors I have made along the road has placed physical or emotional distances between us, but as long as they are healthy, happy and safe, I can live with my sorrow.

Do I wish I had opportunity to lead a "normal" life, one without the madness of all the people I have allowed in out of charity and arrogance? Certainly! (When my memoir comes out, you'll see...I spare no truths to protect the guilty, although I do not come across well, sort of incompetent) But I also know that sometimes I had to go through what I did for my own sake or for that of those around me who may have needed me in those moments. I've never refused the path, merely sometimes misinterpreted the directions.

I'd post the picture Robert sent me, but like with pictures of Ann and Jan and Peri and the Boys (Dante and Elric), I do not suppose to place them in my sphere. Some, such as Peri and Ann (she would have been dynamite for the cover of THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES), have absented themselves for their own reasons, some, such as Jan, have asked to be left out of discussions for their own reasons. And some, such as the Boys, I have been asked to not discuss at length by those concerned for their welfare. Nancy? In the sixteen years since last we spoke she has had ample opportunity to say what she wants, and has not spoken...I do not presume to know her mind. And so, I err on the side of caution.

About a decade ago I know I received a two-email volley from her elder sister, who then suddenly went silent (she is the one acknoweldged in my mythology as Arachne) and I have heard that her youngest sister is still in town (I have seen her listing in the phone book, so perhaps this is true) but for me to suppose that anyone wants to speak with or to me after all this time, especially seeing how recent and more central people and my life have found it so simple a matter to deny me, I am not willing or ready for more humiliation.

~I am a rock. I am an island.~

There, now that song is stuck in my head. As it has been for nearly thirty years, in some corner or the other.