Where was I? On a mattress on a cold floor in a drafty downtown Anchorage apartment. My household goods had not yet arrived in Alaska. I’d left Santa Fe, NM about two weeks earlier, drove to Denver with Rufus, put him on a plane to Anchorage, and from there I continued driving the old Mercedes 300D to Seattle, where I put the car on a ferry and then flew to Anchorage. About two weeks later I’m awake on that shitty mattress, probably rubbing sleep dirt from my eyes, trying to make out what the girlfriend standing in the doorway was saying: …attacked…
Like most every other American alive on that day, 9/11 was transformative. But for me, personally, the good fortune of meeting HW at a wine tasting some eight weeks later was truly life changing. The change would come slowly, way too slowly, and I nearly screwed it up. I should have trusted my instincts then. Had I done so, the worldwide happiness quotient would haven risen by two whole points, years earlier than it did, when, eventually, we became inseparable
Death and destruction, love and joy, both are out there, immutable features of life on earth. Maybe there’s some place out there where we might experience less death and destruction? None at all sure would be nice. If I were the supernatural thing that had created everything, I would have made love and joy the constitutive experience of all life. With no propitiation or belief in me required. And I like to think I would’ve had the good grace to say just one thing to my creation: You’re Welcome