If you are "on Facebook", you are aware that they have a feature called "On This Day" that every day shows you your posts on this day since you first joined Facebook. For me, that goes back to late 2008. I remember really doing something with Facebook when I was confined to bed after retinal detachment repair surgery in early 2009. I was hooked. Sometimes I wonder if that is a good thing, but most of the time I enjoy my Facebooking, and so that's that. Today as I read my post over the past nine years on March 8, its funny how random they seem. Here are some: March 8, 2016: Can't pull up the covers lest we disturb the cat. (There is a picture of me and my animals on the bed. My cat, Nina, is asleep. If we moved, she was gone.) 2015: You became friends on Facebook with 1 person. Janet C who went to the Queen's University in Belfast. (I like the idea of knowing someone who went to the Queen's U in Belfast!) 2015: Home again home again jiggeddy jig. What an odd night. (This was preceded by the following posts) --Two apparent ladies of the night just parked next to me and headed to the nearby hotel bar. Okay, maybe they're just gussied up for dancing. --There is a big white van cruising the hotel parking lot. On the side it says Jesus is coming soon. " To a hotel in Anaheim? --Who else (other than me) would be sitting in a hotel parking lot waiting on a Sunday night at 9pm? (I remember this night. I was picking up a lady at the Marriott who was coming from LAX. All this was going on while I was sitting in the parking lot). Still 2015 --Lovely afternoon with dear friends high above Riverside at Casa de Flanders. (I remember the visit, but the occasion for the visit, not so much) Still 2015 (I must have been very busy on FB that day! This is a cartoon from something called Bitstrips which I really like, but is not defunct. I miss it.) 2014 -- Looking through some old images from last year. I feel a photo safari coming on. (If you care to, you can look at my images here: http://www.qwerkirob.net/qwerkipix.html) Also 2014 -- So true I can't stop smirking. (Post a meme that read: "I would like to think I will die a heroic death, but its more likely I'll trip over my dog, and choke on a spoonful of frosting") Also 2014 -- (This post got a huge list of comments and suggestions with recommendations. I belief this one struck a responsive cord in many!) I'm very disappointed with my whites when I do laundry. I got some new t-shirts that are whiter than white. Now the old ones look dingy and grey. Bleach seems to yellow them. I am using All with Oxicleam currently, but worry about the environment. Perhaps peroxide and baking soda? Such monumental issues on a Saturday morning! (now afternoon). There were many more, but I'm gonna end with this one from 2015. These reminders are such a mixed blessing. 2015 - Nothing like Tater love.
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3/6/2017 2 Comments Finding The AnswerI know where the answer is. I get up from the sofa or out of bed and go downstairs or even come home and go straight to where the answer is. Where is this, you might ask? Well, if you have to know, and don't know already, the answer is right there, in your kitchen, in the big, cold box better known as your refrigerator. (I don't know why I always want to spell refrigerator with a "d" in the middle, but it might because when you refer to it with its nickname, that is spelled "Fridge"! But I digress). Yes, I have come to believe that the answer to the question is in there, inside the Kenmore or Frigidaire or LG or whatever brand it goes by. Why else would I be drawn to it like a magnet upteen times a day or evening? I don't just decide to go look in the fridge, I am compelled! Whatever is bugging me will be solved if I just find it in the fridge. I must be so! Anyway, I realized it tonight. I realized just how true it must be. The answer is in there! Open the Magic Chef and voila! All shall be revealed. Reach in, grab something to satisfy your hunger...at least for a while. How could it not be so? How could you not find the Answer? Think about it. Every time you open that door, the light goes on doesn't it? Even in the dark of midnight, it shines true. So there you have it, my friends, the answer is in there. I rest my case. 3/4/2017 3 Comments This Side of OtherTomorrow is the first anniversary of the passing of someone close to me. Forgive me if I'm feelling a little introspective and reflective tonight. I've heard of a place called the Other Side. It is where, when one gets there, all will be revealed. On the Other Side, there is peace, love and harmony. Strife and suffering is no more. I've know many, many people who have gone there, gone to this Other Side. Trouble is, they don't come back. Sometimes I think I feel their presence. It might come in a cool summer breeze or a chilling of the bones in winter. They speak but I don't always know what they are saying. I can only assume they speak a language I do not yet understand there on the Other Side. So here I am, on this side of Other. I miss those who have journeyed over. I wish I could have one more day, a few hours, even a moment to tell them just how much I love them and have, regretfully, come to know just how much they meant to me here. Yet I know that they know this. I know it because I have come to believe they are indeed where all has been revealed; all is peace, love and harmony. I cannot believe it would be any other way. And therefore I wait, here on this side of Other. I remind myself to find all the joy and love and harmony I can while here, on this side of Other. Every year its the same thing. We celebrate the holidays, bring in a New Year, then the parade of holidays begins again. MLK Day, Ground Hog's Day, Valentine's Day, Presidents' Day, Mardi Gras, etc. And currently we are anticipated the changing of our clocks, the eating of corned beef with green beer, the coming of spring and Good Friday & Easter. It never seems to change. And it goes faster and faster every year. It seems like I just get finished putting away the picnic supplies and white clothes after Labor Day when its time dress in some costume disquise, give thanks for the harvest and our blessings, then its the Christmas/Chanukah/Kwanza/Solstice/Mawlid el-Nabi smorgasbord of holidays. All wonderful, all beautiful in their own way chocked full of meaning and time for reflection and sharing our blessings. When you've traveled on this lonely planet of ours around the sun as many times as I have, you might begin get lost in the rush, the blur, the unstoppable passage of time. And that's when I realize. Every day really comes just once. Today, a Friday, will never come again. And that's when I remind myself to stop, smell the proverbial roses (when in season) and be present. Let tomorrow take care of itself. It will be here soon enough. 3/2/2017 2 Comments finding me in the decade of meOn March 2, 1974, forty three years ago today, I arrived in California to stay. I left my family and friends in the suburbs of Detroit to “find myself.” That’s what people were doing in the ‘70s, “finding themselves.” The decade itself was dubbed the Me Decade by many. I include a link to an article on Wikipedia about the Me Decade and how it came to be. To quote from the article, “The term "Me Decade" describes a general new attitude of Americans in the 1970s, in the direction of atomizedindividualism and away from communitarianism, in clear contrast with social values prevalent in the United States during the 1960s.[3” This seems to be a apt description of the 70s and, I expect, I myself at that time as I explored who I was and what I wanted in life during my 20s. In the 70s, I attended college while working parttime to support myself. I went to Wayne State in Detroit for two years before moving to California. The big university experience left me cold. At that time it was mostly a commuter school and I worked nights. So I never really connected to the university community there. When I moved to Riverside, I attended classes at Riverside City College, a two year institution. I transferred to California State College (now University) at San Bernardino and graduated in ’78. All that while working ¾ time at JC Penney. In my quest to “find myself”, I tried therapy, support groups and disco. I think disco actually helped me find myself more than any other form of therapy. Those were interesting days. But I didn’t discover the discotheque until early 1976. It was Ground Hog’s Day. A Saturday night. I finally summoned up the courage to enter the nondescript building where the Grand Central was housed in San Bernardino. It was here I found my “tribe”. It was here I finally accepted who I was as a gay man. So I guess 43 years ago today I set out to atomically individualize myself and found my way to communitarianism, as described above. I nice round circle of sorts. And now, 43 years later, I remember the day I moved to California as the day I found myself. If we are lucky we find ourselves and like who we find. Took a while, but I do...like myself that is. And that is why this date marks a special anniversary for me and in my own way, I celebrate. Click here to read more about the Me Decade. |
Rob McMurray,
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