Figured I'd babble about Chelsea the dog, since I have not written here for awhile...She is a little over 3 years old, a terrier dachshund mix, and the first little dog ( Beth's ) I've ever been associated with...My last dog was a German Shepherd, and although the shepherd was a wonderful dog, intelligent and dignified, I am slowly believing that this little creature is the best animal I have ever known. There is more willingness to please in the small breeds I think-or a self awareness of the limitations of their small size- so she is obedient now that she knows what is expected of her, and shows admirable intelligence. I have not trained her to sit and other trivial commands-which are unimportant to me- yet I can open the door to let her into the yard, then tell her to wait while I go back in for several minutes, and she will be lying calmly near the door when I get back. Her patience is humbling as she stares at us while we fumble for the keys or tie our shoes or do all the other things humans do to delay themselves, then we take her to the woods where she runs full speed for 12 miles or more, never getting further away than what a few minutes and whistles can bring back. All the while she chases chip monks and squirrels and deer-which she never catches-hopping like a doe and clamoring over logs that challenge even me. At night she sleeps affectionately beneath the covers at our feet. Unlike many dogs she has no hesitancy to look us in the eye, rather seems to possess genuine cognitive understanding of certain things-at least to the extent that dogs can figure things out. And of course she is just cute, and charms everyone she meets, with the exception of tall men with baseball caps-a possible negative memory she retains from her puppy hood. She ended up in a rescue shelter where Beth adpoted her at around five months old. So... Chelsea...great little dog who is curled up on the bed beside me as I type...patiently waiting for me to get my arse back out side where she can run free!
POSTSCRIPT 12/26/09: She stepped into a leg hold trap about a week ago as we were walking along some railroad tracks. It had been set to capture a fox I suspect, and caused to her to scream in pain and shock and anger for the minute it took me to reach her and maneuver around her agitation in order to step on the release tabs at each end. Although I feared that it had cut right through and shattered her bone, by the time I had carried her the mile back to the car she was able to put some weight on that paw. Fortunately a quick check over by a vet-who told me that pets in traps were a common occurrence around here- confirmed that there were no serious injuries, so she was running full speed three days later. As for trapping, I see no real justification these days, although proponents will claim that it keeps populations in check. I suspect that habitat loss and highways have long replaced deliberate human culling as a necessity, and there are many alternatives to animal fur for clothing. Probably I would be less resistant to the practice if years ago I had not witnessed the chewed off leg of a raccoon which had maimed itself in order to escape a leg hold trap. Generally the trapped animals struggle awhile then settle down until the trapper-who is supposed to check his or her traps every 24 hours- arrives and shoots them in the head. I am no Disney idealist regarding nature, but the few dollars received for the fur makes what is a somewhat barbaric and inhumane activity questionable. I suppose that there are live catch traps available, but I doubt many trappers use them, and it still requires killing a wild animal for no good reason.

Where's the Beef?

This is a picture of my mom and Beth's fourteen year old son Kenny, following a performance of Titanic at the local theater. He has a solo singing part within a cast of talented adult performers, and shows remarkable poise for such a young kid. The dark glasses are a joke-they are 3D glasses given to us at a movie theater, but the old lady looks like the old Wendys commercial, eh?... Mom has begun to deteriorate noticeably in the past year, meaning that the good days are fewer and her general malaise has increased. She has been sleeping with oxygen since May and occasionally needs it during the day, and her ability to process conversation is definitely less than it was-never mind the hearing loss. She claims to not be afraid of death but thinks the dying process is not all that hot...There is always another infirmity slowing her down and recovery takes longer, although in her actions and willpower the balance must still be worth it, because she feels well enough most days to yet want to live. When you are 85 your life becomes talking about your latest illness and comparing doctor visits with your peers, and to my sister and I it seems a little pointless sometimes, as if there is an unspoken competition among old people to see who can live the longest, even if life is only sitting on the couch watching television or short excursions in the car. There seems to be an unwillingness among some of them to accept that one of these illnesses will be the last, and that there will be nothing more the doctor can do, and that maybe all the pills and money could be better spent. So far there have only been a few days when my mother felt bad enough that she said she wanted to die, so I guess that when those days become more numerous she will make up her mind to let go. As long as she can still do her crossword puzzles, and occasionally get out to work or to play bridge, then meandering around the house and falling asleep on the couch is life enough. She has never been a woman of deep religious nor spiritual faith, so does not see life and death in those terms, but was the primary caretaker of my ailing father, so has practical experience with end of life issues, just not her own. She says that she appreciates my attention and patience, but there is really not much I can do to help, for she is simply old, and as Jackson Browne wrote "In the end there is one dance you'll do alone" ...

Before & After

In mid-September this dam was removed from the Conewango River which runs through town and joins the Allegheny River about 200 yards downstream. It had been there for at least 90 years-maybe Civil War era-but supposedly (according to the Feds) was deteriorating to the point of endangering... fishermen? or whomever...so for a bid of some $100,000 it was demolished and hauled away in dump trucks. The process involved an air hammer and the dropping of a 1 1/2 ton wrecking ball, which gradually broke it into pieces which could be lifted into the trucks. Watching the work from the bridge it seemed like slow going, and the contractor confirmed that the concrete was extremely tough having cured in the water for a hundred years. No doubt it posed No threat to anyone in hindsight, but so goes government explanations. In truth it was just part of a program that endeavors to remove many low head dams and return American waterways to a more natural flow. Before work began there was a minor amount of local protest-nostalgia-to keep it, but not much, and afterward the department of fish and game relocated about 7,000 mussels-including one endangered species- upstream to slower moving water. So now the Allegheny river fish will have easier migration upstream, and the Conewango, which is already an excellent bass river, will likely be improved. As for the physical changes to the current, they too were minor and the overall depth a mile upstream remained the same.
POSTSCRIPT:4/9/10 -At least one homeowner upstream has noticed his land being eroded and a retaining wall collapsing into the river as a result of the dam removal. Subsequently his house foundation is experiencing stress and may eventually be structurally damaged. So far he has received no help from the state in correcting the problem, for reasons of there being no 'official' policy to address such things and the usual political feet dragging. It does sound, however, and though financial help will be approved-hopefully before the situation deteriorates.

The Hike From Hell

Took the worst hike I've had in at least a decade this morning...foolish of me not to expect today's 2 inch snowfall (October 16th??!!) to bend the saplings all the way to the ground and make some trails next to impassible... but of course after two miles it was too late to turn back, and around here there is no bush wacking off the trail because one gets lost too easily in the thousands of acres of wooded mountains. So I slogged on as the snow fell off the still fully leaved branches and thoroughly soaked me, all the while stepping into mud bogs to my boot tops because the ground rarely dries in Warren due to all the rain. I eventually came to a jeep road-normally wide enough for two vehicles-which also had trees bent double across it in places. I must admit that my sympathy for their plight mixed with curses at the difficulty they made walking. But so goes winter in Warren...Five plus months of mostly crap for an outdoor loving walker like me. I am accustomed to the more favorable temperatures and precipitation further east near Philadelphia and New York-where the sun actually shines for more than a day or two... methinks I will Never wholly acclimate to this... The future plan-after my mother dies and when full retirement kicks in- is to spend two or three months each winter in a warmer climate, but that time is not here yet so I simply have to suck it up and find the good. I've actually considered taking up bowling on cold January days...?? In the meantime Beth and I will be flying to Florida for a week or two in February, which will be something to look forward to and break up the dreary skies...because I am normally quite optimistic, I am embarrassed to sound so depressing, but weather wise Warren truly is the Seattle of the east to me, only colder.

Pittsburgh

Just a couple shots of P-Burg, a neat city situated along three rivers and in between mountains...It is still on the distressed cities list after losing it's steel industry, but seems to hold it's pride up with the Steelers Superbowl winning streak. My niece's wedding was on a riverboat which cruised the water, and everyone had a good time as far as I could tell. We rode the incline the next day(a cable car up a nearby slope) which offered this view of the skyline-but rain canceled a planned zoo trip...maybe next time. Unfortunately, the east has been inundated with rain all season-the wettest on record in New England-so this week will be another washout. At such times I miss that dry heat in the southwest...Wildfires? what wildfires?

Goldenrod

This is an entire hill filled with goldenrod, which is very common in the fields at this time of year...fortunately I am not allergic......The temperature has averaged about 60-70F, the sun has been out at least part time, and within another month the surrounding mountains will be wholly transformed into the fall foliage. In some regards it has been the summer that wasn't-cooler and wetter than usual-but the showers were passing, with enough sun in between to keep me happy during my walks. I'm still toiling...s-l-ow-l-y...on a rewrite of the first draft, which for some reason is taking much longer the second time around...probably because I am more obsessive about each word, and more distracted by other things, and have not set a time limit thus far. I find comfort in knowing that Walden took Thoreau almost seven years and Gone With The Wind took Mitchell ten years, so I'm simply trying to meet my own standards. On the home front my mother continues to work and play bridge and do her crossword puzzles, and Beth and I are as committed as ever-truly friends and lovers in a way I only imagined to have been possible before meeting her. My niece will be getting married in Pittsburgh on the 26th, so that will give us the opportunity to see the city and see my kids and for all of us to do a little sight seeing. I hope that everyone reading this-if anyone reads this blog-is doing well and has an enjoyable autumn...keep the faith!

Health Care

My brother in law is an MD, my sister manages three offices in a medical group owned by the Warren hospital, and I am a casual, part time worker for that hospital. Everyone agrees that the system is broken, but no one agrees on the solutions, and either way escalating costs and an aging population will force future changes. As I have filed charts this past year I have noticed that many of the patients are the same people over and over-about 35% of the total population-and some of the more costly patients are the elderly, such as my own mother, age 85. In the past five years she has amassed at least $50,000 in bills, mostly paid for by Medicare and her private insurance, for problems that can best be described as normal for her age bracket. I regularly pick up her six or seven medications, which often have co-pays of one or two hundred dollars a month. At some point in the future the question of whether it is economically feasible to pay exorbitant amounts for people only a few years from death will need to be answered. Call that rationing or call it bankruptcy, it will happen;the national debt cannot afford either limitless entitlements, lawsuits, or compensations. Of the other 35%, many have self induced lifestyle problems caused by smoking, drinking and obesity, so unless the system includes incentives to change peoples behavior, it will fail. One must also remember that the high cost of healthcare occurs within a system that employs thousands of volunteers- more than any other business, so efficiency is not it's strength.
Basically, I observe the health care system-and Americans generally-as having a profound fear of illness and death, which is understandable considering how removed our society has become from the natural world. At root that also indicates to me a profound lack of faith-as though all the lip service to God and Heaven have no conviction. If one expands one horizon, it is easy to make the case that our moral will is misguided to suppose that $50,000 spent keeping an elderly woman alive could not be better spent treating malnutrition or dysentery in impoverished children. Tough choices, but not that tough if one lives a good life and accepts death as part of life.

Glenn Miller, seventy years later

Last night we took my mother to see the Glenn Miller Orchestra at a small theater northwest of here, and everyone in attendance thought the show was superb! At the band's peak in the early 1940's, Miller volunteered for the army, then disappeared in a plane crash while flying from England to France in 1944. The band has been touring the world in it's reincarnated form since 1956- with a revolving set of musicians of course, all of them top of the line players. They still sell out venues-playing the old swing hits and some modern sound-a-likes- while performing about 300 shows a year...So if you like swing music at all, they were the Beatles of their time, and still every bit as talented!!

Random

This entry has been a long time coming and will be a rambling mesh of disjointed thoughts, self-therapy really, and probably not wisely meant for public consumption, but every so often I find myself losing my focus, or rather , my emotional confidence, and that generally means that I have neglected something deep within me, something personal or spiritual which I have to retouch-or purge-in order that I may get back to my normally positive outlook. Being of a solitary nature, I recharge myself in solitude rather than society, so when I neglect solitude..that is, the Good, Reflective, Primal, Prayerful solitude, for too long- and the writing which often accompanies it- my sense of self suffers. I start to lose ME...and that must never happen, for with it all my intuitive confidence and self worth start to be questioned by over analysis, or timidity, rather than simply being who and whatever I am in the moment.
Such moods do not diminish immediately,and I suppose have a few pressure points which set them off and which then fester awhile before I am ready to confront the hard emotions at their core. At any rate, I have not really written from my soul for over a month -until a few days ago- and this is my raw journal entry from that day, July 7th:
" Solitude. How rare in body, how elusive in mind! To take the time to think. To feel. To be! ...Beth, Mother, Chelsee, my Family, Work, Sleep. My life is not my own again-willingly-and becomes a bit off kilter some hours. Not for lack of solitude, rather for my best use of that solitude. That is, my Prayers are lacking. My discipline. My confidence. Without Proper solitude, I lose Me...I lose my core. My faith. My soul. And I have neglected me too long like the fool I am sometimes. So I walk today determined to balance the uncertainty that threatens to creep into me. And to purge vestiges of my former lives that ended badly yet carry their debris into this one. To write from the heart if I still remember how. Hell! It has been too long. It has been forever it seems. Not by the calender but by everything I have disused or forgotten. Words? What are they? Pieces of things I thought mattered once..that Did matter...profoundly..foolishly..necessarily..like nothing else I have ever known. Decades of words as meaningless as flowers on my fathers grave. They are gone like figments of my imagination. It is the old Buddhist wisdom all over again-Nothing survives so long as the illusion of what we expected it to be. Let one go and another replaces it to carry us on to death. Of course. How could it be otherwise? It is all we can do to stay sane in an insane world and not worry over it."
In the past weeks I have watched my niece mourn the unexpected stillborn death of her infant son-killed it seems by a taxoplasmosis bacterium which she easily resisted. Nine months of dreams gone in minutes, and a family trying to make sense of it. And me looking beyond them to so many others here in town and around the world suffering problems and tragedies I cannot conceive of. Larger lessons learned I remind myself, while forgetting my own.
Today I walked the dog into the mountains and screamed that primal rage against myself and the world-that anger that has men drinking themselves to death and killing one another like sub human rats lost in their cesspool of pain. The amygdala and hypothalamus rule our prefrontal cortex more than we admit some hours- we who do anything rather than look in the mirror at the flawed beings we are. I scream at the trees in such hours, and reset the balance within me the best I can. Nature is my church more than the pews of mankind. All the world is home to this personal God I know, which most of all demands my sober attention to the best parts of myself. It is my neglect of those parts that drives me to these words in the first place-to find the self love I call my own, without judgment or analysis, implied or self created, and enjoy the moment again, so that I may share it with others

Walkfit, HSN , my Mother, and Writing...

Yesterday I received a phone call from Walkfit about an upcoming promotion on the Home Shopping Network, Sunday evening, June 14th, possibly to be of the people who phones in with a testimonial. As far as I know this is the first time Sylmark corporation has tried HSN, so hopefully it all pays off for them. As I have said before, my endorsement is 100% sincere and I was using their inserts-which literally cured my plantar fasciitis-long before I became a spokesman.
Talking with them after the long silence had me re-examining the progress I have made on the book, which is in a re-write of the first draft, and everything else that has transpired since I finished the walk in early June of '07...on that day I sauntered alone onto the beach in Oceanside, CA at about three in the afternoon after completing the final 24 or 25 miles, and asked some tourists to take a picture to document the occasion. Emotionally I was surprisingly muted, for the highs and lows had been expressed all along the way, and by that point I was weary and relieved that I had finished in one piece. I savored the ocean for a couple hours, then caught a bus to Los Angeles, where a niece and her boyfriend let me sleep on the couch for a week. I had written a letter to Walkfit in January of '06, right after I had purchased their product, and told them of my planned walk, and they called me to see if I was legitimate. I suggested that I re-contact them if and when I reached California, which I did, and that led to the endorsement.
Living here in Warren I have been busy working on the book, helping my elderly mother-who is now 85 and has been in the hospital or housebound for the past month-and working for the medical group to which my MD brother-in-law belongs, doing odds and ends part time. Combined with walking several hours a day and other activities, I am amazed at how quickly the months have passed. Sometimes I wonder how I ever accomplished anything when I was working full time, although I know that there are more than enough hours in a day if I discipline myself properly-which doesn't always happen. The book is called Anti-Clock specifically to dismiss our culture's obsession with time and obligations, so I try to go with the flow as they say, and do what needs doing in the moment, and trust that everything gets done eventually with nothing neglected. My essential promise to God-or whatever you want to call it-remains to finish the book, although writing can be slow going when I labor over individual words like I do. Being a conscientious person I sometimes put everything aside when my mother needs assistance, for she does not want to be in a nursing home and I promised her that I would help her die...As of today she has rebounded and may even return to work for awhile, but she is not getting any younger and eventually one of these setbacks will be her last. So overall life is good, and I have met the woman of my dreams, and now I'm just trying to stay focused so that old promises stay honored in their proper place among the new ones...
POSTSCRIPT: I did not make the Sunday night show, but the saleswomen they had on did a fantastic job I thought, and a female caller gave a testimonial as powerful as anything I could have done...They seemed to be selling well, so I think the Walkfit people will be pleased, although I don't know what the break even point is for that kind of advertising...

Eagles & Rocks

This Bald eagle nest is about a mile from town in a tree near the Allegheny river, and is one of two nests that I know of nearby. The two fledglings may have left the since this picture was taken in early May, but it shows that they are making a comeback locally.
The rock formation is one of several in the mountains and was formed from sandstone conglomerates laid down 350 million years ago when there used to be an inland sea around here. I stumbled upon this one and another while hiking, although there are others, including an "official" formation called Rimrock on which climbers rapel, and at which the conservation corps built steps and railings during the 1930's.

Porcupines, Bees, Frost

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-Our dog (Chelsea, a dachshund/terrier mix) had her first encounter with a porcupine while we were hiking the six mile Morrison trail near Kinzua resevoir a few weeks back. She approached it with curiosity and probably a little aggression, to which the porcupine responded with seven or eight quills in the snout before climbing up a nearby tree. There were two or three near her nose which no doubt stung when I yanked on them one by one, and she responded like a little kid getting splinters removed, but all in all appreciated that I was helping and within a few minutes was running happily down the trail. I assume that she learned something from the experience, because porcupines are common around here and we often see them killed along the roadsides. They are slow moving animals, as big as a large groundhog and bloated looking from all the quills, yet seem to be as vulnerable to automobiles as opossums are in the eastern part of the state.
The wild honeybee hive is in a tree near the town of Russell, a few miles from here, and is one of two that I am aware of in the area. I am attentive to such things because of the apparent virus that has been killing off honeybees in the last few years, and which could be extremely serious to agriculture and our food supply if it continues. Fortunately, proper hygiene seems to help lower the risk for commercial hives and scientists think they have isolated the culprit which will help find a cure. For awhile everything from pesticides to electromagnetic radiation to stress was being suggested as the cause.
The frost was on the railing outside my door on May 18th, which just goes to illustrate the mountain weather here. There were isolated incidences of frost in the mountains until the end of the month and even a little snow in upstate New York. So far Warren has had mixed weather with some highs near sixty, some near seventy, and one or two eighty degrees days since spring. Warren is definitely the place to be if you don't like oppressive heat, because you rarely see ninety degrees, although fortunately the sun shines much more than in winter.

Energy, etc

Warren is in oil and gas producing country, so the surrounding mountains and nearby Allegheny National Forrest are filled with oil rigs and pipelines, and more are being drilled. In fact, the original oil rush began in western Pennsylvania in the late 1800's and continues to this day. I often use the access roads as hiking trails, and have a mixed mind as to the environmental, economic and political impact of all the development. There has been violence recently-mostly slashed tires and other mischief- involving disputes between the landowners and oil producers and the Forest service and environmental groups, apparently because of frustration with the federal bureaucracy that restricts what the producers view as personal rights. The latter own the subsurface mineral rights but have to build roads to reach the drill sites, which damages the publicly owned forest. As far as I can determine, the environmental effects are mostly visual, because water quality samples in 1998 of a local stream( Brown Run ) showed no noticeable effects from the oil and gas wells, and air quality in Warren County is rated "good" for 93% of the year. Of course, this relates to the larger questions of whether the nation and the world want to continue extracting fossil fuels or switch to renewables, and those require complicated answers.

      Around here, where United refinery, gas and oil exploration, and logging are economically important, the bias is towards development of the mountains, and despite my ecological leanings, I absolutely respect the hard physical labor required to reach some of the remote oil and gas fields. As I hike past them there is an occasional whiff of oil or gas, but no apparent irreversible damage that a hundred years left to nature would not repair. The most damaging spill in the last three years was the deliberate opening of valves by disgruntled, fired employees, so it seems that human nature is always the most pervasive threat. Yet I see bird nests in the old pumps which are rusting away, and the derricks of the 18th century are long gone and their access roads overgrown. The cumulative effects of over consumption may eventually cause planetary damage, and I personally believe solar power will offer the most abundant power supply, but until that day comes, it is clear from the local debate that strong emotions on both sides misrepresent the reality of what needs to be done. Meanwhile I continue to walk or bicycle and turn the lights off...

Wednesday

A young woman-25 years old- died in a car accident at about 6:30pm two days ago... I happened to be sitting on the back stairs about a hundred yards away and heard the bang when her SUV hit a pole dead center. Moving at a casual pace I put on my shoes and walked past the scene about 3-4 minutes afterward, where bystanders were looking at her unconscious body sprawled on the front seat. Apparently she had hit the steering wheel/windshield? and fell over onto her back. I did not see any blood nor severe injuries and as I glanced in I overheard one of them remark " Yes, she has a pulse." When I walked past two police cars arrived, so one of the bystanders asked the officers if they had a CPR machine, to which the answer was no. I noticed the lack of urgency in the police, who spent about a minute surveying the traffic and assessing a dangling ( harmless ) telephone wire before looking at the victim. While I circled the block, having neither the medical experience to help nor wishing to gawk, I finally heard an ambulance arrive about 5 or 6 minutes after the moment of the crash. Of course, this was far too late if she had been breathless the whole time, and I later heard that she had died at the scene-probably of internal injuries. Further gossip confirmed that she had led a troubled life and possibly had blacked out or seizured-or even made a deliberate turn-before hitting the pole. Fortunately no one on the sidewalk was injured, for this was directly in front of a music store and a short distance from a dance studio where young girls had been assembling.
When I returned to the house after observing the scene, it occurred to me that despite my curiosity I had neglected to say a prayer for the woman and her family, which I immediately did, and in retrospect that was probably the precise moment of her dying...I guess I have no lasting feelings either way, for I saw many roadside memorials while I was walking the country, so this accident-although tragic to the family-is one more death to me. Supposedly there are more hospital acquired infections resulting in death every year than traffic deaths, so maybe our concerns about risk are misplaced anyway...better to just get on with living...

Babble

It has been an emotionally strange two weeks...Beth is moving to a new apartment, which has exhausted her as preparations are made, and I have been floating in and out of consciousness-or so it seems, as the long winter finally breaks and my mind adjusts to the changing of the seasons. I have read too many studies about split brain patients-those who have had strokes or had their corpus callosum between the two brain hemispheres cut-to take anything my left verbal 'reasoning' side makes up to explain a mood too seriously, but it really does feel sometimes that factors beyond my conscious awareness-even things such as magnetic field changes-influence my emotional state unexpectedly. Perhaps the increased light of spring causes hormonal changes which require a transitional period during which the mind works out an equilibrium-which at another time of year would scarcely be noticed...Biorhythms are odd beasts..such as whatever causes women who work together to synchronize their menstrual periods ...So there Is some scientific reality to all this, as well as the possibility that some of it is bullshit made up by the left brain to explain a right brain mood which it does not comprehend... hard to tell which is which.

Obama

For years I had been half jokingly remarking that an economic depression would be beneficial to Americas soul-to remind people that our rampant materialism was not healthy...Obviously the reality of a depression would be more difficult to watch, and I have no clue whether the new "stimulus package" will have any affect. Certainly the current economic trouble IS exposing the flawed system, and the old adage "no pain no gain" applies here, with the choice-as always-being whether we find opportunities for productive change or try to preserve the status quo....in my humble opinion the latter is Not an option, because the rest of the world IS going to rise in power and influence, and oil and other resources Are going be depleted, so the time is Now to find new directions...Mr.Obama understands the problems and has assembled smart people around him...but I question the ability of the average politician or power broker to genuinely compromise for the common good, so we shall see if it is not too late...

Love revisited

This is the love of my life Elizabeth, maiden name Dunham, whom I met about a year and a half ago when she started riding bicycle with my sister. After their weekly rides the ladies would meet for "coffee talk" at my sister's house, where I would take my mother for the social gathering. There was no romantic involvement at first, but we gradually got to know one another and in May of '08 took a short Geo ride, then went to a casino for the birthday surprise of another friend, and a baseball game, then talked a lot at the fire in July, then the Paul Rodgers trip, and here I am writing this today. An easy camaraderie and abundant laughter was there from the start, which makes us realize that previous relationships in our lives were somehow contrived or unnecessarily difficult...and that a genuine love- with a genuine friend and 'soulmate'- is not work, rather is expressed naturally, almost effortlessly, with spontaneous joy and understanding. Perhaps all the other people in our lives were necessary lessons we needed in order to be the people we recognize in one another today, and maybe if we had met at the age of twenty we would not have emotionally connected as we do now, yet the reality could be simpler than that, where we just finally met a person with whom our true emotional selves- both child and adult- can be openly shared, and with whom our inner, original chemistry transcends analysis. We lift and buoy each other is a positive, joyous manner, and sometimes stand in the kitchen doing nothing, yet break out laughing for no reason- because that is the emotional sincerity of how we relate to one another. Serious talks, playful talks, serious walks, playful walks, laughing while working, while sitting, while eating, while driving, while making love...We simply enjoy what happens as if it has been blessed upon us from something beyond our understanding. There has been nothing 'giddy' about any of this, rather it has simply unfolded and deepened into a stronger desire to be with and give to one another. ..not bad for a pair of people independent by nature... At core is the growing trust and compatibility rooted in our basic decency, with honesty and fidelity as the foundations of our intimacy....Character traits which we individually brought to the table and which make everything as a couple that much more precious and enduring.