In the doing of it

A couple of riveting conversations with a woman who is a transformation and change manager (like, for a living) got at something that has been bothering me about any kind of efforts to dismantle the patriarchy. There's a ton of books about attitudes, values, changes in perspective. But what will really matter is actual behavioral change. Maybe an entertaining book would be a behavioral change workbook. Like, a daily exercise for dismantling the patriarchy. Maybe combined with ways to track the results of changed behavior. 

I wonder what women would say, if they were asked what behavioral changes they would like to see. I mean, I imagine, of course, anything that would de-sexualize public spaces and make it safe to be a woman. I'm not sure how that hugely vital topic could be included in my idea. I'll have to think about that. One way that comes up immediately is around the practice of total indifference that I have been trying out at Arizona State, when I am walking on campus. Passing through the world with total indifference toward women. No looks, no objectification, no imagination, no involvement of any kind. Absolutely desexualizing the experience for myself of being in public. That has been a revealing exercise. In particular, it has provided stark contrast and shown me that I have a conditioned, sexualized way of seeing women in public. My default setting is much clearer to me, since I started the total indifference experiment. 

But beyond the transformation of the world into a space that is safe for women, which is an absolutely essential transformation, I wonder what kinds of specific behavioral changes women would like to see. Maybe I'll ask on Facebook and only let women respond. 

At any rate, I am a lot more interested in this project with this focus on lasting, daily behavioral changes, rather than just a bunch of think pieces or recommendations for attitude adjustments or whatever. For one thing, when I followed up with my own behavioral changes, domestically, erotically, conversationally, etc., a lot of attitudinal changes and deep shifts in perspectives followed, much more powerfully than they would have just from "realizations" or "epiphanies."

Thanksgiving

There's a shit ton I still don't understand, and I forget that at my peril. Forgetting is great in a lot of ways, especially if it's enhanced by some kind of weird delusion that everything is just fine. It's a respite, for sure. One can even convince oneself that one has achieved a healthier detachment, a freedom long wished for. Finally! 

But sometimes there's a reminder, like a punch in the gut, a rusted dagger in the heart, a slap right in the fucking face. And in those moments, it suddenly becomes completely clear that it was only forgetting, it wasn't really the freedom and healing that comes from actually letting go or moving on. Yikes, one thinks to oneself, I sure am capable of incredible levels of denial. Aren't I. Why yes, yes you are.

I wonder if I'm too idealistic around this, and if forgetting ought to just be good enough. If so, creating circumstances where forgetting is far more likely would be in order. But I am not interested in that currently. I'm interested in goddamn motherfucking flat out straight up reality. And if people want to fuck around and perform or present or waste time and energy on a look good or an easy oblivion, that's great for them. It's not where I am currently. It's not what I want.

Anyway, an old friend of mine invited me to her house for Thanksgiving, a holiday I have really hated for the past several years, just because of all kinds of baggage and heartache. It was a great time, though. Incredible food, interesting people. I had a conversation about shit I actually care about with an interesting person for the first time in a long time. It may have been somewhat inappropriate for a dinner party on a holiday, but I didn't realize how intense the conversation was until we were already way, way inside of it. The other person didn't seem to mind. It felt like a huge relief to me. It may have been a relief for them as well. 

I was, earlier in the afternoon, absolutely dreading the social time. It was, in fact, the very last thing I wanted to do. I had had a slap in the denial face and the rusted dagger earlier, and realized that my usual response is to hide, hide, hide. Like a wounded feral cat. Just crawl under the porch and be alone in the dark and that is that. If I had been able to cancel, I bet I would have. But I was actually staying at my friend's house, so I could hardly just close the bedroom door and lock it and not come out while 20 people had a nice Thanksgiving dinner right outside. 

I had a ton of echoes of my family situation come back to me. Some years in adolescence where the last thing I wanted to do was join the family at the table for the big holiday meal. 

Anyway, I girded my loins, wandered out into the living room, and steeled myself for hours of social interaction when I really just wanted to curl up in the dark and think of doom. 

It turned out okay. There were people genuinely interested in my PhD research, for example, who had at least a passing familiarity with enough of the technicalities to have a conversation. I was doing okay at small talk. I was surprising myself. 

But over dinner, the conversation in our little corner turned to dismantling the patriarchy, and freeing women, and I really felt a surge of energy around all of that. And it had been a long time since I had found someone fascinating to talk about it with. 

By the time I went to bed, or at least by the time the morning rolled around, I had reached a resigned place around the tearing away of denial and the reminder of the day before. People have lives, and they have every right to pursue happiness, and who am I to kick against any of that. Blessings to all, peace, purpose, freedom and connection and love to all, wherever they may find it. I felt a cosmic shrug, and the full understanding that I had always been a total outsider in this case anyway, and what could I do about it anyway? Except never, ever, fucking ever, never ever ever again let myself be put in such a position. Ever. 

For the rest, fuck it all to hell. 

And I decided to stay in Santa Fe another couple of days but in a hermit hotel room, and I'll drive back on dry roads on Sunday and push my way through my last week of teaching human anatomy at ASU, and into the unknown of the next several months. 

La Cieneguilla Petroglyphs, where I had driven on Thanksgiving, in the glorious snow. 

And maybe that is as close to letting go, but not forgetting, as I can get. 

Free falling

In an ironic answer to my endless bitching about poor financial treatment from ASU, the graduate college decided to throw me a fully funded, non-teaching completion fellowship with health insurance for spring. This means I get paid but I'm under no obligation to be in Tempe. It also means I have far more time to finish the dissertation, get published, look for work, and reframe my existence as I transition out of this grueling Ph.D. process. I'm giddy with relief, really, having gotten this fellowship. They also added an extra couple of grand as a scholarship. I guess I should bitch up a storm more often. 

But it's strange, also, because, as of December 15, I have no place to live, and I was thinking of not living anywhere anyway for a while. Un-housed by choice, with very nice camping gear and intimate knowledge of dozens of places around and outside of the country, including places outside of the grip of winter, where that gear can be put to use, in many cases for free. But it is a weird, total free fall feeling, after having been in such a straitjacket for months on end. The dissertation draws to a close, the defense date looks likely to be February 28, publications are in the offing, with one committee member already greenlighting the submission of something we co-authored, etc. Frankly, I am grappling with anxiety caused by all of this good news. 

It's strange to take note of me not being used to taking a risk and succeeding. I am far more comfortable not taking a risk and succeeding. For example, the easiest thing in the world for me for decades was to apply to private schools and get a teaching job. It was always great to get hired, and I enjoyed that teaching life, but I never really rolled the dice on anything very high stakes. It was success of a sort, but not the kind that arises from truly putting a lot on the line. 

This transition feels much more high stakes. The thing I really want to do is a self-directed two year post doc where I would have lots of support to conduct a major conservation biology research project. If I get chosen for that competitive situation, there's an example of what would feel like success, to me. Not because it's competitive, but because I am aiming high in applying, and it is really what I want to do. I also would love to teach at some of the primarily undergrad places to which I've applied, and two of those feel sort of high stakes also. 

I think one of the great obstacles in my life has been a haunting fear of being rejected, of failing. In the face of that, I have not even tried, a lot of the time. But now I am experiencing some success. I got a new car that I love. I have a wide open semester to dedicate to the best activities, while getting paid. I am not bound by a lease, or by any feasible or accepted affections. A rare moment that, taken together, absolutely marks an ascent out of this katabatic journey through hell. Coming up into the light, up for air. Being set free. The price that I've paid has been fairly heavy, but it does feel like everything is shifting. 

I think it may soon be time to call it on this blog, also. Maybe I'll start another anonymous one. But it doesn't feel as much like katabasis anymore, after almost three years. 

Knocking on wood of course. 

Para-domesticated

As the holidays approach, I'm reminded of some templates for how all of this stuff works. For example, there's blood family, then there's family of choice, which sometimes includes blood family members but often is completely separate. I stopped trying to do blood family holidays a long time ago. I think the last Christmas I tried to do with blood family was in 1990. Engaged to my first wife, I went to Santa Fe for the holidays when she and I lived apart (I was in NY). Then, I moved out West permanently, and never went back for holidays. In fact, I only visited back East again once, in 1999, and then not again until my parents' 50th wedding anniversary, in 2003. Since 2003, I've been back for summer visits in 2008, 2012, and then every summer since 2017. So, five visits in 20 years. None of which have been around holidays. 

In July, when I was driving from Ann Arbor and close to Minnesota, I was fantasizing about seeing someone in that state. But then it occurred to me that I had not been invited. And then it really hit me how much effort, time, energy, money and planning I have put into visiting where I have not been invited, a lot of my life. I have initiated a lot of visits. "Hey, I am going to be in such and such a place, let's get together!" The last long distance relationship, it was very mutual, almost every time, until the trailing end of things, when I kept asking if I could visit. Or jumping at the slightest hint that it might be possible. The last visit was around that kind of energy, but then I was an imposition and inconvenience when I was there, and that's a shitty way to have things reach a conclusion, but it is almost inevitable when one codependently keeps pushing oneself on someone who is clearly preoccupied and not into it. It is revealing to realize that the last really unfettered, enthusiastic and eager invitation there had been seven months earlier. 

I can count on ten fingers the number of times people have taken any kind of effort to visit me, my entire adult life. This is revealing also. And I have invited people too. And I have been living either in an incredible tourist town that's very expensive or a fucking winter paradise for the past 20 years, so you think more people would have taken me up on it. I feel some resentment and sadness about this dynamic. But, I also realize that my anxiety around the motto "go where you're invited" has been that I would never be invited anywhere. 

However, what's actually happened since I made that resolution is that I've been invited repeatedly to all kinds of places, and all kinds of interaction with great people. Most recently, I got a kind and generous invitation for Thanksgiving including a place to stay. It's funny to note that I have been resisting accepting it. But I finally did today, and let's see how it goes. I am feeling sad, lonely, angry, and very hermit-like. My romantic notion is to pile my gear into the new car and go hide out in the back country for days. So I am going to do some of that, but I am also going to be with family of choice for Thanksgiving. Balance!

It all kind of reminds me that I have a lot of the personality traits of a feral or more accurately para-domesticated cat. I want to be invited, but when I am, I often hang back. I want to be within sight, but hiding out. Hovering on the edges of the property so to speak. This goes back to the utterly savage, chaotic, emotionally unsafe way I was raised, where I honestly felt homeless from about the age of 5. Like a guest in a house full of strangers who were not to be trusted. That's the primal foundation of all of the ways I have dealt with the entire concept of "home" and "family and friends" since I was a tiny boy. I have tended to connect best with other such alienated misfits, who have duct-taped together barely workable living situations (even when doing well financially) or found some kind of uneasy domestic peace by just jumping into the scenario. 

It's been a toxic aspect of my partnerships in the past, either with women who were far more comfortable with the idea of home and family than I (or at least trying), or with "homeless" women, living out of boxes or always halfway packed, ready to fly. I've never really understood women who have legit healthy, supportive and intimate relationships with their parents and/or siblings. Who honestly miss them and want to spend time with them. There's a reason the weird phrase "family obligations" has always resonated with me. I have since made peace with my blood family and have enjoyed visits (that I have arranged, planned, initiated) in recent years. Yet it is still true that, if energies were to take their simple, natural course, I doubt there would ever be any real interaction. If you asked any one of my blood family members what is going on with me right now, they would probably either shrug or make up some kind of strange, fantastical tales. 

Anyway, this para-domesticated beast is doing a para-domesticated holiday, with the hermit wilderness first and a family of choice experiment second. 

I'm already feeling this weird sense of having to brace myself. And that's around the prospect of being with people I actually like. 

Failed negotiations

I read a daily meditation in Melody Beattie's The Language of Letting Go last night that put some things in perspective. There's the old framework for the "grief process," a la Kübler-Ross: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Of course this was oversimplified and has been subsequently shown to be neither linear nor universal, but it still feels helpful to me. The daily writing from Beattie that I read last night was, in part:

"One of the most frustrating stages of acceptance is the bargaining stage. In denial, there is bliss. In anger, there is some sense of power. In bargaining, we vacillate between believing there is something we can do to change things and realizing there isn't."

I had been aware of every other "stage" of the grieving process but had been in denial, ironically, about aspects of bargaining going on. I think in the midst of anger and depression a lot of the bargaining has been diminishing lately. It sometimes flares up but I can see it a lot more clearly now. I think the main form now is the fantasy that I can somehow change someone's mind about a decision they made. I get a strong impulse to woo, persuade, convince, etc. As if I would be able to turn the tide myself, and get what I want, and make everything right. 

Embroidered patch by Amrit Brar

But there is also a lot of bargaining in the attempt to manage my own feelings. For example, okay, I'll indulge my romantic impulses or memories for a bit, but then I have to kill all that, so that I can "move on" or function or be safe. I have been bargaining a lot around the idea of reciprocity, also. Trying to make the deal that I will only respond reciprocally, in emotional situations. This is partly behavioral, and there's nothing wrong with that, as it observes a boundary. But I think the trouble is in trying to force my feelings to be reciprocal. Channel, suppress, deny, get angry, etc. It's a lot of turmoil in resistance, a lot of thin and ultimately bootless bargains. 

I feel like things generally go better when I just stop all of that, when I am able to stop it. I think I am often astonished that merely making a decision does not in fact change how I feel. I mean, even deciding NOT to FEEL doesn't work, at least not for me. It has the appearance of working for some people, and I sometimes catch myself trying to make the bargain with the universe, "Universe, please grant me that magic power of not fucking feeling any goddamned thing, like some people seem to be able to do," but then I neither get what I asked for nor do I really want it. I want to be connected to my heart. 

Honoring the decision can change my behavior though, and lead me to honor boundaries of myself and others. There is such a shit ton of stuff I would communicate in a particular situation if I were not honoring someone else's boundaries, or my own, right now. Then the bargaining becomes, okay, I wish I could express myself freely, on safe ground, maybe I can finagle that somehow? But then it becomes clear that is actually NOT possible or at least probably not advisable or safe or supportive for the other person, so away goes that bargain. 

All of these strategies are ways of trying to deal with missing someone with whom I cannot interact or spend time, not being able to communicate to a level that I would if I were free, working on whatever ways of letting go and taking care of myself seem effective, but being in "the struggle," so to speak. 

Art by Amrit Brar

I do find myself wondering if there is a bargain, or a set of bargains, that I actually could negotiate with my heart and the universe, and get at least some of what I want. I definitely have a whole set of ineffective bargains for contrast. How can I step into a position of bargaining power, given the current reality? This connects up with the question "what is my choice or what are my choices in this situation?" It's easy to feel that one has had choice taken away when someone else makes a decision one would never have made oneself. It's important to reframe that in ways that put me back in more of a center.  

From The Marigold Tarot, by Amrit Brar

I'd come back

In a recent epiphany, I felt to my core the strangest sense of complete willingness to go through life on Earth again if it meant a shot at something that seems not likely in this lifetime. It felt to me like a particular definition of love. Would you be willing to come back for it? Yes. The yes was unequivocal and unconditional. It was a strange and luminescent moment. 

But: YES, definitely and absolutely, yes of course. 

And it was such a strange commitment, considering how tenuously attached to this life I am, and how much of a relief it is to imagine that, sometime, probably not all that long from now really, the bullshit will cease. I mean, even if my natural span is out to 90 or whatever, that's not all that far off, in the big scale of things. But given this ill fitting life, and the sense of things being amiss, how weird to be visited by any kind of unconditional yes, let alone one toward the imaginary proposition of having to do this whole shit show over again just for that shot. 

It reminds of Jesus saying: Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.  But isn't even bigger to stay the fuck alive for one's friends? and then to be willing to even do the whole fucking circus over again? That feels bigger to me. Maybe it was what he meant, too, somehow. 

Another thing that hit me hard recently was moving from wishing something would manifest to realizing that I had to find a way to just keep the memories and treasure those and that was that. It hit me very hard that I had been fighting this fact that things just become a memory, that there is no "more" but only never anymore, except for what we remember. The OK Zharp/Manthe Ribane song, Treasure Erasure, captures this evocative holding to what we have had, but have no more. 

Don't forget. Don't forget to remember. 
The time we shared will always last forever.
Don't forget, don't forget to remember, 
The time we shared will always be my treasure. 




And it helped frame for me a lot of what I have been fighting, not that the insight was pleasant or made anything easier, but simply, time was, rather than anything possible or even present. All time was. Accepting time was is the grieving process, basically. Coming to terms with never again. Never ever. And the plain fact is that what is, just as soon becomes never again. This is the weird world in which we live all the time of course, but when what is was cherished it's "never againness" is extra rough. I think there's a moment in every grieving process where it really gets into one's cells. It's gut level truth. It's inescapable. 

Never again. 

Which makes the weird epiphany of hell yes, I'd come back and do all this stupid shit again in the bother of being alive, just for that shot, extra surreal and odd. It felt like it had space because of the acceptance of never again. 

I lay no claim to understanding any of this. I do know, however, a new meaning for the word "unforgettable." 

Growing out of acceptance

On a recent overnight camping trip to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, the main purpose of which was to test out the Subaru on the somewhat difficult Puerto Blanco Drive, I got "caught up" on Melody Beattie's daily meditations that are in her book, The Language of Letting Go. I have the tendency to not read those little one or two page essays for days on end, and then read maybe 10 or 20 of them in a row. It's not the best way to get what she is saying, a lot of the time, because each one can be fairly pithy and provide a lot to think about, as befits the purpose of the book. 

I have some serious issues with her, especially when she leans hard into her archetypal combination of 1980's self help positivism and GOD TALK, just God this, God that, blah God Blah God Blah. It annoys the fuck out of me, frankly. And yet, in one form or another, her writing has provided me with some of the strongest recovery concepts and reminders. As is often the case with recovery literature in general, let alone "self help" books, I am often faced with having to tolerate a ton of ways of putting things that I myself would never employ. Take what works and leave the rest is what recovery people say. Sometimes I have to completely reconfigure everything to even make some of it work at all. 

My recent resistance, funnily enough, is around a few of the themes of acceptance and "plan" or "purpose" that often arise in recovery lit, not only with Beattie. For example, a couple of the entries in a row that I read on this camping trip, October 25 and October 26, go to the heart of what I simply do not believe. Her entry for 10/25, in part: "Our past is neither an accident nor a mistake. We have been where we needed to be, with the necessary people. We can embrace our history, with its pain, its imperfections, its mistakes, even its tragedies. It is uniquely ours; it was intended just for us." And her entry for 10/26, in part: "Today, I will trust that the events in my life are not random. My experiences are not a mistake. The Universe, my Higher Power, and life are not picking on me. I am going through what I need to go through to learn something valuable, something that will prepare me for the joy and love I am seeking."

Okay. Give me a fucking break. Now, I know that a sponsor or another person in recovery would say: "acceptance is the answer to all of your problems! why are you fighting these ideas?" That is the infinite tautology syndrome of a lot of recovery talk that ultimately means jack shit. I want to have conversations with people in recovery who are not buying this crap, though. I want to know that I can reject these ideas of "everything happens for a reason" and, at the same time, stay in recovery. I want room in my recovery for a deeper and more conflicted view of my personal history and of how this shit works. 

Instead of trying to adopt a life philosophy that is abhorrent and seems frankly idiotic to me, as well as fundamentally based on manifest lies, I have had to re-frame these themes of purpose, intention, "everything happens for a reason" and so on. I've arrived at the middle ground of an existential position which is that I am capable of constituting my own sense of the meaning and purpose of my own life, especially in tune with, in an intuitive relationship with, the universe. Here is where I exist, now is when I exist, and I have to have some kind of relationship in that with where I have been and what has happened. 

I do not need to try to force myself to believe a fucking fairy tale, however. I only need to make creative use of my own narrative. I am free, one percent. I can reject whatever the fuck I want or "accept" whatever the fuck I want, and I am not under any obligation, either for recovery or for happiness, to accept "everything." I am responsible for weaving my own tapestry of my own purpose and experience. I have the creative power to make whatever sense out of what I have been through that I feel I need to make. Beyond that, I can just let go and stop trying. 

This works much more powerfully for me than this strange idea that "everything happens for a reason." It works a lot better for me when dealing with tragedy, abuse, trauma, unacceptable loss and change, excruciating suffering and the bare, plain, utterly clear facts of being alive on this planet. It feels to me like it's a bigger way to meet the realities of life. NOTHING happens for a reason without me weaving it into a narrative that works for me. And that narrative ONLY has to work enough for me to continue in recovery. And if I can't weave it into something meaningful for myself, then the skill I truly need is the skill of being in mystery and uncertainty, not the faux certainty of an unacceptable proposition that, in my very gut, feels like a damnable lie.

This gets close to how it is that I am an atheist and yet work, on a daily basis, with a Higher Power. I sometimes say that my Higher Power is reality. Reality is a power greater than myself, that is for damn sure. And if I can be a lover of reality and radically accept that here is where I am and now is when I am here, then I have a very powerful place to start living. I don't need to accept bland and fairy tale style propositions and try to get next to the idea of a "loving God" who is somehow "guiding all of my life" or whatever. All of that shit is just abhorrent to me, and to many other people I know who are growing in recovery just fine without it. What I do need is to live my life with courage and authenticity, and take responsibility for making sense of my experience, and stop trying to explain those aspects of my experience that are inexplicable. For me, this is rigorous honesty. 

The path is co-created. I have agency in all of it. And in these ways, I leave behind all of the recovery philosophy of "surrender" to a power greater than myself. Shared creation, shared care, and a responsibility for making sense of myself in my experience is the way my past becomes "useful" or "purposeful" for me. This feels like moving from a spiritual childhood with a parental Higher Power, to more of a "grown up" life, with a co-creative call and response, intuitive presence and narrative making consciousness that rejects comfortable lies. 

Chronic

My affections in the past have been intense, but relatively brief, or at least easily obfuscated by new affections, or new experiences that have been distracting. I had long considered myself loyal and devoted, until I did a thorough relationship inventory in 2007, at three years sober, and got it all down on paper. I realized that, even in the process of extremely painful breakups, my attachments would fairly quickly either disappear or at least be forgotten. It was jarring to realize that I had been performing a self image of being a deep feeling and devoted person, when in fact it was more accurate to say that I was deep feeling but capricious and flighty. 

The alacrity with which I have jumped from one "serious relationship" to another for much of my life is a part of this. As I have mentioned before, I think a very few, core, primal wounds were never healed, from my family of origin and then a couple of early romantic-sexual attachments, and a lot of my serial monogamy has been simply affect looking for content, as Marsha Linehan calls it. I rarely saw women very clearly for who they actually were, since I was using them, at least in part, to work my stuff out 

I'm experiencing something altogether different now, and it's definitely painful, but also seems like a sign of growth. I have not reached for the distraction of new affections, even though I have been sorely tempted to do so. I have made it so that I have no choice but to deal with things that have long been not dealt with. It's very slow and painful. It's not got that alacritous, bewildering feeling of "whoa, okay, here I am in another relationship! Cool!" feeling. Combined with my realization that I am demisexual and need to be emotionally connected with someone before being very interested in sex, I feel like I am honoring myself a lot more these days, and making different choices, and living a different set of behavioral norms. 

It's not enjoyable in the least. 

I keep finding myself with the plain realization that it is the way it is, and none of it is a problem to be solved or necessarily even a state of suffering to be endured. Yet my unconscious dynamics are powerful, and have not been inclined to a fundamental shift. Given the reality of the situation, I have been left with only acceptance, plain and simple,. No despair and no hope, when I am able to be in the present. Just, well, this is this. 

My oracular friends, the tarot and I Ching, keep basically reassuring me that everything either is or will be okay, just keep showing up. It's a funny contrast to my negative thinking. 

It is odd to discover that I actually meant what I said. It's a benefit to learn to trust myself more, and honor what is really happening for me. I have said a lot of things in the past, made a lot of promises, spoken a lot of vows, and I certainly usually thought I meant them at the time, but have so often experienced my own total unreliability and fickle nature, and have abandoned myself and betrayed myself first, and then others, many, many times. The opposite is occurring now, in unexpected ways. 

All of this shift is directly related to recovery from codependency. In particular, the basic idea of not trying to manage or control my feelings or the outcomes in my relationship life. In letting go, there is a truly weird combination of vast relief and terrible grief. I have been avoiding the experience for decades, enacting a repetition compulsion of distraction after distraction in the hopes of "getting it right" this time. These patterns have caused me and others a lot of harm. 

I do find myself wistfully wishing there had been an easier way for me to have this experience. Futile, of course, but a natural impulse. It's also very challenging for me to avoid catastrophizing into the future: "I am always going to feel this way. This is never going to get better. How can I possibly live like this?" That's natural too, at least for me, but not useful in any way. 

Honoring myself, stepping into my power (as the self help movement puts it), taking myself seriously, not abandoning or betraying myself, accepting reality in as radical a way as possible, and taking refuge in the present. That's my to do list from here to the grave. Well, the urn, since I want my body to be incinerated. And the ashes thrown at the foot of some cactus somewhere.