Anchor Struck

A friend of Jude and mine e-mailed recently to see if we are alright, since I hadn’t blogged in nearly three months.  We are fine, Ms. G.  Thank you for asking.  I haven’t blogged simply because I’ve turned inward.

And why not?  Trumpmania is ubiquitous.  I continue to marvel at how he can make an outlandish statement, contradict himself, then contra-contradict himself and still really say nothing in a span of a few seconds.  The consensus from polls and pundits can be construed any number of ways: he’s fading, surging or foundering in between.

I do still enjoy watching his handlers struggle to stay straght-faced or avoid retching as they attempt to polish the multitudes of turds that tumble effortlessly from the Donald’s pie hole.  How ever will they spin his increasingly vile rhetoric about Muslims?

Trump would consider a national registry for Muslim immigrants.  How about registering the millions of his supporters who would actually give the launch codes to a man with a personality disorder?

But the real reason I’m withdrawing is much closer to home.  I turn 70 next cake.  I’m preparing for my death.  No time soon, hopefully, and with no cooperation on my part.  I’m enjoying generally good health and getting lots of exercise as Jude and I build a firewood business from the unmarketable trees the loggers left behind.  And I eat wisely, even with the occasional plunge into greased foods.

But it’s time, you know?  Two male friends my age have just had sudden significant downturns in their health as a reminder.  There’s not a great deal of paper work to it.  I have no fortune to disperse.  I don’t want any rituals.  I’ve asked Jude to have me cremated, then sprinkled in the catchment barrel of our micro-hydro system so I can swirl through our Pelton wheel and on to a leisurely cruise through our property on my way to the Pacific.

In a way I got a head start on all this heavy pondering from my Marine service in Vietnam.  I helped process several hundred corpses.  On my 22nd birthday, the Viet Cong celebrated with rocket and mortar fire into my tent.  I was in a helicopter when it conked out in flight.

About five years later, as I struggled with not-yet-diagnosed PTSD, I sought out help at a VA Hospital.  A therapist described my plight through the framework of psychologist Eric Ericson’s stages of psychosocial development.

Allow me to overgeneralize.  The eight main stages of life, from infancy to old age, have specific tasks that must be resolved before a person can move on successfully to the next stage.  Faced with the distinct possibility of an early exit, we warriors — hoping only to survive to get laid again — were hurtled into the final stage.

“You returned to the states as old men in young men’s bodies,” the therapist told me.  I had never had it explained it so clearly.

So I’ve had 47 years to let my two bodies synch up.  Even with Trump and ISIS around, I’m steadily making my peace with the world.  At this point, however, I would still appreciate it if all of them would kindly fuck off.