Luggage is My Life

I cut myself on an ice cube

Do you ever do that?

Worst winter ever?

I can accurately report that mosquito season in Rhode Island has begun, as of March 12, 2012.

It wasn't until...

...I stared at a burning wood fire, with my foot adjusting a remnant log so it caught more air and flared brighter, that I realized death wasn't termination or cessation ... it was transformation.

I looked upon that log's burning as a victory. The right thing had happened.

The log itself would have said, though: "I died." But "death" was the wrong word to describe what happened next. The right word was transformation.

"Next" for this particular burning log? Ash. Wood ash is unusually useful because it releases micro-nutrients and vigor into depleted soil. And new minds grow off those crops.

When your mortal body dies, you become something else.

Nothing's lost. The universe is a giant hoarder. You will always be part of it.

The ego dies, true. Yet the ego was always the cousin you didn't know how to evict. Don't mourn the ego. Yes, it contributed. But its charm is oversold.

The universe is a giant hoarder. You will always be part of it.

Domestic dogs are about to earn...

...their "free lunch" living again. Or die. The nights OFTEN fill with coyote howls in the western wilds of Rhode Island. Shiver you out of your pajamas. Soon, according to the movie we loved, The Grey with Liam Neeson: Wolf Packs ... Big Boys ... Humans Die (especially nerds).

Sad story in the Times today

I became a "blogging widow."

Modern times.

Tonight we channel...

...a pre-Castro Cuban businessman. Ramon. This very evening he hopes to sign a deal with el North Americans for el casino.

Even after bribes and cuts, it will be worth a happy, routine fortune. What does he have to trade? Some beach, passed down from Hernando de Soto, a conquistador of reknown.

Four hundred and thirty years later - today - de Soto's family will ascend to a soft, eternal cloud of prosperity.

He is 3 Americano cocktails to the wind right now.

But.

The Americans are 3 Count Negroni cocktails to the wind.

It's the same drink, with a shot of vodka added to the Negroni: a little thing he worked out with a patriotic bartender. A small amount of money was exchanged.

The louder the Americans get - sky's the limit with Americans - the better for Ramon's family.

And the Americans are getting loud, he's happy to hear. Meaning: they are getting stupid and sentimental. He has contracts with him. To put before them. He has pens in his pockets. He has a future rubbing against the pilings.

Why I give to Planned Parenthood

In Brussels, now my secret "even more fun than Paris" city, Irene, of Planned Parenthood Europe, asked me to write down why I support Planned Parenthood:

Well, you know, giving is always personal. And it's always local.

On the local side, there is right now a serious presidential candidate in America who has vowed to "defund" contraception.

I consider that an insane idea, certainly an idea I would fight against.

Why? Because I'm an environmentalist. Our species has outrun our home planet's ability to sustain us, even with advanced technology. We need to fund contraception. It's an issue of species survival. The "religious right," as we call them in America, wants, in my view, to commit "species suicide," through unbridled procreation. God protect us from ourselves.

On the personal side? Well, that's personal.

Let's just say that I witnessed the years before birth control and abortion ... and they were bloody, dangerous, and damaging. I grew up in an Irish-American family who shunned the discussion — the very knowledge — of anything sexual. It was ruinous ignorance at its best.

Sex is easy. Sex is intensely desirable. Everyone's horny. Young men spurt. Young women get pregnant. Lives are ruined early and fast.

The most intriguing statistic I know? In today's America, a majority of the 18-year-olds who cross their high school's stage to receive graduation diplomas are carrying with them some sexually-transmitted disease. Yet they don't know it. Nor do their parents.

Planned Parenthood wants to change that sorry statistic. Planned Parenthood is the leading provider of science-based, honest, authentic sex education in the United States.

Eliminate Planned Parenthood? Are you crazy? The world needs this mission more than ever.

Remo's motto

Remo has said, for many years, "Life is accommodating."

I am setting up a new computer

Pray for me

RI weather is weird

Look, our state has artificially drawn, right-angle borders in the upper left-hand corner ... and yet. The clouds seem to split on them, like waves across the prow of a sailing ship. Last night, Hartford was hammered by thunderstorms. Artillery barrages. My corner of RI? Nope. The storm split and went elsewhere. Tonight: same thing. The Buddhists have long maintained that RI is the global location for several "power spots." Energy zones most of us don't understand or recognize: think oil exploration in the 25th century. I'm beginning to believe.