Playing "after" the Last Quarter

Last night was the election here in USA. We'll see how it all flushes out, eventually.

Past couple of days, however, has brought me into contact with two 90+ gents ... I had some friction with both, though I had no intention to initiate such adversarialness. Both men were angry ... one was speaking publicly. I suggested how nice it might be to get, if we had time, to a related issue .... and ... he unloaded on me. The other was in a reading group to which I belong ... he expostulates ... goes on and on, as if what he was saying was obvious when it wasn't, at least not to me.

In spite of my age-related infirmities, I suppose it is possible that I'll reach my 90's .... and become obstreperous and begin to pontificate. Now, it hadn't passed me by that in writing a blog, one may well go on and on, as if the world were interested. I remember often lunching with a friend ... 30 years my senior but we had been chums together in an educational institute for a number of years. I recall one incident (though similar events were not infrequent) in a restaurant where he ordered a sandwich and coffee. The waiter brought out the coffee and E. went after him ... "When someone orders coffee, don't you know that they want it AFTER the sandwich." And he went on and on.

A dozen years ago, I wrote about a mirror phenomenon ....

"I sometimes imagine an array of mirrors. Some of these surfaces are fine reflectors while others are foggy or cracked or but partially reflective due to some aging process in the surface’s material. Some face each other and others face away. Diagonal, orthogonal, pairwise skewed — a congeries of mirrors set in a never to be replicated  pattern.

I imagine choosing a spot in a singular mirror upon which to focus my gaze. I shall have arrived at this moment and this place and this choice of spot after years of trekking through many other such mirror mazes. Still, I shall now marvel and fascinate at the array of sequential visions that are visible through this chosen spot in this mirror. The images will stare back at me at that moment. Not simple images, but compound ones that, if I look with care, may include me, the intrusive observer who has inadvertently been cast as a shadowy figure in his own observations. And after all is done and looked at, what shall I know of what I see? What is? What is smoke and mirrors?  And what may be contingent on the choice of the chosen spot arrived at here at this random point in the midst of travels? And what shall be known of the identity of others who fortuitously may be looking in on this maze of mirrors just as I do? ' ...

Many such conclusions that arise from such observations are responsive to queries relating to who I am in the diverse roles that I come to play in life. Who am I as child to parents? Sibling to brothers and sisters?  Friend to friend? Lover to lover? Parent to child?  Among them are those relating to who I am as a gendered other to my others. Male to Female and other Male? Female to Male and other Female?"

Geez ... life is complex.