is it painless?

I suppose friendship begins with altruism.  Life can be a haul sometimes and it helps to have someone lighten the load, and you are expected to lighten their load in turn, which it turns out is not a problem because you kind of enjoy lightening the load of your friends the way you would not enjoy lightening the load of some stranger.  I guess there is a mercenary element to it in that if our buddy stops lightening our load we are less likely to lighten his

The lightening of the load thing was probably more important back in the days when we worked the land where the guy would help you out when your crop was bad and vice versa.  Nowadays there isn't that much we can do for each other and it seems to me that the need is more emotional, no man is an island you know. 

For me it is mostly entertainment which for me is chiefly conversation.  I love to talk, just to open the tongue gate and see what comes out. There is stuff that percolates through my mind which is kind of formless and it isn't until I put it into words that I know what it means, or if it means anything at all.

Fellows of the Institute may notice that in my writing,  Sometimes I start out with a clear idea and sometimes I just mosey and mumble along until I see that my half-baked idea cannot be fully baked and I just slap on some glib ending and post it to see what the dawgs have to say about it.

I have been lucky not to have anybody close to me commit suicide.  I don't know anything about Old Dog's friend doing it, but it seems odd that he should see it as a betrayal, I'm sure his friend didn't do it to hurt Old Dog.  It seems like this was one of those things that came out of the blue.  I always think they are the result of depression, which is maybe physical, where things just turn to shit, all the things you like no longer give you pleasure and you just feel bad all the time,  Maybe things weren't going right with his wife and he turned to his girlfriend and things weren't going right there either and then he realized that nothing would ever be right for him. 

Maybe Old Dog thinks he should have reached out to him, told him what was going on and give him a chance to somehow give him a better outlook or something, something.  And maybe he feels betrayed because the guy didn't at least tell him something, but maybe the guy saw his chance to get out of the situation, but it had to be done right then because if he started talking about it he would lose the courage to do it.

There is a documentary called The Bridge about the Golden Gate bridge which has a very high rate of suicide.  Originally a camera was trained on the bridge 24/7 just to document the jumpers, but then they dug deeper and did interviews with survivors and friends, and well, it was interesting.  Some of these people appeared to be depressives, but some of them just had this dark desire, this weird romantic thing that obsessed them,  I don't know.


I am looking for my first total garden in three years.  A couple years ago they were doing our balconies and locking us out.  Mine was due to be locked in July so I didn't put anything out until July when I realized they would never be getting around to me that year, and then I put out what I could at that late date.  The next year they locked me out early so I couldn't get out till late.

Tomatoes, peppers, petunias, sunflowers, and morning glories.  Maybe some corn, not that I expect to get much out of that, but just to watch it grow.. Last year I got some purple Russian tomatoes on sale I think, and they are ugly suckers but quite tasty.  I will be looking for them this year.

Just as Cheboygan is Alaska lite, Chicago is Cheboygan lite as far as winters go, and while we haven't had much snow, temps remain in the 20 to 40 range.  I have been doing a lot of complaining lately but it doesn't seem to have done much good.

Happy weekend guys.