Musings of a Middle Aged Man

Harmony serves as a core principle in multiple belief systems, emphasizing interconnectedness, balance, and peaceful coexistence with other humans, animals, plants, and the objects we tend to arrogantly misclassify as inert. I can attest to rocks having unique spirits by virtue of the 19 rocks gracing my altar, each emanating stable spirit energy unique to their character. Harmony is a tenet of Confucianism, Taoism, Hinduism, and the animistic beliefs of the Mvskoke, Lakota, Iriquois, Diné, and many other indigenous peoples. Harmony is a key ingredient to achieving happiness. Indeed, sustained happiness is impossible if the individual's spirit is locked in discord.

s it any wonder that people living intimately with the Earth view all things as having life, spirit, and personhood? This encompassing perspective sees these three qualities inherent even in those things Western philosophy has relegated to the lowly, inanimate classification. They are treated as pretty much irrelevant in the grand scheme and completely devoid of that spark that gives life and agency to the animate. If we were to stuff the close to the land people into a religious box, that box would be labeled Animism. Animists know the natural world is alive and relational, rather than a collection of inert objects. The Animist philosophy sees humans as part of a larger community of living and spiritual beings, not separate from nature.

n Thoreau's book, Walden, he creates the illusion he is far from civilization, where he is immersed in solitude, far, far from anything and anyone intrusive, enabling the opportunity to bask in the soothing salts of solitary living. However, Walden was only a couple of miles from his home. His temporary cabin was on land owned by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Henry was far from being isolated. He frequently walked into town to dine with friends and entertained friends in the cabin. Knowing this context neither taints my enjoyment of his musings nor negates the impact of his words. However, I do wonder if his semi-solitude hindered his ability to escape quiet desperation and express his song. His book, Walden, may very well have been the song within him. It is a lovely song.

I have seen many animal prints in the backcountry, but never one left by Lord Bear. I have encountered Grizzly in Montana, Black Bear and Black Bear scat on the ramp to the Kuwohi observation tower in Smoky Mountains National Park. Relative to Grizz, the Black Bear looks like playthings, really, really large dog-type companions tagging along on a forest jaunt. Looks are deceiving. The Black Bear could tear apart a human in nothing flat, rendering the next scat pile a mixture of berries and partly digested human bits. I did see Grizz scat while hiking a Glacier National Park trail, but no sign of paw print nor claw indentations in the soil. It was as if Lord Bear levitated while shitting. At least, the piles answer the age-old question about a bear shitting in the woods...

When I need inspiration, respiration, a catalyst, or a spark of divinity, I must exit syphilization, stage left, and immerse myself in a comforting bath of wildness. There, the plants, animals, rocks, dirt, and insects conspire in relationship to infuse my soul with a serenity that draws from Earth's vast resources. There is no specific habitat type that anchors me. The biome can be anything from beach to desert, grassland to dense tropical rainforest, and everything in between. The key factor, the space in which I set temporary roots, must feel untrammeled, pristine. I can pretend a worn path is animal-made during their daily searches for food or annual migration patterns. An errant gum wrapper or selfishly discarded cigarette butt are enough to destroy the carefully coiffed illusion I create that I am on a solitary journey seeking connection with interconnectedness.

Numerous times, numerous seasons in my life, I have fantasized about simply walking away from my place in syphilization and taking up residence in the back country for a life of abject solitude. In that respect, I envy Jack (no middle name) Reacher's nomadic life. Off-grid. Out of society's clutches simply by boarding the next bus on the road to everywhere and nowhere. The key difference. He weaves in and out of the general public, stumbling into all sorts of mayhem, whereas my phlegmatic personality prefers the serenity of forests, mountains, plains, and deserts, as long as the location is devoid of other human elements. What kept me in situ rather than pursuing my fantasy was the responsibility to those individuals depending on me for food, shelter, and guidance, responsibilities I owned up to, for I am not a monster. Err...not that type of monster. Not that the nuances are worth dithering over, for any dissimilarities are mere pettifog.

I was infused with the attitude of a contrarian in my genetic makeup. I have always existed at odds with the collective. Many in society would consider the trait to be a dross gift, the dregs of Santa's bag, worse even than lumps of coal in the stocking earmarked for the naughty list. However, despite the associated challenges with going against the societal grain, I consider my propensity to embrace the adversarial in the face of lemmings a great gift, bestowed by a universe in desperate need of individuals comfortable with embracing their individuality. Those of us who don't go along to get along tend to be at the forefront of change, of eschewing the status quo to instead seek transformation, to innovate away from the routine, for the obliteration of the mundane plaguing society with mindless conformity.

am reading a book that nauseates me, similar to the disgust I experienced when reading Nabokov's book, Lolita, which immerses in the mind of a pedophile in the process of seducing his preteen step-daughter. The book that has my attention now is set in the 1600s, in what the colonizers renamed from Wendake, 'The Island' in the Huron language, to Ontario, Canada. The book, Orenda, centers on Bird, a Huron elder, Snowfalls, an Iroquoian child, and Christophe, a French Jesuit priest set on stealing their souls for Christianity. The book is rife with violence. Physical violence in the clash between the warring Huron and Iriquois is described in graphic detail. And the spiritual violence inflicted by the priest upon the people, a priest obsessed with converting the people to a view of life arising from a Stone Age tribe dwelling in the Middle East on stolen lands. It is this soul violence that makes me want to retch.

Since my early youth, I have been enamored with words. My earliest word recollection is their arrangement into the Hardy Boys Mysteries, which I would devour whenever I could convince my mother I was in desperate need of yet another book in the series. I vividly recall the time I was reading in my bed on a summer's day when she forced me to go outside to play on "such a nice day." I obeyed, reluctantly, remembering some fifty years later, and am still a bit irritated at the overriding of my personal autonomy. As I recall, my malicious compliance was to sit on the back porch and sulk. Unfortunately...

have long believed the sign of a quality mind is the ability to change even the most strongly held beliefs when contrary evidence is presented. To do otherwise exposes a dearth of intelligence, a condition detrimental not only to the individual but also to society. Imagine a society that operates on dogma at the expense of data. What a flippin' mess that would be. Correction. A reliance on dogmatic proclamations has helped send the US into a state of chaos not seen since 1941, with the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. The current tumult has made the US a global pariah, not that we were loved anyway. Grudgingly respected only by nations willing to accept our dogmas because they, too, exist in a knowledge vacuum, making them prone to believing the irrational.

It seems to me all, but the ardent sociopaths or psychopaths are acutely aware they have a darkness dwelling within. The same applies to our bright side, which is also inaccessible to those suffering from Antisocial Personality Disorders (APD). On the whole, humans are a balance between dark and light, evil and good. A dualistic nature possessing innate capacity for both profound compassion, empathy, and altruism, dancing alongside selfish and destructive tendencies. We are inherently complex. If dark is evil and light is good, humans exist in shades of grey, strains of muted...

recently experienced what I can only account for as a eureka moment. A pure flash of clarity emerging from the business end of an incense stick, releasing a heady scent of sage mixed with sweetgrass, two sacred plants. When I inhaled deeply while purifying my energy, the prayer smoke took not only my utterances but also my vision to elevated heights. I floated out of myself on the wings of the smoke and was left floating above. From the elevated position, I watch my seated self in front of my personal altar. I was wearing a serape hoodie. The color pattern is predominantly orange, interwoven with thick black and white threads in a pleasing pattern born of reason. As is my norm, I was meditating by putting dark blue ink onto thick, off-white paper. My body is luminous

he American mythos is embodied in the mythical Marlboro Man, ruggedness and independence, extolling the virtue of individualism, a right enshrined in our foundational documents, guaranteeing the right to pursue our own happiness. So important is the idea to our collective legend that children across the country are indoctrinated into society's collective hallucination with a daily school recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. It wasn't until 1943 that students earned the individual right to exercise their choice not to salute the flag, stand during the pledge, or even recite the jingoistic pledge.

Possibly, the saddest twist of human existence is the failure of most individuals to recognize their inherent divine nature. Followed closely by the heartbreak of people glomming onto external concepts of the divine instead of dwelling within their personal divinity. In the West, where I am a dwelling deity, it is ingrained culturally that we are born unworthy because we are saddled with a sin nature. A curse passed from generation to generation to generation, originating when the first humans were unjustly punished for committing an act they could not possibly know was wrong to do. It is a form of mental prison that kills logical, rational thought. As is apropos, coming from an evil god concept that would punish others for the imaginary breaches of arbitrary rules and regulations.

Religion threatens us with the mythical gates to hell for all eternity unless we diligently adhere to the oft-conflicting commands espoused in self-proclaimed holy tomes, despite being littered with errors. Not being a theist of their ilk, I understand the threshold they fear is actually the doors of perception, exposing truths the sacred books prefer to keep hidden behind closed doors, for fear others may pass through the veiled portals of the divine and finally understand we are all gods. Had they opted to skip around the thresholds of their dreams and trudge through the aperture of awareness, then stand in the midst of the arbor of atonement, they would have become acutely aware that their gates of heaven are nothing more than an egress to anguish and save themselves from an eternity in the bunker of bitterness.

Powaqa invades my dreams...conclusion

Powaqa invades my dreams...

Powaqa invades my dreams...

Powaqa invades my dreamscape...

Twenty years ago, death infiltrated my life when my father, at 73 years, was diagnosed with stage four cancer that had already spread to his brain, bones, lungs, and liver. Much too late for any real hope at a cure or much, if any, reprieve. He did endure one regimen of chemotherapy and radiation, which, if it did actually prolong his life by a few weeks or months, left him wheelchair bound then bed-bound until his final breath was breathed while he was in our home living room, surrounded by all but one of our family. Seeing the horrid effects of chemo, I don't think I could ever submit to that therapy. His death came 22 years after he underwent an emergency quad bypass, with one artery being 90% occluded. He used to joke that he wanted to be buried in the backyard beneath the above-ground pool.

Growing up without many things due to the economic realities of a large family, I splurged on stuff once I started earning money. Probably not the best use of my limited financial resources, but that is water under the proverbial bridge in a raging river from which it is not possible to claw back the money that floated away. It wasn't until later in life that I learned money invested in experiences pays dividends far exceeding money spent acquiring things. Thankfully, it is a lesson I learned prior to retirement, allowing me to build a nest egg that will provide for future experiences, adding a richness to my final years that would otherwise be risky as far as finances are concerned. All that purchasing has saddled me with many things that accumulate as clutter that I struggle to dispose of, while adding only items that bring value to my life.

Having a place that feels like home provides profound psychological comfort, reduces stress and anxiety, and enhances physical as well as mental well-being. There have been places I have lived for extended periods. While some gave me a measure of comfort, I have always felt as if I were a transient, a vagabond mole burrowing into a place to lay my head temporarily, knowing it will be fleeting. Paradoxically, the homiest places I've ever been are lands where I have spent at most a few days to a week before moving back to my "official" home, as per my driver's license.

As an A-Deist, I struggle with the conceptual existence of separate spiritual and physical components comprising a whole human being. Atheists tend to deny that humans have a spiritual side, along with having no place in their worldview for an immortal soul, attributing consciousness, an emergent property of complex brain activity, to electrons firing in the human mind. While I mostly agree with the Atheists, there is no denying the life force departs from the physical at body death. While it may go against convention, I define that leaked out life force as the spirit or the soul, with the understanding that there is no after life component. Dead is dead. The living spark animating the body is termed the Anim.

I have spent time lying in a meadow surrounded by a circumambient blanket of color and felt a deep and abiding joy, infected as I was by the laughing and tittering of the flowers radiating ephemeral colors accompanied by heady perfumes and evanescent arias wafting from the throats of radiant birds rapturously praising the glory displayed by the flora. Alighting from flower to flower, drunk on the nutritious nectar, the butterflies flutterby clothed in kaleidoscopic hues, clap their wings in a delicately raucous celebration of their own joy at the visual and olfactory bouquet. Surrounding the meadow, stately trees shield those less robust from buffeting winds that would rip petals from receptacle and hypanthium,

Now that I am retired and no longer obligated to occupy my mind for the benefit of a large corporation, I am free to focus on topics of personal interest or follow my mind as it wanders to and fro. Sometimes, those wanderings are drawn to a topic that elicits deep focus. My monkey mind tends to bounce between being the horse drawing the cart and the cart being drawn by the horse. I must be careful to prevent the tail from wagging the dog for too long lest I succumb to doom scrolling the day away.

Beauty, it is said, lies in the eye of the beholder. I oft wonder why formal definitions of beauty tend to omit the feral in favor of the carefully coiffed, eschew the chaotic in favor of the meticulously organized, believe anarchy should bend a knee to the ordered, even if the ordered is dysfunctional. Letting the chaos reign long enough, complex patterns will emerge, a type of intricate order born of the anarchy. Wilderness, in its feral state, has existed long enough that the early pandemonium has settled into an elaborate harmony, forming a system that is beautiful for its cooperation between constituent inhabitants. Thus, all nature in its untrammeled state is beautiful, including that which is dangerous to humans. The Grizzly Bear roaming the backcountry is a dangerously beautiful sight that quickens the primordial soul of a lone hiker with awe.

We spend years in school absorbing the supposed truths set out for us by authority figures...teachers, principals, school boards, and politicians who are more interested in pushing their personal agendas at the expense of an education beneficial to the sponges that are children. This aberrant conditioning runs parallel with the religious institutions that preach dogma, claiming it to be unimpeachable facts, but is, in actuality, disguised indoctrination. This one-two punch creates a society of people lacking the ability to think critically, think independently, or truly generate original thoughts. All they can do is fall back into rote mode and vomit back the vile bile they've been forced fed like the pigeons that become foie gras. Only, the goal is not to fatten the liver for consumption, but rather to bloat the mind with opinions that act as articles of faith, ensuring rational thought becomes elusive to their minds and souls.

When I was raising my children, I did everything in my power to help them transcend limits, to believe there were no horizons they could not overcome as long as they worked hard, that their potential was limitless. This should not be confused with the new agey phrase, believe to achieve. That saying omits the critical strive, the third leg of the stable stool, without which the stool is a dangerously unstable place of wood better off in a warming fire. My parents raised me in a similar fashion, which is why I was able to kick above my intellectual weight class to earn a degree in Electrical Engineering. Their belief in me helped me believe in myself and achieve success.

There is a phrase, "seeking the miraculous in the everyday," that the New Ageists love to glom onto as their own. They leverage as a supposedly newly found and profound insight that their attitudes wear like a shiny cast over their rage clothing. Only, this concept, they believe, is for a new age, is actually old school, older than Uncle Walt's verbose rendering. A trip in the wayback machine with Sherman and Mr. Peabody would find this phrase as part and parcel of Buddhism's goal of being mindful. I have no problem with modernists using ancient concepts to enhance their lives. Some would decry it as cultural appropriation; however, I come from a country that likes to claim we are a melting pot,

Uncle Walt Whitman was on the vanguard of what is categorized as the Romantic era of American literature. The era is marked by an emphasis on individualism, imagination, the spiritual dimension of nature, and skepticism toward the pure rationalism that claimed reason is the primary source of genuine knowledge independent of sensory experience, empirical observation, or tradition. Me thinks this era, earmarked by nature writing, was a reaction to the mephitic air poisoned by the raging and unregulated waste spewed out the ass of the Industrial Revolution.

The Kesh Temple Hymn, a Sumerian praise poem composed circa 2600 BCE, is often cited as the earliest religious text. The words were inscribed on clay tablets and were associated with worship in ancient Sumer. The poem pays homage to the goddess Ninhursag (Nintu), praising her temple in the city of Kesh, while also highlighting the roles of the supreme god Enlil, who authorized the temple's construction, and the goddess of writing, Nisaba, who is credited with composing it, making it a multi-layered hymn to deities and their sacred space. The poem is recognized as the oldest surviving literature in the world. This makes sense, logically, considering Sumerian cuneiform script, emerging around 3,200 BCE, is regarded as the oldest written language. That the oldest known piece of literature...

Conundrum: Do I have a propensity for silence because I have powerful spiritual tendencies, or does my propensity to dwell in the spiritual drive my tendency to seek out and inhabit silent spaces? Of course, there is also the very real possibility that there is neither causation nor correlation between the two, and I am simply a malcontent unsuitable for human interaction. To be clear, in my mind, silence is a metaphor for solitude, even more so now that I am cursed with tinnitus and won't be able to experience complete silence until I am consumed by flames, at which time, both my silence and solitude will be as irrelevant to me as my ear affliction is to the rest of the world.

I stumbled upon literary works by Ojibwe Canadian author Richard Wagamese late in 2025. Of the 93 books I read and rated this year, I rated six with top marks. Five of those books were works of fiction penned by Wagamese. I don't rate many books this highly, let alone multiple books by the same author, unless said author is the deceased prophet, Edward Abbey, a scribe proffering extraordinary magic via the written word. Ed and Richard are two of my most highlighted authors. There are a few others with the ability to parse ideas and assemble words in ways whose beauty brings tears to my eyes and joy to my heart.

Other than war and romance movies, possibly the next most popular genre involves aliens visiting Earth. Almost all end with some type of epic battle from which the primitive earthlings emerge victorious over the advanced alien race. Primitive humans? Indubitably. Any beings who can master star travel have to be more advanced technologically than one whose most advanced exploration method is by remotely controlled, unpeopled vehicles. Advanced technology implies advanced cognitive abilities to harness and create technology that must be light-years ahead of human-designed machinery.

Religion and spirituality are both concerned with humanity's role in the sacred. Religion tends to be institutionalized, communal, and governed by dogmatic doctrines. Spiritually (but not religious) is geared toward the individual and heavily experiential, rendering it more fluid than the static state characterizing religion. The notion of the sacred typically revolves around god, goddesses, ultimate reality, or other transcendental dimensions governing life. Both can be expressed at multiple levels and powerfully shape values, identity, and the behaviors they define as ethical. Both have potential for profound good and devastating harm, especially when they devolve into fanaticism, exclusion, guilt, or abuse.

Despite there being not a smidge of evidence for the existence of an immutable, eternal soul, its existence is a deeply held belief, likely echoing from the dawn of modern man, perhaps even a conviction of our Neanderthal ancestors. This assumes the Neanderthal propensity for ritual burial is evidence of their belief in some sort of afterlife. There is a hidden presupposition in this question, namely that a soul exists, which leads me to believe it was postulated by a theist or a deist. The question, then, is missing one of the potential answers, rendering it more a trap than a quest to uncover truth. Theist camps claim each of the three answers to be the truth, depending upon the religion followed.

Religion was primitive humans' first attempt at pseudoscience, their first attempt to make sense of the mysteries encountered by the primeval brains of a nascent species with minds able to soar from the physical to the abstract on wings powered by imagination. As with any first attempt, it was clumsy and riddled with holes invisible to fledgling brains, rightly focused on satisfying physiological needs necessary for basic survival, such as building or finding shelters to protect them from weather and marauders. They formed small cooperative groups to share the hunting and gathering necessary to support the group, including the offspring scurrying about the cave and those soon to cross the threshold from mother's protective womb to Earth's suckling breast.

To level set: Superstition is a belief that attributes supernatural significance to specific objects, actions, or events despite lacking scientific evidence or logical connection. Faith is a profound trust and belief in someone or something, often transcending mere intellectual acknowledgement, to involve deep reliance and commitment. Both involve faith (a form of not knowing) in unseen, supernatural forces. These forces influence life. They rely on rituals, generally stemming from fear or a desire for control and meaning. The key difference is the object of their focus. One's magical thinking is targeted toward a sky daddy, while the other is not limited to a god. Both make space for the inclusion of amulets to bring about good fortune and to ward off evil.

Silence is typically defined as the absence of sound. Incomprehensible is the inability to understand. The question rejiggered would be "What does it mean to be an absence of sound that can't be understood?" Silence can also refer to a book omitting pertinent data, effectively silencing knowledge, ensuring the topic can't be properly comprehended or is purposefully manipulated toward nefarious ends. And there is the vacuum created when a group is silenced by institutional exclusion, epistemic injustice, and marginalization, bringing about loss of agency and the inability to influence the world around them. The oppression of people is a silence incomprehensible to me, who believes all humans should be equal participants in the game bookended by life.

There was a time when a child was meant to be seen, not heard. Told to stop crying or they would be given something to cry about. More often than not, they were instructed not to speak unless spoken to and, in even less enlightened times, were used to do menial and dangerous labor for a pittance, if any compensation, because they were viewed as more expendable than the more robust workers in the labor force who required higher wages to support their families. It wasn't until 1796 that an English radical published "Rights of Infants,"

There was a time in my arrogant younger days when I would have responded with an unequivocal yes. I thoroughly bought into the anthropocentric doctrine proclaiming that the only valid moral choice would be to choose human survival over the survival of any and all non-human beings. The arrogance arises from the pompous belief that humanity was somehow more special than our evolved brethren of the nonhuman varieties. It was a haughty attitude toward nonhuman life, bolstered by the many religions where man is the face of the worshipped deity, with the rest of the earth to be used and abused to satiate man's desires.

My thirty-plus years as a soccer referee make me uniquely qualified to address this question. It was a role requiring me to be not only the judge and jury, but also the executioner when severe breaches of the Laws of the Game (LOTG) occurred. The brilliance contained in the LOTG is the unwritten law, known as Law 18, that says referees must use common sense when applying the LOTG. This allows the referee to set aside any breaches of the law for the “Good of the Game.” It helps the referee manage unique situations with practicality rather than the strict application born of rigid literalism

Inner peace, aka peace of mind, is generally defined as a state of psychological or spiritual calm that is maintained despite the presence of external stressors. External stressors are events or situations that originate from your environment rather than from your own internal thoughts or beliefs. Let's face it. Bad shit beyond our control happens to us. We cannot control external stressors, but we can choose how we respond, a choice that is healthier than surrendering control. That a question about cultivating inner peace would come from the current incarnation of the Dalai Lama, the world leader of a religion dedicated to inner peace and a man whose countenance is so beatific...

The earliest identified purposeful burial site dates back 300,000 years ago in South Africa by our hominid ancestors, Homo Naledi, an extinct relative of Homo Sapiens, our species. The Naledi were cave dwellers with a timeline overlapping early Homo Sapiens. The Neanderthals, contemporaries of the Naledi, were buried with grave goods, including flowers. They included behaviors of covering bodies or placing them in protected niches as if their corpses needed to be protected for future use. The earliest Homo Sapiens single individual, intentional burial sites are estimated to have occurred 100,000 years ago. Those Sapiens grave sites contained bodies decorated with red ochre and tools suggesting their ritual care held symbolic intent. 40,000 years ago, burial sites grew more elaborate with graves containing ochre, jewelry, weapons, and artwork, culminating around 4,700 years ago in the Egyptian pyramid system. Modern burials...

There are no known organisms that live on nothing. All must engage in some sort of food consumption to sustain their lives. Predators either hunt and kill or scavenge off the deceased. Grazers mow green plants until they are nubs, then move on to greener pastures. Photosynthetic organisms, such as plants, consume light, water, and carbon dioxide to synthesize the sugars necessary for their survival. Biologically, consuming means taking in matter and energy to live, grow, and reproduce, a process necessary to all living beings if they are to perpetuate and procreate. Without the pressures of death to sustain life, evolution would have taken a vastly different path. I doubt that life would have evolved beyond single-cell organisms, including the blue-green algae that inhabited the primordial soup.

I grew up in the racially charged South Side of Chicago, an area with definitive lines separating white from black. Many of the families in my suburb fled the city neighborhoods in which they grew up because they feared living in an integrated neighborhood, believing they would be under siege from those "colored" people. The exodus was called white flight. It was exacerbated by unscrupulous real estate agents who would cold call and announce that "they" were moving into the area and ask if the homeowner would like to sell before property values plummeted. It was not until I attended University, where, immersed in diversity, that I was able to purge myself of the infected thinking rooted when surrounded by homogenous thought and petty prejudices that I assimilated by osmosis.

The belief that humans have free will is the basis for the modern laws governing crime and punishment is foundational to most, if not all, modern societies. Those that don't tend to be firmly embedded in Determinism, the belief that all events, including human actions, are determined by prior causes. Modern laws include caveats to lessen or eliminate punishment if a person is deemed either too young to make rational decisions, alleged to be mentally compromised, psychologically incompetent, or coerced into committing an unlawful transgression. Religion is a system known for strict adherence to dogma in the face of conflicting data, requires free will...

The implicit implication when saying something needs to be fixed is that the thing is broken. A stick can be snapped, as can a human bone, when pressure is exerted with sufficient force. Machines can stop running because a crucial part becomes defective, taking down an entire system. Earth is a highly complex system with checks and balances, but I don't envision Earth being broken, considering it is a self-healing system that adapts to variations, creating new realities as elements evolve and the system dynamically adapts, creating new realities.

The USA in which I grew up is but a faint mirage of the USA in which I am now living, despite my living in the same city area for nearly all of my soon-to-be 65 years on earth. Some, increased empathy, individual awareness of their rights, a growing appreciation of diversity, and less outright segregation have been for the betterment of society and individuals. Others, the resurgence of blatant discrimination against the poor and nonwhite, the trend toward embracing fascism, and a desire to return to earlier days when only white males were allowed to vote, are very much to the detriment of a once-admired nation. It is quite a culture shift over my lifetime.

That someone would need to seek out the significance of silence tells me they are likely an incessant babbler compelled to fill the silence they fear with nonsensical words, the way a baby craves a favorite blankey or self soothes by sucking their thumbs. So powerful is the silence vacuum, the police frequently use silence as an interrogation technique because they know silence is a black hole void that pulls incriminating words from people's mouths.

There are five question renderings beginning with the letter 'W': What, when, where, why, and who. Coupled with two tiny words, 'am' and 'I', they span queries from empirical to existential. What I am, when I am, and where I am can pretty much be answered unequivocally by observation. In my case, I am a human living in 2025 Chicago. 'Why am I?' requires delving deep into metaphysics for any plausible answers. 'Who am I?' can be addressed both empirically by observation...