The hardest part about coming home every year for the holidays is watching the slow aging of your parents. All of a sudden mom becomes so important. All of a sudden you realize that your mom just might be the most important treasure in your life. the most precious and valuable treasure you may ever have. When does this happen? I am trying desperately hard to not let go of that youthful attitude where we just totally take our parents for granted and we just act like we don't care. But its hard now. one minute we are just these kids or teenagers who don't care and in the next we find that we are becoming parents to our own parents. I hate that. 

All of a sudden now the sight of my mom when I see her for the first time each year and notice that she has aged a bit more, it just crushes my soul. Breaks my heart in pieces and makes me dread the day she gets old, like really old, or passes on. Then what? My God the fucking horror of that. My heart suffers for anyone who has lost their mother already. Mom lost her own mother about five years ago and still cries when she speaks of it. maybe that's just something that you never quite get over. 

I am reading people magazine. I know what you're thinking. Temporary insanity perhaps. But seriously. its really quite fun and sinfully enjoyable. Like eating potato chips or fast food or something, or sneaking away to smoke a cigarette. The thing that strikes me while reading people is how it is absolutely positively every bit as mainstream, inane, and irrelevant as you guess it would be, and yet at the same time it isn't. Granted, I'm reading the year-end recap issue, so maybe it offers a bit more meaning than most of the weeklies. This thing with queer eye for the straight guy is great. The idea that a few years ago, there was that whole Matthew Shepard horror and the whole don't ask don't tell shit in the American military, and now gay guys are on prime time TV giving straight guys make-overs. And of course Ellen has her own talk show and its rated number one. just a few short years ago, it was considered so taboo when she “came out” as being gay. Watching humanity evolve. This is a huge thing for us. And you also get to see all the hot actresses dressed up in people, which is nice too. and that guy surfer chick who lost her arm and is still out there going for #1. and that rock climber who cut his own arm off because he was trapped under a boulder for five days in Utah. How inspiring. I'm hooked on People.   

[when I was a kid I used to love US and People magazine. When I got to my teens I reached this point where I wouldn’t be caught dead reading it. I mean, I would rather have been caught dead than even thinking about reading one of those magazines. Because after all, when you are a teenager... you know the drill. Switched over to soaking up all the philosophy I could for years, and then of course literature, making the rounds, then the sciences, and then the religions, its like we go on this search... for God... for meaning... for something deeper than Bennifer and Britney etc... [no seriously, bennifer and Britney truly have been around that long. for decades now, just their names change. I tried to think of examples from the eighties or nineties but I couldn’t. that's the thing... they just kind of disappear, get sucked up by the new Bennifers and the new Britneys... but I digress.] So scooting through your twenties and you're all about the sciences and the real world stuff, how electricity works and how to make money and save money and start empires and take over empires and all of that stuff. after a while you kind of give up on the whole religion thing because it becomes rather frustrating. you start to realize that God isn't actually in any of the religions, kind of still hiding in the Tao te ching really, but none of the religions want people to know that, so they keep it a secret. That's why they all align themselves with governments and armies and all that. because they realize, unlike most human civilizations yet, that religion isn't about God as much as about who has the most money and who has the most guns and might and influence. This could help explain why God is still hiding in the Tao te ching and so few people know it. the Taoists and the Buddhists don't have any guns. They never really bothered to attack and kill a lot of people or take over any countries so they never had a chance at making their religion one of the major ones. Unlike the big three. but the point is after a while you just kind of give up on all that stuff. you accept that its all kind of fucked up and wonky and maybe just best to leave it all alone. let other people swing with if they want to. as long as they aren't trying to ram it down your throat... so all of a sudden you pick up a People magazine again...]

Current read: The world of Islam. (LOL) Studying the Muslim religion now. Learning a lot. What a mess this whole thing is.