DayBooks: 21-Jun-96 01:38 (Fri) Freeman Lake "Other Lives"

They cut down the maple tree in front of my cottage today ... I thought it was going to be spared. I've been awakened each morning to the sound of chain-saws for the last few days. They're clearing the trees in preparation for laying sever lines. At first we thought it was clearance for the cranes they'll use while excavating, but today I learned that for the most part, they'll be running the lines beside the asphalt road, so they'll be removing the roots of the trees.

I'm glad that my neighbors are dead, so that they will not see their old friends cut down and uprooted. They lived in those houses for over 40 years, and some of those trees were over 100 years old. For the last four autumns I've watched them change color, and I shall miss them.

When I heard the chainsaw this morning, I wondered why they were back. By the time I got to the front door and realized what had happened, there was nothing but a stump by the hedges out in front. I was livid, and have not felt so helpless in years ... it was just another one of the Good Things about this place that has Gone Forever. <heavy sigh!>

After sunset, I went next door to see my neighbors, the Ball brothers ... to commiserate and mourn the loss of the trees, and to complain about the lack of privacy that their destruction brings to our lives. OTOH, there is more sky exposed for my telescope, assuming the weather ever clears again ... it's been cloudy for a week, although I caught a glimpse of Jupiter through the haze one night.

Jimmy and I had a Very Long talk about his relationship with his Old Lady, i.e., his "significant other" who lives in Maine. She has apparantly reached the limit of her endurance, and their relationship is seriously on the rocks. I tried to explain to him that she really loves him, but there are some things about him that she really hates.

What it comes down to is that he's too much of the wrong kind of Rebel. What she likes about him is that he is a hog-ridding Rebel, but there are Good Rebels and there are Bad Rebels. What she likes about him is the God-fearing Rebel who really loves his parents. What she doesn't like about him is the potty-mouth Attitude he uses whenever he's not around his parents. ("I'd never talk like that around them!")

I told him the same thing applied to me ... I like him for his fear of God, and I don't like him for his Bad Language. I never said anything about his totally unconscious liberal use of the F-word because it's either been at his place or somewhere out of doors. But tonight I told him about the F-word Jar, and how I used to charge people 25 cents each time they said the F-word in my office. It's something I started during my second marriage, when I needed to clean up my act and become more sensitive to my language. It's one of the Changes I went through that preceded my acceptance of Islam.

I told him that he couldn't come into my house without a pocket full of quarters, and when they ran out, he was going to have to leave. The beard of the guest is in the hands of the owner of the tent! I also suggested that he check out those "Bikers for Jesus" as being Good Rebels that he could hang with ... if he was willing to change his Colors. I gave him as much advice as I was willing to for free, and ended by suggesting that the two of them spend some money and some time with a Professional. I've been through it a couple of times myself, and sometimes, the only solution is to end the relationship, but at least you have a better understanding of why that's a Good Thing and how to cope with it.

Anywho, Jimmy & Mike had company, and were listening to the radio. A song came on that I have always hated, but it was the Number One Song in America for a while back in the 1970s. Whenever I hear it, I can't help but remember the first time that I heard it.

I was driving to a woman's apartment where we were going to celebrate her 50^th birthday. I only had an AM radio in the car, and there was no PBS affiliate on AM in Rochester, NY. Remember "disco" music? Around the same time there was something aimed at the pre-teen rock music market ... they called it "bubble-gum" music. This was the ultimate evolution of the "art", with the most insipid lyrics I had ever heard ...

Love is like oxygen;
you get too much you get too high,
not enough and you're gonna die.
Love makes you high!

It was the kind of thing you can't get out of your head, repeating over and over and over ... you finally just have to share it with somebody to try to get rid of it! So as we sat down to a candle-lit supper in her dining room, I told her about it, and how appaled I was that it was the Number One Song in America.

It must have been 1973, because I had split up with Beth, but had not yet taken up with Chic. I was living in the apartment over the spinster (who would not let me have "lady visitors" in my rooms after dark). I may even have a taped journal entry about the evening, but I haven't gotten that far in my transcriptions.

The point is that she was recently divorced, and we had met at one of these recently-single support group thingies that were Very Popular back then. The fact that I was in my twenties and she was in her forties was no barrier to our lust, and there was never much question of romance on either side, but we were both horney.

Sooo ... as we were lying in her bed after making love later that evening, she was commenting on having lived for half a century, this being her fiftieth birthday and all. She asked me how old I was, and told her I was twenty-three. She said, "My son is five years older than you." I thought for a few seconds and said, "What a coincidence ... my mother is five years older than you."

And that is why every time I hear the song, "Love Is Like Oxygen," I think of a woman I have not seen for 23 years, whose name I can't even remember. Tonight, I'm wondering if she's been sexually inactive for as long as I have been. (But I don't think I'd be willing to go to bed with her again, unlike some whose names I'll never forget. :-)

That is all I have to say. -=DAH=- 21-Jun-95

Last update: 21-Jun-96 by dennette@wiz-worx.com <Who is this "Dennette" person?>