Then Again

...I also have an extended family. The people who stayed. The people who became more than friends; the people who open the door when I knock. That's what it all boils down to. The people who have to open the door, not because they always want to but because they do.

This living stuff is a lot. Too much, and not enough. Half empty, and half full.

Memories are simply moments that refuse to be ordinary

That's what I learned. I learned I couldn't shed light on love other than to feel its comings and goings and be grateful.

We can't save the past or solve the riddle of love. But to me, it's worth trying.

The exhausting effort to control time by altering the effects of age doesn't bring happiness

Choosing the freedom to be uninteresting never quite worked for me.

At times she's so basic, at others so wise it frightens me that I got so far in this world without the benefit of such knowledge.

Its the journey that counts, not the arrival.

Before I opened my computer in the parking lot today, I relived one of my favorite memories. It's the one with Woody and me sitting on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum after it's closed. We're watching people parade out of the museum in summer shorts and sandals. The trees to the south are planted in parallel lines. The water in the fountain shoots up with a mist that almost reaches the steps we sit on. We look at silver-haired ladies in red-and-white-print dresses. We separate the mice from the men, the tourists from the New Yorkers, the Upper East Siders from the West Siders. The hot-pretzel vendor sells us a wad of dough in knots with clumps of salt stuck on top. We make our usual remarks about the crazies and wonder what it would be like to live in a penthouse apartment on Fifth Avenue overlooking the Met. We laugh and say the same things we always say. We hold hands and keep sitting, just sitting, as the sun beings to set. It's a perfect afternoon.

I kept thinking if I’m so miserably maladjusted to this life, my absence would only be felt for a short time. And anyway, my responsibilities with the family are over. They no longer look to me for guidance. It’s more like I’m the one they’re stuck being responsible for. My company isn’t sought after. Whatever I have allowed to happen has also brought on this horrible lack of confidence. I’m intimidated. I have no one to tell my concerns to, NO ONE. I’ve let myself come to a very sad state, not only sad, but stagnant.

I have assessed my happiness ratio and this is the result. I am totally content whenever the ones I love are happy about something little, big, insignificant, whatever. I just don’t think anyone could possibly have the same wonderful, intense, compelling feelings that I have for this family of mine.

I WISH I FIGURED OUT A WAY TO LOVE YOU WITH ALITTLE LESS EFFORT.

I want to hold my life up alongside hers in order to, as she wrote, reach a point where i begin to see me-and her-in a more understandable light.

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder are mirrors a waste of time?

As he stared into the ocean, he must have tossed a lifetime of apologies into its silence. Maybe he thought the tide would wash his troubles away.