This day I would prefer to avoid physical contact.

I want to clear my thoughts of male aggressiveness that has pervaded our culture in the news about Donald Trump, Sarah Palin, Charlie Sheen, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, to mention the latest usual suspects.

Above my head, it appears a raccoon coughed up a strawberry on a skylight (or gorged itself and couldn’t finish the feast of spoiled strawberries thrown out in the yard for the backyard wildlife, dropping one on the sunroom roof).

Flies finish the meal, one dissolved bite at a time.

On to another subject.

A dancer.

Started dancing lessons four years ago.

Then, a horrible automobile smashup.

“I share DNA with a road intersection,” she’s been quoted as saying, a large amount of blood spilled on the motoring surface.

Body damage, possible brain damage.

Permanent brain damage?

Hardly.

Not if she’s the graduate student in aerospace studies that they say she is.

Wears glasses and contact lenses.

When wearing the latter, her eyes shine bright.

Thus inspiring a dance partner to reminisce about youth.

Glad that a young driver recovered her form.

Days after days of physical therapy have paid off.

May she glide through life on light feet, finding the dance partner she’s suited to meet.

Life is full of missed opportunities.  I have made only one commitment to myself and to society to which I hold my lifelong trust – marriage to one person until death, for better or worse, richer or poorer, etc.

Without that trust and that commitment, all other foundations that prop up the subculture I was given as a child have no meaning.

With no meaning, anything goes.

And if anything goes, there’s no end to the possibilities.

Only one life to live, forty-nine revolutions around the Sun old.

Better focus on something else, Rick.  Otherwise, you’ll lose track of who you were raised to be and become those who dominate the news whose childhoods were not like yours, their parents giving guidance that made narcissistic headlines.

The choices we make in this moment create the next moment’s framework.

How do I want to be framed?