Being There

How could this have happened to me? It's a complaint that's often registered when you find themselves entering those later "stages of man" that Jaques talks about in As You Like It. All of a sudden, you're almost at the foot length of a 12-inch ruler when you might have been at something closer to the half way mark yesterday, or so it seems. At a certain point it’s going to seem overly optimistic or quixotic to sign a five year lease, or fork out for that car or piece of furniture you finally can afford, not to mention friendship and love. Does it make sense to get married for a year or two at most, thereby leaving the other person emotionally bereft—unless, of course, you’ve fallen for a gold digger who’s looking to get set up the rest of their life. Have you ever come to one of those yellow “dead end” signs with the black lettering? You don’t think twice about them, until you begin to consider what the words really mean. Dead End are two nouns in apposition. Does a roundabout exhibit the reality of a real “dead end?” You may have heard someone describing a job that’s going nowhere, with no possibilities for advancement as a “dead end job.” The fact is whether your driving or just living, the end tends to come faster than you expected. The Long Island Expressway or LIE ends at exit 73, but it’s hard to believe for those who have never gone as far as Riverhead. When you’re just taking the LIE to exit 49S or N, the Huntington exits, you feel the LIE will go on forever.

read "Mortal Coil Stuff" by Francis Levy, HuffPost

and listen to "Security" by Otis Redding