Sudden Attack of Nostalgia

Watching a recent Colbert, a guest recalled a past role where he played an elf named 'Swifty'. For the majority of the viewing audience that didn't rate a second thought.

For me it opened the floodgates of memory.

'Swifty' made me think ... Damon Runyan, and that made me think ... The Lemon Drop Kid, and that made me think of Bob Hope, and then memories of all of the movies he made that I like (and even a few I didn't) came pouring out of my brain's equivalent of a dusty, cluttered closet.

And with those memories came an overwhelming wave of bittersweet nostalgia.

It's the kind of experience we older folks can have that younger types just can't generate.  They haven't lived long enough.  This is one of the few nice things about getting older.

But as I mentioned, these thoughts are bitter as well as sweet, because the things we remember are gone - often long gone, and their like will never return.

The feeling that ensues is sometimes an odd, off-kilter one.  It can make me feel dizzy and disconnected with the present.  But only for a moment.

The wave of triggered nostalgia fades and the present resumes its rightful prominence.  For a moment, though, you are suddenly young again within your old self, seeing the world again with youthful emotions.

For all of you in the same temporal boat, enjoy riding the waves of nostalgia.

Rip Van Wayne-kle

Whoa!

It's already April ... 2017 ...

And not a single post on this page to keep the bots alert.

You can chalk that up to ennui. Or laziness. Both are at least partially true.

Also, distractions of my full-time paying job can get part of the blame too.  That's been there for quite a few years of this blog's history, though.

No, the really real and definitely not fake reason I haven't been posting here is that others have been posting their hearts out on the very same subjects that interest me.  And most of them have been doing it better than I could.

So, I've let them 'speak' for me.

They seem to have the better ability to cut through the shock-induced fog and see the world clearly enough without fear and loathing biasing their POVs.  Not so me.

But I hope this will pass soon.

I began this blog on the run-up to Barack Obama's historic first election.  Naturally, that was the main focus for quite some time.  Over the ensuing years I branched out to indulge my fancy in musings on life, human nature, science, and even some poetry of a sort.

It was meant to be though-provoking to anyone who stopped by to read it, but I really tried to keep it light and inject whatever humor my talent would allow.  I hope I did so with some success, although it was hard when each blog post was done on the spur of the moment and sent out into the world without much review, reflection, and possibly badly-needed editing.

I kept it up for a few years but the pace slowed, eventually to a crawl, and then to this latest somnambulation.

To the maybe one or three people who routinely viewed this blog back in its heyday, I must apologize for letting things fall away.  I promise to try to pick back up someway, somehow.

But it will be difficult. Looking around for ideas these days I have been struggling to find anything to say that can be said with humor.  Colbert, Trevor Noah, SNL, and Samantha Bee do this well and make me laugh enough to hold back the tears, but I can't yet find the spirit to follow their lead. Not even in my micro-blogger way.

So, I am making a promise to visit with you here at least once or twice a month for the rest of this year.  I won't promise that much of it will be humorous, although I do hope it will continue to be thought-provoking.  You can think of it as free group-therapy, if that helps.

See you (or at least the bots) back here soon ...