Another cycle has ended and by this I do not mean another holiday season has been run. Actually, I am thinking about the almost 365 essays I have written from the end of last year to the end of this one. You may not know this but I sometimes bubble forth with two or three essays a day, most of which do not get sent out. Carol has a way of agreeing with me that they are merely repeats of old themes or just do not cut the mustard as they might. So, I have tried and mostly succeeded in writing one essay per day for a whole year. I am ending this cycle early because on Tuesday we are going to take a cruise to Panama in the south western Caribbean that will begin on Tuesday the 28th of December and we will celebrate New Years’ Day and Carol’s 79th birthday on board ship.
The really nice thing about this cruise is that we will be driven (including my electric scooter) to the ship in Fort Lauderdale and return to the same port when the cruise is over. We will be met by our driver on our return.
Illnesses and trips seem to cut down on my output of printed essays. When something happens to Carol’s health I have no wish to be creative. When I am sick or in the hospital like, for instance my bi-lateral knee replacement, my themes for things to write about increase ten fold. With no computer to set them down I sometimes just make lists that I try to fill out later on. I still do a lot of writing on tablets at the kitchen table in response to stimuli from the NY Times or the Miami Herald, but I often just sit here in front of the computer monitor and begin typing on an idea or issue or, as it happens, reflections on the times.
So, I am going to shut down THINKING ALLOWED for a period and come back from our trip with a fresh view of the new year, 2005 – one that is not covered with bile and merde from the recent display of American civic virtue. Instead, I am looking forward to the portraits I shall try to sketch while traveling the seas to our assigned ports. I have collected a number of partly used sketching pads, new pencils and sharpening devices and new and unused erasers – the kneaded type – to try to catch likenesses as well as the obligatory left profile in which I specialize. I had an enlargement made of the sign I used on our trip to Australia and New Zealand. This states- “Portraits Sketched in Exchange for Interesting Conversation” on one side of a 16 x 20 Poster Board and: “Left Profiles Guaranteed and Likenesses are Possible” on the other side. I make a plea to exchange cards with e-mail addresses for future continuation of our conversations. I’ll be back next year with what I hope is a continuation of the high standard you have come to expect of my writings. Then again, this might be the time to ask me to stop.