four score and seven years ago ....

I remember writing about fetching Aryan princesses slithering into a debreeding tank filled with whirlpooling Russian vodka, something about jimmy Carter throwing barrels of peanuts at his television and eschar long before I ever really considered what it all meant. I thought in terms of things and how they related to other things that I may or may not have had full knowledge of. Things like celebration and sorrow, things like hope verses fear, madness verses sanity, and change verses complacency.
Now-a-days, I think about happiness as a general objective. The idea that life is really and truly short and fragile has become a driver and catalyst to seek out all things that feel good and bring joy…all things that feel nice and just right. Celebrating just about anything is a good way to raise the roof of doldrum and the stale. More fun might be a symposium in the ancient Greek style. This is really like a cerebral stag night: a bunch of blokes stay up late drinking, preferably entertained by musicians and naked hostesses. However, instead of watching a DVD of Die Even Harder This Time, they talk food and wine then drink and eat it all the while talking about how it feels to eat and drink it …
Perhaps on reflection, the best thing to do would be to curl up with a good bowl of chocolate pudding and a triple stout. The case is, as ever, inconclusive. But in a world where dogmatism is increasingly the greatest threat, perhaps the tentative nature of personal joy is precisely what we should be celebrating.