Point of View: Dial It at Any Time

   I was surprised when, on arising this morning, I was cheery. There was no reason to be, but perhaps I am programmed to be so, particularly when things aren’t going well.

    There is spring, of course. Where it is I don’t know, but everyone’s saying they can sense it; there seems to be general agreement as to its inevitability. And then, of course, summer, which I inveighed against recently, perhaps unfairly, but it had it coming. “Ou sont les etes d’autant?”

    I do these “25 Years Ago in Bonac Sports” columns each month, and it is interesting, as Pat Hope once said, to meet myself coming around the corner. Things go whooosh! Just like that. It’s gotten so that yesterday seems like today. Indeed, it may be “all one fuckin’ day, man,” as Janis Joplin said.

    Except some days do seem different — more cheery, less cheery — but if you always look at the big picture, which is impossible, I guess that it’s all one fuckin’ day. During which there is a time for this, a time for that, as Ecclesiastes says. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, nothing new under the sun . . . a chasing after wind.

    Therefore, we are to enjoy ourselves, he says, inasmuch as our days here are few and we’re all dead in the end.

    “Whatever your hand finds to do, do with your might,” saith Ecclesiastes. Something to get the blood flowing.

    Amen to that. In fact, I understand the editor of The Onion recently advised such a course of action, and everybody’s marveling on Facebook that a funny man is such a sage. It’s good advice, though, for Americans, many of whose hands endlessly do with their might the bidding of monolithic corporations.

    It is this facelessness, this growth of unanswerable power that is scary. We need flesh-and-blood contact, not machines telling you if you know your party’s extension you can dial it at any time. While you wait — because you never know your party’s extension — you could be finding something to do with your might.

    Let’s not get put on interminable hold. Our days here are few.

    And with that I’m off to Cayo Levantado.