Happy Birthday

I'm so distracted and concerned about me, I've forgotten my friend's birthday.  In truth, I don't remember birthdays and dread the coming of my own.  Still, I feel badly about it.  Everyone needs a "Happy Birthday" once a year.  So friend, Happy Birthday.  I remember the time we celebrated with about two hundred of your friends in a small bar in the East Village.  Time flows differently for me now than it used to, and I can't remember how old you were then.  But it was a night.  Really a night.

And I wrote you an email the next week and predicted all that would happen.  The women, then of a certain age, would be thinking babies and suburbs and the old gang would spread to the four winds gathering every once in a while to reminisce about the old, crazy days when you were all young and owned Manhattan.  It was a good email.  I wish I knew where it was.  I'd post it here now.  But it doesn't take a sage to predict those things, just someone who has already gone through all that.

Do you want me to tell you about the next ten years?  No.  I won't.  As Glinda told Dorothy, you'll have to learn that for yourself.  If I told you, you wouldn't dare go through with it.

*     *     *     *     *

"Do you believe in God?"

"God is everything and everything is god."

"Yea, you say that.  What do you think hell is?"

"Losing all of this."

"Well, what do you think heaven is?"

"Losing all of this."

"Is that a paradox?"

"Beats me."