A Way Of Putting Things

    Allo, gadies and lents.  Alas, there's not much to report, the NSG Doc's life being about as exciting as Jim Jarmusch movie.  Except for playing around with his comptuer and trying to get it operating as efficiently as a machine several years out of date can, most of his time has been devoted to two things: catching up on movies and struggling with how to respond to a lingering issue of some distress.  To the latter, mercifully, I have become much more calloused.  (Sorry if what follows seems cryptic, but it must be for reasons of discretion.)  I have decided not to let the matter get the better of me, or poison me any further than it already has.  There's no point, I've realized, attempting to undeceive those who've too much invested in their delusions; they'll merely marshall whatever misprisions they must to maintain them.  One might as well present a dinosaur bone to a Creationist.  Best to accept in the interim whatever I must just to extricate myself from the spirit-sucking clamour.  I'll know the truth, as will the people about whose opinions of me I truly care.  Let the petty and the vapid believe what they're going to believe.  It may well be all they have.  (For that they should more be pitied than chagrined; they'll out themselves sooner or later.)  I have better things to do with my time than indulge in acrimonious behaviour better suited to the schoolyard than the (abstractly) august institution to which I've earnestly, and probably misguidedly, devoted myself for most of my adult years. 

 

    But that's too morose (or moribund?) and cynical a way of putting things.  One of the odd things about being in my position is that I'm past thinking about myself, or at least about defending myself.  Instead I think of the good fortune I have had to deal with some of the brighter and brightest young minds in my vicinity, and to be able to part of their learning.  Not fake learning, by which one passes exams, but genuine learning, in terms of the permanent desire to expand understanding.  In this way, I've been astonishingly lucky, and for which I'm beyond grateful.  Like the hungry man at the table, I can't say I've had enough, but I've probably had my fill, so to ask for more would be gluttonous.  Financial dimensions aside, I've been well-rewarded, in fact generously so.  Probably disproportionately so.  This is also something one only realizes when one sums it all up.  My apologies for not doing so earlier--- and my thanks now that I finally do.

 

    As for me, as Mr Cohen has said, I'm junk but I'm still holding up this little wild bouquet.  And you know what?  I don't care.  I give up, completely and entirely.  I'm just getting lost tonight in that hopeless little screen. 

     No wonder I've been watching so many movies lately.....