The odyssey is over but what a magnificent journey. Oddly it started with an incredibly loaded van chugging up Deadwood one noon day on the way to Camarillo; and ended with a little lighter pickup floating down Deadwood at midnight from that very same city of Camarillo. It seems a circle is still a circle, and this was a full one. It took eight years and maybe covered 80 thousand miles.

I’m not going to chronicle the journey here again. In fact most of it has been the subject of Cowboy in Paris all along. Any page will show you a facet and all the pages reflect the route. Here I’m just grateful that I had the guts to go. It’s one thing to strike out at thirty – I’ve been there and done that; and it was good, but it was normal – that’s just what we do when we are young and don’t know any better. Twenty five years later I was in heaven and I knew it – and I still went. That was a leap, but it was the smartest leap I ever made. I learned more from that woman than any man has any right to know. I lived, and learned, and experienced more in our 10 years together than in my first 55 combined – and those first 55 were great years to begin with! The people I met and the one I married, the tears of joy and the tears of life all combined into an epic odyssey. I am a lucky and blessed man.

And now I am home, and tired, and ever so accepting of my fate, because I did it my way – which really was just Max Ehrmann’s way, which I borrowed and repeated almost every single day for 35 years. I still repeat the words of the Desiderata daily and try to live them. I only wish she had been with me last night to watch The Curious Case Of BENJAMIN BUTTON – it would have been a fitting end.

May 20, 2009 / The Odyssey is Over / AFW pg 92 © 2009 / CIP # 772, May 23, 2009 / SHE

With that title we could be talking physics but we’re not – we’re much closer to home. We’re talking family and truth. We’re talking listening and hearing; seeing and believing. The subject is perception and filters; communication and relativity. So maybe there is a little physics here too, but that is uncertain.

Many years ago I thought my mother was lying. She is long since dead now, so none of this really matters, except as illustration. The point is that for quite a long time I thought she lied. She would recount incidences to others, right in front of me, that I knew I had been present at. Often the retelling was not even close to what I remembered. Gradually I had to conclude she lied. It is a shock for a young man to realize his mother lies.

I did not revisit the conclusion for many years. It was just a sad fact that I knew about my mother. Very gradually though it dawned on me that sometimes other family members were occasionally doing the same thing. Now I had to start questioning my own memory because it seemed unlikely that my sisters or my cousins would be fibbing to me. Sometimes it did turn out my memory was less than perfect, though more often than not I continued to have faith in my own recollections. I suspect there’s just a little human nature and prejudice showing there. Still the seeds of doubt were planted.

In America families tend to split up and move to various corners of the state; or the country; or even the world. Long absences ensue and the problem compounds. Now, not even experiences are the same. It turns out our perceptions are very colored by our individual adventures and our separate milieus. Our truths are molded by our lives. Though certainly they used the terms very differently, perhaps Einstein and Heisenberg had a point. Everything is relative and nothing is certain.

Anyway I’m not so sure my mother was always lying. She probably believed a great deal of what she said. All our truths are relative – especially when they deal with relatives.

May 12, 2009 / On Seeing What Isn’t There / AFW pg 88 © 2009 / CIP # 770, May 23, 2009 / SHE

If all’s well that ends well, It’s bad when it ends sad.

If – Love is never having to say you’re sorry, Then perhaps it should end up saying thank you.

All this possibly implying that endings and beginnings, like near and far, aren’t opposite but are rather right next door to each other. Matter and antimatter in a particularly relative, uncertain way

May 18, 2009 / Endings / AFW pg 89 © 2009 / CIP # 771, May 23, 2009 / SHE, OAR (or SHORE)

Almost robust might be the way I would characterize my current health – it would be ‘very robust’ if I added the phrase ‘for 67 years of age’. For the past 35 years I have experienced superb health – largely, I always claim, because 35 years ago I gave up doctors, hospitals and insurance, at least for myself. If you have no choice, and you listen to your body, the answers become evident. Balance, time, common sense, and small adjustments can fix almost anything. It won’t last forever. Everyone dies. Still, I have already won a thousand-fold.

As for the ‘almost’ – two things niggle. For maybe 10 or 12 years now I have been complaining my knees are gone. Well, in fact, a few weeks after the latest move my knees always get almost better. True, each move there has been some slippage, but it’s slight. I’m just going to stop moving, and stop complaining. As for my eyes, alluded to earlier, I think I will just fall back on the Desiderata: “Do not distress your-self with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.”

We can go back almost 50 years now to what I originally decided would be my end. For some reason way back then I decided I would die of a blood clot breaking loose from a spot just below the calf in my left leg. I can touch the spot, I can always feel it and I am pretty certain there is a real problem there. It would be a great way to go and I am ready. I won’t hurry it because I am at home, in peace, and happy with my pictures and my memories. Still I kind of hope it is soon because I would like to join my Minou. Then we can hold hands forever.

May 21, 2009 / Almost Robust / AFW pg 93 © 2009 / CIP # 773, May 23, 2009 / SHE

Every couple of years I adjust the direction and emphasis of Cowboy in Paris. If you click on ‘General’ under categories on the left of this page you can read all the earlier adjustments chronologically in reverse. If I was you I wouldn’t read them all – you’ll probably get easily bored. But I would read carefully the second article entitled A Simpler Time and perhaps skim a few of the others. At least you will learn a little on how to navigate the site and what you might find if you push some of the other buttons below ‘General’. Really, the problem is that the infrastructure was built with the earliest concept of ‘Cowboy’ in mind. I don’t know how to change that – so I jerry rig.

The first two years we stuck fairly close to the original concept of relaying impressions of the people and places of Paris and France from the perspective of this cowboy. They are all still there just further back. The last couple of years have been scattered all over the place and decidedly more personal. A Simpler Time mentioned above makes it a little clearer. I will continue in the same vein but there will be a little more emphasis on physics. It has been about 2/3 personal and 1/3 physics but, starting with the next installment, those figures will be generally reversed.

There is one other point. Back in 2007 we were ‘off the air’ for a few weeks. I believe it had something to do with changing servers. Finally we did get most of the written content back up, but most of the links and pictures didn’t work. I tried hard but failed to get that fixed. It used to be a much better site.

May 21, 2009 / Going Forward / AFW pg 93 © 2009 / CIP # 774, May 23, 2009 / General

It could be a plan or a pipe dream – I don’t know which yet. For now I prefer to dream of it as a plan. It may have seemed that in the last couple of years my interest in physics had waned. It didn’t – I just went back to school. I never had any formal training in physics; and never had any interest in the math except in the beauty of it. I just observed and read and gradually morphed into a few theories of my own. More recently I decided perhaps I should at least be able to pronounce my heroes names, and terms, and tenants. Perhaps even know some of the basics of basic physics. While I knew, for a layman, quite a lot about particle physics and quantum theory I knew nothing of the thousand rungs up to that point. I went back to school, Community College, Physics 101, 210, and parts of 102 and 211 – I heard the names and filled in outlines.

It was useful, but limited. Then I learned of physics lectures for free on the internet. MIT, Berkeley, Perimeter Institute, Cornell, ASU – all offering free lectures, some the entire course, very often by the topmost names in the field, and relatively current!! Recently (last month) I saw a live webcast from ASU with six Nobel Laureates at the same table discussing The Origins of the Universe – the Big Bang, the following seconds, and all the way up to today. Okay, there were only five at the table – Stephen Hawking fell ill that day in California on the way to the conference and had to send his contribution via an audio feed carried by his daughter. This is heady stuff, pronunciation, personality, cutting edge and all.

Now I am amazed at how many of my ideas are, at least in part, corroborated by the great minds. Of course often that just means I borrowed it from them in the first place, all be it unbeknownst to me. Osmosis works that way. And of course the symmetry isn’t perfect. I still can’t do the math, and considerable gaps in my knowledge still exist. I came by it from a different tack. Furthermore they are rightly patricians, they have earned it, and I am plainly plebian. That said, I still find most new theories are rehashes of things said in the past with a tweak here, a tweak there, or sometimes a recombination of the various elements. Did I mention they sometimes appear to just average. So there is no reason for me to not continue enthusiastically on my way. Okay, I’ll do it, that is the plan for now.

May 10, 2009 / A Plan Or A Pipe Dream / AFW pg 87 © 2009 / CIP # 828 / OAR

Three sets of windows – all double door – a man couldn’t be luckier. The first set was a narrow, elongated, 8th floor set of double windows overlooking the rooftops of Paris. There is no more beautiful city in the world and Haussmann arranged a bird’s eye view for me. By administrative fiat Baron Haussmann decreed all buildings in 19th Century Paris must be 7 floors or less. And even today they virtually all are. I was lucky enough to share, with the birds at eye level, an almost unobstructed view of large swaths of Paris. For five years I designed games, pursued physics, loved a woman and watched that world. It doesn’t get any better than that.

Unless of course you come home, set your-self down and look out a beautiful set of corner windows and listen to Edith Piaf – the Parisian sparrow of yesteryear. That is exactly what I am doing right now. Non Je Ne Regrette Rien – that is the song that is playing right now, somehow it seems quite appropriate. Deadwood towers right outside the right picture window, literally yards away. Outside the left window lupines and poppies bloom, quails and squirrels play with butterflies fluttering and bees buzzing – peace abounds. And yes, I’ve even seen a hummingbird outside that window. Except for missing that woman – who spent years with me under the shadow of my Deadwood before I spent years with her in her Paris – except for that ache everything is good. She passed, but we have already had the best of two possible worlds.

It is the third set of windows that may be problematical. That’s the set we all have – our own two eyes. They have served me superbly for 67 years, but it seems more and more likely that something might be happening with mine. It could be something that a doctor warned me of 40 years ago when he stitched up my right eye after an accident. That was actually very close to the last time I saw a doctor for me. It could be something an optometrist mentioned in passing a few months ago. It could be neither, and it could be nothing – just a product of an over active imagination. Time will tell, but in the meantime I will take no action. That too has served me superbly for 67 years. Finding natural balances usually works better than listening to the medical profession. No matter what I have seen more than most and it was exquisite.

I have read recently that most economists date the beginning of the current recession to December, 2007. Actually I read it again this morning in an article about Warren Buffet on AP/MSNBC – it was updated at 6:44 AM, so you have to believe it is current. I can’t help but reflect that my sweetheart fell ill for the first time in November 2007. She fought valiantly for 14 or 15 months but succumbed. I was ‘healthy’ but continued on the downward spiral for another 14 or 15 months. Only recently do we see light at the end of the tunnel. She is at peace and I am finally at home. It appears the worldwide recession might finally be bottoming out. Life and death imitating art – a Kabuki of sorts or perhaps I should say Kafkaesque.

May 4, 2009 / The Economy / AFW pg 82 © 2009 / CIP # 765

In the early months of la renaissance she told me. In those months when you talk of everything absolutely freely she told me she would die at 54. She repeated it more than once. She was afraid, but not morbidly so. She was more sad than afraid, but still quite sad, because she wanted more time even back then. I didn’t really believe her but I comforted her. And then we went on and happily built a life together, seldom if ever mentioning those early premonitions. She was born in 1954 so I knew that was a pretty good year.

It was the London trip that somehow still haunts me a little. Did she know? Did she somehow sense it had to be now? We had discussed it for years and she was well aware that I very much wanted to visit my father’s grave before I died. Still we had dawdled over the years because London seemed so close and easily accessible. Once we had even made plane reservations, but when we went to secure a hotel we found that London was full. We switched to Amiens, halfway to London – it was a good compromise and a fun trip.

Usually we preferred to go south towards Annecy, Provence, Avignon or our perennial favorite Aix-les-Bains. Occasionally we would head west towards Rouen or Normandie. Sometimes she would fly off to the islands with the kids – land of the sun and sand and golden tan. Every trip was a warm memory with a hundred photos, a thousand smiles and a hand to hold. Still we had never made it to England.

Then suddenly she started making serious plans – the plane, the hotel, the itinerary – the whole shebang. It was for my birthday and a surprise so I knew little beforehand. I am virtually certain I told her we didn’t have to go then, we could go next year, but she was set. She orchestrated the most magnificent trip I ever had. It was magic. The hotel was superb, the pictures taken, the goals all accomplished, and side trips completed. She seemed as happy as I had ever seen her, and I know I was. Just being with her and accomplishing my final goal was enough for me. Everything else was cake and there was plenty of that. Only in the aftermath did I begin to wonder if she could have possibly known. I don’t believe so – we were just too happy on that trip, but still it nags a little.

Then too, in the aftermath, the Litvinenko case took on overtones that gave pause. At the time we were barely aware of it, if at all. Only in the ensuing weeks did it become a cause célèbre. Still the poisoning by Polonium 210 took place at around 5:00 PM in the bar at the Millenium Hotel, Grosvenor Square. They also were in a bar that we had walked right past earlier. We were right in and all around that area all of that afternoon. Probably it was just coincidence. I asked three different doctors could there be any connection between that and the tumor that materialized a few weeks later? The answer was no, no, and no! Still it too nags a little.

Of course it is the 54 that I keep returning to most. Very early on in our relationship I had noticed the concurrence of her birth year and the 1954 National Football Championship UCLA won. I am a great fan of all their teams so I thought it augured well. Okay, we will now fast forward to the near present, actually just about a year ago. UCLA, in basketball this time, was playing extremely well and threatening another National Championship. I knew that 54 and 1954 equaled 2008. I knew my sweethearts condition. I remembered the prediction. For the first time ever I didn’t want UCLA to win. They didn’t. Now the year 1954 alone remains a great year.

February 24, 2009 / How Did She Know? Or Did She? / AFW pg 72 © 2009 / CIP 761 / Mixed / SHE

I awoke on the 21st ‘lighter,’ noticeably so, strangely so. A cloud had lifted. I was surprised. I had expected something closer to despair when I went to sleep. When you dread something, reality often turns out to be kinder. The 21st was the first of a series of anniversaries. A year ago today …. …. Mostly they were not pleasant memories. This would be the week when a world collapsed – day by day, by hour by sometimes seconds. It was the first anniversary of the end. And yet here I was in the first hours feeling ‘lighter,’ stronger, almost happy. Of course maybe it was because it was both the first and the last of the first anniversaries. Having survived both hers, and my, and her children’s ‘first birthday without her;’ and Christmas, and our Wedding Anniversary and every other first for almost 363 days, I only had to survive the anniversary of the day she died. Of course it was actually the anniversary of the start of the ‘Thirty Something Hours’, two days before she died.

Anyway, it started with a dream. This was before I awoke. I couldn’t remember or even see the faces clearly, but I knew one of them was me. I could remember the age, the ambiance, the rolling fields, the eagerness of youth, and the beauty of the opposite sex. Yes, I could remember them well, though I almost never dreamed of them now. We must have been late teens or very early twenties. We were running and rolling over the undulating fields – cavorting and wrestling as youth does – laughing and tumbling together and feeling the heat.

That’s when I awoke the first time. It was about 2:00 AM. I was damp and still pulsing. Somehow I had forgotten about those kinds of dreams, but hazily I knew one when I felt one. Groggily I turned over and fell back asleep. It had been a long, long time coming. Actually I had sort of assumed they were gone forever, like many of the other things of youth. When I awoke on the 21st I felt ‘lighter’. Could it have been my Sweetheart again? Did she send me first a poem, then some photos and now a dream?

February 24, 2009 / The 21st / AFW pg 72 © 2009 / CIP 5/8/2009 # 760 / Mixed / SHE