The empty echo of Christmas swirls in the mists of memory

Well, it's finally over and my body and mind can take a short respite - very brief, indeed! But I made it through Christmas 2003! Wow! I can hardly believe I've lived on this planet for nearly 53 years now and still feel as though I've learned so little.

Life is a strange concoction of equal parts pleasure and pain, sweetness and nasty urine-stained underwear, glorious revelation and bleak, disillusionment. Contradictions, paradox and change seem to de rigeur for God's plan, whatever that is ... .

I haven't a clue - have you? But I do know that I love a woman who's suffering like someone eaten up with cancer - the pain is unrelenting and vicious and I want to rip it out of her body and strangle it till it dies! But I cannot, alas, for pain, like the Holy Ghost, is an ethereal, ungraspable (is that a word?) thing; palpable but not present. Mainly it just sucks! Especially since I feel so powerless in the light of its horrible exactitude and heavy price.

And so it goes.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas, and I wish one and all a very Happy New Year! Now and forever, Amen.