Mark: Tuesday, Dec 8th, 2015 Hella Complicated Gratitudes

• Life's what happens to you while you're busy making other plans:  Today, and many days, I'm so grateful that the world hatched John Lennon.  When he died, I was three, going on four.  Today, I'm 38, going on 39 - almost as old as he was when he was killed.  We barely overlapped, but so many of his songs are so deeply embedded in the soundtrack of my life.  Whenever I hit a hard patch - particularly the hard patch that comes from the road getting long, I turn to Watching the Wheels.  I really love to watch them roll.  It scares me and makes me feel sad and hollow in the core of my gut to think that he died the way he did, and also that literally nothing has gotten better about gun violence in the last 35 years.  In a heartbreaking irony, he's probably the one person who could write the words that would make all of this ache a little less.  But aside from the tragedy - I'm so deeply glad, and truly grateful that he lived.  I'm grateful that he matters enough to miss, even though I never really knew the world with him in it.  I'm grateful for his ideas, and his weirdness, and his music.  Shine on, John Lennon.

• I love that it's a warm winter, and it scares the crap outta me.  It's ten days before my birthday.  The sense memories I have of my birthday for my whole life are of winter coats, chilly air, and Christmas lights in the snow.  It's a warm winter in Washington so far.  The air feels more like it should in mid-March...where the temps get into the 50's and even kiss 60 sometimes, and the breeze doesn't have a cold bite to it.  It's a scary sign of the state of climate change.  And - all that said, there's definitely a silver lining...it's been beautiful, and sunny and gentle.  I can wear a light jacket or vest, and flounce about with abandon.  I turned off my furnace and air conditioner, and am just letting my house settle it's old bones into the temperate air around us.  I'm grateful for the good part.  Or maybe I'm grateful that (at least for now), there is a good part.  

• Freud would have a lot to say about this.  Dr. Wiseguy is my long time therapist, counselor, touch stone, and maybe even friend.  I've seen him in good times and in bad for more than a decade, that saw the break up of important relationships, my parents divorce, changing jobs, ball cancer, and also some triumphs along the way.  I call him Wiseguy because his last name is Weissman, but also because I really do believe he is wise.  He's calm, and insightful, and I think he gets me.  But also, a friend of his from back in the day posted this picture of him from the 80's (he's the one with the beard and the bangin pecs), and he was hot as hell back in the day.  I'm grateful for Dr. Wiseguy, and I'm also grateful that being gay means you can have a therapist who looked like this and think it's totally hot and not be tied in knots about it (unless getting tied in knots is your thing, in which case Dr. Wiseguy would say as long as you're being safe, you should totally get tied in those knots).  Also, it's probably weird that I'm Facebook friends with my therapist, but I'm kinda grateful for that too, because I like it when stuff like this pops up, and I'm also always tickled when he likes something on my wall - it makes me feel validated by a professional and a friend.