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The Perfect World

Yesterday, the last of winter's snow melted in our yard.
Today, we are under threat of a tornado.
Tomorrow, out taxes will be filed.

Yesterday, I raked winter's tree waste from the yard.
Today, we put out some pansies, and bird feeders.
Tomorrow, I will try to find where the feeders went in the wind.

On another planet, Bert said his friends had rented a condo in Ft. Myers for the summer.  "Another summer spent inside the house," Dick replied.

The Twins are playing in their first home series.  It might be one of the best new baseball stadiums--in downtown Minneapolis--with two superb Irish bars a short walk away.  So far, the Twins have scored 3/4 of a run--not in the game:  all season.  At Kierans and The Local, there are losers, but the scoring is sky high.

Born in Tacoma, I didn't know there was a sun until I was twelve.
In Berkeley, summers were fog.
The heat snapped all the window frames in my car in Phoenix.
I wore woolen underwear all summer in Alaska.
There were times, in Norway, when the sun never rose.










But there were days, in Norway, when the sun never set.
I played baseball three days a week, year around, in Tucson.
Was ever a day more glorious than a summer ferry ride in Puget Sound?
No one knows what "green" means, who has not been to Iowa,
or what a fine day is, who has not walked a lake in Minneapolis.

Everywhere there are beautiful places, and dismal days, too.

And more than fog and sun and snow, there are restaurants and coffee shops and rivers.  There are attitudes, and kind neighbors, and good groceries.  There are museums, and diversity galore, and good schools.  There are streams and stones and songs and the stone arch bridge.

A good life is a jig-saw puzzle of possibilities that can be put together in a thousand ways.  There has never been a perfect picture, but almost always, there is both loveliness, and occasional despair.

For most of us ordinary mortals, it is economic fantasy to pretend that someday we shall have a house for each season:  one where we were born, one warm, another where we would like to play, and a condo in the city.  Those are the fantasies we have been taught by the people who use our wages to pay for their houses, and by politicians who recite the Preamble to the Constitution because they want our votes, and by ourselves, because we believe there are perfect places, and perfect times, and lots of Gardens of Eden.

"Have you heard about the man who was looking for the perfect woman, and who found her?  But she was looking for the perfect man."

That is how many of us get through life:  pretending.  Maybe a lottery ticket.

Personally, I believe we are very near to achieving a perfect world, because my new gout medicine works really well.

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