The Good Life

Dear Eugene,

Don't you agree even if born under the most inauspicious skies a person would still strive for a better tomorrow, a brighter future, some impossible ideals?

Oh, the good life, full of fun seems to be the ideal
Mm, the good life lets you hide all the sadness you feel
You won't really fall in love for you can't take the chance
So please be honest with yourself, don't try to fake romance

I love this Sacha Distel song, popularized by, of course, Tony Bennett.  There is a touch of irony in every turn of phrase.

And I love how Bennett sings it, how the sadness oozes out of a wound of broken dreams with the triple unmitigated, inconsolable up-and-downs (of-fun, to-be, i-deal), a fatalism pervasive and powerful but you aren't quite ready yet to make up your mind and let it kill you.

I was the one who said I will never let a dog roam in my house.  Yet having loved my own Sumi that is in this world, I would love her unto the end.

There used to be an ideal when my kids made the pledge to walk Sumi with me every morning up the hill, and that's the condition on which the overcoming of my reluctance to, even disdain for living with a beast, was built.

And for months it was like a Thomas Kinkade painting, Yes, that the three of us would walk up the hill, on our way everyday greeting two lady neighbors who had newly embarked on an idealism of their own to jog in the morning together for health and friendship.

Then slowly and surely the painting lost its color and the thing just died without a sound.  I didn't care to give it a proper autopsy.  Who can stop a drop of vapor and question where it's heading?  Maybe it was a paper-moon to begin with, something meant only for the make-believe.  Now I couldn't recall if the kids were genuinely happy waking up early for Sumi, or I forced the painting to emit a certain light.

Romantic Realist, that's what I like to call myself, the Ralph Fiennes character in "The English Patient," one of my favorite movies based on one of my favorite novels.  The director Anthony Minghella died very young, he too a Romantic Realist.

(I don't know where I am going with this piece.  I am setting it up sky-high to fall flat on its face.)

My lady neighbors aren't jogging any more, stopped at around the same time I became the lone human with a beast.  But even now whenever walked by one of the ladies' house, Sumi would stop and look into her window, longing for an exuberant greeting that once was.

Have a most blessed Wednesday...somewhere up the hill, I suppose?

Yours, Alex