Yeah. What she said:

I wrote an email to K* in Japan last night:

"All these years, I have thought that we met in August, but looking at my old Nothing Book, I see it was actually September when you passed through California.  31 years ago.  My Nothing Book says that I met the woman I was going to marry, so I saw a future there – one that has worked out much differently than I thought… but we are still "together", in a way, so I was sort of right about some of it ^,.^ "

She said:

 "Wrong date, but not a wrong choice, eh?

31 years is not too bad.(^-^) "
 
***
 
I think it’s all in your perspective.
 
***
Perspective is everything.  Yeah, bad things happened 35 years ago; my parents died and my brother and I got fucked around and blah blah blah.
So what.  That was then, this is now and "now" is far more important than "then".  Once it’s past, you can’t do anything about it.
 
(well, you can tell it different, but the facts never change, unless you lie, and then it’s not true and did not happen)
 
It is a sunny day, this first day of Fall, a beautiful day.  I have a place to live, my very own space all to myself.  I have this computer that I get a LOT of use out of. I walk out on the balcony (it is silent most of the time) and I can hang out and enjoy the sun, and since I’m on the top floor of the tallest building around, I don’t have to worry about it much and can get the full body vitamin D exposure. No glaring tan-lines here.
 
I look down and see the black car I love, that I have managed to keep – it is sort of "bad" that almost all of my scant resources got to keeping "a car" – I would feel really dumb if it was one of those three Volvos I had – nice, good cars when they are new (and none of them were anywhere near new)  but expensive to fix, and that was a colossal waste of money (that is why I bought a NEW CAR – enough with all those pos used cars).  I KNOW I can go down down there, get in the car, turn the key, and go anywhere – cross fucking country if I want to and can afford the gas.  Black Cali turned over the 50,000th mile last week.  I don’t have to worry "what’s gonna break next".
 
Perspective.  I have a studio apartment all to myself – I have a home.  I don’t have much but I don’t need much.  I have food and can get more.  I have coffee and can go out on my balcony, stretch and enjoy it and enjoy another day HERE.  When I was in the coma there was no "here", no "I", no "me", no nothing.  No time, no consciousness of being me, no joy, no sorrow, nothing.
 
I have something awake and alive and while it may not be exactly what I want (do you KNOW what you want, Cat?) it is enough to live on and to live well.  My brother, who was homeless for an unknown (to me) length of time, down and fucking out and way worse off than I’ve ever been, said to me the other day, "we are rich.  Compared to almost all of the people on the planet right now, we are in the top ten percent".  I don’t think he spends much time thinking about the hundred thousand plus that was "stolen" from us, that someone else mismanaged into oblivion, that we didn’t get to lose ourselves.  He’s probably smarter than me.
 
I was married for 11 and a half years.  I got exactly what I wanted – see that line from my Nothing Book, the diary or journal I kept as a teenager/ young 20’s guy.  We have been divorced since 1995, but both of those are just pieces of paper, the wedding  and the divorce, and we are still something to each other and probably always will be.  That’s something to be happy about, to be proud of.  We have been divorced longer than we were married, and so what – we are still friends.  Haven’t been lovers since 1994, but we are still friends.
 
She says we do vacations together really well – it’s the Daily Life thing we sucked at.  She doesn’t hate me; her family doesn’t hate me; I don’t hate her.  It could be worse.
 
It could be worse.  Perspective is everything.  "Wrong date but not a wrong choice, eh?"
 
It’s a sunny fall day today, but even if it was raining and bleak and totally fucked for weather, it’s still a good day.
 
Yeah. What she said.
 
And, you know this is coming, right?
 
Onwards.

*****