Old Roads: Old Friends, Always Welcome

 

  What makes us go back to our enjoyments, our enthusiasms, if you will, of the past over and over again? Every time I use the word enthusiasms I am reminded of the movie The Untouchables with Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, and Robert De Niro. The scene where Al Capone has his capos around a table, making a speech. "A man becomes preeminent, he is expected to have enthusiasms, enthusiasms. What are mine? What draws my admiration? What is that which gives me joy? Baseball." 

Old Roads: Returning to the Books That Made Us

In You've Got Mail Meg Ryan is writing an email (via AOL, speaking of old roads. Though to be fair, the UI looks more like an IM than an email, but it's been decades and I could be wrong.) and she writes "So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn't it be the other way around?" It probably should be the other way around, but I know, for myself, that so much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, or saw in a movie.

Old Roads: Paths Though Memory.

 

Some films are favorites. Others become places we return to. For me, one of those places is the 1977 animated The Hobbit.

Music, Movies, and Memories, Oh my...

Music, who knew? Well, everyone, I suppose. Everyone but me, apparently, because this is one of those I was this many years old when I discovered it moments. 

Sometimes the Past is Past. (Or, How to Put Your Behind in the Past)

Sometimes, no matter how great the past was, it's the past and it's gone forever.

Back in the day (WAY back in the day) my high school had what would now laughably be called a computer lab. We had about 25 Atari 8-bit computers (a mix of 400 and 800 models) that we used to learn how to type, budget, write, program, and (though they didn't know it) play games. This isn't about those computers. I still have a working Atari 400 and a working Atari 800 (and countless other older computers) This is about the other thing in the lab. 

Coffee, Neurosis, and wit.

 

When I power-watch a TV series that I have already been through any number of times one of two things happens. Either I mostly ignore it, knowing exactly what is going to be said by whom and when, using it as background noise or filler. Or I pay extra attention to it wringing out new meanings, new details, and little in-jokes that I somehow missed the previous times through the show. 

Decision Making Paradigm re-evaluated.

 

So while I had hoped that I was done writing about friendships it turns out I am not. 

Time to re-evaluate my decision-making paradigm...

Rita Mae Brown, in her 1983 book "Sudden Death" wrote, "Unfortunately, Susan didn't remember what Jane Fulton once said, 'Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.'”