Listing

It is here again, the twelfth month, a time to wrap up the year listing; the verb, not the noun. The only list I’m feeling right now is the disequilibrium, the tilt of this country going down in a ship wreck. But enough about Trump.

The other kind of list enumerating the ten best or ten worst is altogether out of my reach. The last list I made out was a shopping list (Chopin Liszt). I doubt I can remember ten movies, thumbs up, down or horizontal. What I do remember turns out to have happened three or four years ago; or never. Let me see how many adjectives I can name which describe my feelings about lists; grouchy, irascible, cantankerous and crotchety.

I am particularly opposed to ranking artists, actors or athletes. All arbitrary and absolute. It is too hierarchical. Give them all a hand. Come up here and take a bow. As for the worst politicians, they are all tied for first place.

I take my cue from Gilbert and Sullivan. I’ve got a little list, and they’d none of them be missed, they’d none of them be missed. The sycophants and bullies, the lackeys and the cronies and all those who turn a deaf ear to his malfeasance.

Award ceremonies are an exercise in hyperbole. After alI, I don’t rank my friends and I have no enemies I’m aware of (just a lot of folks who regard me with profound indifference). Did Beethoven and Mozart compete or was Wolfgang still dead at Ludwig’s peak? Did Picasso and Matisse have food fights? De Niro and Pacino? Billie and Ella? Hammacher and Schlemmer?

If it isn’t lists it is those year-end letters summarizing life’s slings & arrows along with new riches, travels or benedictions. Along these lines I can attest that the dog I don’t have didn’t die. Once again, I did not win the lottery. Next year I may even buy a ticket. I did visit my daughter in her new digs on Bainbridge Is. Otherwise, my notable trips delivered me from the bedroom to the kitchen and a happy return. My three daughters continue on their life journeys beset with my imperfect DNA. Sorry girls.

The travel I look forward to is a transport from this realm to a transcendent elsewhere accomplished through love of family and friends.