The pink bloom of a Petunia stands at attention in the flower pot beside my outdoor writing desk.
A yellow sun plays hide and seek behind white wisps of stringy clouds.
A few trees sadly stand naked of leaves and overshadowed by the evergreens.
Bare feet dangle from the chair draped with a red "Club Orient" beach towel hiding ugly cushions raising me to the proper height to stare at the computer screen streaming "Alice Cooper."
Wearing only black running shorts, I'm trying to catch rays on the second day of January.
I know ... it's a dichotomy.
So was the year.
While I worked with the dying, Sarah and I were given new life with our baby girl, Che.
The world lost many I came to love but it gained too with her birth and babies born to our friends.
Back inside the work environment I was a stranger in a strange land in a corporate world focused on profits at the expense of loyalty and employee well being, forever demanding more be done with less ... which, of course, makes no sense.
Slowly killing myself, I lived to drink and in excess drank to live and it almost cost me the very things I'm living for.
Having believed the creedo "the more you give the more that is given to you," I've learned the more you give ... the more they take ... though certainly there are nice exceptions fooling me into again adhering to the creedo.
Accustomed to being in control, I'm now accepting how little I have.
The old year died leaving me saddled with these things and the new one's begun with me intensely watching lemons drop to the ground on a beautiful day that will not last the winter.
