Gaiman could sneeze on a blank sheet of paper and come up with better material than I ever will.

No doubt you’ve heard the legend of the Wandering Jew, who was condemned by God to eternal life. The legend is the basis for Mel Brooks’ Two Thousand Year Old Man.

I don’t know if I agree with this, but it does not seem unreasonable. The young take awful chances, and it seems in societies where death is easy (like in our own unhygienic and pre-medical past) people do very risky things to achieve fame, glory, wealth, etc before they die of some simple infection we can defeat routinely. It’s like people say, “Well I’m probably going to die soon anyway, so I might as well go for this.”

BTW, I’m not from ancient Greece, but that “this too shall pass” attitude has a lot to recommend it. I’m trying to put myself in that place. The question is, how well does it hold up to hard times, when everything suddenly becomes a question of assholes and elbows? It’s easy to be serene and philosophical when you’re comfortable and nothing hurts.

The good old days were good because it was a young person who was living in them.

Is this a simple physical process? Is it more about the naivete versus the experience? Does cynicism grow on you along with the normal survival tools?

You know, if anyone ever does live to be 300 years old in the future, we would learn a lot by what their eventual attitudes turned out to be. I couldn’t even guess.

I watched a TV show once based on the movie “Highlander.” In the series (I never saw more than a few shows) there are apparently more immortals than you can shake a stick at. But most are in their hundreds, and lucky to make that since they seem to be in the habit of killing each other off (how’s THAT for an evolutionary dead end?). But there’s was a guy in this show from ancient Greece or something who was thousands of years old. A more laid-back view of life you’d never seen. I guess when you’ve lived that long you might realize that “this too shall pass” applies to almost everything.

Don’t build in a flood zone.

I remember reading Michener’s “Chesapeake” years ago. Forgot everything about the book except for a few things about punt guns, and a sequence at the beginning that made an impression. An Indian is examining an island as a possible place to settle, but realizes that it is slowly being worn away inch by inch by the currents, and will be gone in a couple of hundred years. The location is discarded. That’s forward thinking.

Every empire has hard times after it peaks. It doesn’t necessarily mean catastrophe, and it isn’t even the end of the world. After all, England in the 60s was an exciting place to be. They saved America’s black Blues from oblivion and gave us the Beatles in return for our Elvis. They were the Greece to our Rome. And they are still around today, and they are still a player. It’s just that the sun no longer rises and sets on their royal ass.

I remember the 60s when we were beset by racial unrest from blacks and race riots from whites, student revolt, Vietnam, hardhat reactionaries and profound social changes. For the old farts reading the news to us, it was the end of the world. For me and my contemporaries, “there was music in the cafes at night and revolution in the air”.

It was a very optimistic time for young people. Shit, I was the first person in my family to ever go to college! We were at war with poverty and racism and militarism and we were going to conquer the solar system, maybe within my lifetime!

So what did the 70s bring us? The peak of American power and prosperity? Watergate, Disco, Afros, Leisure Suits and Jimmy Carter.

And of course, I prospered like crazy during that time. But of course, I was in my 20s. If you can’t thrive in your 20s, regardless of the times, you are a sad case indeed.

A girl named Logan in a more optimistic time.

Being empathic doesn’t help. I am surrounded by denny downers here on the home front.

Still sucks.