Blog 78 Empathy for My Friend (Gary)

            It's August and the leaves are just starting to dry and fall this morning.  It's about 9:00 a.m., and the air is very cool and crisp.  We begin to see the fog that rolled over a distant mountain range from the coast.  It's refreshing, and a reminder that summer is waning: a time of change, another transition.

            We are like the environment in which we live.  This is why man has survived for so many thousands of years, because we adapt so well.  However, as we get older it becomes harder and harder to adapt.

            Today we start out fast.  Mark is not talking.  Usually he talks, and I fill in the blank spots here and there.  Today Mark is silent.  This is a first.    

            We make it to The Tree in a great time.  A time we haven't hit in a couple years: fifty-six minutes and forty-four seconds.  I know my best ever time was fifty-six-something.  Today was good.  We are cleansed again and we turn back down The Hill.

            Last night we went to see his new house, which is a down-size from his more upscale neighborhood, but it's a cute house in a quaint neighborhood.  His wife is sick from what I call “executive toxic smelt.”  The corporate world can begin to smell, and the person affected by it perceives that smell.  She melded into it, and it’s making her sick.  Like putting metal in a forge.  I remember that from high school, and the welding of pipe when I worked for the gas utility.  There are toxic fumes that come from the intensely heated metal.  Spend enough time in the heat and you become one with it, or smelt.  Melt and mold into another shape.  However, some can't mold; they just burn up or out.  The cultural changes that have to be made by the individual have become repulsive.

            Mark is also looking for a job now that he has his PhD.  He has another obstacle: finding a job to fulfill his hours for licensing.  He is preparing one house to sell, buying another house and planning its refurbishment, has a smelted wife, and no job.  Add the usual man-woman relationship stuff in your late 50s, and aw shit.  It's a truck full.  I feel for him.  He's my brother and we walk, just walk together.  Our pace is not only quick, but also like two men marching.  We are a machine: two wheels on a two-wheel tractor, if there was such a thing, climbing The Hill. 

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