Since no one knows how much he was taking before he died, no one can tell what a fatal dose would be.

Hence, “inconclusive”.

The problem with it is that one becomes habituated quite rapidly, and it takes more and more and more to achieve the same high. Most addicts are simply trying to “get well”, having given up on the high. It starts taking a lot of it to just feel normal.

Grim.

They look as if they belong at a Nuremberg rally in the late ’30s, goose-stepping their way along in front of a reviewing stand.

Oh sure, times changed. The King might die and a new one succeed him, or there might be a war, or a plague, or an earthquake or flood; a good harvest or a bad one. But the world essentially remained unchanged. The trade you learned from your father was the same one you taught to your children.

A world where people live in a different culture than than the one their parents were brought up in is relatively new, and a social universe where the old cannot speak meaningfully to the young because their formative experience is totally alien is something we have never experienced before.

Oh sure, you can repeat platitudes like “change is nothing new”, or “old people are always complaining about the younger generation”. But you and I have lived long enough to know the world HAS changed, we’ve seen it change profoundly in just our own lifetimes. People now talk differently, act differently, think differently than they did when I was a young man. And if you take a sabbatical of a few years you run the risk of even losing your profession.

Those who have convinced themselves that “the more things change the more they remain the same”, obviously haven’t lived long enough, or they haven’t been paying attention.

However, as pragmatic as I am, I marvel at life’s blindsides. I find myself *literally* telling myself…*does this affect me?*

Sadly, being an INFP according to Briggs Meyer personality test and living with this brain for 59 years…everything leaves an image with me. I just move on more quickly.

They found 50 bags of heroin in his apartment.

As strange as this will seem…I sensed he was hiding a secret when I would observe him…not listen to him…watch him.

Exactly where I have been lately.

Things change so fast that the world around us feels strange and unexpected, even though we have grown into it naturally. I used to see that same level of disorientation and confusion in my grandfather. He was intelligent, educated, vastly experienced and very wise, but he saw the world around him slipping away into incomprehensibility, not because he was unable to keep up with it, but because no one is able to keep up with it.

The very young don’t see this because they haven’t lived long enough to see any change happen. They seem so at ease with the present, but I fear that they will soon become disoriented too, and even faster than we were.

It’s not as if we’ve forgotten, we never knew.

At one time I thought of the Academy Awards as a measure of excellence, an acknowledgement of superior accomplishment. I gradually came to think of them as simply self-promotion for the industry, with the award basically an economic and political function. There seem to be awards of one type or another every other week. I do believe that many Academy Award winners are superior actors, actresses and movies, but are they be best? Maybe, but I doubt it. Consequently I haven’t paid attention to it.

More and more of life has become that. A car is not a measure of worth or stature, it is a way to get from here to there. Period. A house is shelter, warmth, a place to work and relax. It is not prestige, and those that are used for that have wasted a lot of money. One can only occupy so much space at one time.

We used to call that “culture shock”, returning to a nation which had inexplicably changed. Only now it’s a change of individual focus, what’s worth devoting a limited consciousness to and what isn’t. Life get’s narrower as one’s perspective gets broader.

It’s an interesting trip.