You've lived your life pretty much. No rational woman would desire you, all blotched and scarred with the sheen of youth dead history. An eccentric up the hill, but the bills get paid and no one is after you. It is tempting to believe you're sharp and sage, and not just dumb lucky.

I'll admit I have that white privilege, and it is real. If it weren't it wouldn't put such ants on those of a more pigmentally challenged state. Listen, I was just born. I recall nothing about picking and choosing. I was spat out into a total surprise, as we all are.

Lucky#1: No drugs. Pot was a rumor, and I never encountered it until my late teens, in the military. It was like The Red and The Black in the South, either the military or the pulpit, and I went military. Hit the grow up button. I cannot imagine encountering it as children do today in lower school. As my own Son did.

Lucky#2: Good Times. It was all growth of some kind, and if you were wanting to work you could for awhile there, though that slid now and then. Things came and went, but the center held and it seemed as though solidity existed. Work and bank. And bank.

That's it for the luck. Though the optimists crow about a surging economy, there are interior fault lines that have been coming apart in the retirement departments as those six figure pensions come into play. Out in the hinterlands. Out where magic is hard to sell. Things have a foggy aspect, and the Las Vegas shooter might as well be some photo-shop of a geezer in a pussy hat or Richard Simmons. Biggest massacre or message? Interesting times.

It is so very easy to fall into oblivion any day. Trip and fall on a whim, and study a body cast for a year or two. Income? Something you once had. It's risky just getting around, but you have to keep moving to keep the buzzards off. This might just be the beginning of an epoch for those who get lucky in these garbled days, and we're privileged to view it.

We leave no discernible trail, and our efforts are for us alone, and ours. And so we pass, unless you think there's more? Good luck with that.

C Demon