we just returned from our annual holiday at the beach.  still beach-lagged & trying to adjust to real time.  shaking the sand from my hair.  looking at the long end of wearing pants instead of shorts.  i think of something my man thom gunn said, in his autobiographical essay 'my life up to now' [the occasions of poetry: essays in criticism & autobiography (the university of michigan press; 1982)], when speaking of gunn's own holidays taken at The Geysers, in sonoma county, in the early 1970s,

what is the point of  a holiday if we cannot carry it back to our working days?  there is no good reason why that hedonistic and communal love of The Geysers could not be extended into the working life of the towns.  unless it is that human beings contain in their emotions a homeostatic device by which they must defeat themselves just as they are learning their freedom.

gunn approaches his own hedonism & communal love with a steely eye toward the hard fact that human beings will sabotage their own selves.  i've quoted this passage made by one of my favorite poets because i agree with thom gunn.  as i have told anyone within earshot who will listen to the idiocies of an obscure but happy poet - me - that there is no ice cream in heaven.  nor hell.  eat it while you can.

yes we must remain ethical & practice kindness.  having a job might get in the way of the visions of art but working & work life are necessary to keeping our civilization going.  the art of living is another way of practicing that communal love & hedonism into 'the working life of the towns.'

at any rate, i love travel.  i love being at home.  i am pretty good at a mild form of hedonism.  but i am pretty good at defeating myself as i do the things that need to be done without taking any pleasure in them.  i blame myself for it.  because on the surface i am normally cheerful & dumb.  hey!  that would make a nice epitaph!

here lies the poet richard lopez: happy & dumb

put that on my tombstone!