Re-Entry

It seems I am an anomaly.  After having girlfriends almost my entire life, I landed at age fifty-two living with my mother.  I have no children.  I have no wife.  It is uncanny.  I do not know how I ended up in such a state.  Certainly such a situation demands acclimation.  I have come to realize that the majority of adjustment are in environment.  The last time I lived in this particular home was when I was in high school.  It is difficult to look back.  Why would one want to look back over thirty years at one's life then?  Surely after one has lived half a century the soul searching should be completed.  That is what is unique about my situation.  As an adult, a mature adult although often I do not feel mature, I am back living in a similar environment to one while I was attended high school.  There are several major differences.  The most conspicuous are the absence of half of my immediate family.  Because I do not have a wife or children I am speaking of my immediate family.  This consists of my mother, my father, and my sister.  I am living with my mother because my father at age eighty-six needs the care of a nursing home.  He is lucid, but living in a two story home was not an option for either my mother or me.  His move also took some acclimation, but it happened on his part.  No longer does he want to come "home."  Well, not that often.  That acclimation on my part is far from complete, and there is a simple reason for it.  The majority of time I lived in this house, the four year period I attended high school, I was a child.  This home was purchased by my parents, furnished by my parents, and run by my parents.  This provided a certain cushion for my existence.  Never did I have to bond with the house.  My life was focused on my education and more importantly for me my personal life with my girlfriend.  While living here now I have neither.  I have a much broader and far reaching education, and I have had many girlfriends.  Trying to rewrite my own history with this house almost is impossible, but I keep trying.  There only is so much you can do to modernize your environment before it instructs you you have gone to far.  Then I retrace my steps, undo changes I have made, and proceed.  I think once again I am teetering on this brink.  It is difficult to live in a foreign environment, so it is normal to try to make friends.  As in my case this not always is possible.  Some things just can't be changed.  One of them is Fayetteville, North Carolina.  While many things drastically are different here such as the level of education and its inhabitants, the core of Fayetteville remains steadfast.  The same populace that has controlled Fayetteville staunchly sits on top of their old money controlling its purse strings.  There is little room for diversity.  Instead their is a glorification of the military.  In reality this glorification really is just brown nosing.  The old money of Fayetteville has come from the military, and to keep it it requires constant tending.  It gets old, this tending of the military.  There are other things in life.  There are things other than learning how to kill.  There are things other than learning how to be a soldier.  There are things other than the 82nd Airborne.  There are things other than air traffic, rapid troop mobilization, and wars.  During the late l970's the war in Viet Nam had come to a close.  Richard M. Nixon after a long ten year war, decided it was time to stop fighting.  American troops exited Viet Nam and returned to the U.S.  After living through the Viet Nam war during my childhood and a violent junior high school, the peaceful years of Ronald Reagan were welcome.  Probably they and my college years may have been the best years of my life.  Certainly they were the most fun.  We now live in a different time.  Generation X has moved aside and we have a new youthful generation.  Only can I think they must be called Generation 9/11.  As I really begin to pay attention to what is happening in America after twelve years abroad, it is startling.  It is crystal clear what this generation has seen and experienced.  They sexually are ambiguous.  It no longer seems to matter which gender they are.  I am not sure this is what God intended.   What is most striking is their deserved mediocrity.  I see reality show after reality show, and I see shows that must be produced by this newer generation.  They seem to demand an adherence to their own mediocrity.  It is a kind of selfishness that only could some from miseducation.  When one is ignorant one only can demand that the rest of the world be like you, ignorant.  There no longer seems to be a model of success and not financial success.  There no longer seems to be a model of "celebrity."  There no longer is a model of "movie star."  The quality that seems to have existed in American Hollywood since its inception has grown extinct.  Maybe it is an anachronism.  Maybe with global terrorism and extreme Islam the glamor of Hollywood no longer is relevant.  Still there was and is something underneath the glamor of Hollywood.  There was an artistry and sophistication.  There was a class and education that existed much as it has throughout the world's history.  Whether it was in courts of Europe, the studios of Hollywood, or the performing stages of universities a better more artistic life existed.  Slowly we are seeing the extinction of such a thing.  Is it fair that the ignorant demand all mankind regress to their mediocre level?  It is happening, and reality television is not helping.  We in America have become a generation of brown nosers.  We canvass the vote, and then we tend it for our own selfish good.  It truly is a shite state of affairs.