The three songs are the audition of Kevin Skinner singing IF TOMORROW NEVER COMES, MR. CURIOSITY, ONE HEADLIGHT.

IF TOMORROW NEVER COMES has two meanings.  That a person can come out of nowhere and express a talent is the obvious to me.  The other message is that you need to say and feel what you need to say and fell while you have the opportunity.  I actually feel like I have that covered.  The loss of two wives to death has left me with the hope that I did just what the song said.  From here on I will continue that idea but unfortunately my fear prevents me from even finding someone to feel that way about.

MR. CURIOSITY gives me hope.  The person who gave me that song is on mind daily.  Something she said chews at me and it spell checks me.  Still there is a peaceful that overcomes me when I listen to it.

ONE HEADLIGHT brings me to tears.  That song is the story of me and Sandra.  Her death haunts me and so much of me is wrapped in that song.  My saving feeling is that my life is meaningless and my life life.  No one will ever know the struggles, the successes, the joys, the tears but me.  This song runs those things through my picture player.

The music takes me to a place where words don’t work.  It is a feeling, a sense, a time.  It feels like it wants to be expressed.  Maybe that’s why I write.

THIS IS PART OF THE 30 DAY WRITING CHALLENGE

My first doctoral dissertation chairman was Dr. Albert AX.  He did the famous fear and anger studies back in the late 1930s.  So the definition of fear to me is most likely different than most.  Fear is commonly defined as an unpleasant feeling in the presence of danger.  This is a step advanced from anxiety which is the a similar feeling with no present danger or another definition where there is imagined danger..

This writing prompt allows me to understand something about myself.  As a baseball player I learned to control my fear. Iin a batter’s box with a 9 in sphere coming at you at 95 mph has risk but the fear is in not hitting it as that was what I got paid for.  Once I mastered hitting the ball I saw it as a challenge.  So I learned to alter my perception from fear to challenge.

So for me to have a fear I would need a significant change in blood pressure and pulse rate and the autonomic response of perspiring.  Don’t misunderstand me, if I was being held in an ISIS camp I would have FEAR, worse if you dropped me in South Chicago.  But as those are only anxieties because I keep away from those places I do not consider them fears.

The one fear, at least I classify it a fear, is fear of rejection from a woman of interest.  I have many female friends and they, by nature, can be fairly judgmental and outright nasty.  Because I have no romantic interest — no problem –fire away.  But I avoid women who I am attracted to because of fear.  I get all the physical signs.

So my technique avoids anxiety and fear.  I am surely alone, but fearless.  Since I avoid fear enhancing situations I have few fears.  I fear bugs as they are a number one killer of people.  I don’t fear death but I am not running to it and certainly don’t want to be felled by a bug– an insect.  So I live in the mountains where they don’t thrive.

I don’t fear the inevitable.  I don’t fear my dog dying but I do keep him on a leash so he decides to not look both ways.  This is a precaution that allays anxiety and fear.  Some people can’t trust their safeguards and worry about things that could happen.  This is where years of failure (experience) comes to bear.

Bottom line, I have so many things I can be anxious about and can even advance them to real fear but I choose not to do so.  Thirty one years of forensic neuropsychology and treating anxiety has given me skills that are resistant  to fear.

Now if I could only talk to her.

This writing prompt points out a deficit of mine.  Maybe it’s a strength.  But since I can remember, colors, clothes. design, art  has never grabbed me, at least like I see how others react to it.

I would get annoyed when someone asked me to help them make a decision on color coordination.  It seemed worse when they gave me a choice of two and I oickedd one and then they slammed my choice.  (came to learn that to be a female trick to see how far she could push you).  Since I was the only boy in the family (cousins included) I had to color coordinate, dance, sing, sew, cook and a host of other unmanly things.

I realize now, today, the appeal of my two deceased wives.  They were like me.  They did not care about these things.  As a psychologist, I had a patient who complained about how different his wife was on the issue of color and preference.  He agreed with his wife that he would go out and make money so she could stay home with his daughters and figure out wall colors and occasionally buy shoes to break the monotony.  He reached a limit when he found out that after they figured the color scheme, he had to go buy the paint and then paint the walls.  The whole time he said they complained that he was painting it wrong.  The family eventually settled on irreconcilable differences.

The constant exposure to the feminine arts slowly had an affect on me.  I admire men who dress nicely.  I know good fabric and good fit albeit I do not practice it.  But one day I saw a woman with horizontal black and white stripes on the blouse with vettical black and white on the bottom.  I honestly thought there had been a jail break.  She was rather curvaceous and the stripes were going in various directions.  I knew this to be a fashion faux pas,

I have two Cuban women in separate apartments next to me.  They are sweet gals and funny.  They also have the two biggest asses in the neighborhood.  When they walk in the huge park next to the house they look like hippos grazing on the Serengeti. They tend to wear very bright colors like canary yellow or burnt orange or brilliant white.  Need I say they look like they have a map of Russia dragging behind them.  Then one day they wore brown pants and the map shrunk to the size of Portugal.  So the years of hearing “does this color make my ass look big”  now made sense.

So my favorite color is blue.  I don’t know why but I figure I have blue eyes which I seldom see but people remark about them, (“blue eyed bastard” “keep away from my daughter you blue eyed freak”)  I’m working on changing my image.

I have learned patience and acceptance using two quotes.

The first is an olde english quote, “It be an ille winde that blows no one no goode”

I recently mentioned this quote in a writing group and the writers pounced on me for my poor grammar.  I defended myself by citing the original verse.  I went home and looked it up as I had done previously and all the grammar had been updated.  The saying now says” It’s an ill wind that blows no one (any) good.”

I had the same issue with the pronunciation of OXYMORON.  The original pronunciation was with the accent on the first syllable but the usage has changed.

So back to my original quote that basically says if a hurricane destroys homes the construction people find jobs.  Another way is to say every cloud has a silver lining.

As often as I use those quotes the one that I use the most is my mother’s.  “The purpose of any conversation is for the other to speak.  So keep your mouth shut.”

I have mastered that saying.  I give the illusion that I gossip but in fact I pretend to gossip to learn information.    As a psychologist I had to learn to keep things to myself and I might say much to my detriment.

I have painted a persona that allows me easy entry into another person’s world.  The whole time I have only given the false belief of what I claim or what you wish to believe.  Sounds devious but it is very open.  Sometimes I feel bad that people believe these things that I allow, but many see past the veneer.  I have one friend who does not and she actually believes that things she says.  This allows me the opportunity to weigh statements by giving information to her that she interprets that others see differently.  This difference is important to me.

My two quotes may seem trite but when added with others as the situation arises I figure things out.

• Lay in bed and remember you are retired
• Anything you do is a plus
• After toiletries COMB hair
• Give Faulkner the coyote a hug
• Feed Faulkner
• Brew coffee
• Take Faulkner for river walk
• Return, change do yoga
• 2 cups of chocolate coffee wuth Chips Ahoy cookies
• Check Emails
• See of US started another war
• Write daily challenge
• Read Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant for book club
• Go to YouTube watch a Scrivener tutorial for upcoming workshop
• Head to 12 Chairs writer’s group
• Call Monica to meet at dinner
• Tutto Matto for dinner and social
• Buy 8 pounds of dog food at Mercado
• bus home
• Take Faulkner on walk to his girlfriend
• Return and write 1700 words in YA Nanowrimo challenge
• If time watch Netflix
• Jim Rollins novel, notes to self about story ideas
• bed and recap the day