What doesn't kill me makes me stranger.

Heath Ledger as The Joker.

That may come as no surprise, or perhaps elicit a smile that I've finally realized what you've suspected all along.

I've always admired eccentrics - Einstein, for example, and Alexander Pope (18th C. Wit with Tourette's), and TV's rumpled sleuth, Lt. Columbo.

I'm among those who identify with slovenly genius and once romanticized about a world in which I am benignly and endearingly nonconformist.

But last week I went to work with two different shoes on. Now, I wasn't so feeble as to choose two left or two right shoes (I do have SOME marbles), but I did put on one left and one right from two different pair - both brown, same shade, but different pair nonetheless.

Top to bottom: 
 Peter Falk, 
 Einstein, 
Alexander Pope.

And I have a daily struggle getting my shirt buttons to match up. I get all the up to my neck and realize I am one button off and must start over.

And of course the other day, as you know, I tried to walk through a glass wall.

If I'm warm and comfortable, I don't care too much what I wear. And so long as I get enough to eat, what I eat doesn't matter. If my lawn is green, I don't mind if it's mostly weeds. Same with the roof over my head, the car I drive, etc.

I tell myself that I've programmed my brain to ignore trivial matters and focus on more important things. Perhaps.

Some things matter, matter very much. Faith, family, words, ideas, patience. 

Not in that order. Things that truly matter don't have an order any more than one part of a spiderweb matters more than another, or one leg of a milking stool, or one car tire, or one letter of the alphabet.

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The best Columbo, ever, IMHO: "Try And Catch Me" (October 1977), with Ruth Gordon.

This is the theme song that introduced the Columbo I grew up with:

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One among many of Pope's best-known works: An Essay on Man >.

Probably his most famous couplet, written as an epitaph for Sir Isaac Newton:

Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:

God said, "Let Newton be!" and all was light.

[2015-01-12]

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