remembertheplunge

[remembertheplunge]

I love reading your blog. I've been following you for a while, and I don't have many chances to speak with older gay men IRL. For a long time, I didn't feel like there was a future for me past 25 or 30. Your blog helps me to feel like I actually have a full life ahead of me, like I can actually grow old someday.

I was just just over 3 months old when you wrote in August 2001. Now we get to share space with each other in the gay community. How cool is that?

Wishing you the best. Thanks for everything.

You are right! We are sharing this "now" together. And, that is exciting. Yes, there is a great life ahead of you! Just go with what wants to happen. And, as much possible, do life your way. The older I get, the better life seems to get. I'm glad that you love reading my blog! I love reading my past journal entries and working them into a blog posting. Wishing you the best as well.

[remembertheplunge]

Please see transcription in following 6/24/25 blog

[remembertheplunge]

A place where there is time to think

8/8/2001I’m free to climb down from—

Fall off of—

Get away from—

The ladder of success.

To a place where there is time to think.

Age 46 is the era of burning ash—

To begin to savor the life lived.

At 46 the harvest begins.

The antidote to anachronism in your own life is to notice, be, don’t join groups, Don’t watch TV.

End of entry

Notes 6/24/2025

(An anachronism is something or a way of acting  in the present that is of a former time.  Example is writing a letter instead of sending an e mail. Or making a phone call from a rotary dial land line phone instead of from an I phone).

I wrote the  above antidote to anachronism when I was 46 in 2001. 

I’m now 70. At 70, I am a living anachronism! I don’t want an antidote to it. But, more than that , I have come to realize that I am a pool of consciousness in our common “now”. We are all actually the same age in our common “now”. “Now” actually has an ageless feel to it. 

Please see original 8/8/2001 journal entry in the preceding 6/24/2025 blog which includes the above transcriptions.

[remembertheplunge]

Life is all tonight

From my 2001 journal

[remembertheplunge]

Dancing on Eternity's edge

December 18, 2016 Sunday 2;29am

The combination of having egg nog at Empresso’s Coffee House in Stockton and eating chicken (started a fire in the living room fireplace and baked a chicken last night) and having peanut butter before bed has me up now!

In the night, clocks tick, the refrigerator rumbles and the heater just shut off.

Before waking up, I was having interesting, powerful dreams. Pretty much a good feel to them. Unsure now of their content.

If I had a TV, I might turn it on now just to see what was playing at the crest of a week. Since I don’t have a TV, I’ll be content with quiet edited by the clock’s tick.

TV drowns out contemplation.

It provides meaning.

It becomes meaning.

Without it, meaning arrises of it’s own accord.

What colored the day of December 17 was Cidy’s struggle over her husband’s death.

She spoke of the “Golden Hour”, a time in which one heart treatment or another can be used for a dying heart.

They let her try to save her husband for 49 minutes. He died.

She thrashes with that reality. Her card indicates she works in some area of cancer healing “to keep John’s dream alive”.Gotta save someone when she couldn’t save her husband.

I told her that her conversation with her husband would go on and that their relationship would improve.

In our conversation, we were dancing on eternity’s edge.

 She said that the key to life is to dance.

 She also said that she’s always been happy somewhere in herself and that she’s always been the same , but has broadened.

I met Cindy earlier today  at a yard sale. Her husband died of cancer in January.

[remembertheplunge]

Frameline Gay Film festival at the Roxie theater in San Fransisco, California.

I saw I think 6 short films there yesterday. One of the “Autoerotica” was about my friend Patrick Batt who owns Autoerotica on 18th near Castro. He gave me a ticket to see the show. The movie emphasizes that, although it sells gay nude magazines, they also include a rich recounting of gay history.

The other films were gay related, profound and insightful. When one film ended the next film started.

I took a photo included above of the film makers on stage at the end of the show for Qand A.

The film festival is being promoted on the Castro Theater markee.

The framed poster hung in the Roxie bathroom.

[remembertheplunge]

[remembertheplunge]

The pandemic’s patina of devastation and bareness cast across the land

9/22/2020

[remembertheplunge]

I meant to include this journal entry along with the Castro mask blog which I accidentally posted twice.

I posted the blogs from the Anchor Oyster Bar on the Castro in San Fransisco. It has great food, but you are crowded in and in the middle of the service action which threw my blogging off course! Sorry for the screw up!

[remembertheplunge]

Mask-arading in my 2020 journal!

[remembertheplunge]

Yes!

[remembertheplunge]

The Loving story catches the tenor and the times of present day 2025 America. Christian Nationalists want to send us back to 1958 white only family values.

[remembertheplunge]

Thank you Mr. Buttigieg for having the courage to confront the Right with the awful facts of what they did to Senator Padilla.

Pete Buttigieg calls out Trump admin for assaulting Sen. Padilla

[remembertheplunge]

Following is part of my journal entry for 11/3/2024

11/3/24. Sunday 8:47pm

Not a bad Sunday, really.

Shrouded in the pall of the election. Motivated me to post a "Rage on the Page" anti Christian Right and Trump blog. Got 15 likes including 2 reblogs.

The blog was motivated by a show on KPFA free speech radio in which a program guest said "things are getting scary out there election wise."

My blog was a drop in the wheel barrow. But, it got reblogged into '59's blog which is full of anti Republican blogs. Anti Trump/pro Harris.

I like how in my blog today I'm encouraging them to write their way through this massive election experience.

Use it! This is monumental. record it. Comment on it. Preserve your first impressions. And, preserve your guess as to what is and as to what it means.

It will help you to plan future strategies.

Rage on the page

11/03/2024 Sunday 12:50am

We are in that weird 2 hour time in which it’s really 11:50pm on 11/2.2024, but until 2am it’s masquerading as 12:50am.

Day light savings time begins at 2am. 

We fall back an hour.

Kind of matches the weird political state we are in in the United States. When the calendar strikes November 6, 2024,  the Christian Right wants it to read 1950-1954, the McCarthy era on steroids. They want Trump to be President' so he can be  dictator and  institute martial law as the law of the land.

————————————

Writing helps. The journal was built to survive this kind of  a potential atrocity.

This proved true after I learned of my mother’s death October 28, 2012. 

 On November 3, 2012, the day after I learned that I had been disinherited by my mother, a devastating blow, I wrote “I had my journal in place this week to catch the debris and the insights and the fury and the rage resulting from the disinheritance and the events leading up to it.

What was good for the fury and rage resulting from being disinherited will be good for the fury and rage potentially resulting from the 2024 election and it’s aftermath.

Write! Document! Rage on the page! 

End of entry

Note:

McCarthyism refers to hearings officiated by Senator Joe McCarthy held between 1950 and 1954 in which he and his committee attempted to expose and confront communists and gays employed by the government. It was a witch hunt.

Martial law refers to civil law being replaced by military rule and control.

[remembertheplunge]

11/6/2024 journal entry.

So, I wrote a blog ---titled it "You have agency" which I thought might get panned---and, it got 54 hits: 13 reblogs and 41 likes! And, one beautiful statement in the hash tags. The hash tagger wrote that , overwhelmed with the Presidential election results, she worked in a soup kitchen and was healed.

"No protests. No broken windows" Mitch Jeserich of KPFA said of his walk home from the election night broadcasting event in Oakland. It was quiet. He said Oakland is a noisy town. But, that night, it was quiet. Store windows had been boarded up in case of violence. When Trump won in 2016, I guess windows were smashed. It was quiet before the election, too here in Modesto where I live.. Very few Presidential yard signs or bumper stickers.

KPFA several times has said that if the Republicans take the House, and Trump takes the presidency, then hitting the streets in protest is the only check and balance.

KPFA also said that we need to get away from the Democrats and the Republicans. They are corrupt billionaire fronts.

We need to form our own party.

Come January 20, this is going to get really ugly.

Very few people to talk to about this. If I don't know if they are a Trump supporter, I won't discuss his win. We are polarized.

Besides, I heard what they said with their vote. I like being alone. No people. No fear of crossing lines re: Trump.

Notes: 6/16/2025

I'm still careful who I talk resistance with, but, I blog about it freely. The "You Have Agency" blog now has 108 likes! Its message is just as valid now as it was when I posted it last November.

You have agency

November 6, 2024 Wednesday 4:40pm

Trump Wins. Ushering in a dark  uncertain time.

After the shock and awe die down, remember, you have agency.

The greatest growth comes through the darkest times. Keep observant and vigilant. Opportunities will come along to be a part of the way out.

In 2017, I had many encounters with the homeless. I would fill reusable Trader Joe bags with food, toiletries and socks and pass them out to homeless people. I thought “just this one person”. I can’t solve all homelessness, but I can have an encounter with this one person. That’s how I used my agency. 

Regarding this new potentially authoritarian Trump era that we are entering, maybe try my method. Just this one thing. Just this one person. Whatever it is that is aimed at the oppression. That’s enough. (Passing out a bag was also a gesture "at" societal oppression that sustains homelessness)

End of my thought above.

[remembertheplunge]

I added two videos of the Modesto No King's Day resistance protest!

https://www.modbee.com/news/local/article308609550.html

Modesto’s ‘No Kings’ protest begins at 10th St. Plaza with hundreds in attendance

Julietta BisharyanUpdated June 14, 2025 6:09 PMProtesters gathered at 10th Street Plaza in Modesto, CA on the morning of Saturday, June 14, 2025 as part of the “No Kings” protests planned nationwide. One protester was detained and taken away by law enforcement.  By Julietta Bisharyan | Andy Alfaro| Loumay Alesali

Protesters began to gather at Modesto’s 10th Street Plaza around 10 a.m. on Saturday as part of the “No Kings” protests planned nationwide.

By 11 a.m., there were hundreds at the plaza in front of 1010 10th St. Many were holding signs, including one that read: “Immigrants are not the enemy.”

One unidentified protester was detained by law enforcement and taken away from the scene. No other details about the incident were made immediately available.

[remembertheplunge]

https://www.modbee.com/news/local/article308609550.html

Modesto’s ‘No Kings’ protest begins at 10th St. Plaza with hundreds in attendance

Julietta BisharyanUpdated June 14, 2025 6:09 PMProtesters gathered at 10th Street Plaza in Modesto, CA on the morning of Saturday, June 14, 2025 as part of the “No Kings” protests planned nationwide. One protester was detained and taken away by law enforcement.  By Julietta Bisharyan | Andy Alfaro| Loumay Alesali

Protesters began to gather at Modesto’s 10th Street Plaza around 10 a.m. on Saturday as part of the “No Kings” protests planned nationwide.

By 11 a.m., there were hundreds at the plaza in front of 1010 10th St. Many were holding signs, including one that read: “Immigrants are not the enemy.”

One unidentified protester was detained by law enforcement and taken away from the scene. No other details about the incident were made immediately available.