NEANDERTHAL

Neanderthal.

It feels like that’s one of the places we in my family come from – both from Mom’s actual inheritance, and Fred’s frontier intellectual-socialist leanings, coming of age in the ‘50s

Having enough materially to begin to care about the gens, the people, the populace, the population – a sincere passion for the public good A village patriarch mentality – grown from the country folk mentality before it Not for power, but from loyalty, devotion, passion, creativity – A real orientation toward the public good And … More Geniality is a really important foundational cultural state –

Rather than to creed or to custom

Old men aren’t being old men – They’re being the younger man when he first came to be, to be who he was, to be who HE was – 16 or 17 year old selfhoods They’re bein’ in the hood.

Even after the object of that initial love moves away from one’s life – you’re left with that unmet longing, as a continuing presence, alongside all the other presences in your world and in your self