The term America can refer to the continents of North and South America.

Another similar term is the New World.

[Google]

“

The American continent (the Americas) comprises 35 independent countries divided into North America (including Central America and the Caribbean) and South America, stretching from the Arctic to the Antarctic circles.

Key nations include the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil, with a total population exceeding 1 billion people.

North America (including Central America & Caribbean) 

• Antigua and Barbuda
• The Bahamas
• Barbados
• Belize
• Canada
• Costa Rica
• Cuba
• Dominica
• Dominican Republic
• El Salvador
• Grenada
• Guatemala
• Haiti
• Honduras
• Jamaica
• Mexico
• Nicaragua
• Panama
• Saint Kitts and Nevis
• Saint Lucia
• Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
• Trinidad and Tobago
• United States 

South America

• Argentina
• Bolivia
• Brazil
• Chile
• Colombia
• Ecuador
• Guyana
• Paraguay
• Peru
• Suriname
• Uruguay
• Venezuela 

Key Territories/Regions

• Central America: Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama.
• Northern America: Canada, US, Greenland, Bermuda, St. Pierre and Miquelon.
• Non-Self-Governing Territories: Including Greenland, Puerto Rico, Aruba, and various Caribbean islands.

”

[This is a difficult topic; my emotions are still in the way. These pages are in flux and need to be joined up with others.]

Sometimes i have fallen in love with the wrong person. When friendship and sex overlap, i tend to have trouble. With Rabbit, i *so* wanted to be strong enough to not want a traditional romance; but i was not strong enough.

It became one hell of a friendship, and it lasted for something like ten years. My life is still sprinkled with Rabbit-influences and Rabbit-memories.

We first met at a café in Tempe AZ, and i quickly knew i was a goner. From the beginning, we spent days together; and i was in heaven. At Rabbit’s sincere urgings, we agreed to just be friends.

Watching movies and various Star Trek reruns on old TVs. Finding pleasure in massage. Long talks about sexuality and relationships. Comforting each other when relationships went bad. Cat-sitting. Helping each other move between apartments. Going on medical appointments together. Reading each other’s writing. Just being there for each other when we needed it.

I moved to Durango CO with a new romance (and her young child); but that relationship wouldn’t last, and i ended up living elsewhere in town. When it was time for Rabbit’s final year of college, they helped me move back to Tempe.

Meanwhile i had started writing my first book, anomaly, about me jumping off the bridge at Cornell. Rabbit read relevant parts of it and gave me feedback.

I look back at this period now and feel really good about it — i was becoming the person i am today. My writing took off, and i continued working on anomaly and also published a monthly zine called The Moon for six months. I took a few more classes at ASU — Critical Theory and some linguistics (History of English and/or Syntax 2) from a professor i still see (remotely) in a Syntax reading group in 2026.

Rabbit helped lead monthly pagan celebrations at our house with grad-student Religious Studies friends (including meetings of the Church of all Worlds, a group inspired by Robert Heinlein’s novel Stranger in a Strange Land). It was such a blast, staying up all night on the solstices and participating in pagan rituals (and drinking mead)!

But time went by and eventually Rabbit graduated; soon they were headed back east for grad school. I guess i was done with Tempe.

My father flew out to Phoenix; we drove up to Flagstaff and took the train all the way home to Massachusetts. Then a trip out to Ithaca NY for my 10-year class reunion at Cornell; i’d also sublet an apartment there for the summer — cheap, in those days. A whole summer of fun, back at my old school. (Rabbit even visited, and we went to dinner at the famous Moosewood Restaurant!)

Back at my new apartment in Southborough MA, i knew i still had feelings for Rabbit, so i got more practice at hiding them. Visiting Rabbit meant taking a commuter train into Boston; but it was worth it, and we had some more good years out of the friendship.

One summer i got to sublet a room in the apartment that Rabbit shared with two others. There were multiple massage tables in different rooms, and i got to indulge my enjoyment of giving & receiving massages with a variety of people — dancers, friends, & street performers; the place had a great queer hippy vibe. It was one hell of a summer, and i stored up a ton of memories. Sadly, though, i could never bring myself to have a proper discussion of my long-unrequited love for Rabbit; it was just too difficult.

After that that i moved back to Southborough and took more classes at Framingham State College — Creative Writing and Computer Programming in Java 1 & 2. At the local Starbucks i met this woman, Margot. We saw each other a few times at Starbucks, and at first she wasn’t that interested in me romantically.

But then i went back for a weekend in Boston — more cat-sitting for Rabbit — and Margot heard about the massages & the hippy vibe. Now she wanted to go out with me! I met Margot’s 8-year-old child and soon moved in; it was all a little crazy.

[More on Margot later.]

Rabbit eventually moved to San Francisco, after their Master’s Degree was finished; and we fell more & more out of touch … and i guess our ways of thinking fell out of step.

I don’t really know what happened, but i’m sure i shared responsibility for it. I know Margot was jealous of the way i’d felt about Rabbit, and the new relationship with Margot put a damper on the friendship with Rabbit. Some fractures cannot be healed. Some friendships don’t last.

I really wish i could have talked to Rabbit as Sandi was dying (or during the next year of grieving). But i guess our friendship had decayed too far. They had moved on.

Goodbye, old friend.

Whenever i’m processing difficult emotions, i tend to transfer & associate those emotions with whatever music happens to be on. When i hear those songs again, however many years later, the emotions just come pouring out; it’s out of my control. After the TBI, my most common reaction to hearing such a song is to cry — so if you’re ever with me and i’m crying, it’s probably from music.

Just before my suicide attempt, i was learning to play ‘Summer, Highland Falls’ on the piano (it’s an older Billy Joel song, from 1974). Hearing it now (or even thinking about it, sometimes) is almost guaranteed to make me cry.

(Here’s a link to a 1995 performance) https://youtu.be/vvOnuPYiUzw?si=QFUf_2T-FpuC5VGs

~

Unthinking uniformity tends to be a tool of fascism: diversity and difference tend to encourage freedom and free expression.

~

Some days i just don’t feel like writing. Some days i don’t feel like doing anything. Maybe this whole writing-a-sequel-to-my-first-book idea is ill-conceived. We’ll see.

~

Part of what The Big Bang Theory TV show is about is the emptiness & the disappointment of having eidetic memory and simultaneously being the highest form of genius: sometimes those are bad things, not good things; Sheldon’s life is not easily a happy one.

~

How tempting is it to revise history? Switching the movie that I saw with my friend Tracey (in college) to “Good Morning, Vietnam” from “Field of Dreams” … very tempting. (I really wish it had been Good Morning, Vietnam — such a better movie. But you can’t change the past.)

~

My advice?
Flirt with people a little.
Even if you’re the wrong gender, it’s always nice to be flirted with.
What else is life for?

~

And getting back to The Big Bang Theory, both it and the series Young Sheldon were both favorites for Sandi and me. I recently bought the DVD box sets and i’m watching both series again; it’s like spending time with Sandi in my imagination. And there are a bunch of episodes that i do not remember at all!

Back when i had really nice legs, i used to wear skirts & dresses. It was fun! It served many purposes — primarily it discouraged undesirable elements from talking to me at the café.

My time with Rabbit had introduced me to the queer community, and i really liked it. I wasn’t especially queer myself, but i really liked the community.

Cross-dressing was an effective method of screening out people, but it also attracted a lot of curious women. It was my chance to be a little funky, finally. It was a conversation-starter.

My years in Tempe AZ, living on the edge of the campus of Arizona State University, were ones of figuring out who the hell i was. I went to Rabbit’s “Bi-Necessity” meetings about bisexuality. I played a supportive role, as a (fairly) straight outsider.

And i brought the cross-dressing to Durango CO, where Ladies Night at a local club included free admission for cross-dressing guys. Was a *lot* of fun!

But i was never trying to pass as a woman; i was more interested in whatever experiences i could find. I began to write more with female pen-names, and i wanted to know as much as i could about being a woman. I took more Women’s Studies classes and talked to women about their experiences. It was all research, to me.

Sandi identified as bisexual, so we got along extra-well in that respect.

I’m really trying, for once, not to let my sex drive run my life.

Almost every major decision i’ve ever made in my life has been closely related to sex & sexual attraction, and a lot of those decisions have been lousy.

A few of those sexually-driven choices have worked out well — my marriage with Sandi comes foremost to mind, and my friendship with Rabbit — but even those paths were mixed with pain.

I suppose lots of people can say the same thing. Certainly sex has motivated large swathes of human history, and it’s been the driving force of most human stories.

My first book, anomaly, was basically a chronicle of my romantic misadventures, though it started off as an exploration of my suicide attempt.

My jumping off the bridge — at first glance seemed mostly about sex and the difficulties it added to life, which i no longer wanted to be part of.

Sometimes when i think back to why i jumped off the bridge, i know part of it was my deep disappointment in how the pursuit of physics had turned out for me.

All i can do now is interpret the facts i’ve reconstructed and the memories i still have. It’s all confused and muddled with confusing emotions. Some of it was grief over the failed relationship with Sylvie. Some of it was grief over “losing” physics. Some of it was just the dark destructive side of me. Maybe there wasn’t a reason; maybe it just happened.

What have i learned in 35 years, now that my wife has died and i’m all alone again? That i’m generally better off on my own. I like the idea of people, but the reality can be difficult and/or disappointing. No wonder i was so attracted to fiction — ideas, not reality.

I guess i was lucky to have substituted English language studies for math & physics: it’s a better fit.

You spend your whole life looking for something, and along the way you’re gonna find things. The key to life is learning to be happy with whatever you happen to find — because it probably won’t be what you expected.

~

It’s easy to write a lot. It’s much more difficult to write less and still say something.

~

Writing fiction is sadistic. You create characters, and then you do awful things to them — that makes a story.

*Reading* fiction isn’t much better.

~

Why do i write the stuff i write? I guess i just write; and what comes out, comes out.

~

In life, you do the best you can with the opportunities that come along. Sometimes great things happen; sometimes not so great.

~

For me, maybe it’s not worth doing things in real life. I’m not going to remember things very well; i may as well just read about something — i’ll get about the same experience as if i actually did it. Now that Sandi is gone, i have even less reason to do anything new IRL.

I thought I knew about grieving, after the deaths of my parents and then of one sibling; but grieving for a spouse is a whole different story.

My wife died two years ago, and i’m having trouble moving on from it.

I still talk to her in my head, and also out loud sometimes. In a way, she is still alive in my head, in my memory … so it still makes sense for me to talk to her. I’m not looking for a response, but i feel that i should say things. Perhaps that will fade in time. Perhaps not.

Sandi and i had our disagreements and conflicts, like most couples. Sometimes we had fights that got loud and dramatic — we both had dominant personalities, and neither of us was much good at de-escalation — and i have some lingering guilt over those verbal clashes.

I often find myself apologizing to the Sandi in my head for those big arguments. She almost always got over her anger fairly quickly and was ready to make up; but my anger often took more time to dissipate, and i would usually go for a walk until i cooled down.

We were together for 13 years and did not start off arguing. Things got worse between us as her health declined and she had to stop working and go on disability. I slowly learned i was not cut out to be a caretaker — my TBI had significantly diminished my patience and emotional endurance (which was why i’d had a vasectomy at 25 years old; i knew that i would not be able to properly care for a child).

I feel good about having shared a great marriage with Sandi, from a passionate courtship to a lovely wedding, and then years of joy amidst turmoil. When her health declined further and she got a terminal cancer diagnosis, we put our past conflicts aside and focused on checking things off her bucket list in between rounds of radiation, chemotherapy, and immunotherapy.

Sandi had a pretty good last year, considering; we did our best.

So now every day i go on with my life, sometimes with the Sandi-spirit in my head and sometimes without. Most days, i feel good about being on my own; and i’m deeply grateful for all the experiences i got to have.

❤️❤️❤️

Ignore most of what people tell you — you’ll have to figure out the importance stuff for yourself; no one can tell you.

And you know what they say about attachments — avoid them. People. Possessions. Et Cetera. You really don’t need much.

The more excess crap you eliminate from your life, the better off you’ll be.

I’ve gotten to the point where it’s almost not worth telling anything to anyone. It’s a lot easier just keeping everything to myself and experiencing life by myself.

Remember, nothing is very important; nothing means very much. It’s not a big deal, any of it.

Just let it go.

Live, and try to enjoy it.

Take it as a given that my brain, your brain, any brain, any person … they seize upon certain spellings, certain words, certain feelings as their own; that’s part of what makes them individuals.

Don’t be ashamed of these choices; be proud of them. Those choices make you who you are.

Of course i’m wary of people who choose hate and anger. Everyone is going to have a certain amount of anger: it’s what they do with that anger that’s important. Do they channel it. into destructive or constructive efforts? It matters where that energy goes.

~

Perfection is another difficult thing, another difficult choice. Most things and most people can never be perfect. But some people get caught up with chasing after perfection, and they waste a lot of time and effort on it.

I used to be more of a perfectionist, but then i loosened up … a little, at least.

Embrace your limitations; don’t fight them. Your quirks are what make you an individual, what make you valuable. Waste as little time as you can on trying to be perfect. Instead, just try to get some stuff done — that’s all we can hope.

Allow yourself to make some mistakes. See what those mistakes are, and see if you can do something with that knowledge. Hopefully being better acquainted with your own mistakes will make you tolerant of everyone else’s.

Basically, i got to have two lives — one before i jumped off the bridge, and one after.

But wasn’t i the same person before and after? Mostly, with some caveats.

On the other hand, i was also very different in some ways (and i felt very different). It was like the suicide attempt killed off part of me, a dark part of me; and the part that survived was a little lighter. It took me a while for me to grow into this new person — sort of like twenty years of growing up compressed into six months. Freaky.

In some sense, the suicide attempt actually was successful — i did kill off part of myself, and that made room for me to change.

~

Thirty-four years old, that’s how old the new me is. Wow, that’s appealing! What should i do as a 34-year-old? Woo-Hoo!

In that vein, i am tempted to take a winter rental in Provincetown; i’ve always wanted to live on the Cape — even temporarily — and there’s a UU church in P-town. Maybe next year.

~

Or, from a different point of view:

In 1991 i had given up on the world; i didn’t want any part of it. And so i killed myself.

This, for me, is merely the afterlife.