It's human nature's greatest mystery. It's the one question which hasn't coughed up its answer. It's the equation which no mortal has yet balanced:

What's the difference between men and women?

Many have expended tremendous effort in formulating a solution, and a few have arguably come close to the mark, but none have quite poked the bull's eye. Though some theories may be worthy, perhaps, of an honorable mention, there is simply no acceptable margin of error in matters of the heart. The "Men-Mars/Women-Venus" thing is cute, but doesn't cut it, nor does any theory attempting to extrapolate meaning from the analogy of cats and dogs, or any of the other pop-psych metaphors.

Those brave philosophers who have attempted to philosophize themselves out of gender's rat-maze and come up wanting, then, still get a big fat zero at the top of the page. It's the whole horseshoes and hand-grenade thing. Sorry. I don't make the rules. I just enforce them. Now take those papers home and bring 'em back tomorrow with your parents' signatures.

The main problem with these attempts to resolve humankind's greatest source of tension is that they have no practical value. They can't answer the sole relevant question, "What do men and women want?"

I'm here to answer it.

See, this whole sexual tension thing started a lot longer ago than anyone would think. That's why nobody's pegged it yet. They never imagined it all started at the beginning, that it goes all the way back to our common point of origin. It goes all the way back to Adam and Eve.

Okay, follow me on this...

Let me start with Eve (sorry, ladies, if I'm a little harsh here, but truth is truth and it must not be concealed any longer. Besides, the guys have their turn coming up next).

Eve was created in paradise with a silver spoon in her mouth and tragically underdeveloped concept of noblesse oblige. From the moment of her own creation until the Fall of Man, Eve had no sense of hardship. She lived in the richest place in the history of the universe, where beauty and happiness were the norm, and there was nothing to ruin one's day (well, there was, of course, but we're not going that far with today's lesson, boys and girls, and shame on you for reading ahead). Whatever Eve might have lacked in the Garden was bestowed upon her by divine providence.

As a direct and proximate result of her pampering, Eve became, to be blunt, little more than a spoiled bitch.

Adam, by contrast, was born out in the wilderness. He spent his early years way out in the boonies, out where the wild things are. With nothing more than a stone to serve as a pillow (unless a rabbit or groundhog happened by and he was quick enough to bonk it on the head), Adam slept on the ground with the snakes and the bugs.

He was okay with that, though. He'd never known anything better, so with ignorance cranking out the bliss, he was happy. He cavorted about with God's other critters (until he got hungry, at which time he'd stop to eat one of them). He learned how fun it is rolling around in the mud, and engaging in all sorts of other rough-and-tumble pastimes. What do you expect from a guy who was created out of dirt? In fact, so inseparable was Adam from the mud that God felt compelled to name him after it. "Adam," in Ancient Hebrew, means "earth."

So, what practical knowledge can be gleaned from this?

Well, for starters, it goes a long way toward explaining all the odd, irrational, and just plain idiotic things we each think members of the opposite sex do.

Ladies, take note. This is the reason your stupid husband feels compelled to go out and sit in a boat all day, drink beer, and haul nature's #3 stinkiest animal out of the water by the bucketful (#1, by the way, is the skunk. #2 is your husband). He does it because God made him that way, and if God proclaimed it, you'll just have to learn to deal with it.

Men, take note, too. This same creation story is the reason your crabby wife bitches when you bring said bucketloads of stinky animals home, lop off their heads, and gut them in your wife's freshly-cleaned kitchen sink. She yells at your because God built her to yell at you. Take the fucking fish outside and clean 'em with the garden hose. You're happier in the mud, anyway.

But does this reach that final crucial question of what men and women each want? I think so. Try this on and see if it fits.

If it weren't for men, women would never be able to get the lids off of jars and would have to spend their lives standing on chairs for lack of anyone to slay the mice that chased them up there. If it weren't for women, men would go around wearing plaid pants with striped shirts, always have a little food stuck in the corners of their mouths, and would spend eternity driving around lost because they refuse to stop and ask directions.

If we spend so much time complaining about one another, though, then why have we not, as an entire species, divvied up the earth and given one hemisphere to the men and the other to the women and bid each other adieu. Why do we hang around each other, if we're so repulsive?

Because we need each other. That's why. And that means that whatever differences we have, men and women really want the same thing, more or less.

Women just want it in pretty colors.

I met an amazing man, yesterday.

During each of the previous four years I've been blogging, I've added a Memorial Day post [2006] [2007] [2004 & 2005 not available] Each has been about a specific U.S. veteran no longer among the living. The Navajo - a culture in which oral tradition is of utmost importance - have an old saying that something lives only as long as the last person who remembers it, and it has been my intention that each of these men would continue to live in someone's memory.

This year, I decided to do something different and post about a living veteran, so yesterday, I visited the nearest VA hospital and met a member of the "Greatest Generation," a World War II veteran whom I'll call "Hugh" because I neglected to ask his permission to use his real name in this post.

Surprisingly, I have little to say about Hugh's military service. I met with him for about four hours, and during that time, he said little about his experience in the war. I took that as a sign that he'd rather not discuss it, that those memories were best left buried, but about halfway through my visit, I realized I was wrong. I realized that, unlike many veterans, Hugh's military service did not define him as a person. To Hugh, combat was trivial. To Hugh, the war was nothing more than a rite of passage that, once behind him, became only a short chapter in the book of his life.

Hugh is wracked with cancer which started as multiple myeloma and has now spread to his bones. His skeletal system is so fragile that he requires assistance to roll over in bed to avoid breaking bones in doing so. At 83 years of age, there is little that can be done to help him, since treatment would kill him.

Like his military service, though, this is nothing more than one of life's little nuisances, and though death will come for him soon and though he lives in unimaginable pain while he waits for it, Hugh is the happiest man in the world.

Hugh is also one of the wisest men I've had the privilege to meet. His wisdom is born of practicality, of the knowledge that he's tougher than anything life can throw at him, and forgiveness has been his strength.

Hugh told me that, when he was young, he read a story in the newspaper of a man who was granted a pardon by the Governor for some crime which Hugh has long ago forgotten. The concept of pardoning a person for some wrong they may have committed made an impression on him and it has stayed with him all his life.

It was with this concept in mind that, just before he got married, he told his betrothed that during their marriage, they should each get three "pardons" which they could use whenever they wished. No matter what the crime, once a pardon was invoked, there would be no punishment and all would be forgiven.

His wife agreed, and during the years that followed, Hugh made a point of telling friends about this pact before they got married, and each incorporated the idea into their own marriages. He told me that, through the years, he'd seen these pardons save marriages from adultery, abuse, neglect, and a whole host of other sins, and that not a single one of those to whom he told of this concept had ended up divorced, nor did he and his wife. She died about ten years ago, two weeks after their fiftieth wedding anniversary (her death was, by all I gathered, just another of those little nuisances life tends to sling here and there - the man has never grieved in his life, because he's never needed to).

The amazing thing, though, was that when I jokingly asked Hugh how many pardons he or his wife had used, he told me that neither had invoked the privilege. He told me that he knew, when he first came up with the idea, that if both he and his wife knew that nothing they could ever do would ever rock their marital boat, neither would be tempted to do anything that would necessitate the use of a pardon. It was prefab forgiveness. The simple fact that the pardons existed meant that they'd never be used.

As with all great ideas, its brilliance lies in its simplicity, and when he told me this, I thought, "Now, why in the Hell didn't I think of that?

That's gotta hurt.

This is a re-post from my former blog, a poem brought to mind by a post today on a friend's blog.

"I wish it would stop raining,"
he says, though outside it is sunny
and hot, with no threat of rain
at all for the next few days.

He scoots to the edge of his bed
and readjusts his pillows,
and exhales the foul breath
of death, when I sit down.

He tells me childhood stories,
memories from the war.
I go to see him afternoons
since he has no family left.

I bring communion to him
and we bless each other
and forgive each other for sins
committed in our younger days.

He grows delirious, thinks his
wife is still alive, and his son,
both killed years ago in a
horrible car accident that

left him alone in the world,
except for a handful of nurses,
and me, to keep him company
while we each watch him dying.

And he keeps saying it,
over and over and over,
"I wish it would stop raining.
I want just one more day of sun."

We leave traces of ourselves everywhere we go. We leave them on the things we touch, in the air we breathe, and on the ground upon which we walk. Most of the evidence of our presence is not readily apparent without close inspection - fingerprints on a doorknob, tiny skin cells scaped from our arm when we brush against an object, footprints in the dirt - but they're there.

Aside from the physical, however, we also leave traces of our souls. Whether in some mystical, supernatural realm (if such a thing exists) or nothing more than a memory in someone's mind, they're there. They are the ghosts of the past which haunt the present.

When we first settle somewhere, we notice everything. We notice the smells, see the forest and the trees, and hear the things that go bump in the night. The sensory overload, however, dissipates over time. We get so accustomed to the presence of the things around us that we eventually only notice those with which we interact on a regular basis. All else begins to blend into the background and are banished to a world of semi-extinction. Even the things that go bump in the night.

If we stay in one place for too long, though, we ourselves risk becoming those inaudible background noises and invisible objects. We begin to merge into the scenery and become inseparable from the surroundings. We become a forest without trees. We become the things that go bump in the night.

I have been here too long. The fond memories of happier days in this house have vanished as a wisp of smoke in the breeze of less pleasant times. Much as I have loved this house in the past, it has become an unhappy purgatory of simmering unrest, and I must leave before escape becomes impossible.

I will miss my mountain. I will miss watching the willow tree I planted at its summit as it grows and becomes noticeable from my bedroom window. I will miss the lake, the people, the sunrise, the stars.

The cycle has run its course. The circle is drawing back to its point of origin and will soon become complete.

A circle represents continuity. Rise and fall, ebb and flow, wax and wane, birth and death, the cycles of the universe have been repeated over and over since time began and will continue so in perpetuity.

Circles have secrets. No one can ever know the exact measure of the circumference of a circle based solely upon the length of its radius. To calculate the circumference, one must use a formula containing the mystical number, pi, which is the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle, and just as a circle has no ending, pi itself is infinite.

It is no surprise, then, that circles have taken on symbolic meaning. In many religious marriage ceremonies, for example, spouses exchange wedding rings which symbolize the eternal vows husband and wife make to each other. The ring is placed on the ring finger of each spouse's left hand, the finger which, in ancient times, was associated with the heart. Thus, the ring also symbolizes the enclosure of each spouse's heart by the other.

And my own marriage is drawing to a close and is the source of my need to depart. Where I will go and what I will do, I am not certain. The only certainty is that I cannot stay in this place.

Someone once postulated that if we could freeze the universe in place and catalog the motion, location, direction of travel and velocity of every particle of matter in the entire universe, we would be able to determine their travels and interactions with other matter and divine the future. We are already able to do that, in fact, though on a much smaller scale. Based upon our observations of our own solar system and application of mathematical formulae to what we observe, we can predict where any planet will be in its circular orbit around the sun at any future time.

In theory, then, if we are able to predict the physical interaction of all matter that exists, we should be able to predict human future, as well. After all, our human thought is the product of physical and chemical interactions of the matter in our brains. And while I do not believe in the concept of predestination, I have to acknowledge that it is possible, given this idea, that mankind's destiny could be mapped completely until the end of time, a future from which we may not be able to vary.

Lacking sufficient information with which to extrapolate any predictions, however, my own future must remain uncertain.

Destiny will be my guide.