I'm glad summer is not over.  I'm glad my air conditioner still works.  For all my tantrums and bitterness, I am still grateful that all the world's people continue their precious journies despite my occasional desire that everyone except me be vaporized.  I am grateful for the work I am allowed to do -- even with all of its frustrations, catch-22's, and angry-scared-hurt people who call and try to be mean. 

I am thankful for consciousness; for sight; for the ability to read; for the opportunity to write; and for the paperback set, now venerable and disintegrating, given to me by my sister 30 years ago, 29 years before she died. 

I like woodsmoke carried on crisp air, or the scent of suntan lotion mingling with sweat and sea air on a brilliantly sunny beach-day.  I apreciate the performance art of day and night, of sunset and sunrise, of cloud and sky, and of star and spirit.  I love all my ex's and their vast capacities to forgive; few of them hate me, but most of them have had reason to.  I am grateful for all the trauma's I have suffered, for my abortive evasions of trauma's effect, for the decades I have lost to self-pity, self-contempt, and breathtaking rage.  And I am grateful to have lived long enough to grow up and to retract the blame that really belongs to no one. 

I have hated living only because I loved life more than I thought I could bear.  I am grateful now to know that my love for life is vast -- and exactly the equivalent of my capacity to bear it.