It's too bad, because Tom Hart's litany of early disasters from the Dubya is right on the money. But we won't notice in the midst of another Dollar Bill sideshow. Sleaze and redemption, sleaze and redemption.

Meanwhile, as per usual, important stories will get pushed to the back pages of most journalistic efforts. I'm working hard to avoid having that syndrome spread to our little corner of the media universe, which means we'll probably come off as boring again. The renewed talks between the Zapatistas of Chiapas, Mexico, and that country's government is one example. Even as I type this to you, our new correspondent CARSON BROWN is attending the celebration taking place in southern Mexico before the Zapatistas go to Mexico City for a story we'll bring you next week. This is an important story we hope you'll come back to digest.

Next week, we'll also bring you reports on the Robert Hanssen indictment for spying against the United States, another from NATALIA ABAKANOVITCH on the religious split in Belarus and a DAY ONE analysis of the paradox between advocating small government and a big military simultaneously. These are what we consider front page news here at The World's Magazine. As far as we're concerned the latest Dollar Bill scandal should run on about page A7...

"But, but, but!! Rod, that kind of journalism guarantees that G21 will never be considered sexy enough!"

I'm wagging my head. We're not in this effort to be sexy.

Things Past

Given the chance, I probably went overboard on the grocery shopping. It's human nature. Having seen the cupboard literally bare of everything except cooking oil, tabasco sauce, Worcestershire sauce and spices, I was driven to buy stuff that would fend off a Next Time. All those "If only I had had" items. Lots of potatoes, rice and beans. Ingredients for meals that I could stretch over a couple of weeks and turn into other meals, like the chili I plan to make that will be the basis for burritos further down the road. Rice, the world's food, is at the heart of loads of dishes. As mentioned in an earlier Glass House, I'm become the Wolfgang Puck of the bean.

Not having to worry about something as basic as food makes me feel I can concentrate on my real worries. My other bills and the Grand Plan for extricating myself from Baltimore, the Charm City which failed to charm Yours Unruly the least little bit.

But, I can't keep myself from pawing over Things Past...

The butterfly above is from Dmitri. He entitled it "flutterby," a very appropriate apellation for how people must experience the incidence of "Butterfly Soul," my alter-ego, in their lives. I've been the quintessential Mr. Now You See Him, Now You Don't. I think it has to do with that Escape Artist thang of mine. I would have made a great character for someone like Zane Grey. Riding off into the sunset is what I do best.

In my obsessive reminiscences about women I have lost, I keep coming back to Sherrie. I told you that she was the most unconditionally dedicated of them all, even to tolerating the fact that I had other women, but I omitted to tell you that we were engaged. I jumped over that because it inspires my characteristic guilt. I broke it, and us off, and ran off to Texas.

Even while I lived in Texas, that first year, she wrote to me. She was trying to encourage me to return to the East Coast and give our relationship another try. She said that her involvements with other men since my leaving had only driven home for her what a good man I had been and that she wanted me even more than before. She thought we could build a life together.

I wrote back that I had to keep moving forward. There were other flowers onto which I needed to flit. My Plan was to save up enough money from my job to finance a move to Mexico, Oaxaca, where I planned to live cheaply for as long as I could and finally finish writing the novel I had churning away inside.

That was it for me and Sherrie. She was officially moved to my "What If" column. What if I had stayed there and married her? What if I had decided to go back?

I never did make it to Oaxaca, though. I met Debbie and fell in love. We moved in together and were eventually married in California, a place I never wanted to live but where I would spend most of my adult life...

I believe I dwell so much on things past because I'm trying to discover some Secret Key to myself and my life that will help me determine where I'm fated to go next. Yes, I've said repeatedly that I feel it is New Orleans. But I'm not yet 100% convinced even of that.

Since fleeing California, for the third time in my life, I've developed a complete and ready listing of the reasons why I should not return. I've pulled it out like a well-worn catechism.

Mike came back with his New Orleans as a precinct of Hell argument, the same take Van Helsing has on the place coincidentally. You don't need exotic any longer, Rod, he argued. You're at an age and place now where you need to live somewhere nice, somewhere most comfortable. Exactly the kind of argument, I thought, you'd expect from someone in "mellow" California...

Besides, it is impossible to convince a Californian that any other place on Earth is as beautiful, as cutting-edge, as "with it" as their own blessed state. Remember all the people who asked me, incredulous, how I could leave "Paradise" when I announced I was leaving San Francisco?

Out on an afternoon walk yesterday, moving across the melting snow, I waxed momentarily sentimental about this East Coast of the United States, the place of my roots. I thought about how used I had become to everyone here in Baltimore greeting you on the street, a polite, old country kind of feel to it. I thought about missing the streets of Harlem, too, and the distinquished old buildings there, the stately brownstones. There is something about this rugged weather I do love, when it does not go to the extreme, though I can hardly abide how overheated most of these Easterners keep their buildings. I find it stuffy and stifling most times. That probably explains why I don't like going out, especially in winter.

You will miss the East Coast if you go, I said to myself. But I have missed everywhere, as I've missed every woman, I've ever left. I still look back fondly on Cairo after all these years....

With few exceptions, I have found something delightful to look back upon in every relationship and every city now a thing past. That makes it all the harder to congeal around some image of a Place Future. N'Orleans? Amsterdam? Sebastopol? Tahiti?

GO PLAY!

THINGS I NEED THIS WEEK

Rod was a columnist for the Andover News Network, where he wrote over two hundred articles on web design and development issues. He was also principal writer and Editor for IT Manager's Journal, where he reviewed technology issues weekly, producing 383 editorials. He became the Managing Editor for Electronic Mail/Newsletter Publications at Andover.net at the end of February, 2000, and left in September of the same year. He was a contributing writer for ACCESS magazine, which appears both on- and offline for 10 million readers in 100 newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle, New York Post, Boston Herald, Austin American-Statesman, Denver Post and Orlando Sentinel, among others. In January, 2001, Rod became the US reporter for Silicon.com, a division of Network Multimedia Television in London, UK, reaching 3.5 million European readers.

Rod lives in dreams and visions, edits the writing of people from six continents for The World's Magazine, and wonders if New Orleans is actually the next stop on the hejira.

He continues to be committed to integrity, chastity and a dose of humility.

CREDITS || AWARDS || SEARCH ENGINES || LINKS ||
VOX POPULI is YOUR PAGE to talk back to us. I'm glad you're not bashful. Keep those cards and e-mails comin', Kids!

Our Editor