Click images for desktop size: "Eyes Wide Open" by Vince Baak When I start to feel things are falling apart, like the center of my universe is unravelling, I think about Raymond Chandler.

Its one of my rules.
We all have them. I just the sort of guy who needs to codify them, list them and remember to the point of no longer having to write them down.

1) Avoid all situations they write operas about.

2) You can always rely on the wisdom of Satchel Paige and Ernie Banks. ("Don't look back, they might be gaining on you" - S. Paige and "Its a beautiful day. Lets play two" - E. Banks)

3) When devising a plan if you can imagine Wile E Coyote agreeing with you then it is best to re-think.

4) No matter what anyone says it is better to love than to be loved.

5) Remember your life is not a movie. Your life is not a pop song.

6) If something's broken, fix it or shut up.

7) Don't judge. Simply watch.

8) Children and dogs always deserve a hand.

And on and on. These aren't rules for everybody. I'll never so arrogant as to lay down a personal code for anyone to emulate.
They're just my simple guidelines that I can always fall back on no matter how stressed.
So I think about Raymond Chandler.
I've long held that Chandler is one of the greatest American writers. His developed style and extended a staid genre into a testament.
Like my other two favorite writers, Wild Bill Faulkner and Wilder Bill Kennedy, he wrote about a specific geographic place. Like in film they turned landscape into psychology.
Faulkner and Kennedy derive much of their frission from sexuality. Faulkner's sexuality was tied up with despair and loneliness as epitomized in "Sanctuary" and Popeye's rape of Temple Drake with a corn cob.
For Kennedy sexuality is a staving off of death, a celebratory thing. the ultimate scene of this is when the Ferryman's necrophiliac urges actually bring the corpse back to life in "Quinn's Book".
In Chandler's Marlowe their is almost no sexuality. There are some carnal thoughts. Chandler was an anglophile but not Victorian. The overt act in Chandler's work are always of love. The little guy drinking the poison to protect Gladys in "The Big Sleep", Marlowe's sacrificing of himself for the love of his friend, Terry Lennox, in "The Long Goodbye". And the driving the abused woman back to Kansas, seeing her home safe when he knows there can never be a romance between them.
Love and loneliness are the semiotic signposts of Chandler. They are a unison.
I've studied enough of his life to understand why he perceived the world this way but when the world is falling apart it helps me to review it and to understand how and why.
Love is an ideal to be cherished quietly.

Tomorrow my puppy and my foster dog are doing a big dog walk for Charity. After the dog walk I have to coach some pee wee footballers and give them their summer diets and personal work out schedules . . . try figuring out what 9 year olds can do as a personal workout! try getting some parents to feed their kids healthy food!
On Weds I have to pedal the old bike to a middle school where I'll proctor the kids final exams. Then the doctors and then the first summer volley ball camp.
It will wear me out physically but lift my spirit immeasurably.