REFLECTING ON THE DEMISE OF OLD COLLEGE FRIEND.....AFTER THE RECENT SUICIDE OF JOHN WHARTON LOWE, WHO ...RECENTLY.....OFFED HIMSELF AFTER DECADES OF SUICIDE IDEATION AND DEPRESSION........

Two friends from University days, reading my rambles and mention of my friend, Bert, who died, just past his 40th b'day of 'complications of Aids', the 'then' death warrant 'condition', asked me about what 'happened' to Bert........and why he and I had been such good friends during college days.......Bert and I met during the first day of 'orientation' at Vanderbilt, quickly discovered our love of contract bridge, baroque music and fine dining.......we had breakfast and dinner together almost every day for 3 years, afterwards.....over the years, Bert learned many languages, including Attic Greek, Latin, French , Italian, German and bits of others, and became a PhD classical linguist/scholar/professor in Toronto.......and, later, became embroiled in a 'sex scandal' with some students and some priests and nuns....he had a strange sexual fixation on 'the cloth'.....was fired from his professorship, for 'sexually inappropriateness', worked on his family farm raising chickens and pigs, then decided to work with plants and landscape gardening.....a hobby that we also shared....went into partnership with another friend who had completed medical school, but REALLY wanted to do gardening.........I just 'came across' this old magazine cover, featuring a very dapper Bert......Somewhere around here I have the 'alternate take' with Bert, stark naked, as he would have preferred, but for the censorship of the repressive bourgeoisie......At 18, Bert introduced me to good cognac, pot, the importance of scholarly research, French restaurants and leather 'posing' straps....and those really cool GE portable 'stereo' units with wood-veneered, 'swing out' speakers........and, importantly, 'interchangeable' photo cartridges...for different types of music.......I still have a miniature suitcase, fitted out for my photo cartridge collection.....Who else, but Bert, would have thought this a very importantly practical and pragmatic consideration.......Now, alas, A.N. Bottorff III has been dead since Elizabeth Taylor donned her first sequined, padded shoulder pads for Dynasty......I still have the collection of records that I would haul to Bert's room to play on his 'swing out', as the 'boys' on our dorm floor banged on the door for us to 'stop that noise' so they could hear Paul Revere and the Raiders and The Swinging Medallions on their new FM radios........My point? (and there generally, even specifically...is at least one.....even if hidden in a haystack of verbiage and images).........One of the greatest treasures of Life is that of Sympatico.......a rare thing for the most eccentric of us.......Life is not a target that we must 'hit' or 'miss'......1955 was, fortunately, a long time ago......'If you get what I'm sayin', that is'........