As I write, the world wonders if the United States government will default.  Weather forecasters warn that a ferocious heat wave will engulf the Washington, D.C. area where I live for a few days, or five hundred years.  (As if there isn't already enough hot air around here!)  Did I mention that Michele Bachmann who, talk about Apocalypse Now, could end up being the next U.S. president, is ever so helpfully ready to "pray the gay away" from queers like me?  My anti-virus program just told me it had "protected" my computer from "a few of its many recent threats."  LOL, my efforts to get with the new media program, have yielded me (wait for it!) six Twitter followers.  My writing or love life?  Not going there!

But I'm not petrified, pessimistic or paranoid.  Because I'm buoyed by  knowing that life is, has been, and always will be, incomprehensible, gray, often bleak, even when it's our birthday; but even as we hopelessly pace in our caves, we're making art on the walls and (figuratively) dancing with the stalactites.

What gives me, hardly a candidate for Mensa, this knowledge?  A lifetime love of Eeyore, pal of Winnie the Pooh and the god of gloom who says of the human condition " {it's} nothing....We can't all, and some of us don't.  That's all there is to it."

Since childhood, I've felt an affinity with Eeyore.  Like the renown prophet of doom, I've complained, fretted, whined, and assumed that the world would end tomorrow.  Following the donkey's lead, I've spent days...hours...months chasing my tail. Only to find, with the help of my friends or my muse, that I'm sitting on it.

When others enjoy themselves, I, like Eeyore, think "some can."

Yet Eeyore endures.  Complaining, anxious, but still living with his buds in the Five Hundred Acre Wood.

Go ahead.  Scoff at Eeyore, Pooh, Owl, Piglet and their gang.  They made Dorothy Parker "thwow up."  They are creatures of "little brain" who care mainly about thistles, honey, and showing off their wisdom. 

But I dare you not to like them.  I bet, especially if you're any kind of creative artist,  in your heart of hearts, you identify with them. Every time I go to a meeting of the Po Biz tribe, I'm right in the middle of the Five Hundred Acre Wood. There's the "Owl" poet who glories in her pomposity.  In the corner, "Eeyore" mopes, musing about the desertion of his muse.  The bard of "little brain" suffers from writer's block. Somehow, art emerges like a Heffalump, out of this pomposity and angst.

In this season of "The Tree of Life," I recommend the new Winnie-the-Pooh movie. It may not be a good fit for the next Cannes Festival, but it's Heffalump worthy.  Featuring the look of the Shepard illustrations in the Milne books, the film shows how a story (appealing to tots and adults) can be told without Transformers.  It's a reminder that even though everything is nothing, we'll survive in the Five Hundred Acre Wood.  And go on making art with the stalactites in our caves.