One endless good time

"It's weird," someone once said. "You know the end of something great is coming, but you want to hold on, just for one more second, just so it can hurt a little more."

I've never cared for endings. Don't handle them well. Don't even like thinking about them, really.

Whether it be a love affair, a good story, a long vacation or a fine film, I never like to see the finale. Don't care much for last call. Never did much like "Turn out the lights, the party's over."

Finished a fine book tonight, an excellent biography of William Faulkner, "One Matchless Time." As the pages dwindled to the inevitable conclusion, I hated to see it go, knowing the moment would never come again.

It reminds me of the time I read "Lonesome Dove" in Phoenix on spring break. What a fine novel. At its center, Larry McMurtry's book chronicles a true friendship. I think often of Gus and Call. In my mind, they are always on an endless cattle drive, forever forging the frontier.

You ever had a perfect day? One so beautiful, so full of color and life, that to see the setting sun was to know pain in its purest form?

What bittersweet sadness when such moments pass.

I'm a sentimental so-and-so, and I don't see why that's frowned upon. Who isn't maudlin about some things? I don't care much for those who aren't. Take your "I'm above it all" smugness somewhere else.

I tear up over episodes of "Andy Griffith;" I always choke up when John Wayne jumps over the fence at the end of "True Grit."

"Well, come see a fat old man sometime."

They say all good things must end. I say, "Why?"

Let's keep the whole thing going. I'll stay here as long as you will.

OK? Sounds good.

See there? That feels better already.