In a message dated 03/30/2000 7:01:00 AM Pacific Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

<< that shouldn't make us insulate ourselves from others. >>

Tom,

I'm afraid that what we should or should not do, or want to do, in a rational
sense is not always what happens. I've  not closed myself off to knowing
people, or to getting close to them. Neither do I suggest that people close
themselves off from relationships -- though I have closed myself off to
pursuing relationships with people that I sense are destructively distubed in
the head. I no longer hang with a crowd that, though interesting, is as apt
to produce a murderer as a mathematician. I was raised under a paternal reign
of psychological abuse and working through the disillusionment of my
generation was the least of my problems.

This all reminds me that one of my HS friends shot and killed his parents
while they were alseep in bed. He then drove off in a stolen car and was
eventually gunned down by State Troopers in Alabama. The odd thing I remember
about this guy, other than his being a blazingly intelligent social outcast,
is that his parents were anal about his cleaning his room on Saturdays. Last
time I saw him, a few weeks before his demise, he was wandering around
College Town, Ithaca, with long hair and was blown out on acid... which was
not to say too much on my part as we were meeting equal on the same turf.
I''ve not yet gone to Alabama.

][<en