I CAN'T GET NO ...

 Some days while taking my early morning walks through Danfroth Park I marvel at how an indifferent sunlight manages to tease such elegance out of the slender grey twigs of the ancient Pignut Hickorys or how the ribbed, olive green leaves of the Black Cherries fairly glisten with so little prompting.

But most days I wallow in a foul cesspit of regret having spent the best years of my life living in the boonies.

I'm a city boy at heart and for me, after a while, every bird ends up looking like a pigeon.

I love the noise, the filth and the relentless bedlam of aggressive cosmopolitan bullying. I love the armies of people rushing in that deranged choreography of urban pandemonium, the mayhem that seems to be just one tiny incident away from a broiling panic.

You can't find that kind of energy anywhere but in big cities but what you also find in these centers of sophistication and wealth are steaming mounds of pitiless bullshit.

Case in point:

My daughter Sherrie lives on the upper west side of Manhattan, is a buyer for one of the big department stores, makes a comfortable six-figured salary, has two children, a housekeeper and a wonderfully loving husband and yet she constantly complains that she is "unhappy."

Oh to live in the First World! Where is that Jerry Lewis telethon when you really need it?

Only in these charmed and lavish communities do you find people enrolled in workshops and seminars that promise to teach the fine and elusive art of joie de vivre. Sherrie is already six weeks (and who knows how many thousands of dollars) into a class at the 92nd Street Y called (I kid you not),  Fabricating Fun: How to Fashion Rapture into Your Lives and Learn to be Fulfilled Again.

The class promises to "detonate the shingles off your chagrin," and to "overhaul your hell, turning it into an authentic, nourishing and animated carnival of happiness and glee."

Gee!

I'm often tempted on my early morning strolls to ask the trees if they are living up to their ultimate potential, if they are exhilarated and animated by the delights of being and becoming, if they are vitalized by the winds and the rains and fortified by the sun.

 Have they found bliss in the sheer thrill of living or are they stressed out because too many dogs are pissing against their bark.