Adventure Ahead

It’s six a.m. on a chilly clear morning.  Chilly for September in the Ozarks, that is.  I’m a bit puffy-eyed and cotton-brained and slowly waking up to one of my favorite pieces of atmospheric music, Brian Eno’s Music For Airports, and am about to do a pour over to make my second cup of coffee for the morning.  My companion Wendell, whom I call a cat but he believes he is superhuman, is tearing around the room, seemingly happy that I am out of bed and soon going to give him some lip-smacking wet cat food. 

A few days ago I was loading some of the last boxes and miscellaneous crap from the garage at 835 W. Maplewood into the car when the mail carrier came by and handed me the last piece of mail delivered to me at the house.  It was from a friend of longstanding, going back to an English literature class in my early days at Southwest Missouri State College (aka Missouri State University).  It’s good medicine for the soul to receive a hand-written letter these days of e-everything.

I have moved.  Again.  And am going to move again in the near future.  The house is sold, it closed five days ago, I found a duplex five minutes away from the house, and I have crammed most of the contents of Maplewood’s 2200 sq. ft. into Franklin’s 1000 sq. ft.  Thank god for attached double car garages, for this one is totally filled to the gills.  And I can’t find half the stuff I go looking for.  It is laughable, temporary, and good practice in letting go.

I have done a lot of letting go and now sometimes seem so light that the bathroom scales don’t know who I am.  Here we are, all of Paul’s light and dark sides still present, and preparing to embark on a great journey, both literally and figuratively.  Life is good.  Andrew Marvell’s lines come to me:

Had we but world enough, and time...

But at my back I always hear Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near

And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity.

In a few days I will be in Spain with a Road Scholar group, walking parts of the Camino de Santiago.  My power-hiking/backpacking/roughing it days are in the past, but I embrace the good fortune to find adventurous opportunities for silverhaired guys like me who love their comfort and yet still long to hit the open road and explore the landscape to the limits of their diminished energies.  We land in Madrid, travel by coach to Burgos, and then hit some highlights in Ponferrada, Leon, and Santiago de Compostela.  And what exploration of the Way would be complete without a visit to Cape Finisterre, in Galicia, which was in Roman times believed to be the end of the known world?  I will be back in the States the last week of this month, god willing and the creeks don’t rise, as my high school biology teacher would so predictably say at the end of each week of class.  And I will, no doubt, have had my fill of cathedrals, strange beds, rugged high plains and mountains, and assorted stimuli and adventure.

The plan, my plan... is to move to Kansas City area in November/December.  Andrew lives there now.  He is a hospice social worker in the south part of the metro area and works at a major nonprofit hospice in their palliative care unit.  He has found a temporary abode in Lees Summit.  We have begun the process of house-shopping and will take our time to find “the perfect place.”  I say that tongue-in-cheek for their is no perfection, only the settling into the real world with as few distractions as possible and as much sanctuary as can be found.  I have found a name for my species of creature and the name is “empath.”  It describes me well, and is different from merely introverted, highly-sensitive, etcetera.  So, I add that to my autobiography.

from Aldous Huxley's novel Island

I’m in my fourth year as a grateful member of AA.  The letting go of alcohol and the fellowship in AA has been a blessing for me.  It has greatly helped to solidify my marriage with Andrew and has brought peace of mind and much more stability to what had seemingly become... to some people... to appear to be... bipolar behavior.   Whew!  As a friend in recovery said so well, "What used to be like a roller coaster has now become more like lasagna." This morning brings one of the highlights of each week:  my 10:00 a.m. 11^th Step prayer and meditation meeting at a nearby coffeehouse. 

Stay tuned for updates on the path of the Way.  I look forward to what lies ahead as the road curves and the hills rise up.

Middle Eastern Suspected Terrorist

Just heard this on my newsfeed.  This is an artist's rendition, based on reliable evidence.  Will update you with more info as I find it.

• This much is known now.  He has numerous followers who secretly are part of a radical sect.
• Many of his followers have cruelly executed infidels.
• He has desecrated numerous houses of worship
• 
  

Mind Makes Monster

I remember being sent to bed at a reasonable hour as a child while my older brother and sister got to stay up with my parents.  A dark room, discontent, and imagination created a bogeyman in the closet.  The closet door opened slightly, I called out with terror for help, and a parent came in to reassure me.  Then, I was again alone in the darkness and could see the closet door open just a little bit, and…  [repeat several times a week].

Switch to adulthood.  Several hours of drinking, isolating myself, day after day, and in my world I saw my life in ruins, everybody and everything out to get me, and leaving me in poverty.  Blame, resentment, anger multiplied like cancer cells.

Apply AA principles of sober living to the affected area, work the Steps, pray, meditate, remember The Promises, go to meetings.  Relief comes, the plague of faulty cancerous thinking clears up, and life is rich.  The past three years, life for me has become progressively brighter and better.

How can it be that I could slip back into creating monsters after enjoying such recovery?  The past two days, even while beginning to feel consumed and experiencing the toxic thoughts, responding with prayer and meditation and reading from the Big Book, the mind kept manufacturing its own reality and all seemed lost.  Feelings of isolation, fears that bills can’t be paid, taking up heavy burdens without any need to tote them, and the spirit begins to spin into a self-induced collapse from the weight.

Relief comes from talk, honesty, and fearlessness in acknowledging how the mind can water the seeds of fear.  There is no way to the light other than walking through the darkness.  No shame here, no guilt, no despair, only recognition, renewal, and recovery.  Day by day, hour by hour, sometimes great strides, sometimes small steps, sometimes stumbles, always getting back up.  

I STARTED OUT THE DAY

… with the experience of Monkey Mind.  There it was… my mind… with four limbs and a tail, jumping from one set of cage bars to another, all the while vocalizing the most unpleasant and silently shrill shrieks.  “Let me out… get me outa here… no, no, no… give me control and give it to me right now…”

What good can come of a day that starts with getting up, eh?  How can I make it worse?  Let me count the ways…  Let me play the movies in my mind that confirm my wild perceptions.  Let me replay in my thoughts the words my mouth wants to spew forth.

And then, in the afternoon, the letter carrier brought a package of daylilies and peonies I ordered last month.  And then… UPS left a big package filled with four old-fashioned rose bushes I ordered last week.  And then… I set out to move from the driveway some more of my big black gold compost pile from Springfield’s yardwaste recycling center 

to the back yard and spread it over the garden.  Next came the hoe, and I chopped away my monkey mind while pulverizing the hard clay dirt clods into finer soil and mixing it with the magic black concoction of rotted leaves and treated sewage waste.  Tossing shit on the garden…  getting rid of the shit in my mind...  chopping the rough ground with the hoe… feeling the body getting tired after just a few minutes… all is A-OK and the mind is coming back to freshness.  And then, planning where the three climber roses (two of them still on their way from another supplier) will go in the back yard.  Let’s follow good directions, which say to dig a hole two feet in diameter by two feet in depth.  I’ve known for decades that it’s far better to put a $5 plant in a $20 hole than the opposite.  So, three spots chosen along the fence, and swing that pick.  Amazement—ground is soft enough no pick is necessary.  Just dig.  And dig.  Digging a hole—who could have thought such magical restoration could come from this holey work? 

I ENDED THE DAY… at ease in mind, with sweet aching in body.  A good day with the sun, the wind, and the soil.

...and the rhubarb is emerging...

...and the little baby Tulip Magnolia is magnificent...

The Way of the Gang

It’s noon on New Year’s Day and the Gang of Five are sweeping in and out of the huge Sweet Gum tree in the front yard.  The Gang of Five, as I term this group, are a Murder of Crows and their five feathered members rule the skyways of the neighborhood in which I live.  Princes of darkness, air traffic controllers, sly squadron companions, explorers of every iota they survey:  their shiny plumage absorbs all light and casts back a radiant intelligence that dares any living creature to match wits.  They are a team, tightly bound though loosely congregated, and they work their ways with a casual savoir faire that fools the foolish and is fatal to the unwary.  I see them, first perching on rooftops, then on tree branches, now strutting across the lawn.  I hear them, right this moment, as their brash calls smash through the windows of my room, even sealed as they are against the winter air.  I feel their vital energies, this pentagram force, as they swoop and soar, dive and drop, all the while confident that one of them, one point of their star, stays alert and guards against any enemy.  

What do these Corvids have to say about 2016?

Today’s a good day to eat the innards of this run-over cat
To pull burger leftovers from the dumpster
To bask in the sun
To play games with friends
To roost high in trees

No resolutions about eating less fast food or getting more exercise, nor to somehow become a better bird.  Self-improvement is second to survival:  stick with the gang, use those vocal cords, eat more intestines, have fun now, never become bored.

I think my resolution today is to emulate the Gang of Five and come to know them better. I like their style and I think of Walt Whitman’s words:

“I think I could turn and live with the animals, they are so placid and self contained;I stand and look at them long and long.They do not sweat and whine about their condition;They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins;They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God;Not one is dissatisfied-not one is demented with the mania of owning things;Not one kneels to another, nor his kind that lived thousands of years ago;Not one is responsible or industrious over the whole earth.”

Play more, shout, stick together, don’t be a picky eater, watch everything, trust one’s companions, get a good night’s sleep.  Perhaps it is enough.  Welcome to the journey of 2016.

One is for bad news, two is for mirth

Three is a wedding, four is a birth

Five is a journey...