Days go by and weeks go by. Years go by. They don’t stop. After awhile you’re old.
Everything that has happened in your life has happened in the past and everything that is going to happen in your life is in the future. It’s just that your future is a lot shorter than your past.
My perspective has changed a lot over the years from ‘I’m going to live forever, hey how do you know I’m not?’ to ‘I won’t be here one day. Everybody else will but I won’t’.
Nothing wrong with that. I’m just sayin. The perspective changes. Things that weren’t important, now are. Like trying to extract the most out of each moment. The image of juicing an orange comes to mind. Juicing it down to the rind and drinking it, all of it.
That’s the good thing about growing older, you get hip to some wisdom.
Years ago, many many years ago when I was a young man living in Michigan I spent 2 1/2 weeks one Fall helping a friend who’s family owned an apple orchard. Every day I was up in the trees on a ladder or gathering the few I could reach from the ground and putting them in a large canvas bag slung over my shoulder. When the bag was full I would climb down and dump them (carefully) into a bin which Clem or Larry, his son (my high school friend), would come around with the tractor and haul off to the barn.
The day finally arrived when all the apples were harvested, no more round red orbs up among the branches to search out and pluck. I was free to pick up my check and leave. The Bergman farm was out in the country a couple miles from the small town where I lived and I decided to walk home along Sparta Ave. For some reason, which I’ll never understand, maybe it was a gift from the trees, or maybe it was a serendipitous ray of sunshine that struck me but as I walked along I was suddenly filled with this feeling of pure freedom and joy. So pure and so free and such a simple joy that I knew beyond any doubt that that was what life was all about. That feeling was everything I would ever want.
It was a shocking experience in a way, it was such a surprise, and I remember thinking to myself, ‘I hope this feeling never goes away’ and then watched as it slowly but inexorably dissipated, grew dimmer and dimmer, became not a feeling anymore but a memory. It become a memory but one that I’ve never forgotten. To this day it has remained a marker, like a beacon shining out from some place deep inside me I guess, from some place wonderful. And whenever I happen to remember that day, it resets my view of life, adjusts my priorities and reminds me again that that place exists.
That’s wisdom. I’m pretty sure that’s wisdom. I think so anyways.
I’d love to know what epiphanies you have experienced in your life. If they’re not too private to share, add them to the comments. It’s wonderful to remember those moments and it’s wonderful to share them.
I once did a documentary called, cleverly, ‘A Documentary’. I was traveling in Europe at the time and I went all over the place in Oxford and Barcelona and Brighton asking people ‘what makes you happy?’. It was amazing. One of the things I learned is that people like telling other people what makes them happy. Even if it’s a complete stranger.
‘What makes you happy?’ oh virtual friend. Share it and it might make someone else happy too.
You won’t be here one day. Just like me. Whatever makes you happy will still be here but you won’t. I find that fascinating. Confronting but somehow compelling, like a scary movie that takes you to a different reality. Hey wisdom doesn’t necessarily come from a book, it comes from us too.
This sign stands along Broadway where I ride my bike almost every day. It used to be a magazine and comics store with music and movies. Now it hosts food trailers in the parking lot, a barber shop, a cafe, a hip clothing store and has become a gathering place for the neighborhood. The only thing that remains from the previous incarnation is the sign. Pretty cool, huh? Seek glory. There’s wisdom.
This is a squashed plastic bottle in the street. Also pretty cool. I found it along Austin Highway, close to Broadway. I remember stopping to take the picture.
There is cool stuff everywhere. Where you live is an exotic location to someone who has never been there before.
I woke up from a dream this morning that I was collaborating with David Byrne on a musical adaptation of something I had written or something like that. His studio was in a small nook above an incense shop like something you would find in the old city of Jerusalem. The proprietor was costumed in a colorful robe and jewelry like I had never seen and seemed somewhat mysterious. The building with the incense shop and David Byrne’s studio was almost like a grain elevator but smaller, much smaller and sat in the middle of a large, gravel parking lot. I climbed up a wooden ladder like you would see on a tree house and entered his space. There was a bed and just enough head room to sit down. His companion was sitting on the bed, I guess his girlfriend or accomplice. He offered my a big fat joint and I sort of took one puff and said, ‘I’m ok. I’m already pretty high’. Then I woke up and continued the conversation in my mind because it was so cool.
I have a theory about dreams. That they come from the little people. The microbes that live in our gut. I can’t prove it but I’m gathering evidence. If they’re happy I have good dreams, if they’re stressed I have bad dreams. They do talk to our body, we already know that much. When I wake up I record what I can remember of the dream in voice recorder and try to recall what it was I had to eat the day before.
The world is strange and wonderful. What is a dream and what is reality? When you’re dreaming you don’t know you’re dreaming, right? We don’t think we’re dreaming when we’re awake either. So maybe when we die we sort of ‘wake up’.
I amuse myself with these thoughts. I never thought I would be old but now that I am, to heck with it. Everything else I mean. J. Krishnamurti was this wise spiritual guy who used to travel and lecture, telling people about his wisdom. A few weeks before he died he was speaking to his followers, I guess, people who followed him and he said, “I’m going to reveal to you my secret”. Everybody like leaned forward and listened intently, oh boy he’s going to reveal his secret. “I don’t care what happens” he said to them. That’s what I mean.
War is raging in Europe, a horrific war. I can’t even read about it. The planet is heating up, humans are damaging the biosphere of life, the politicians are mostly greedy liars, the systems of society seem to be failing: the economy, the democracy - how can you say you don’t care what happens? Well I do care but I don’t care that I care. I won’t be here. I guess I’ll be somewhere else but I don’t really care. I’m sure it will be fine.
I care but I don’t care that I care. More and more this seems like a dream to me. My job is to keep the little people happy. That’s not a class distinction, it’s a reference to the constituent elements of my existence. Ha, now I’m sounding like Krishnamurti. It means being healthy and sane basically. Constituent elements. Like wow man one day I won’t be here.
podcast music ::
Haav & Inge Weatherhead Breistein / Blåne II
Skinshape / I Won't Be There
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I won't be here