The spirit of writing hasn’t come upon me lately, no more than the rain has visited this parched terrain.
The urgency to explain or declaim is missing somehow, instead I’m watching TV football and gazing out the south facing windows at the sun filled front yard. There are deep slanting shadows attached to the trees even while their leaves shine brightly. I know soon they will grow dim. Soon it will be night. And then morning again.
The game is mildly amusing but mostly as background for my thoughts. The volume is off. The commercials are either pharmaceuticals or pickup trucks. The colorful uniforms identify which tribe they belong to as they rush and chase and collide with one another on the field of action. This game has been played since we were kids - chase and tag, laugh and fall down. It has been played since the primordial days of hunting deer, chasing them until we could bring them to the ground.
Watching my life unwind, hunted by mortality, that stealthy, persistent and supremely confident hunter. Since the first mewlings, the first suckling at my mother’s breast it has been on my track. Dodge and weave if you can, dance if possible but that arrow will find you . . . and other pleasant thoughts such as these as I watch the trees and the organized violence on TV.
Maybe that’s why I’ve got nothing to say. The old brain slowing down. More interested in reading than writing. More interested in listening than talking. The rohn report more reporting on Rohn than Rohn reporting. Wanting to be comforted by silence, informed no more.
Days go by. Sunrise sunset. I exist in between the two and half the night. And so maybe it is the way we lean into the wind or wind down at the end that matters more than what actually happens. What actually happens happens to everybody in some way or another but how you receive it is unique and personal. Only you know. Only I know.
I had my 75th birthday party recently in the backyard and it was attended by 15 or 20 friends including baristas I know. It was a barista friend (although she didn’t show up) that requested my ‘back story’. Who are you dude? Basically that’s what it was. I jazz and jam with the baristas on my morning cafe quest out there somewhere on my bike, the only human contact I have in a day many times so it’s special. I try to create a theatre moment. Isn’t it all theatre?
Anyways, that was the request and I told her, “Ok, come to my birthday party and I will tell you my back story, reveal my true identity”. But who even knows their true identity? We wear masks on top of masks and are not accustomed to taking them off, exposing ourselves to the vagaries and judgmental opinions of the world.
So anyways I prepared a speech and endeavored to tell my ‘back story’ even though Gabby wasn’t there. Everyone seemed interested. I hit the high points along the way. How I came to be who I am or atleast who I appear to be. At the end I congratulated myself on making it this far, congratulated everybody for making it this far. Hip hooray, and turned on the music. Big sound coming out of the speakers with the video accompaniment on the outdoor screen. Check it out below. Eighteen songs chosen for their grooviness and danceability.
And so here I am, the son of a Baptist preacher, born and bred in a small midwestern farming town, a product of 1950’s public education (I learned my ABC’s and 1 2 3’s but never who I was or how to be), left alone I finally began my quest, traveling with my backpack and tent across Europe to the ‘Holy Land’ and back, still didn’t find it, Psychedelics - they taught me a lot, really a lot - that everything is not what it seems, but what is it then? That, they didn’t teach me. Finding my mentor, Prem Rawat, just a young kid then, fresh from India where he grew up and touring the world, barely a teenager but confident and capable. He showed me what I was looking for. Big moment. Some people never find it. Continuing with my life, working, making money, getting tired of making money, living in Mexico on the beach, scuba diving and teaching scuba diving (finally becoming a Baptist minister in a way as my father had always hoped) saving the sea turtles, returning to civilization, wearing shoes, making money, playing the game, writing poetry, taking everything I knew and throwing it into that poetry, having affairs, losing it, finding it, writing about it, making my way to . . . here, now, where we all are. It’s just do we notice it? Everything has led to this. This is it. Everything you thought your life would be, it is what it is.
I got nothing more to say really. Didn’t know I had this much. Might have stepped out of my boundaries a little but that’s alright. Who can say what we should be. And then we die.
75th birthday celebration playlist
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