Our story is our life. Our perception of our life is maybe the most important part of our life because, as Maharishi says, "the world is as we are." How we see things IS our world.
Writing down what we see, is like drawing a picture of something so we get it outside ourselves. Then we hang the drawing on the wall and look at it. It makes it visible to our eyes when otherwise it remains inside, hidden from view.
I believe it is the most helpful thing we can do—to make our insides visible—to be able to consider our lives. Then we are able to track our path. We can see where we have gone wrong and are then able to adjust our course.
It’s like plotting a course on a boat. Based on where we have been, we see where the wind and the tides have moved us and we are able to adjust our heading.
Somebody said, "a life not considered is a life not worth living." By writing, we have a view of things—not only the choices we have made on our own, but we are able to see where the currents have thrown us off course. It is very helpful to think of our self as a navigator. We are the pilots, the captains at the wheel, steering both through good times and difficult times but we need to constantly check the compass to make sure we are on track. It is so easy to be fooled.
Following my internal conversation yesterday about trying to lighten up, as often happens, I’ve automatically snapped back in the other direction towards seriousness.
Ever since my heart operations I’ve had a tentative feeling about life. It’s not that I’m feeling morose or anything like that. The tentative feeling is more of a subtext to my life—something sitting just beneath the surface. But it’s a feeling that is most definitely there.
As a result, I think I am suddenly acting on things that I’d been putting off for years when I thought there was no end to time. I’m acting more quickly—as if doing what needs to be done is suddenly a matter of urgency.
I’m moving with my family across country to a kinder, gentler, and cheaper place. I’m making plans—literally—for a house I’ve always wanted to build. A simple place on a hill with a view, to be built of natural materials only, wood and stone and very little paint. There are some other projects that I’m going ahead with but not yet ready to talk about.
The point is that all the things I’ve been putting off for years, I am now making plans to do. I’ve got no timetable other than to do them NOW. I’m finding all the old excuses like "not having the money" or "taking on too much at once" are just fading away. In fact, it seems that the bolder I am about my plans, the quicker they seem to be fulfilling themselves.
This is a good test of what I’ve been practicing for some time--having faith in my Higher Power. As I found myself telling my friend Randy Durband at lunch the other day, it is when we actually EXPECT things to happen that they do. To me, expecting something to happen is the best sign for me that I’m trusting in God or in Nature to get things done. God or Nature are far more powerful than I am. What I’m doing is what some call, "letting go and letting God."
So in the end this tentative feeling I have is serving me well. I won’t be around forever, so for the time I’m here, I'm using it.
I woke up this morning thinking, for whatever reason—I can’t explain why—that I should lighten up. I’m way too serious to the point of annoying even myself. But, although I’ve tried in the past, I’ve honestly never been able to.
Some people have told me my serious nature is a function of my astrological sign. "Oh, you’re a perfect Capricorn!" No matter what the reason for it, I suppose I’m stuck with being who I am—which is for the most part quite okay with me.
Many times I have wished I could be one of those jovial types who remembers jokes and can come out with one at the drop of a hat. Instead, I am a thin body type (Vata-Pitta they call me in Ayurvedic terms). I have a quick, nervous metabolism and I’m just plain, serious!
It is what it is. I yam what I yam!
Okay, so now you’re going to know how crazy I am—the kind of thing only my wife and kids knew up to now. I’m moving west, right? So, I thought I’d better get the feeling down. And since I don’t own a cowboy hat, I decided I should start stretching my boots out.
This is no easy matter. Although I bought them probably ten years ago, I’ve only worn them about three times (not an exaggeration) because they don’t fit all that well. I’m not sure I have the right feet for cowboy boots—I’m not sure anybody does unless they have no instep, and their feet are inhumanly narrow and all their toes line up to make a point!
My feet are wide, I have an unusually high instep and as a result of these two things, wearing my boots is a painful experience. Not only that, but when I’ve had enough of the pain, it is nearly impossible for me to get them off. Without my son’s here, I’m probably going to need to call the neighbor over to pull them off.
The truth is, they really are fairly comfortable once their on and in place. But what I like most is the added height. I am 6’ 1" with no shoes or sox on, so with my Abeline’s I should be at least 6" 2" –could be possible even 6’ 3"? Just think, the boots make me that much closer to God! Which is one way to justify the pain.
Sometimes I am made aware of the fact that people are reading what I write here. It happens when I receive a comment or an email of encouragement—mostly for being open and honest with my words. I am reminded that blogging is a public forum.
But when I am writing, like I am now, words echo in my mind only as thoughts of my own. They are considered as if I am walking alone or as if I’d written a poem and am reading it over for the first time, to be checked for grammar and spelling, but mostly for the truth of the sentiment.
It is an added attraction to know that sometimes someone actually reads what I write but when I ask myself, would I still write knowing that nobody would ever see these words. And, of course, I think of the years of scratching my thoughts in personal journals that are locked away in old olive green foot lockers for no one to see but me.
So much of my life is lived through television. Is it sad? I don’t know. The way I look at it: It is what it is. If I didn’t have a television (or a radio, I suppose) I might not know when hurricane Isabel is going to arrive.
This morning I found out when I watched MSNBC and the newscaster told me—I always feel they are speaking just to me—it is ready to wreak havoc on the coast of North Carolina. The outer parts of the storm will skirt southern New England, which is where I live. We might get some tropical force winds (30-40 knots—or do they use miles per hour?) but that’s about it. Oh, and a lot of rain.
What I really liked about the newscast was the visual (that you wouldn’t get on the radio unless the person was very good at describing things) of the rain going sideways behind the news guy. You could tell that the camera guy did an excellent job of lighting to get the effect. It wasn’t lost on me; it was the best part.
Sometimes it bothers me that so many of my experiences are taken off the TV. It makes me feel very fortunate that I got to fly in to photograph the World Trade Center disaster on 9/11, and that I got to go to Baghdad recently. If I hadn’t done these things, I know I’d feel a little empty inside. I am a tactile person so I like to touch the scenes of things—especially important events.
When I was watching the guy on the news standing in his weatherproof parka, I wanted to be there too. Whatever is this strange need I have, it is never quite filled by watching television, even when the lighting is done so well.
There were two towering blue spruce trees in the back of our house. When I was in junior high school I found a friend, Joe Giglio, who liked to climb trees as much as I did. We got this crazy idea in our teenaged heads to see who could climb the highest. I have a picture in my mind of Joe touching the very top branch, the one, which the tree sends straight up towards the sun.
I don’t know how we invented the process—maybe one of us lost our grip and slipped—but we invented a game where we’d climb to the top and slide down the tree. It wasn’t quite as smooth as it may sound. The game was to let go and, more fall than slide, down through the branches all the way to the ground.
Sometimes there’d be a branch below which would stop the fall which meant you’d have to crawl back out to the end and continue until you reached the dirt below.
Somehow, thinking of trees reminded me of this—those carefree days where letting go, and letting nature take its course, was way more fun than being inside watching TV.
When we told our friends about the game and they came to watch, and we dared them to do the same, as I remember, they never would. It was a skill that only Joe and I had mastered and maybe the two of us were the only ones crazy enough to try.
A few times some of the lower branches didn’t comply and let us fall through but luckily neither of us ever broke a leg or anything else. If you think about it, if the trees knew what we were doing, I’m sure they would’ve thought of us as crazy—or maybe just annoying.
One of us, at some point, planted a shirt over one of the top branches—I think it was Joe. I remember I could see it from my bedroom window. Whenever I saw it, it made me feel proud of our great accomplishment. It was like we'd conquered Mt. Everest.
When I was young I had a real and close fascination for trees. I grew up on nine acres of property where the man who built the estate had planted many species native to the northeast. There were maples—my favorites—oaks, beautiful pines including several blue spruce which grew regally tall on the south side of the property.
Maples were the most fun and easiest to climb, the branches perfectly spaced, it seemed, allowing a young tree climber to easily reach the highest altitudes. And when the wind blew strongly enough to turn the leaves upside down I’d walk out on the lawn and watch the way the light green would show—the leaves always appeared lighter on the undersides. When the wind became really powerful the leaves stretched out from their stems as if they were hanging on for dear life as if they were little people in a comedy movie about to be blown off of a ledge.
These were the times when it was the most fun to reach the top branches of the trees, to feel the sway of the branches daring them to break, knowing they never would. Somehow, I knew enough of the feel of the tree to feel it was safe to climb up even on the limbs, which were only an inch in diameter. I knew the branches growing vertically would support my weight.
There, high in the maples, was where I learned to trust the strength of the trees and to love them really. I think the most awesome sight, was the view from the top of a maple, feeling how it supported me, looking out at the other trees at the way the wind pushed through the branches and the leaves of the other trees. It made me want to climb them all but it was often satisfying enough just to watch how the leaves hung on as they sailed around in the wind revealing their undersides. I thought they must feel a lot like I did.
I feel it already, the hurricane. I’m not the only one. Everyone in town does. And we live way up here in Connecticut, a thousand miles from Isabel. Stop & Shop was mobbed today. The check-out clerk was worn out when I shuffled through her aisle and it was only 1:30.
My personal theory is that our moods are more closely linked to the barometer than we know. I’ve been slightly depressed for a few days. And, although there are lots of other things I could attribute this to, I think the way I feel right now is linked to the weather. We’re in that weird time slot that is pre-storm when everything goes quiet. True, there were lots of people at Stop & Shop but there was a strange sort of quiet calm about them. It seemed that the shoppers were all busy collecting tons of cans they really didn’t need. I saw a woman stuffing about a year’s supply of toilet paper into the trunk of her car.
Whatever direction God sends Isabel she is already causing havoc—in her quietly strange way. As she inches closer on the Weather Channel map, it will be interesting to see how she changes me, and all the other shoppers at Stop & Shop.
Now that my family has moved there, and I’m left behind to sell the house, I feel like I’m standing, facing West, in the direction of California.
I found a book on the shelf, "Paintings of California" which has, on the page facing each painting, some suitable words from the likes of John Muir. I find these short quotes to be what fills my loneliness for the time being.
This one is from Walt Whitman. "Song of the Redwood Tree" -- 1873.
"Murmuring out of its myriad leaves,
Down from its lofty top rising two hundred feet high,
Out of its stalwart trunk and limbs, out of its foot-thick bark,
That chant of the seasons and time, chant not of the past only but the future."