Day One

Woman trainee at McDonald's training our age struggling to deal with hamburger tech register interface.   Trying to escape from facing stock market “slump”  being bombarded by multiple blaring mac  monitors plus a wall full of bing bang video game monitors for kids and FOXNews breathless rabid  reporters shouting out the latest threat to our freedom oozing from the fetid marshes of Obamanism.  Trying to sit and enjoy a grease dripping sausage /egg burrito vowing to eat healthier for the rest of the way and feeling it was good to get that out of my system.

New York and Pennsylvania rest stop men’s room urinals no partitions between urinals men end up leaning away from each other to preserve privacy.  Virginia “Welcome Center” complements its warm sophisticated red brick colonial architecture and courteous almost gentile reception desk staff with a serious bow to civility by placing substantial barriers between urinals.  All of a sudden, in restaurants, motels, rest stops it seems like people are “nicer.”    Northern Virginia, rolling through the fabled Shenendoah valley is visually satisfying. Farmsteads look prosperous and peaceful.  Rolling fields accented by mountain ridges on both sides.  Horse farms with well-kept white fences.  Grazing cattle.  Stacks of round bales of hay.  Unpleasantly interrupted by giant structural steel crosses and huge billboards proclaiming ‘READ THE BIBLE! ABSOLUTE, TRUE, FINAL!   Covered about 500 miles on our first day.  Approaching Roanoke

Cross country cross-border adventure begins tomorrow

Tomorrow morning, Wednesday, January 20, 2016. Dorothy and I are leaving on a two-month adventure to Arizona and Mexico. 

I'm making a commitment "right now" to write something every day in this blog and to include pictures and videos whenever possible.  This "travelogue" format may mean that my posts may not be as high brow as usual.  I encourage readers to be patient. and they may find some gems among the rough stones.

One of the big differences with this year's  trip to Mexico is that we're starting it off with a cross country car trip to Tucson to visit our daughter Katie before heading south of the border. Tomorrow the plan is to leave about 6 AM and drive approximately 550 miles to Roanoke Virginia.  We're leaving a day earlier than we planned because of a snowstorm that's working its way up the East Coast and is scheduled to hit Roanoke on Thursday. Dorothy and I are having a discussion/debate about whether to go through Alabama and Mississippi or to cut across Tennessee Arkansas and then into Texas. Again we'll see how that works out. If experience is any teacher we'll probably do the Tennessee Arkansas route. 

We plan on taking it easy getting to Arizona. Probably taking six or seven days. We'll spend four or five days in Tucson with Katie before leaving the car there and taking a bus to Hermosillo Sonora Mexico. From there we have reservations for a February 1st flight to Oaxaca in southern Mexico. We have hotel reservations for four weeks at Las Mariposas. A hotel where we've stayed three other times and which we really love. We then have a week without any plans. Maybe Mexico City maybe will stay in Oaxaca. Quien sabe? Our last week in Mexico will be at San Agustinillo. A small beachfront town in the state of Oaxaca on the Pacific coast.  We'll then fly back to Hermosillo and get a bus back to Tucson. Plan is to stay there a week and then head back east. On the way back I'm hoping to stop in Myrtle Beach South Carolina and play a couple rounds of golf with a friend from my golf league. 

There's no question this is probably one of the most ambitious trips we've ever taken. My personal goal is to try to savor every moment, understanding iow fortunate we are to be able to do this. I'm hoping that the process of keeping this blog will be a tool to help with this appreciation. 

If you decide to join us in this journey by reading this blog every once in a while that would be fantastic.

Adelante!

Dorothy is beautiful and so is her garden.

This year my wife Dorothy has been very involved with the plants that surround our home.  The result is a wonderland of beauty.  I've tried to capture some of this in this video...

The music is by the Nicaraguan duo, Guardabarranco.  This songs title is Colibri which means hummingbird.

Yeah, but....

Where do I really want to go?  What direction makes the most sense? Lose yourself in service to others?  Find yourself through solipsistic spiritual practice and introspection?  Spend/lose time in engrossing pastimes? Wander aimlessly like Rumi's camel? As regular readers know, this question has haunted, sullied, permeated and propelled this blog since it's conception four years ago.  It feels worse than dog chasing tail madness.  It's as if the dog has caught the tail and is choking to death on it's own inedible flesh.

Yeah, but...

What's more important than figuring out how to live?

One answer might be to just live and just stop worrying about all this esoteric bullshit.  Spit the tail out and run around like a mindless, happy puppy.  Okay, that's a bit much.  How about these well worn thoughts from Thoreau...

"I wish to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life...If it proves to be mean, then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it...Or if it is sublime, to know it by experience, and to be able to give a true account of it...I wish to learn what life has to teach, and not, when I die discover I have not lived."

Go Heny David!  I get it.  I'm down with that.  Happiness isn't found through a mindless abandonment/disownment of the angst that stalks our lives but on the contrary, our salvation is tied to our willingness to embrace life in it's totality. To "suck out all the marrow of life."  

Yeah, but...

Post Mexico Post

Hello loyal reader(s),

I just reread my long-ago prior post "Shakytown" and was struck by the nakedness of my words. Reading it was like watching myself undress.  I found myself trying to consciously suppress my conditioned embarrassment. Real but uncomfortably revealing.  On one hand I felt proud, or at least accepting, of who and what I am and have become and what I was trying to express in words. On the other I could feel the cold, critical, self-belittling voice, which I fear/know will always be in the background watching and judging.  This push and pull's been going on for most of my life.

The "episodes" I wrote about have, thankfully, pretty much stopped. There have been maybe two or three over the past four months. The last one was the last week in January at the beginning of our five week Mexico trip.  I was standing in a line at the Teatro Macedonia in Oaxaca and felt the same nauseous/dizzy/near passing out/fearful stuff.  I stepped out of the line and noticed, I don't know if I mentioned this in earlier posts, a "zooming out" sensation.  Like turning the lens of my eyesight, moving from a close up to a more distant, wider, blurrier, darker view.  Unsettling but interesting in retrospect.

Mexico was wonderful.  We spent a week in Puerto Vallarta and Yelapa and four weeks in Oaxaca.  One of the highlights in Puerto Vallarta was a whale watching excursion into Banderas Bay where we saw Humpback whales flapping their flippers over and over.  Not sure what it meant but it sure was interesting to see.

 It felt good being around the ocean again but PV was way too crowded with tourists.  Much preferred smaller beach areas like Playa Chacala and Yelapa.  Here's a photo from our dinner table in PV

It was our third trip to Oaxaca.  We've stayed in the same hotel each time.(Las Mariposas) It's starting to feel like a home away from home.  The staff and the other guests are pretty much the same each year.  It's friendly, comfortable, convenient, safe and cheap ($35/night). I bought an inexpensive Mexican nylon stringed guitar and played regularly with a guy from Connecticut who plays harmonica.  Great fun.  We even played a couple of times in the hotel's main courtyard for a group sing-a-long. Here's a picture of the courtyard looking through the front gate.

Dorothy and I have seen most of the tourist sites in and out of town.  On this trip we spent much of our time walking the ever fascinating streets of the city.   People were consistently friendly, helpful and would always smile back if you greeted them with a smile.  Streets were busy with cars and at times demonstrations and blockades.  Political groups and unions are very active and militant in Oaxaca.  The teacher's union, Seccion 22, had regular marches in the street and were occupying the downtown zocalo throughout our time in town.  They were protesting an new educational reform law.  I am generally supportive of workers rights but the occupation of the zocalo ruined the atmosphere of what in the past was a wonderful respite from the busyness of the rest of the city. 

Oaxaca zocalo scene February 2015

Here's how the zocalo looked in prior trips.

Here is a video The video's main focus is the street art one finds all over the city.

The music in this video is Gracias A La Vida written by Violeta Parra and sung by Mercedes Sosa.  

There's a lot more to show and say about our trip to Mexico and I hope to do so in future entries.

As always, thank you for visiting. 

Shakytown

I don't usually treat this blog like a journal.   I'm generally more interested  in the questions that day-to-day events help surface.  What's the lesson/meaning of events not the events themselves.  But...the last few days have been pretty tough and I don't I have any understanding/lesson to share here.  So I'm hoping spending some time writing down specifics will help guide me toward a better understanding of what's been going on and what I should do.

They started about five days ago.  "They" is an interesting word here.  I know it is the proper plural of "it" but it seems to give "it" a more personal character.  Like "it's" alive and in many ways it feels alive to me. "It" is a mysterious being that comes uninvited into my body, heart and soul that scares the hell out of me.

"It"/"They" have been visiting several times a day.  The first conscious thing that happens is that I feel sharply nauseous.  Very close to vomiting.  This startling discomfort makes me aware that I have been daydreaming about something disturbing.  The maddening thing is I can almost grasp what I was thinking about but can't get it.  It keeps slipping through my hands like night dreams/mares I try to recall when I find myself suddenly awake.  The nauseous feeling passes after a few moments and then I feel immmediately blanketed by a deep feeling of dread.  I force my self to breath slowly and focus on my breath like I do during meditation.  This begins to calm me down and I gradually feel less panic.  Each episode lasts less than a minute.

I've had around ten of these episodes during the past week.  I've never experienced anything like them before.  I don't like them.  It makes me feel as if the ground I'm standing on is being pulled out from under me and I don't know what/who's doing it,  why it's happening or when it will happen again.

I've just stopped writing to do a web review of anxiety disorders and panic attacks.  What's happening to me doesn't seem to be a classic panic attack which apparently last longer and usually have more physical symptoms such and chest pains, difficulty breathing and heart pounding.  The symptoms I can identify with are feeling nauseous, dreamlike sensations and, excuse the word, terror. The description I found of  the feeling of terror was appropriately frightening, "a sense that something unimaginably horrible is going to  happen and one is powerless to prevent it."

What is happening is clearly related to anxiety, which is probably related to many of the issues I've talked about in this blog over the past several years.  Retirement, aging, loss of (fill in the blank), yadayadayadah.  Excuse the self-deprecating tone here but it does get old talking about all of the same age, life-stage issues ad nauseam.   Ah there's that nausea stuff again.  Interesting.  It's like I'm getting a wake up call.  I need to pay attention.  But to what?  What's different? What's causing this crapola now? What should I do?

Things have gotten uncomfortable/scary enough that I have started reaching out.  Yesterday I talked at length about this to my wife Dorothy and my friend Bill.  Both were great listeners.  I felt their care and support and talking out loud about this stuff was helpful and hopeful.

Today I'm writing this blog as a selfish, therapeutic tool.  It feels right even though I know such an extremely personal expose (put accent over last e) might be crossing a boundary and a turn off for some readers.  Again, this still feels right.

So I still haven't looked at the Why Now? question very carefully,  Here's a few off the cuff ideas.

Tomorrow's my 67th birthday.  Hmmm.  Why does 67 seem like such a bigger number than 66?

Golf season is ending.  I've been spending the last six months golfing three times a week and practicing often on the the days I don't play. This has been a convenient, fun, and in many ways satisfying past time. but I have a strong sense that it's losing its utility may be fading as an effective diversion from looking at, and dealing with the BIG questions.  This is the first Fall in recent years where my enthusiasm for the game started to go south before the snow fell.  Hmmm.

Boredom.  I've now been retired over three years.  Much of this time has been wrapped up in the excitement of building a new, post-employment life in a new community.  It's been a challenging adventure getting settled into a new home. We now are active  members of a wonderful church.  Dorothy and I are involved in many church-related activities which we both find satisfying and enjoyable.  I have a group of guys I play golf with regularly  who are usually fun to be around.  I keep a regular health regimen.  I swim, walk the golf course, eat well, drink in moderation, and take my meds and supplements religously. I meditate daily.  I spend lots of time playing my guitar and singing.  Most always to myself but once in awhile there's a couple of guys from church I play with.  All this sounds great. These are all accomplishments of the work Dorothy and I have done to establish a new life and home in Binghamton.

So why did I start the above paragraph with the word "boredom"? Because it's true.

Perhaps my life  has become too predictable and safe.  The sense of adventure, which I crave, is rapidly fading.  Is this all there is? If it is, why the fuck can't I be happy and content. I have so much to be grateful for. Why do I feel I want to turn over the apple cart and take a hike into the unknown?

What's next?  What should I do? I don't know. I do know that these "episodes" I've been having are telling me something I need to pay attention to and that talking to people I trust and love and writing this blog entry have been helpful.  Thank you for reading.

Solipsism and me

 Today is July, 11, 2014 and I once again have opened my blog with the intent of writing something.  In an attempt to be inspired I reviewed a draft of a piece I started to write last December.  Here it is... It was entitled "Dark"

The beginning is an end.  The middle becomes an end before I'm ready.  The cycles are exhilarating, dizzying but ultimately depressing and debilitating.  My enthusiasms transport and elevate me than leave me stranded on a hill of denied expectations.  Reincarnation into repetitive circles of duka.  Unsatisfactory, dis-ease.

I believe if I''m going to be as present/alive/awake as I can be during this last portion of my life I cannot turn my back and wishfully ignore the sadness and discouragement I often feel.. I have a storehouse of philosophical and physical strategies I use to stave off this darkness but it seems very skilled at finding a chink in my armor.

Today is Wednesday, December 7, 2013.  It seems like its been cold and cloudy for weeks.

No wonder I stopped writing that. Dark indeed but it still rings true. Using that as a jumping off point is like a pre-sex cold shower.  Chilling but somehow still hopeful something will rise up from the depths.

It is now glorious mid-summer.  The grass, flowers, trees are spectacular.  Greens of every shade and hue bring not only pleasing beauty but a satisfying, nurturing comfort.  Maybe this sense of well-being  is some sort of atavistic response to nature's bounty that's triggered by a relaxation of the survival instincts/pressures.

In any case, my wordy analysis above only clouds what I truly want to say, which is simply, It's beautiful outside and the beauty makes me feel wonderful....at times.  There's still some of the dis-ease/duka mentioned above but it's continually morphing into new forms shaped by my ongoing struggle to sort things out.

sol-ip-sism

1. Philososhy, the theory that only the self exists, or can be proven to exist
2. extreme preoccupation with and indulgence of one's feelings, desires, etc; egoistic self-absorption.

That's it.  That's the heart of this blog. Egoistic self-absorption.  Ferdrightnow is my full Monty egoism untempered by fear of social reprimand. Screw it. Let 'er rip Ferd.

So here's what I really want to talk about.... (to be continued)